Page 25 of The Stolen Heir
I drop to the floor, but not before I recognize the long fingers. As I crawl naked underneath the bed, I hear the sound of nails scratching against glass. I brace for Bogdana to shatter the window or kick in the door.
Nothing happens.
I draw in a breath. Then another.
Minutes later, there’s a knock. I don’t move.
Oak’s insistent voice comes from the other side. “Wren, open up.”
“No,” I shout, crawling out from underneath the bed and scrambling into my clothes.
I hear shuffling and a thud, and then something metal slides down the gap between door and jamb. It opens.
“I thought you were . . .” I start to explain, but I am not sure he’s paying attention. He’s put away what he was using to jimmy the door and is gathering back up a cardboard drink holder of coffees and a large paper bag.
When he looks up, he freezes for a moment, an unreadable expression on his face. Then he averts his gaze, turning it toward something just over my shoulder.
I glance down, at the way the damp cloth of my dress has stuck to my body, and flinch. My breasts are visible, even my nipples. Could he think I did this for his attention? Shame heats my cheeks, crawls down my neck.
Walking past me, he sets down the sack on the bed. His golden curls are only slightly mussed, his fresh linen shirt white and unwrinkled, as though he’d never been poisoned, or shot, or fallen off a horse. He certainly hadn’t cleaned his clothes in the sink. And his mouth is twisted in an expression of insufferable amusement.
I wrap myself in the coverlet from the bed.
“I wasn’t sure what you liked.” Oak proceeds to take out a mango, three green apples, a handful of dried figs, a bag of crackers in the shapes of goldfish, frozen pizza bites, and four foil-wrapped hot dogs. He does all this without looking at me. “They seem like meat, but they’re not.”
I am hungry enough to accept one of his weird vegan hot dogs. “You don’t eat meat? Your father must hate that.”
He shrugs, but there’s something in his face that tells me it’s been discussed before. “More for him.”
Then I am distracted by eating. I gobble three out of the four hot dogs so quickly that when I stop, I see Oak has his hand curved protectively over the remaining one. I pick up a fig and try to take smaller bites.
Leaving the remainder of the food on the mattress, he goes to the door. “Tiernan told me I should be grateful for your unwillingness to drop me on my head, however tempted you were,” he says. “They’ll sing ballads to your restraint.”
“And why would you think I was tempted?” There’s a growl in my voice I can’t seem to get out.
“Many are. It must be something about my face.” He smiles, and I think of the jealous lover with the knife.
“Maybe you keep dragging them on quests,” I say.
He laughs. “This isn’t how I thought to see you again.”
“I imagine you thought you’dneversee me again,” I say, to remind myself of the many, many differences between our positions in life.
His grin slides off his mouth. “That did seem to be what you wanted.”
I wish it didn’t bother me that he isn’t smiling anymore, but it does.
The door opens. Tiernan is on the other side, glowering at us. “Let’s get moving. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
Outside, I see that we have acquired a new horse, black as ink and smelling of seawater. Oak’s faerie steed shies away from it, blowing panicked breaths from flared nostrils.
The new mount catches my eye hungrily, and I realize what I’m looking at. The creature is one of the solitary Folk, a devourer of flesh. A kelpie.
CHAPTER
5
Get on up,” Tiernan says impatiently, nodding toward the kelpie.