Page 71 of Heart’s Rescue

Arryn

Feels Like a Trap

Iwake to the smell of smoke. Woodsmoke, yes, but also something else, something coarser and sharper. Blinking, I try to drag myself through thick, misty layers of sleep. I’d been dreaming that I was warm, warm and safe, somewhere far away.

“Voids damn it,” a man growls.

There’s a bang of metal against stone. I open my eyes and roll over as my brain slowly puts things together. The Lands Below. The cut on my arm. The cabin.

The cabin’s windows are dark, and the fire’s burned down. Rowan is hunched over the embers of the fire, scowling at something. I sit up. It’s the pot. Rowan is scowling at the pot of beans he’d hung over the fire just before we’d—

Heat rises in my cheeks, and I turn away. Before we’d everything. I’d never seen a man like that before, naked and on his back, waiting for me. Letting me take him in my mouth. I’d heard whispers and jokes and bawdy pub songs, of course, but I didn’t think that sort of sex was something people actually did. I’d thought sex meant bending over and gritting your teeth while a man slammed into you until he was done.

Rowan makes another growling noise, and I turn back to him, my teeth sinking into my lower lip. He’s still shirtless, and the low firelight plays across the muscles of his chest. My breath catches in the back of my throat. Stars, he’s so strong. Strong and brave and brilliant. That image rises in my mind again, the Dragon Pass, the road to the Silver City. Rowan beside me. Watching the horizon, waiting for sunset. Waiting for me to show him the stars.

“Oh,” Rowan says. “You’re up.”

I jump like he’s just seen me doing something I shouldn’t.

“We should probably get going,” Rowan says, scowling at the pot again.

His voice catches as though he’s got gravel in his throat. He sounds upset, like something’s gone wrong.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I messed up the beans.”

It doesn’t seem like the time to make a joke.

“That’s okay,” I say. “I didn’t even know we could eat them.”

Rowan frowns and pulls the lid off the pot. A whiff of smoke curls up from the darkness inside.

“I don’t think we can,” he says.

“Well, I’m not very picky,” I reply.

I kick my legs off the bed and lean forward, reaching for a red balled-up bunch of fabric on the floor that’s probably my shirt. I grab it, then realize Rowan is watching me with very wide eyes and an expression that makes me think there’s a void beast crawling over my shoulder.

“What?” I ask. Fear creeps up the back of my neck on very fine, very cold legs.

Rowan shakes his head. Stars, he looks tired. I couldn’t have slept for very long; my body still feels like it’s been taken apart and packed with sawdust. I wonder if Rowan’s slept at all.

“Your arm,” he says.

I realize I’ve got my hand pressed against the cut on my left arm. Very slowly, I peel my fingers away. And then I hiss through my teeth.

The void-touch spread. Black tendrils like curls of ink bleed across my skin, reaching almost to my elbow. Almost to my shoulder. I make several gasping attempts to inhale as I stare at the part of my body that’s gone horribly wrong. Spread slowly, I think, my mind wheeling almost desperately. It was supposed to spread slowly.

There’s an ugly scraping sound, and I look up to see Rowan running a spoon along the bottom of the pot.

“I’m a shit cook,” he says, shaking his head. “Phaedron’s the cook, not me.”

Stars, his voice is so angry. What happened between the time I fell asleep in his arms and now? I pull the red shirt over my head with a shiver. Rowan thrusts a plate at me.

“They’re half raw and half burned,” Rowan says, bitterly. “It’s my specialty.”

I pick up a spoon and force a few beans into my mouth. They’re still hard, and yes, they’re a bit blackened, but they aren’t the inedible little rocks they were a few hours ago.