At your command,
Nyfain
I blew out a shaky breath and my heart grew warm. I hated to admit my animal was right, but…she was right. Nyfain could and would handle any danger that I couldn’t handle myself. He wouldn’t balk, and he wouldn’t back down. He’d fight until he bled out, for the kingdom, and apparently now for me.
I bit my lip, took stock of my surroundings, and worked down the tree. Back at the birch, I scribbled a hasty note and got out of there.
Dear Beast,
Thank you.
I’m okay. Your words have helped calm me. Please let me know about the demon situation—if the ones at the castle have heard from Jedrek about me. That’s what has given me the most concern. I will try to make it here for the night shift unless things get weird.
As a quick aside, it seems I am still a healer and not a murderer. No cats will have to take the fall. Old Man Fortety is not amused.
The damsel most recently locked in your tower,
Finley
He’d be giving me some weapons. That was good at least. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t accept a gift so easily, but the guy had a royal armory and didn’t use weapons. He could spare a few things.
Halfway home, an owl screeched, warning its kind of my passing.
Every. Damn. Time. It seemed like it just hung around the area, waiting for me. It was nocturnal, for goddess’s sake. Did it not have something better to do than watch its stoop for kids traipsing over its lawn?
“Sleep or something, you blasted thing.”
Frustrated, at wits’ end, I snatched a rock from the dirt.
“And if you can’t sleep, hunt. Help your family out. Unless you don’t have a family, which makes sense, since you are obviously a rotten fucker who can’t mind its own business.”
I threw the rock, missed by a mile, and kept trudging toward home.
I’d told Nyfain that I was fine. That I was calm. Pure lies.
Because it made me nervous that Nyfain had focused solely on Jedrek and not said a word about James, who had also been a dick. Being an alpha whose duty was protection, he’d clearly sensed which one of them was a threat. He’d essentially confirmed my fear. And while I would love to snap my fingers and tell Nyfain to give Jedrek a hunting accident he wouldn’t walk away from, I didn’t want to do anything until I knew more about the blowhard’s dealings with the demons.
I neared the edge of the wood and spied a shape walking past the perimeter. I pulled my animal closer to the surface, needing to further enhance my sense of smell and hearing.
One of the shitstains we passed in the square. A growl ran through her thought. The dopey-eyed cunt with fuzzy eyebrows and a “dead man walking” tag stamped on his forehead. I put the tag there. Just let me help you collect it.
Fuzzy eyebrows… That was probably Clautus, Jedrek’s right-hand man. He usually hunted in the communal wood on the other side of the village. The only time he ever came this way was to show girls how brave he was by walking five feet into the Forbidden Wood. That trick had stopped working a few years back when it became known that I went deep into the Forbidden Wood to get everlass. Deep compared to their reckoning, anyway.
Just the one? I thought, easing my new dagger out of its worn sheath.
Yes. He has traces of the others’ scent on him, though. He hasn’t been long out of their company.
He’s looking for me, then.
By all means, let him find you.
I would.
I gripped my dagger a little tighter and then lowered it at my side, natural for leaving the Forbidden Wood at night. He’d have no idea that anything was amiss. Barren branches scraped across my shoulders. The warmth from the sun washed over my face.
Clautus saw me immediately, his brow furrowing and his lanky body pivoting.
“Finley,” he called out too loudly. He was only ten feet from me and didn’t need that volume—he was calling someone else.
A surge of adrenaline fueled my speed. Fire roared through my blood, my animal providing me with power.
“I’ve got places to be, Clautus.”
“We heard your dad is doing much better. Imagine that. Jedrek was right, I guess, huh?”
“About what, being a limp-dicked shit lozenge? Yeah, I’ll say he was right.”
He caught up to me as I reached my usual reading sycamore, angling past it toward my cottage. He pushed in close, trying to intimidate me. It was something he’d done in our youth, the older kid picking on the younger.
Then I grew up.
“Speaking of,” I said, “what did you do in a past life to end up looking like you do? You look like a puckered asshole with a bad bleaching job. And if your eyebrows are like two bushes out of control, what must your balls look like? With a dick as small as yours, you should consider landscaping so the succubi can find your pecker. They probably think the damn thing fell off from inactivity.”