Page 45 of Mated to the Mad Marquess

The clumps of child-like shadows came together to check on their master. They brushed against him, warming his sides. Clapa disappeared.

Hrafn squatted next to him and crossed her legs beneath her. She ran blessedly cool fingers over his clammy brow, and a grateful grunt puffed from his lips. Solis formed a bubbling puddle in the lawn, sloshing in closer to Hrafn. She reached for him too, caressing his darkness, connecting them together like a conduit. Solis rippled in response to her touch.

“I think that went well,” she said, her hint of a smile crinkling the corners of her fawn-colored eyes.

“Easy for you to say,” Malcolm gasped, and his lungs hitched. “Your insides aren’t trying to become your outsides.”

She laid a comforting hand on his back when he vomited in the grass again. The relish and pap were not nearly as delightful in reverse. Hrafn sent a passing servant after a bowl of fresh water, and the boy responded immediately to her crisp, authoritative tone.

Clapa reappeared, holding a squirming frog between her claws. “Atta betta,” she said cheerfully, setting the frog down on his chest.

Malcolm squinted at the slimy thing. It squatted there, peering back at him. The shadow babies nuzzled against his sides.

“Well done, Clapa,” Hrafn said. “That was just the thing he needed.”

Clapa chirruped happily. Malcolm grunted at the frog and the frog made a noise back. Then it turned and leapt off his chest. The shadow babies rolled after it as it bounded through the grass. Clapa joined in the chase game.

The water arrived in a wooden bowl, along with strips of cloth. The servant lowered to a knee to help his lord, but Hrafn took the bowl and dismissed him with a wave. Wetting one of the cloths, she ran it over Malcolm’s brow, and his lashes fluttered. The coolness eased some of the churning in his belly.

She squeezed water into his mouth so that he could cleanse it of the sour taste, swirling and spitting it out. When he returned to his back, she ran the cloth over his lips, then under his chin and behind his neck, and that was heaven. With each gentle glide, he felt more grounded. The world spun less. He wanted her not to have to care for him in this way, wanted not to have ruined himself so quickly, but it eased too many of his discomforts to have her touch, her presence so close.

Solis gurgled and bubbled. Hrafn laid a hand in the darkness, taking care not to ignore his weakened and needy soul. She wet the cloth once more, wrang it out until it was damp, and laid it over the top of his face, covering his forehead, eyes, and the bridge of his nose.

“Leave it,” she scolded when he squirmed.

The wet compress helped calm his nausea, so he kept his eyes closed and let his limbs fall lax, trusting his mate. A breeze blew, and shifting grass tickled his neck. The breeze was cold, with hints of the coming fall carried within it. He flinched when he felt her plucking at his boot laces. His feet were filthy, the stockings damp . . . but his mate was tending to him, a bonding ritual older than time, and so he didn’t dare stop her, no matter the worries rising up in him like the sick he’d spewed in the grass.

She shucked his boots and peeled off his stockings without comment. He sensed no judgement in her. Hrafn rinsed his feet, and when they were dry, she dug her thumbs into his arches one at a time, and his body shivered. The sudden pressure deep in his tissue eased an ache that he felt shooting up into his ankles and calves. Hrafn pulled on his toes, cracking them, letting the air out of his joints.

She cared for him: his heels, his calves, his knees, his hands. Her thumbs ran gently over the pulse at his wrist and the creases in his palms until he had the strength to sit up on his own. The bond pumped in his chest, greedy and eager for more contact, more tenderness.

He let the cloth fall from his face, onto his lap with a splat. Solis had reassembled into a muddy version of his usual self. Malcolm blinked until his vision fully cleared and his mate came crisply into view.

Hrafn gifted him with one of her rare smiles. “I’ll get you there, shadow god,” she told him. “I promise I’ll get you there, as strong as before. Just don’t give up on me.”

“Give up on you?” he said, and his voice was coarse as gravel. “Never.”

Giving up on himself was another matter entirely.

Chapter 12

Hrafn

Hrafn spent the next week training her mate. They took to the courtyard in the mornings and then again just before dark. They cooked meals together—because the bond liked it. They gave other reasons, claimed it was easier that way, hedged that Malcolm just wanted to avoid eating flesh for a while, but she knew the truth of it.

She was doing a terrible job of avoiding the things that the bond wanted her to do. It simply felt too good to give in, to draw closer, to give gifts, and to learn each other the way the mate instincts craved.

Their bond wasn’t the only thing growing.

Hrafn stood staring out the balcony in a sitting room on the second floor of the keep. Dusk was nearing. The wide doors were made of plated glass that soaked the room in sunlight. Equipped with a large fireplace, it was the best spot to keep the shadow babies content. The little nuggets of dark mist hadn’t grown much in that first week at Skugborg. During their second, they’d come together, doubling in size and halving in number, a promising sign of Malcolm’s growing strength.

She looked to the horizon through the plate glass. Beyond the line of trees was nothing but darkness, a deep black that the sun did not pierce. She hadn’t been able to see the monster from the window the day before. Now there it was, moving like smoke between the trunks.

“It’s growing,” she said, worrying her lip.

Malcolm sat in an armchair near the bookcase, covered in cloudy puffs of the needy shadows. They clung to his legs and arms, eager for his attention. The remains of the babies’ most recent meal cooled on the marble just outside the fireplace grate.

“Just an illusion,” he soothed. “A phantom is a finite being. It can make it look as though it’s spreading, but the only dangerous part of that darkness is at its heart where the monster hides its glamour, waiting to whisper madness into your ears. Don’t let it alarm you. We’ve received no more reports of missing people. Phantoms like to nest. It’ll stay put unless something comes to threaten it.”

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