Rhoswyn
My body feels grimy and sticky, which is a ridiculous thing to focus on while we’re riding for our lives through the moonlit forest.
Shouts are echoing around us from all directions. It seems like our pursuers are doing their best to cut us off, but the horse is surprisingly agile, making turns that have my hands clenching on the belt of the male in front of me.
I cling to him like a barnacle as the world blurs by. Just like with Jaro, this stranger elicits a strange buzz wherever our skin touches, and I wonder if that’s just my new body, or some fae trait I don’t know about. Perhaps it’s a side effect of my senses getting sharper, like Jaro said. My eyesight is certainly keener than ever. It’s night, but I still can make out every detail of the world, which is bursting into bloom all around us.
That’s going to take some getting used to.
Every now and again, I catch a glimpse of the other riders through the trees. Blue-skinned, white-haired, and riding enormous armoured lizards. The movement of their mounts is almost serpentine, allowing them to scale obstacles and flow around trees as if they aren’t even there.
It’s no wonder they’re gaining on us.
Suddenly, our horse rears. My legs start to slip, and I squeak in terror as I feel myself sliding away.
The horse recovers at the last minute. The male I’m clinging to curses. They’ve blocked our path and now we’re surrounded by a dozen or more blue warriors.
That’s got to be too many for my companion to fight alone.
I cast about, frantically searching for Jaro. But he isn’t here. We left him behind. Only the screams coming from behind us are proof he’s still alive.
“Close your eyes,” my rider orders.
If he knew me, he wouldn’t simply assume I’m following his orders. But, alas, he’s only just met me. He hasn’t yet learned that, of all my flaws, curiosity is by far my worst.
So when he reaches for his neck and pulls away the black ribbon fastened there, I see.
I watch in amazement, and more than a little fear, as his head topples from his neck, falling to land perfectly in his hands, which tuck it securely under his arm. Despite the calm purposefulness of his actions, I struggle to rationalise what I’ve just seen. For a second, I’m convinced that I must have hallucinated it, and that my well-meaning rescuer is really dead, killed by an unseen strike from one of the blue fae. My morbid gaze travels up without my conscious permission, and I fully expect to see a bloody stump where his head should be.
Instead, wispy shadows conceal whatever wound remains. The darkness is so thick it’s almost opaque, and it gathers loosely in a rough skull shape.
I’m still coming to terms with that when he snaps his arm out, making me leap out of my skin. A whip which looks to be made of a human spine uncoils from the palm of his hand, blazing with flames. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said he was hiding it up his sleeve, but his bracers are so tightly strapped to his forearm that it couldn’t have been.
My mind blanks at the impossibility of it all.
What kind of male loses his head and doesn’t die? What kind of person has a whip made of fire and bone?
The weapon lashes out and wraps around the blue male on our left. He’s yanked from his lizard, and into the male beside him with a pained groan. The whip leaves a trail of fire glowing in its wake as it snaps back and strikes another rider, then another. I flinch with every blow. I’m unused to so much violence, and I feel every blow of the whip as it strikes our attackers.
The lizards don’t like the fire. They hiss and scuttle backwards, disobeying their riders and sowing yet more chaos.
Our horse neighs, charging for the gap that the disarray has caused, completely unfazed by the flames. My grip, which has gone lax from shock, tightens once more as we leap over the wounded and back into the trees.
My rescuer releases his whip and it disappears, as if it were never there to begin with. Then replaces his head on his shoulders with practised ease. Behind his braids, a new ribbon scrolls across the wound, covering the raw, red tear in the skin.
“I told you to close your eyes,” he mutters darkly.
His voice is low, but not heated. More like disappointment than anger.
Still, I’m not sure how to respond. Do I apologise? By the time I’ve panicked over what to say, the silence has stretched for too long and turned to awkwardness.
I open my mouth, and then close it again. Thankfully, Jaro returns, shifting back from a wolf to a very naked male in seconds. The transformation is strange to watch. His body shifts and contorts as it morphs from four legs to two.
I’ve never been one to swoon over the shirtless men working in the fields or over the forge, as Clair is. For years, my certainty that marriage is not for me has only been fuelled by my lack of interest in men in general. As a herbalist, I’ve seen all manner of bodies, and cared little for them.
Jaro appears to be my exception. His chest is dusted with a thin trail of tawny hair and his muscles are rigidly defined. I wouldn’t normally look, but there’s so much of him to look at, and I can’t seem to drag my eyes back to his face.
Until I inadvertently let my gaze follow that trail of hair further south.