Page 13 of The Manticore's Fire

“Very trusting,” she mumbled under her breath but got to immediate work.

Between the two of them, they managed to create a perfectly pleasant meal, and Abby seemed to soften up as they ate together. It was only when they were finished that herexpression seemed to shutter and she stood once more, eager to find something else with which to operate her time.

Samir sighed as he watched her leave the room. He had been rather enjoying the lighter mood and the rare sound of her laughter. He had not even realized until it was over, and she began to silently clean up, how much he enjoyed it. It filled an empty hole within his chest that he had never noticed before. But then she left the kitchen, taking the warmth of her presence and the musical sound of her laughter, and only then did he realize how much more there was to desire beyond the hunt.

How odd.

Chapter

Ten

Just looking at the manticore unreasonably infuriated Abby. Once again, Samir had caught her inching her way toward the exit of his den. And now he was just sitting there in his chair once more, looking as unnatural as could be like a trained creature perched on a chair but with joints and musculature caught somewhere in between species that allowed him to sit comfortably. And once again he was ignoring her in favor of the book held so casually between his hands. A book that Abby already knew that she couldn’t make heads or tails of, like so many in his collection secreted away into a small antechamber off the main den.

Days of boring exploration of her surroundings while she attempted to find some hidden way out hadn’t done much for her temper. Even less considering that she had been forced to spend hours that first day mending the rips in her pants to make them wearable. But finding a massive collection of books that she couldn’t read, and that her captor seemed to derive a great deal of pleasure from, just annoyed the fuck out of her. All she could discern was that the script bore some very faint similarity to local writing, but it didn’t help her since she couldn’t read that either. Worst of all, his preoccupation with his books sent a clearmessage that he was distinctly unconcerned that she could take advantage of his distraction to bolt from the cave. Which in turn just pissed her off because it brought every single smug word he had growled back to her with infuriating clarity.

Abby scowled as he slowly turned yet another page without so much as looking up in her direction. “You do realize that you can’t keep me here forever, right?”

“I would beg to differ,” he replied in a low rumble, followed by the rasp of yet another page turning.

The sound made her eye twitch, and she clenched her jaw with annoyance. She got that he somehow managed to crank out some magical seduction juice that turned her into a sloppy mess of desire and his ability to track her and run her down was far superior to her own ability to escape, but his confidence was entirely unfair and uncalled for. “Look, I don’t know what you think this is, but this is no Beauty and the Beast fairytale. I’m not going to just magically fall in love with you.”

He snorted in reply, the sound dancing on her last nerve. “You assume much and think far too highly of yourself. I do not require the love of a human. What I have from you is sufficient. You have nothing to complain about. I provide for you—you are fed and kept comfortably within my cavern safe from a world of men that would use you and bleed you dry.”

Abby grimaced. He wasn’t exactly wrong there. While there were any number of warrioresses and sorceresses out there carving out adventures, it was still a hard life for a woman alone in those fields. How many times had her mother cautioned that she would be better off waiting to begin her own adventure until the right partner came along. She knew exactly what that was code for… find a man with whom she could team up for her own safety and wellbeing as her mother had done. She wouldn’t be surprised at all if that was the reason that she wasn’t brought out on hunts despite the general completion of her training.

“With me you have some relative freedom,” he continued. “Your time is your own except for those rare occasions when my need will call to you. The inconvenience is a small sacrifice for such pleasure that we will both derive from our breeding. It is an agreeable arrangement for however long it pleases me to keep you here and it isn’t required to be anything more.”

“Breeding?” she squawked in alarm. “Who said anything about breeding? I can’t fall pregnant! This is my first hunt away from home, I can’t possibly…”

“Calm yourself,” he sighed with a hint of disdain evident in his voice. “It is merely an expression. Manticores are even slower than most to breed, mostly because we are largely solitary due to our territorial nature, but that does not mean that we do not have our desires. A male can easily control his fertility. The last thing I would desire to do is sire cubs on a female who has not proven herself as a worthy mate suited to my fire.”

Her curiosity piqued; Abby was dying to ask him what that meant. On the other hand, she really didn’t want to get drawn into a conversation about mating. It certainly seemed that he intended this to be a temporary arrangement to scratch some sort of itch for the time being, though he had not taken advantage of any opportunity to repeat the experience since his first hasty rut. Maybe the desire was just as slow to rouse as their desire to reproduce. That made a strange sort of sense, but it didn’t bode well for how long he expected to keep her on hand there. There was absolutely no reason to encourage him to consider things even remotely in the long term by questioning him. She might not be able to escape him, and he was rightfully confident in his ability to keep her there, but he wasn’t thinking of keeping her either, which was good news compared to the alternative. At least until she could find a way to escape without him noticing.

She eyed him for a long moment and huffed irritably. “Seeing how your books are all in another language, how is it that you speak northern common so well anyway?”

He glanced up at her, a mocking expression fleetingly appearing on his face. “I educate myself,” he replied drily. “You may want to try it.”

Abby’s face burned with a blush. Ok so she wasn’t exactly the most studious outside of tracking and weaponry. She had barely been able to sit still long enough to learn the few spells she knew—much to her mother’s disappointment. She enjoyed reading stories of adventure and danger, but studying was just dull as hell and all the untapped magical gifts she inherited from her mother wasn’t going to make a sorceress out of her.

“I know enough for what I need to do,” she muttered.

“But not enough to be prepared and fully informed when venturing into a new land with a language that you do not know,” he replied, his attention once again returning to his damned book. “It is a miracle you were not swindled and left dead in a pit somewhere long before arriving here. Or sold to slavers.”

She winced. Perhaps she had run off a little half-cocked, but while Zayman had been a ruthless and relentless prick, he had also been convincing. She had been confident that she could get in, get the job done, and get out again with little fuss. The promise of a guide had made it all seem so simple. She had thought nothing of the way his companions chattered quietly around her when he escorted her through the city, or even the way some of the men had stared at her. It had been annoying, but she hadn’t been afraid. Now, however, she felt a chill of apprehension. They could have plotted anything, and she never would have known. And how much did she truly know to be able to survive after her mission was completed? Would she have even made it back if she had succeeded in killing the manticore?She wasn’t so sure now. Perhaps her mother was right to have misgivings about Abby striking out alone. She suddenly felt very vulnerable without a basic understanding of her father’s tongue. Why hadn’t she made more of an effort to learn it?

Probably because she had never planned to venture into the deserts. The far reaches of the northern lands had more than enough work to keep her family in business for generations. Yet here she was. She really was a terrible student.

Abby swallowed and cast a covert glance at Samir’s book. “Do you… do you think you might teach me?”

His hand paused mid-page turn, and his green eyes lifted. He regarded her with a blank expression for a long moment but then his ear flicked and his head cocked in a faint expression of puzzlement.

“You wish to learn?” he drawled skeptically. “It is not necessary if you are merely bored. I can find the few books I have in northern common rather than waste both of our time with the tedious task of teaching you.”

She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from snapping the first insult that came to mind. Acting on her wounded pride wouldn’t get her anywhere. Truthfully, she was a little shocked and more than a little grateful that he appeared to be seriously considering it. If nothing else, teaching her the local language would give her a tool that she could use to her advantage. He had to know that but was still willing.

“I would really like to. Honestly, though part of it is boredom, I’m also realizing that I’m at a huge disadvantage in ways that I hadn’t considered,” she admitted.

He inclined his head as he thoughtfully closed his book and set it on the table between them. “It is a foolish amount of trust to put in someone to come across the desert on the promises of a man.” He hesitated, his eyes narrowing on her. “And you would trust my instruction?”

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