What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(47)
I regretted my boredom the moment night fell over the forest, bathing me in darkness that made me startle at every sound. I’d always loved it, always found comfort in the inky shadows as they wrapped around me. Something about it, after being pursued in the eclipse when the Fae took over our world, while running for my life with my brother at my side, just didn’t feel like home anymore.
It was just one more thing the Fae had taken from me, and I hated them even more for it. If I didn’t belong to the night, then where exactly did I belong at all?
“We should stop for the night,” Caelum said, looking at the sky above us.
“Where though?” I asked, looking around for any place to hide and take shelter. There wasn’t a clear spot that would hide us from the Wild Hunt or the Mist Guard; nothing that could provide any semblance of cover whatsoever.
“We won’t always have a barn or a cave to sleep in, Little One. Tonight we’ll have to sleep beneath the stars and take turns on watch,” he said, moving to a place where the trees were thicker and provided just a little bit more shelter from hunting eyes.
“How do I know I can trust you to watch over me while I sleep?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest as he dropped to the ground gracefully, his massive body seeming fluid as it melted down to the forest floor.
“If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t have to wait until you’re asleep to do it, my star, and I most definitely wouldn’t have bothered saving you from the Wild Hunt,” he said, his lips curving into a grin. I grimaced at the words and the reminder of my own weakness. It shamed me to admit that I liked when he called me Little One, against my best intentions, though I would never tell him that. “My star,” on the other hand, sent a wave of something that felt a lot like affection through me, warming my cheeks.
I shoved it down in my irritation.
“You’re so pretty until you speak,” I said, smiling at him sweetly. “Do try not to ruin it.”
He chuckled as I took a seat next to him, my cheeks flushing at the smirk that claimed his lips. He sank his white teeth into his bottom lip as he studied me intently, like a predator stalking his prey.
“Why is it that you blush when you compliment me? Shouldn’t it be my face that turns pink?” he asked, grasping my hand in my crossed arms and tugging as if he wanted me to sit closer to him. I resisted.
“Only you would take it as a compliment when someone tells you that you’re prettier when you’re silent,” I returned with a scoff, refusing to answer his question. Caelum didn’t need to know that I found him far more than pretty, that something I didn’t understand compelled me toward him. He seemed larger than life. He terrified me, but he also appealed to me, turning my insides liquid and me into someone he could play with and mold into whatever he wanted.
“I’ve heard worse,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and quirking a brow at me. “I wonder how much you’ll blush when I tell you that you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” Everything in me stilled, and I turned my face away from his to hide the deep red stain to my cheeks. Even knowing it was a lie or an exaggeration, or both, I couldn’t stop the flush that lit my face on fire. “Like that then.”
It should be criminal to be so handsome that he threatened to make me lose my senses while his mouth tormented me so easily. I recovered as quickly as I could, clearing my throat. “Perhaps it is you who should be worried, Caelum the Marked,” I said, twisting my lips into a saccharine smile as he watched me. I fought back a shiver as the cold from the ground seeped into me, even with my dress as a barrier.
I knew without asking that there could be no fire to keep us warm tonight, not without a hiding place to shield the light from all manner of predators or the beings hunting us. I shuddered just thinking of what might find us, uncertain if I preferred death by fang to death by freezing or blade.
“Are you planning to gut me while I sleep, my star?” he asked, as he laid himself out on the ground. Even with his cloak still wrapped around my shoulders, he didn’t seem bothered by the cold dirt beneath him. Stretching his arms over his head and cocking a knee so the bottom of his boot pressed into the ground, he bent his elbows and used his forearms as a pillow. “Perhaps burn me with the fire that smolders inside of you, waiting to ignite?”
“I need you alive for now, but that doesn’t mean I need you to have all of your appendages functioning. I’ve kind of always wondered how a man would scream if I cut off his prized flesh between his legs,” I said, wrinkling my nose. My only hesitation in doing it to Lord Byron, aside from the obvious death sentence it would bring, had been that I would need to touch it in order for that to happen.
I would pass on that any chance I got.
“There’s my girl,” he said, pursing his lips in a move that only drew attention to them. All I wanted was to lean forward and sink my teeth into the plump, tempting flesh, to draw blood in a way that felt so unlike me. I’d enjoyed being able to protect myself in the past, but I’d never thought of myself as being particularly violent.
Not until the Fae Mark took everything I thought I knew about myself and changed me, twisting me into the bitter, rage-filled woman I felt myself growing into more and more, every hour that passed. The darkness lurking inside of me seemed overwhelming in the moments when I overreacted to Caelum’s ridiculous commentary and his desire to irritate me.