by Emma Fenton
Peryn raised a brow. “We’ll see.”
Feodor frowned at the other man, no doubt trying to figure out if there was some kind of hidden meaning in his words. Ria didn’t have time to soothe the prince’s worries, however, because she recognized this plot of woods. And so did Peryn.
If the hunting party went too much further, they’d definitely be able to see the small clearing where she’d summoned the demon only a few short weeks ago. She was almost certain she hadn’t left any substantial evidence behind, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be hints of leftover magic or signs that a ritual had taken place. And with Lord Izan poking around the library for books on ancient Helish witchcraft, she didn’t want to risk that he’d somehow be able to put the pieces together and accuse Peryn of being a demon. Somehow, she didn’t think that would go over well with the public.
Peryn’s eyes met hers, as frantic as if he’d followed her exact thought process himself.
“Distract them,” he mouthed at her before nodding vaguely at the other three men.
Great, Ria thought. How was she supposed to do that? The easiest thing to do would feign ill. She’d have to be dramatic, though, probably pretend to faint and risk falling off her horse. Given her luck, that would mean a few cracked ribs. Even then, would that draw enough attention? Keffleton and Izan were far enough in front of them that they might see the summoning sight before they noticed her. It’ll have to be more eye-catching, then.
Without stopping to think too much about the consequences, she subtly tightened her grip on the reins and not-so-gently dug her heels into her horse’s side, sending a silent apology to the creature even as it bolted forward and veered off to the side at a breakneck pace. Ria clung on for dear life. She was only vaguely aware of the shouts coming from somewhere behind her, but she couldn’t focus on them too much.
Her plan to draw the hunting party away from that particular section of the woods was working. But at what cost, Ria thought as her horse sped into a slightly denser part of the woods. She tried pulling at the reins to slow down because she was certain they were far enough away, but the horse seemed to have another idea. It tossed its head, pulling at the bit, and pushed forward at the same pace as before.
The trees blurred around her, stray branches whipping against her arms with enough force to tear through her sleeves and break her skin. One, in particular, was high enough that it lashed across her cheek as they flew past. Her cheek stung, and she was forced to bury her face into the horse’s neck to avoid any more serious accidents. She could no longer see where she was going, but it was far better to ride blind than to risk losing an eye to a tree. Not that being able to see had been too helpful in the first place considering her horse was intent on ignoring her, Ria thought bitterly.
Hooves thundered in her ears, but not quite loud enough to drown out Feodor’s shouting as it grew ever closer. Ria’s eyes were still squeezed shut, but she pulled on the reins again, a little less frantic this time. Her horse whinnied in complaint, but slowed to a trot, enough for Ria to sit up again just as Feodor rode up beside her, eyes wide. The other three men were close behind, and Ria briefly met Peryn’s eyes. His mouth was pressed in a thin line and his eyes were an unreadable swirl of emotion, but he gave her a stiff, almost imperceptible nod, and Ria relaxed.
“Here, let me see,” Prince Feodor said, holding up a handkerchief to Ria’s cheek.
She hissed through her teeth when the cloth met her skin. It stung rather violently, tears prickling in the corner of her eyes, but she’d had far worse before. She wasn’t about to show weakness in front of Lord Izan. Ria blinked a few times to clear away the moisture and offered Feodor a smile of gratitude. He didn’t return it, too focused on the handkerchief that came away stained red.
“I knew this was a bad idea,” the prince muttered as he frowned at her tattered, bloodstained sleeves. “We should head back. Your horse is clearly far too easily frightened—”
“I agree,” Keffleton butted in. “The Queen needs a more docile steed. One more suited to the riding style of women.”
Ria very carefully breathed through her nose. The more time she spent around Keffleton, the more she reconsidered her stance on simply murdering people she didn’t like. She knew Peryn would hardly complain if she asked him to kill off the Duke; the demon was practically itching for the opportunity.
Feodor mistook her sharp inhale as a sign of pain, however, and his frown deepened.
“And you need to see a healer,” he said firmly. “That looks like quite a bit of blood.”
He was right about that, at least. Her sleeves were utterly ruined. But luckily the scratches were shallow: messy but ultimately nothing more than a scrape. Her arms would probably be sore for the next few days and she suspected that sleeping on her sides would be impossible while the scratches healed. Ria was tempted to take Feodor’s suggestion to turn around, though, and end the hunt. But then Keffleton would complain, and while she cared very little for his actual happiness at the moment, she would only be forced to repeat this activity or another one of his choosing at a later date if she cancelled now.
“It looks worse than it is,” Ria said, though Feodor looked skeptical. “I would hate to disrupt our outing.”
“But—” Feodor started.
“I know my own limits,” Ria said firmly. “I can assure you that I’ve had much worse. This is nothing.”
Not quite nothing, Ria thought, because nothing wouldn’t sting so miserably. But she knew Feodor wouldn’t let it go unless she pretended to be completely fine. It was nice to have someone so invested in her well-being, but she was more than a little annoyed that he thought her so fragile she could not bear a few scratches.
“It’s truly lucky you were not more severely injured,” Lord Izan said. “Perhaps it would be safer to continue on foot. The forest is thick here, and your horse may easily spook again, your majesty.”
Ria forced a polite smile. “An excellent idea, Lord Izan.”
She didn’t believe in his sincerity for one second. Izan probably had ulterior motives for suggesting they dismount, and she resolved to watch him carefully. But Ria would be lying if she said she wasn’t eager to have her own feet firmly on the ground. She allowed Feodor to help her down from her horse and did her best not to seem too shaky. She didn’t want him to start up again with insisting they turn back.
While the men tied up the horses, Ria pulled her knife from the sheath at her hip and tried to cut away her left sleeve before the blood-soaked fabric could stick to her wounds. It would be far more painful to remove the material if she waited. But it was difficult to get the right angle to cut through the fabric without very nearly cutting herself in the process. She furrowed her brow in concentration. I am a queen, for gods sakes, she thought, agitated as the knife once again slipped against the fabric harmlessly. I defeated my sister in mortal combat. I should be able to cut a damned sleeve off.
She grunted in frustration. If it was this hard to get the left sleeve off, the right one was going to be a nightmare since she’d be trying to do it with her non-dominant hand. The blade sliced through one of the seams, but her satisfaction was short lived as she nicked her shoulder in the process. She cursed under her breath.
“May I?”
Ria whipped around to find Peryn standing right behind her. The tension in his muscles that she’d noticed when he first rode up had yet to abate, nor had his expression softened in the slightest. Of course, he has the most to lose if it’s discovered that he’s a demon, Ria thought. He must be angry that we were so careless to risk being caught.
Behind him, Duke Keffleton was apparently holding both Izan and Feodor hostage with yet another long-winded tale about his own hunting experience back in Moruna. How Peryn had managed to escape being subjected to the story himself, Ria wasn’t sure. She also wasn’t sure why he was bothering with his polite, “Lord Hollbrook” manners when it was clear that nobody else was paying attention.
Silently,
she passed him the knife. He took it and stepped closer into her personal space as he so often liked to do. His focus was completely on the stitching at her shoulder where the sleeve was attached, but for a second, his eyes flickered up to hers as if gauging her reaction. Then he braced one hand on the top of her shoulder to steady himself and pressed the sharp edge of the knife against the first stitch. With unfailing precision, he flicked his wrist just slightly and sliced the thread straight through. He continued moving around the sleeve, leaning even closer as he cut through the seam but never touching her except for where his hand rested on her shoulder.
Ria had the sudden strange urge to lean against him. His shoulders were hunched slightly and his head was bent down so he could see the threads better, which put him at just the right level where she if she leaned forward—not even by much, since apparently demons, or maybe just Peryn, had no sense of personal space—she could rest her head against the crook of his neck. A ridiculous thought, she scolded herself. It’s Peryn. You don’t want to be any closer to him than you absolutely have to.
“Stop that,” Peryn said. He was on the last few threads of her first sleeve on the underside of her arm.
“I’m not doing anything.” Ria scowled down at him.
His eyes flicked up to meet hers for a split second, dark and fathomless, and then he went back to work. He cut the final few threads free and slowly started to peel the sleeve away from her skin. She gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut when the fabric dragged across a few of the cuts but let Peryn continue. When she opened her eyes again, he was staring intently at her arm, eyes flitting from one scrape to the next, lips pressed into a thin line.
He turned to her other sleeve before she could discern what he was thinking, tending to it with the same focus as he had the other one. Once again, she found him unnecessarily close to her, his soft breath warm on the skin of her shoulder as he plucked each stitch from the seam. It tickled.
“I told you to stop that,” Peryn said again with an impatient sigh as he moved the knife away from her.
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you are. If you keep moving, I’ll accidentally cut you,” he said. He leveled her with a stern gaze. “Now stay still.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “But don’t get so close.”
His lips twitched as he purposefully took another half-step closer, keeping only a hair’s-breadth of space between them. It was entirely improper, and Ria’s eyes flicked over to the other three men, relieved when they still hadn’t looked over. They would get the wrong kind of impression from the way the two of them were standing, she was sure. Even married couples don’t stand this close in public, Ria thought. She hoped he wouldn’t notice the flush that crept across her skin, but the smug amusement in his eyes suggested otherwise.
“There.” He gently pulled her sleeve away but stayed close.
She really ought to push him away, she thought, or at least step back, but then the back of his hand grazed her side and she froze. His lips quirked, and his hand trailed a little lower. Her breath caught in her throat. His magic buzzed under his fingertips, lingering where he touched her. It was like the night she summoned him, only his magic was solely focused on her now, not just an expression of his power.
He slid her knife back into her hip holster and then, without another word, he turned and walked back over to his horse.
Ria nearly gaped at him. What an ass. How could he go from actually seeming to care about her one moment to being totally indifferent the next? It was infuriating. And it was infuriating that he presumed to touch her at all. She watched as he deposited her bloody sleeves into his own saddlebag and pulled out some sort of off-white bundle of cloth before walking back over to her.
“What are those?” she asked when he was close enough.
He raised a brow as if her question was stupid. “Bandages.”
“But where did you get them?” Ria narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you expect me to get hurt? I’m not nearly as clumsy as you seem to think, you utter ass.”
“Ungrateful,” he muttered under his breath. Then he paused, thoughtful, and gave her a salacious grin. “Unless you were hoping I’d rip off my shirt for you and use that instead.”
Ria’s face burned. “No.”
Peryn snorted, amused, and started wrapping the thin strips of fabric around her arms. The fabric was oddly cool on her skin, though she winced when he wrapped it tightly across her cuts. Still, he was being uncharacteristically careful with her, careful not to grip her arm too tight or to push on any of her scrapes. He’s being careful for his own sake, she reminded herself. Not yours.
He finished securing the bandage on her second arm. “Good? Not too tight?”
Ria stretched her arms out and flexed her fingers. She reluctantly had to admit that they were perfect: tight enough that they would stay in place, but not so tight that they restricted her movements or put unnecessary pressure on her scratches.
“They’re adequate,” she said, trying not to sound too impressed, but the demon must have picked up on it anyway because he looked terribly smug. Ria swallowed her pride and much more earnestly said, “Thank you.”
“Yes, well,” he said, awkward and stiff. Then Peryn shrugged dismissively. “You reeked of blood and you would have trailed it everywhere. You’d have announced our presence to every creature in a five-mile radius.”
Ria glared at him and turned on her heel, muttering, “I don’t know why I even bother.”
She marched back over to where Feodor and the others stood by the horses. The prince was the first to notice her sudden reappearance in the group. His eyes widened incrementally at the bandages covering her arms where her sleeves used to be, brow furrowed. And then his eyes darted over to Peryn; Ria didn’t even have to turn around to know that’s who Feodor was looking at because of how the prince’s lips pursed just as his gaze rested over her shoulder.
“Of course, back in my day, I was considered the greatest hunter in my province,” Duke Keffleton was saying. “I shot enough venison to feed a village for the winter. In fact, there was this one buck—massive antlers, I tell you. It was in the dry season, a nice warm day like today—”
“Duke Keffleton,” Ria interrupted, hoping to fend off what would undoubtedly be another unnecessarily long story. Even Lord Izan looked genuinely relieved at her interruption. “I hope we will have the honor of seeing your hunting prowess in person today.”
The Duke puffed his chest out. “I’ve yet to find a beast who could best me, your majesty.”
“Shall we, then?” She motioned towards the woods, allowing Lord Izan and Duke Keffleton to go ahead of her. Feodor offered her his arm, but she merely gave him an apologetic smile. “Forgive me, Feodor, but my arms are still tender. I’d rather not disturb the dressings.”
“No, forgive me. I didn’t think,” he said. He frowned, chewing on his bottom lip. “If you are in discomfort, Ria, I really must insist that we return to the castle so that a proper healer can see to you.”
“I assure you, Prince Feodor,” Peryn drawled, suddenly right beside them. “My bandaging skills are…adequate.” His lips twitched as he looked down at Ria, eyes glittering with amusement.
“Lord Hollbrook, I did not realize you were a physician.” Feodor smiled as the demon’s jaw twitched. Ria shot Peryn a warning look when she felt the edges of his magic swirling around her. “That’s the only reason I can fathom you would be so confident in the state of her majesty’s health.”
Before Peryn could retort—or more likely, strangle the prince—Ria intervened.
“As I have said repeatedly,” and it took great effort for her not to snap at Feodor, who was really only trying to be nice, “I am fine. Lord Hollbrook was kind enough to cover my wounds so as to prevent infection, and should I find myself unable to continue, Feodor, you will be the first to know.”
The prince pursed his lips but nodded.
Lord Izan and Duke Keffleton were a dozen or so paces
ahead of them, but Ria could tell that things were not going well. Izan’s crossbow was held at the ready in front of him, and it seemed as though only sheer willpower was keeping him from using the weapon against Keffleton. The Duke was still blabbering on, though who knew about what. Ria wondered if the man would ever run out of things to talk about, or if he would just cycle back through all of his previous stories once he’d run out. I’d better make sure I never have the opportunity to find out, she thought.
“Duke Keffleton, please,” Lord Izan said, and Ria could have sworn she saw his trigger finger twitch. “The Helish deer are quite sensitive to…loud noises. We must be very quiet if we wish to find one.”
This seemed to shut the other man up. He turned his attention to the dirt, leaning close to the ground in search of deer tracks. Izan was quick to put some distance between himself and Keffleton, which did not go unnoticed by Peryn.
“I never thought I’d say Keffleton had a good quality,” the demon whispered. “But he does repel Izan in a way I can only call inspirational.”
Ria hid her chuckle with a small cough. “Is he growing on you, then?”
“Hardly,” he deadpanned. “But I suppose none of you mortals are perfect. It’s beyond your means.”
“Let me guess,” Ria said dryly. “Perfection is an impossible feat for us pathetic mortals, but well within reason for you, a demon.”
His grin was sharp. “You’re words, not mine, your majesty.”
If it wouldn’t have caused her the exact same pain, she would have very much liked to knock him flat on his ass. Superior, smug, entitled, egomaniac. Was it ‘beyond his means’ to go five minutes without insulting someone?
“Tracks!” Duke Keffleton called from just ahead, loud enough that his voice disturbed a flock of birds in a nearby bush. “Looks like a whole herd.”
They had no choice but to follow Duke Keffleton as he led them through the woods, although Ria had some serious doubts as to whether there were really any tracks at all. She hadn’t seen so much as a sign of wildlife aside from the birds Keffleton had disturbed, but then again, she wasn’t exactly a hunter. Feodor was just as skeptical as she was, especially as they trudged on without further sign of deer.
