Chapter Ten
A Night on the Town… And Spicy Nuts
“Are you trying to kill me?” I clung onto Rowan’s neck and hid my face between his shoulder blades.
He laughed. “You’d know if I was.”
“Do you have a thing against using doors? Stairs? Walking on flat ground?”
“Doing so would deny me the joy of hearing you whine,” he responded, leaping from one rooftop to another. That’s what it felt like anyway. My face was still shoved against his back. “Open your eyes.”
“Nope.”
“You’re missing the view.”
“The view of my imminent death before we tumble to the ground below? No, thanks. I’m good like this. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.”
“Every time you open your mouth, I feel myself falling a bit more, little treasure.”
Would’ve been sweet words had he not pretended to slip while saying it. I didn’t need to look in order to feel the little off-balance jolt. The jerk.
“Falling isn’t good.” I squeezed him tighter. “Try to avoid that.”
“I’ve tried,” Rowan said quietly.
Curiosity soon got the better of me, as it so often did, and I lifted my head and peeked at our surroundings. A glimmering night sky filled with stars. That’s what I noticed first. We seemedto be racing straight toward it, flying through the air like we were made of stardust.
Maybe we were.
“Rowan… it’s…” There weren’t words to describe the beauty around me. I’d never experienced anything like it.
Buildings clustered together below us, and the glow of lanterns and streetlights gave the town an almost dreamlike quality as we soared above it.
“About time you looked.” Rowan ran across rooftops with ease, light on his feet despite the extra weight of me on his back. Which was kind of impressive considering we were about the same size. He was an inch or so taller than me, but we both had small frames and lean builds.
“Where are we going?” I asked. The town was the same one I’d seen when we’d arrived earlier, but from so high up and beneath a starlit sky, it seemed different. Magical.
Or maybe it was the person with me who made me see it that way.
“Wherever we want,” he answered, approaching the end of the roof.
There was nothing on the other side. No other building to jump on. Nothing but trees.
“Rowan!” I screeched.
He leapt off the edge and landed on the branch of the nearest tree before swinging down. It was only slightly terrifying. Okay, alotterrifying. Pretty sure my soul left my body for a split second. And I’d closed my eyes again.
“You can look now,” he said. “We’re back on solid ground. Happy?”
“Relieved you didn’t kill us, actually, but I guess ‘happy’ will do.” I slid from his back and stumbled a little.
Sighing, Rowan caught me around the waist. “Stumbling again? I guess it’s fortunate you’re afraid of heights. You’d try toclimb a tree, and your clumsy little feet would send you right to your death.”
“Hey, we’ve been over this. My feet are average-sized.” We were enclosed in a section of trees, completely hidden from the outside world. Beneath the shaded canopy, his scent hit me stronger than before. His sweet pepperiness mingled with evergreen trees and pine, and I found myself pressing closer to him. It was automatic. “Why are we in the woods?”
“You’ll find out soon.”
“Well, that’s not suspicious at all. I’ve caught on to your plan now, Mister Thief. You carried me off to the woods where you’re gonna off me and hide my body.”
