by Marie Hall
She shrugged. The words were nice enough, but hardly mattered to her at the moment. What she felt now went beyond the fact that he’d not liked her meal. And she could tell. It’d sat too long and grown cold and overcooked; if he’d been awake when she’d finished cooking it earlier it would have been much better. “Doesn’t matter,” she muttered and then gave a feeble chuckle. “It really was awful.”
“No.” His hand shot out and once again he unerringly found her hand through the illusion. “It wasn’t nothing,” he said with a gentle squeeze of her fingers that caused her already-splintered emotions to go haywire. “You took the time and I fear I can be quite bullheaded when on a mission. It’s always been that way with me sadly.”
When he let go of her hand it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that he could continue to hang on to it, but she’d already suffered quite enough rejection for one day.
Irritated by her feelings, she shoved her hand under her butt. That way if he tried to grab it again he’d be unable to find it. Lilith clenched her jaw. The point of an illusion was to not be seen, and she didn’t want him touching her so casually anymore.
She should ask him to go back to the shack so she could get some rest. But they’d slept the afternoon away, the last thing she was was tired. Engaging him in conversation was a bad idea. It would only serve to strengthen the emotional attachment she felt for him and it was better for all involved to just sever it now. Her wolf would have to find a compatible shifter at some point that she could mate and be happy with. Lilith needed only to give it more time.
Allowing herself to become entangled with someone outside of her species was a death sentence. Why couldn’t she seem to get that through her thick head?
But against her better judgment, she murmured, “What way?”
Leaning back on his hands, he appeared to be settling in, and she wasn’t sure whether she liked that or not. Her stomach was a painful mess of quivering, dancing butterflies and her throat felt much too thick. Her tongue swollen, she had no idea what was the matter with her. Why all her wits seemed to have suddenly fled.
Nibbling onto the corner of her lip, she glanced at her toes.
“I was born from a pit of flame in a world called Delerium.”
Brows gathering into a tight vee, she peeked at him from the corner of her eye. She’d been asking him for weeks to tell her more of himself and he’d always seemed to have one excuse or another not to. Now suddenly he wished to share?
Not that she minded, but what had brought about the sudden change of heart?
“It is an old world full of old ideas. We live in a caste system, immediately born into it. Our lives and our roles in society are dictated from the moment we open our eyes and take our first breath.”
Wetting her lips, she stopped wondering about the why and decided if he was going to share than she would ask the questions that’d been gnawing at her from the moment she’d first spotted a demone.
“The wolves are much the same way,” she admitted hesitantly. When he smiled back at her, she felt bolder to continue. “Alphas are not made, they’re born. And they’re usually terrible, demanding everything, thinking of no one but themselves. I much prefer the company of real wolves over my own kind—isn’t that terrible?”
“No.” He picked up a twig and toyed with the dried edges of it. “Not so terrible at all. I found during my life there that I was good at what I’d been created to be, but I wearied of the life.”
“You were a warrior?”
His lip twitched just slightly. “Indeed I was. I even bore a moniker.”
Laughing, she played with the pile of loose moss strings by her knees. “Aye? And what was it?”
“The Black Death, for I brought it wherever I roamed.”
“My father would have been impressed. He, too, was a bred warrior for a dark queen many, many years ago.”
Snapping the twig in half with his blunt fingers, he tossed them over his shoulder. “And what made him walk away?”
She snorted remembering the stories her parents always told. They were an unusual pair in that they’d truly fallen in love. Many wolves married, not for love, but power. “Father fell in love.”
“You make it sound like he contracted a disease.”
“Well.” She shrugged. “To my kind, it is. Love is a weakness.”
He sighed. “I do wish you’d change. This conversation loses something when I’m forced to speak to the beady eyes of a reptile.”
Chuckling, she dropped the illusion. Mostly.
His jeweled eyes narrowed as he reached for a tendril of her hair. “Blonde?”
She shivered as the end of it slid through his fingers. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she’d done it in hopes of discovering what his preferred form for her was, but instead she snapped her jaw shut. There she went again. Forgetting why flirting him was such a bad idea.
“I prefer you in your natural form,” he whispered it so low, every cell inside her body stilled.
Surely he’d not said what she’d just heard. It’d been a trick of her subconscious. “Excuse me?”
“We are alone in the woods, Lilith, no monsters can attack us this close to the safety of the shack. Be as you are.”
Not a declaration of his heart, but…not so bad, either.
Banishing the illusions completely she wriggled her wrist. “There. I am who I am.”
“Better.” He grinned.
And she clamped a hand to her stomach. “Knight, have you been bewitched? You’re acting quite unusual.”
Immediately the easy banter and smiles ceased. He leaned back and gazed up at the stars, exposing the long column of his throat. It would have been impossible to rip her gaze away from his posture even if the woods were burning down around them.
If he’d been a wolf, she would have understood the position to imply his wish to mate her. Exposing his weakest point to her and telling her without words that he trusted her wolf to come out and play with him.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she turned her face to the side and swallowed hard. Giles was no wolf, and what he’d done he’d done unknowingly.
Clenching her fingers into her mother’s cloak, she bunched the fabric tight in her fist and counted slowly to three in her head, doing her best to ignore the primal urge to crawl onto his lap and suckle at the base of his throat with her teeth and tongue.
“You are right.” His deep, barrel-chested voice sliced through her thoughts. “I know I am acting differently. I’ve been debating what to do about a certain situation for over an hour now.”
Her eyes snapped open. That was not at all what she’d expected to hear him say. “What do you mean? Debating about what? Our journey?”
“Yes.” He finally glanced at her. “But more than that.”
She blinked. He seemed to be struggling with the words, and that sign of hesitation only served to increase her curiosity. She’d been gone for a little over an hour—was he referring to her, then? And if so, why?
“What about?”
Scrubbing his jaw, he peered at her intently for several tense seconds before saying, “Perhaps it would help if I started from the beginning.”
She nodded for him to continue.
Taking a deep breath, he gazed at the flat meadow spread before them. Cicadas and grasshoppers added a gentle melody to the night’s breeze, which rolled with the redolent scents of honeysuckle and wild roses.
Lilith wanted to urge him to continue, but for once she held her tongue. If he wanted to share, he would. It wasn’t as though she’d been very forthcoming with him about her life, either.
“As I said before I was born a warrior. Trained from the moment I could hold a wooden sword, all to serve King Dionysis—a power-hungry tyrant who thought little of the subjection of his people in his constant quest for more. And while a part of me didn’t like it, I figured I had no voice. It was who I was. Who I’d been created to be. And there was nothing more to it.”
Lilith
bit down onto the corner of her lip, wanting to ask him so many questions, but not wanting to veer him off course again.
He lifted a brow, as if noting her struggle. She waved her hand. “Continue.”
Shrugging, he stroked the grass beside him absentmindedly. “The changes in me didn’t occur overnight. I am a creature of habit and anything that takes me outside of my comfort zone makes me uneasy. It’s a flaw of mine. I struggle with doing what’s right—”
Unable to hold her tongue, she shook her head. “You seem entirely honorable, Giles. Look what you did for me with the girls, and the merry band of thieves. You’ve—”
“You mistake me.” He gave her a tight smile. “My desire to keep you safe is tied into my desire to see this journey to its end as quickly as possible. You are in my charge and so therefore your safety is of paramount importance to me.”
Duty.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
It was like jumping into an arctic pond to hear it. Swallowing hard, she nodded. Trying desperately to pretend his words hadn’t bothered her in the slightest.
“By ‘right’ I mean stepping beyond my line of duty, making a decision of my own that benefits no one other than myself. Though I was bred a warrior, in many respects I’m a servant. It is the role I’ve adopted here in Kingdom to my prince. I do as I am bid.”
“Don’t you have any feelings on the matter?”
“That’s just it. I am demone, the role comes so naturally to me that emotions rarely play a part in my life. It isn’t that I don’t have them, it’s that I’ve been so trained to ignore them that it is second nature. My desires and wants mean nothing.”
“They mean everything. How can you truly be happy without them?”
He sighed. “Happiness, joy—I’ve felt them. I’ve known them, but as a warrior they were always tied into conquest. Winning at all costs.”
“The joy of a child. Of a wife. Of a home—those mean nothing to you?” Why was she so adamant in pointing those things out in particular to him? She couldn’t understand that someone wouldn’t wish to know love or to be loved; the concept was entirely foreign to her.
Even with all the bullying she’d experienced as a pup, her one constant had been a loving and nurturing family life. Without it Lilith feared she might have become just as mean-spirited as the rest of her kind.
“I don’t know, Lilith. I’ve thought of those ideas in an abstract sense, but my life was always too busy. Because I cannot give all of me to anyone else, Rumpel already has it. I must be there for him whenever he needs me, whenever he calls me. Ready at a moment’s notice to carry out his every whim. Whether as a warrior, or valet, or game master.”
“Which leaves nothing for anyone else.”
He spread his arms. “Exactly. So though I’ve on occasion wondered what my life might be like were I born someone else, it is always fleeting. Even as far-removed from Delerium as I am, the caste system still remains alive and well inside me.”
She clenched her jaw. Lilith didn’t want to read between the lines, but this felt an awful lot like someone giving her the hint that it would never happen between them, and that burned her because she’d not asked it of him. In fact, she’d only just determined that she would let up on her pursuit of him.
“But that isn’t true,” she surprised herself by saying, “because you did break away from the king, obviously. You live here now, on Kingdom. You serve a prince, not the king you were destined for. You can break out of the mold.”
“Yes,” he growled, but not at her, his eyes were distant, staring far off into a memory she could not see, “and it nearly broke me to do it. The only reason I did was because Dionysis would kill our species off in his madness. We are an immortal race. But we can die, though it isn’t easy. Disease will not take us, but the cruelty of our king could. It is difficult for my kind to breed. Children are rare and valued, treasured. So to kill us off meant he’d extinguish our flame, our species, eternally.”
“So Rumpel fought him?”
“No.” His lashes fluttered and he finally looked at her, laughing softly but not sounding as though it were funny. “Dionysis was too powerful, and most warriors did not do as I did. They remained loyal to their king. Rumpel was banished for daring to speak out against his father. A few of the royals felt as he did, and the murmurings of a revolution were enough for Dionysis to kick him out of Delerium and all who followed him.”
“Why not just kill him?”
“Because royals are powerful, imbued with magics beyond imagining. And, should the king have taken a sword to the dark prince, he’d known the revolution would have risen. It was one thing to brutalize the serfs, but quite another to attempt the same with a sovereign.”
She sighed. “It makes no sense to me. So Rumpel spoke out against a wicked king and only those of you at the castle in the sky were bold enough to agree that the king was evil? Here in Kingdom we call it like we see it, and should I ever come across the Red Queen, I’ll cut off her head with my claws.” She flicked her fingers at him.
Her silly threat failed to illicit even half of a chuckle from him. “Kingdom is entirely different. It is why I’m not surprised that you do not understand me.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, knight,” she said, looking at him gently, “it’s just that I can’t. Rumpel seems to have adapted well here, so why can’t you? Why must it be duty or nothing? There is more to life.”
“Rumpel was born a prince. What he wanted he always got. But when you are born to believe that you are owed no more than what’s been given, and everyone believes as you do, you cannot break away easily.”
“And yet…” She touched his cheek briefly, trying to make him understand her point. “You did. You followed Rumpel. And…all things considered, he seems a helluva lot better than Dionysis.”
Grabbing her wrist, he squeezed it gently before pushing it away.
Biting onto the tip of her tongue she reminded herself not to touch him again. It was so easy to forget that they hadn’t been friends forever; when she was with him things felt so natural. Just like being with her brothers.
Except, of course, for the fact that she wished to lie naked with Giles and explore his body while he explored her own. She sighed, damning her foolish bargain with Rumpel all over again.
“I will never regret following Rumpel, but I swore to him that I would never do anything to dishonor him. This journey we’re on, it takes precedence above all.”
She sensed a ‘but’ in there and waited for it.
When he didn’t continue talking, she spread her arms. “So that’s it? This is what you grappled with while I was gone? None of this is really much of a surprise to me. At least tell me why we journey as we are. To what purpose? Why must we fetch that chalice, because the dark prince wishes it, or is there more?”
“Because his son is dying.”
Giles wasn’t being as honest with her as he pretended to be. Lilith looked entirely too lovely sitting before him, her dark-as-midnight hair lifting gently in the breeze, her pale ivory skin gleaming like milk in moonlight, and his fingers itched to trace it.
He did feel.
He did want.
Though he should not. And he’d told her all those things, not just to make her believe it, but himself as well.
Speaking with Danika earlier, he’d come to a startling and terrifying conclusion. For the first time in centuries Giles wanted selfishly.
Her full pink lips tipped upward. “The chalice of hope—one drink from it and whatever the heart desires, the heart shall have,” she whispered. “I can see now why this quest is so important to you. I am sorry to have been such a thorn in your flesh through this, Giles.”
He hated to see the sparkle in her eyes dimming, damning himself even while he reached out a hand to trace the velvety softness of her cheek. He shook his head. Trying desperately to ignore the trembling in his heart at the touch of her.
Lilith’s lashes fanne
d across the tops of her cheeks like the darkened tips of a paintbrush.
“Lilith, don’t,” he murmured, wishing for the first time in his life that he was someone else, someone who was free to fall in love.
Danika’s whispered words, that Lilith would make him happy echoed through his skull. In all his years of pretending he’d never wanted, that was the one desire he’d most secretly yearned for. Desired above all else.
Happiness.
Doing his duty made him content, but true joy had never been his. His life had always belonged to someone else.
How would it feel to know it, to own it, to know that what your mate gave you, you could also give back to them?
She jerked away from his touch and he bit down on his bottom lip, knowing he needed her to keep away from him and then remembering all over again the life she’d be destined for if she did.
Godmothers did not lie when it came to matters of the heart, it was why Rumpel had such a disdain for them—he was in the business of taking, whereas godmothers were strictly in the business of giving. It was bad for business when godmothers interfered.
And here was one coming now to Giles to ruin everything. There was only one way to fix this mess now.
“Lilith, I know.”
She sniffled, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand and staring down miserably at her feet. It bothered him to see her like that. Bothered him that she was no longer laughing and flirting with him as mercilessly as she had at the very beginning of this long journey. Lilith was always so sullen now, and he knew that, unintentionally or not, it was because of him.
“Know what?” she muttered.
He inhaled deeply. “I know the pact you made with Rumpel.”
Jaw clenching, she refused to look at him. “I suppose you find it funny, then. That your master would take my deal when I was barely old enough to wipe my bum.”
“You don’t sound bitter about it. Why not?”
She let out a small chuckle that sounded like it was mixed with unshed tears. “How can I be bitter? I made the deal. I went to him, I sought him out. Do you know,” she turned to him, “that he gave me three chances to walk away?”
