Page 65 of Brambles and Bellflowers
12
Titus POV
We hadn’t foundMiles by the time the sun began to set, but it wasn’t him I was worried about.
Bianca had moved through the forest with a practiced ease that both comforted and alarmed me. She instinctively stepped over roots without looking, chose the driest paths through the undergrowth, and kept her footfalls nearly silent. While it was true we inherited certain aspects of our past lives, her mannerisms indicated that she had experience surviving in the wild.
And not in any past life either.
Plus, there was no way that Abigail and Jonathon had taken her camping—they’d given up that lifestyle when Abigail was forced to retire.
Even though the darkness grew stronger, I was tempted to press on. The humming under my skin had intensified, indicating we were close to a witch. If we didn’t find him tonight, we definitely would tomorrow.
Bianca had been pretty annoyed about the mushrooms. It might be funny to see what happened if she caught him doing it red-handed.
I generally wouldn’t upset her, but this was well-deserved on Miles’s part. We’d been dragged out here because of him. Watching Bianca yell at him would be poetic justice. Knowing him, he probably had no idea he’d even done anything wrong.
Moron.
“We’ll stay here for the night,” I said, choosing a clearing suitable for camp. I watched Bianca, who’d stayed close to me all day. Despite her surprising endurance, exhaustion lined her features. “There’s a hot spring nearby if you want to relax.”
Her eyes lit up, the green flecks catching the fading light. “Really? How do you know?”
I tapped my nose in response. Damen stomped past, his jealousy rolling off him in waves. He always got like this when she showed interest in anyone else, though I’d noticed how he perked whenever she challenged his authority. For all his posturing, he enjoyed it when she defied him.
“Is it safe?” she asked. Her hair had fallen over her face, breaking free of the thick braid that fell over her shoulders, and the most distracting smudge of dirt was spread over her cheek.
How had that even happened? I’d been making sure to keep anything remotely threatening away from her.
“Yes,” I answered, wrapping the edge of her braid around my wrist. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Did she think I’d send her somewhere she’d get hurt?
“But…” She bit her lip, glancing in the direction I’d indicated earlier.
“But what?” I asked, tugging lightly on her braid. Damen and Julian had also stopped unpacking, their full attention on her. But neither would interrupt. Right now, Bianca was mine.
“What about the cottonmouths?” she asked, biting the tip of her nail. “Don’t they hide near water?”
“Cottonmouths?” I dropped her braid, studying her as another puzzle piece fell into place. “The snake?”
“Yeah…” She didn’t notice the slight shift in the air, the way all three of us waited. “Aren’t they venomous?”
There had been no record of where she lived before Eric Richards, and prior questioning yielded no results. In every instance, she’d clam up. But maybe nobody had asked therightquestions.
“Bianca.” I grasped her slender hands. “There are no cottonmouth snakes around here.”
“What?” she asked, blinking as her expression shifted from trepidation to confusion. “But Kieran said…”
The name hit like a physical blow. My hands tightened on hers before I forced myself to relax. This was the first time she’d mentioned him directly to us. The fact that she’d let it slip so casually while discussing something as mundane as snakes…
“We’re too far north,” I answered, keeping my voice steady despite the dragon’s growing agitation beneath my skin. “Have you ever seen one?”
“Yes.” She cocked her head at me, forehead wrinkling. “I thought they were everywhere.”
My skin burned as the beast’s urgency prickled against my nerves, and the ever-growing need to do anything was becoming too much.
I would need to shift soon, even if only to shed this pressure.
