Page 29 of A House of Cloaks & Daggers

“We’ll camp here tonight,” he informed me bluntly, his back turned to me. He began to kick at the stones and bark on the ground. “Because I’m sick of walking.”

Without uttering a single word about it, I turned on my heels and went to find some privacy.

Heis sick of walking? He isn’t even human!

But I was, and I felt it all over. My calves were cramping, my lower back ached, and as I stormed back the way we’d come and sagged against the last tree on the road, I realised that my feet were numb and swollen in my boots. Very likely blistered, too.

Wren hadn’t taken many breaks on the way into Faerie, which meant that I’d been on my feet for most of the day. And with night fast approaching in the Court of Light, it must have been a very, very long day.

Delirious fatigue hit me all at once, and I was barely able to keep my balance as I stumbled back down the road after squatting behind a tree like a dog.

Wren was leaning against a tree trunk on the other side of the dirt road, legs crossed at his ankles, absentmindedly peeling an apple with his poniard as he watched me approach. His eyes remained that soft shade of lemon, and he’d removed the weapon belt from around his waist.

I refused to meet his gaze.

As my eyes pointedly drifted past him, they fell upon a small cottage with a smoking chimney sitting on the other side of the trees. I really must have been delirious because it had not been there before.

Wren jerked his chin towards the building and took a bite of his apple. The delectablecrunchmade my mouth water, and so I followed him—if only to get close enough to steal his food.

“You look like a rabid animal,” he remarked as he sauntered down the front path. “Behave a bit like one, too. Did you really storm off to go and piss behind a tree?”

I was suddenly too tired to fight him or feel anything in response to his words. Even as the cottage door swung open toreveal a blazing hearth and small table set with food and silver cutlery, I couldn’t muster the strength to ask questions or care if they had logical answers.

The cottage was single-storey and had one room. A bedroom. My eyes locked onto the end of a small bed poking out behind the open doorway, and I made a beeline for it—manners be damned, and Wren be damned, too.

He sidestepped in front of me, eyes narrowing like a panther. “Eat,” he ordered, pointing to the table with the hand holding his apple. “And drink something, too. Your lips are as dry as the Opiate Desert.”

Ignoring his focus on my mouth, I sank into one of the hard wooden chairs and rested my heavy head in one hand as I peered up at him. I was starving, but something I’d read about faeries and their food nagged at me, and I was too tired to dredge up the specifics of the memory.

“Can I even eat any of this?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, shrugging as he took another bite of his apple. He licked some of the juice from his lips, and my stomach bubbled and groaned. “Can you?”

I pushed my chair away from the table and made to stand up to leave, but his hand came down hard on my shoulder, holding me in my seat. The fireplace popped and crackled behind me as if it was sharing his annoyance.

“You’re not asking the right questions, Auralie.”

“I’m tired.”

“You were doing just fine.”

I sighed. Obviously, the view from his high horse obscured the struggles of mortality. “Is this food safe for humans to eat?”

“No.” He removed his hand from my shoulder and walked around to take a seat in the chair across from me, hoisting one mud-crusted boot onto the edge of the table and crossing hisother one over his knee. “But you’re not human,” he said, before I could bolt for the bedroom door and throw myself in a heap on the mattress.

I considered that for a moment, staring down at the spread of food. Most of it looked like the food I was used to in the human world—roasted meats and vegetables, cold salads and platters of fruit, a tray of crackers and cheese and plump berries—but the colours were somehow more vibrant, the smells more potent and inviting.

My stomach growled again.

“Eat, Auralie.” He tossed his apple core over my head and into the hissing fireplace before pouring a goblet of water from the jug. He slid it across the table to me. “Part-faerie is still a faerie, at least when it comes to fine dining.”

That was all I needed to hear, though I didn’t feel like I had even an ounce of faerie blood in my veins, and the way I gobbled down food with Wren’s filthy boots sitting directly in my line of sight didn’t resemble fine dining at all.

“I’m going to bed,” I mumbled, after downing the fourth goblet of water that Wren had poured for me in a few long gulps.

Rising from the table, I felt so full and so exhausted that I almost didn’t think I’d make it to the door before I collapsed into sleep.

“I’ll be in soon,” Wren called after me suggestively.

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