Page 73 of The Legacy of Ophelia
“How far into the city is the inn?” Lancaster asked as we crept through sleeping alleys.
“Not far,” I answered without looking at him, but his stare bore into me. Stupid, overly observant fae. “I have to make another stop. I can show you to the place we’ll be staying first.”
“I’ll go with you,” he asserted.
Too quickly, I said, “You don’t have to.”
“I will.”
I pursed my lips, well aware that attempting to deter him would only result in him being more insistent. In silence, I led him to the residential stretch of town where the homes sprawled further apart the deeper one ventured.
After a while, Lancaster whispered, “I was thinking about that woman.”
“As all males do.”
He grumbled something unintelligible, then went on, “I have never seen, read about, or met a being with her presence before.”
The singing voice in the forest wrapped around me again, punctuated by the memory of bird carcasses dropping to the ground.
“What do you mean?” I asked as we approached our destination. Shallow pools of mystlight lined the back edge of the manor’s wall from lamps hung periodically.
“It is not often I am caught off guard by a creature I do not recognize,” Lancaster said pointedly.
Arrogant, non-immortal. But he was right. With all the centuries he’d spent on this world, itwasrare that he didn’t have an idea from his over-inflated sense of self. So, who—or what—was she then?
“I will write to my sister about her when we stop,” Lancaster said with finality.
“Good idea,” I whispered, turning toward the high stone wall. “Now, help me up.”
For a moment, he didn’t move. Then, Lancaster’s hands met my waist. I suppressed the jolt of heat that shot through me, plucking the string in my chest, and focused instead on not allowing the Bounty instinct to revolt as I pulled myself over the ledge and dropped among the ring of cyphers lining the property, willowing branches opening to a large grassy expanse in the center. Lancaster grumbled as he scaled the wall behind me, landing clumsily.
“Aren’t you supposed to be stealthy thanks to those immortal senses?” I whispered.
“Not immortal,” he muttered. “And you didn’t say there were rose bushes.”
“Well, you already smell like flowers and have plenty of thorns,” I said as I crept along the wall, sticking close to the sweeping branches.
“You know what I smell like?” he asked.
My palms prickled.Kill, kill, killechoed in my mind. “I had to borrow your spare cloak as a blanket the other night, did I not?”
He’d conjured clean ones after ours had soaked through in a sudden spring storm. It was inconvenient, though the rain on my skin had been cleansing, bringing out the freshest scents from the surrounding plants. I’d slept well that night.
“Why are we here, anyway?” Lancaster growled quietly as we slipped effortlessly among the trees.
“I told you, you didn’t have to come,” I sliced over my shoulder. Not stopping to answer his question, I wove through the grove as cyphers cut away from the wall and lined the path toward the manor in the front of the property.
“What else was I going to do?” he muttered to himself.
Luckily, this estate wasn’t as large as some of the nearby ones. And given that it was night, the residents were likely to be close to the house.
Lancaster kept to my side, pricking up my Bounty instincts in an infuriating way, but I bit my tongue to keep from exposing our presence. When we reached the edge of the tree line, I peeked between the willowing branches, to where three children no more than eleven played on the wide veranda. The girl—the oldest of them, though only by a few minutes—looked up, scanning the trees as if she heard my ragged breathing.
She didn’t, though. It was just those warrior senses I’d never understood as a child. The instincts that alerted you to someone approaching.
My heart clenched. She looked just like her sister.
Lancaster pressed closer behind me, peeling the cypher branch back another inch. His breath prickled the back of myneck as he whispered, “Who are they?” It sounded like he already knew.
