Page 40 of Married By Treachery

“Is there any way I can help?” she asked.

Jake stood—still, with his back to her—took a few steps to the right, and crouched again. “Yes. Don’t run away.”

“I have no desire to be eaten by a tree.”

Jake grunted a laugh, though the sound lacked his former lightness.

Then, “I’m sorry about the stag.”

His motions snagged again, and it took him a second to cut them free. “Why? Didyouset the curse upon him?”

So itwasa curse! Not simply a disease. “No, but I am to stop this curse, aren’t I?”

Jake stopped drawing, and he looked back at her. Raquel couldn’t read the expression there. “Yes, my bride. Yes, you are.”

He turned away and resumed drawing his symbols in the earth.

Raquel felt a prick of unease, and she would have asked him to expound on this new admission, but then Rian was there, holding a small cloth pouch before her.

“Eat,” he said.

She peeled her gaze from Jake and glanced down at the pouch. Rian mistook her hesitation for mistrust, then withdrew a pale cracker and took an overlarge bite.

“Thee?” he said, mouth full. “Ith not going to kill you.”

“Swallow,” Raquel urged, to which Rian rolled his eyes and swallowed. Pleased, Raquel took a cracker from the pouch. “Thank you.”

Rian grumbled, and he walked on to share with the others, while Raquel ambled away, still within the confines of the perimeter Jake and Sienne were drawing, and sat down upon the soft earth. She took a bite of the cracker and nearly spit it out. It tasted like sand, and actually, shewould havespit it out, except that it had suddenly morphed into a thick paste, and she could not physically dispel it from her mouth.

“Here,” Jake said with a chuckle and held his flask before her.

She meant to reply, but then her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she could not pry it free. Resigned, she took the flask from Jake’s hand and washed the rest of the cracker down. Surprisingly, the wine burst with flavor. Like roses and berries and temptation.

“I can suddenly understand why you’ve taken to drinking,” Raquel said as she pulled the flask away and dragged the back of her hand across her lips.

Jake grinned, but it wasn’t easy like before, and then he snapped his fingers.

Suddenly, an enormous and luxurious sky-blue blanket appeared on the ground beneath her, and Raquel gasped in surprise. “What…how…?”

“I cannot have my bride sleeping directly upon the dirt, now can I?” Jake said.

Raquel looked around at their camp, at everyone lying directly upon the ground. “Everyone else is.”

“Everyone else is not my bride.” Jake stepped around her, onto the blanket, and sat down. “I may be a scoundrel, but I like to think I’m a mannerly one.”

Raquel snorted.

He leaned back upon his hands, his legs stretched before him, and his sun-gold eyes fixed on her. “Tell me you disagree.” There was a challenging glint in his gaze that had been gone since the stag, and Raquel was glad to see it’d returned. She didn’t quite know what to do with the silent and formidable forest prince.

Because it made Dream Raquel want to comfort him.

“No, but you’re still a scoundrel,” she teased.

“Andyoustill have my flask.” He held out a hand.

She realized that she was, in fact, still holding on to his flask. She eyed him, then smirked, and took a long and deliberate sip. Jake’s hand remained outstretched, though his eyes darkened, and when she handed back the flask, his lips curled in a way that made her heart jump.

Until he shook his flask and realized it was empty. “All of it?Really?”

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