Page 36 of Sweetling
The unicorn shook his mane, waving that horn at her menacingly, and began to paw the earth. He flicked his head at the house.
“Fine, fine,” she grumbled, “I’m going back in.”
Scowling at the overgrown guard pony, Molly retreated into the kitchen, careful to keep the unicorn in her sight until she was back inside. Although she liked the fresh air and view of the estate, she shut and locked the split door, just for good measure.
Rubbing a hand on her chest, over where her heart wanted to race right out of her ribs, Molly paced around the kitchen. When that didn’t settle her nervous energy, she threw herself into making a meal with the last of the food in the larder. She kept back crusts and peels and rinds, her uncertainty over when Allarion would return making nervous knots out of her guts.
Molly knew what it was to go hungry, and she’d promised herself never to be in that situation again.
As the day passed without hide nor hair of the fae, that anxiety and fear in her grew into anger. The fire in her belly was a relief—she’d much rather be angry. And fed.
Before she lost the sunlight altogether, she went looking for him again. All throughout the house, up to all the levels and back down again.
Nowhere.
She called his name, told him to call out and tell her where he was, if he was hurt.
Nothing.
Fuming and tired from her hike through the house, Molly stomped back toward her bedchamber.
She could make what food there was stretch another two days, three if she took only one meal. The thought of having to do so only brought painful memories, of scraping moldering bowls and gnawing rotten apple cores during the long days of plague that took her parents. Sequestered in their house by the town council for fear of spread, they weren’t allowed out until the fever had passed or everyone inside was dead.
Molly spent nearly a month raiding her family’s meager stores, eating the weeds growing in the flowerboxes and boiling leather strips from their shoes. Sometimes she didn’t have an appetite from the smells emanating out of her parents’ room, where she’d left them prone in their bed weeks before. But most of the time, her hunger ate at her, and she spent her days finding things to put in her belly.
When she’d finally emerged from that house, pockmarked, bony, orphaned, she’d vowed to never know hunger like that again.
Molly indulged in food whenever she could, the comfort of a full belly something she couldn’t resist. Her uncle may have scolded and berated her for it, Nora may have made snide comments about her figure because of it, but Molly didn’t care. A rumbling, empty stomach brought her to that house of death, a place she refused to go back to.
Planting her hands on her hips, she didn’t immediately go into her room. Instead, she scowled at the door he’d pointed out as his.
It was the one place she hadn’t checked yet.
As if it could sense her question, his door opened a crack.
He didn’t walk out to flash that sharp smile, even though Molly stood glaring at the door long enough to wait him out.
When he still didn’t appear, she stole down the corridor, easing her angry stomps to instead creep silently to the cracked open door. She grasped the handle but held still just outside, listening.
Nothing.
No moving, no breathing.
Utterly confused and more than a little frustrated, Molly opened the door and entered his bedchamber.
Inside was as rich and sumptuous as the library. Heavy curtains draped from the windows across the room, and an expansive rug shot through with red and gold thread covered the floor. The drapes had been pulled closed on two sides of the massive four-post, canopied bed, creating a cave of velvet and silk.
Within the darkness of the room, laying motionless on the bed, was Allarion.
He lay supine, hands folded neatly on his abdomen.
Molly crept closer, daring to whisper his name. “Allarion?”
Nothing.
The closer she drew, the more she could discern from the meager light of the corridor. His long hair spilled across his pillow, falling over the side of the bed. His sharp nose and proud chin jutted up at the canopy. He was clothed in a loose shirt and linen braies, leaving his lower legs and feet bare.
He had no body hair—not on his chest, not on his legs.
