Page 51 of Dare

Yes. Right.

Except my mouth tingled from his gaze. Between us, I doubted anything would ever be settled.

***

As eventide swept over us, we preoccupied ourselves with another problem. We needed sleep. But we only had one blanket.

As the prince inspected our small enclosure, I read his mind. He would prop himself upright against the nearest covered trunk for the night.

But that wouldn’t do. The man was too large, the area too compact to distance ourselves.

The blanket lay sprawled across the ground like a punishment instead of a comfort. Putting it mildly, I would rather nibble on barbed wire than lay unconscious beside this monster, but I also wasn’t about to let him do me any favors.

I slipped under one side of the blanket, then spread the other end for him. “It’s your choice,” I mumbled before tucking myself in.

After a moment’s deliberation, he expelled a resigned breath. The blanket shuffled as he reclined beside me. We made a show of arranging ourselves, if only to avoid glimpsing one another.

Though more than once, I caught him eyeing every potential weapon in the vicinity. No surprise, I’d been eyeing them too, if anything to make his sleep challenging. It would be easy to stab him, to rid this world of one more swine. Except he could have taken the same advantage and hadn’t. And despite having numerous fantasies about maiming this Royal, I ultimately didn’t murder unarmed people, no matter how vile they were. Otherwise, I’d be no better than him.

A few merciful inches separated us. With our backs to one another, we listened to the swaying tide. I felt grateful for the noise, which muffled our combined breathing.

Every once in a blue moon, I talked in my sleep. I’d developed this habit early as a child, but after losing my voice, the words came out undetectable unless one knew how to read my lips. Yet even with my head turned away from the prince, he would grasp whatever I said. If that happened, hopefully I wouldn’t mumble anything I’d regret.

I sensed the Royal staring at the trees’ canopy, thinking a million Winter thoughts. I had assumed his skin would be cold, but the villain prince emitted more warmth than I’d have wagered. More than that, a crisp aroma wafted from him. It resembled something tingly, invigorating, and masculine.

A Winter scent? I’d heard stories of needle forests and blustering winds, and although I had never inhaled those types of fragrances, I could imagine the sharp bite of them.

As the night wore on, the prince and I stayed awake until I couldn’t think anymore. Yet as I drifted, I felt his weight shift and those eyes stray to me.

***

Plinking noises yanked me out of sleep. Bleary, I lifted my head. The makeshift blanket cocooned me, the ends tucked in although I couldn’t remember having done that.

Rain drenched the cove, the onslaught slick enough that a person could slip on the noise. Lightning blasted through the heavens. Yet something about this tempest seemed different.

A male groan came from behind. I twisted, my gaze landing on the Royal who sat upright with his teeth clenched in pain. He’d rolled up his pants at some point, a cut now festering beneath the cuffs, the angry red line seeping from his lower calf.

That wound hadn’t been there before. And although the fern canopy protected us from the downpour, a few drops trickled past a small gap hovering over his side of the thicket. Each time the orbs slipped through, the prince dodged them.

I whipped aside the blanket and scuttled on all fours. As I headed toward him, a splash of water nipped my shoulder. I yelped, glancing at the blood welling from that spot.

Another bolt of lightning tore through the storm. I changed directions, scurried across the sand, and halted at the enclosure’s threshold. Stretching out my hand, I gasped and reared back when the water hit me. The first drips had grazed, but these other wet bastards left their marks.

This wasn’t vapor rain. This was a piercing type, the droplets needle-like and falling like weapons.

Lightning rain. It breached rifts in the leaves, not slicing into the ferns themselves, nor damaging my blanket, but slipping through to strike my wrists and the limbs of my enemy.

This could be another greeting from the rainforest. This could be an initiation, to experience all the elements this realm offered. That way, I would bond more with this place, learn its secrets, and therein earn my path to the key.

In Summer’s culture, we acknowledged nature’s will in whichever way it required. People dove off cliffs, swam in perilous tides, and lay upon burning coals.

Ignoring the prince’s shouts, I sprinted into the deluge. Racing across the cove, I opened my arms, answering the rainforest, giving myself to it. The sky bit into me, nicking my ears and elbows and thighs. It hurt but not like the ink on my neck once had, and if Summer could brand me like that, I could let this place give me other marks—let it grant me this rite of passage. I shrieked from the pangs but welcomed them as the onslaught blessed me.

By the time I reentered the thicket, my large companion glared at what I’d done to myself. Or rather, what the rainforest had done to me—how it honored me. Somehow, my clothes were intact, not a tear in them. By comparison, bloody lines covered the exposed parts, stinging and leaking. I hissed with each movement, but I also grinned because the cuts would heal. Matter of fact, the droplets no longer sliced, now that they’d landed on me, so they must only hurt on impact.

I’d forgotten about the prince whose calf had taken a hit. The split in his leg was shallow and slender, as though somebody had skimmed him with a razor.

I tugged on his weight, he thrust himself across the sand, and together we got him into a shrouded corner. The drenched shirt clutched his torso, each toned line pressing through the material.

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