What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(79)
Walking through the maze of tunnels and descending down stairs carved into the rock itself, we curved around a center room. “How is it so warm in here?” I still hadn’t seen any sign of a fire or stove and given that they could cause a risk of suffocation, I would have been surprised.
“These mountains are warm in general. All the springs surrounding it are hot springs. We aren’t sure why it is, exactly, but the further into the center of the mountain range you go, the hotter it gets. The core of the central mountain is hot enough to make you sweat,” Jensen answered, pushing open a door as he stopped at the bottom of the stairway.
The scent of food immediately wafted through the doorway, the heat of the kitchen seeming stifling as a handful of women labored over the fireplaces.
“What have I told you about sneaking down here before mealtime?” one of the younger women asked, raising a wooden spoon from the pot she’d been stirring to wave it at him as she scolded him. Above the stove, there was a little alcove carved into the rock for the smoke to vent upward. Cool air filtered in from the corridor, so a breeze flowing through brought fresh air and ventilated the kitchen.
“It isn’t for me this time, Skye. I swear,” Jensen said, reaching back to grasp my hand and tug me further into the room. Caelum’s eyes narrowed on the contact, and Jensen released me immediately upon seeing the glare for what it was. “They’ve just arrived from above ground.”
“Oh! You must be starved. Sit, sit,” Skye said, fussing as she grabbed two bowls off the counter and ladled soup into each one. Setting them in front of us, she pointed Jensen toward the metal spoons off to the side and he grabbed one for each of us as Caelum and I pulled out the chairs and lowered into them slowly. Skye cut a wedge of bread off the loaf, dropping it onto the table in front of us as the aroma of freshly-baked dough made my stomach growl.
I lifted the bread to my nose, inhaling the scent for a moment as I tried to pretend to just enjoy the smell, but also tried to detect any of the poisonous plants I was familiar with. If a Lord could slowly poison his own wife, I would put nothing past a community of people I didn’t know.
“You really think I’d be ballsy enough to poison that oaf of a man next to you?” Skye asked, drawing my attention up to her. Her hand dropped to her hip, head cocking to the side as she raised her eyebrows at me in challenge. “I’d need to feed him the whole loaf, you hear me? Eat.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled sheepishly, taking the first bite of the bread as Caelum chuckled at my side and lifted the hot stew to his mouth.
“I feel like I should take offense to being called an oaf. I am not stupid or clumsy,” he said, earning a smile from the woman as she laughed under her breath.
“Apologies then. You’re too pretty to be smart. I shouldn’t have assumed,” she said, turning back to the pot of stew as her cheeks turned pink. I swallowed, the loaf of bread feeling like a heavy weight in my stomach.
Had she been flirting with Caelum? More importantly, had he been flirting back?
Maybe being on our own was preferable to having others like us around. It would have been difficult for him to stray if there weren’t other women around, but now that there were…I sighed.
Caelum dropped a hand to my thigh, his fingertips digging into the fabric covering my skin as if he could sense the squirming, throbbing jealousy that threatened to make me sink into my bedroll and never reemerge.
I hadn’t wanted this. I hadn’t wanted to want him. I definitely hadn’t wanted to get so attached that the thought of him touching another woman made depression swirl in my gut and threaten to overwhelm me. The bastard had worked his way beneath my skin with what were probably false promises, and there would be nothing left of me when he tossed me aside.
“Eat, my star,” he said, leaning into my side. His mouth hovered just above my ear, his words sinking inside me along with the proximity I’d come to crave.
“That has got to be the sweetest nickname I think I’ve ever heard,” Skye said, turning back and staring at us. “You don’t look like siblings. How do you two know each other?”
Jensen’s eyes felt heavy on the side of my face as I lifted my spoon to my mouth and ate a bite, using it as an excuse to give Caelum the opportunity to define us. As much as I wanted to stake my claim, it seemed far smarter to let him put a label to what was happening between us.
“We aren’t siblings. Estrella and I are together,” he answered, the words soothing the part of me that I hadn’t wanted to be frayed in the first place.
“Oh!” she said, glancing out the side of her eye to where Jensen stared at me. “We tend to be more…open in our relationships. You should probably be ready to bathe him in piss if you want the other girls to know they aren’t able to take him for a ride,” she said, a teasing lilt coming into her voice.
I didn’t have any desire to mark my territory. Okay, I did, but I didn’t want to have to. Any man who couldn’t be trusted to label himself as off-limits wasn’t worth my energy.
Caelum could have just about anyone he wanted. I’d never be able to stop him from wandering unless it was what he wanted. Understanding that brought me a certain measure of peace, knowing it would probably be inevitable for us to end, giving me a twisted satisfaction.
He was jealous enough that I could just imagine his rage over seeing me with someone else if that ever happened. I’d enjoy every minute of tormenting him, in that case.