Page 9 of The Midnight Arrow

Lorik didn’t wake again until nightfall. He found me out in the garden, tending to my glowflies.

I didn’t sense his presence until Peek came sauntering out from the Black Veil and then immediately hissed, his eyes pinned on something behind me. Thinking it was a Sever, I stiffened…until I looked over my shoulder and found Lorik regarding me from the stone bench wedged against the back wall of my cottage.

“How long have you been there?” I asked, surprised, straightening from the garden bed, my arms covered in rich, black soil as a shadevine glowfly nearly got tangled in my wavy hair. I shook him out, getting his dust in my strands, making them gleam. Had he heard me singing to myself?

“Long enough,” Lorik grunted. He was hunched slightly, his wings looking uncomfortably squished against the wall of my home. He looked tired, dark circles under his eyes, though he’d slept the day away. “You’re horribly unobservant. I’ve decided you must have had Severs come onto your land—you just haven’t noticed them.”

“So you admit that Peek isn’t from the Below anddoesn’thave magic that keeps Severs away?”

Lorik grumbled something under his breath, in a language that sounded familiar but new, and I grinned.

Being out in my garden always lightened my mood. The dust from the glowflies possessed calming qualities and their buzzing lulled me into a gentle trance, but it was the gardening I enjoyed the most. Tending to the plants my glowflies were growing, weeding, snipping away weak leaves that would only take more energy to heal, watering where needed.

“You’re different out here,” Lorik remarked. “Thisis you, little witch. In your garden where you sing, where you are free.”

The grin died from my face, even though his words filled me with a strange, fluttering warmth.

“You have a beautiful voice,” he complimented. “You were singing an Allavari poem, weren’t you?”

The Allavari poem Aysia had always liked. I’d often sing it at night at Correl’s home for the other children as they’d drifted off to sleep. I’d been the oldest there. I would tuck them all into their beds at night, and they would always want a song or a story.

The poem was about love…on its surface. That had been Aysia’s favorite part. But the last verse was a dark warning, for the Allavari girl’s lover consumed her heart like a feasting Sever, though Aysia had always thought it was interpreted as the girl giving her heart away.Romantic,she’d sighed, and I’d always bitten my tongue, not wanting to disappoint her.

Perhaps I should have,I couldn’t help but think, a prick of guilt making me stand from my kneeling position. I journeyed to the garden bed closest to Lorik, kneeling down at its side as I began to pluck away fallen leaves from the trees overhead that littered the soil.

“Severs don’t feast on hearts though,” Lorik said quietly, watching me work. “Not anymore, at least.”

“How are you feeling?” I asked, ignoring what he’d said.

“Like death itself,” he replied, though he grinned, his fangs flashing in the moonlight, making my breath hitch.

Deep down, I knew he would need to feed again and soon. I was dragging my feet, however, not wanting the confirmation of what I already feared.

Another day,I thought. Surely he could go another day. I would feed him a hearty bone broth tonight to nourish him, and then he could feed on blood tomorrow.

“You were on the brink of it,” I told him, feeling a tightening in my chest at the thought. I didn’t know if he understood how dangerous night nettle poison was.

“I’m stronger than I look, Marion.”

There was something in his voice, a muted confidence that had nothing to do with bravado and everything to do withfact, that reassured me he was telling the truth.

And the way he said my name made a warm shiver stroke down my spine.

“Who shot you with the arrow?” I asked, the question I’d been pondering since I’d found him last night finally out in the open between us.

“Perhaps I did it to myself so that a beautiful human witch would take pity on me and allow me to warm her bed,” he said, “when I have been dreaming of it for so long.”

His words brought a dizzying rush of heat to my belly.

“The arrow tip pierced all the way through your shoulder. Even with your strength as a Kylorr, even if you somehow were in your berserker state—which you weren’t—you would’ve needed a bow for that. Quite impossible to shoot yourself,” I pointed out, if only to distract from the rapid beating of my heart.

“Is that what your beloved logic tells you?” he asked. I’d looked down to the brightbell plant I was tending to—ironically, the plant that would have been the antidote to the night nettlepoison had it been fully grown—but I heard the smile in his voice.

I shrugged a shoulder.

He chuffed out a small sigh. When I looked back at him, he had his face tipped back to the night sky, his eyes closed. I paused in plucking out leaves to watch him. My gaze drifted down the long, thick column of his throat, over his shoulders, one of them tightly wound in clean gauze, down the slabs of muscles lining his chest.

“Who do you think shot me with an arrow?” he asked.