Page 215 of Evil Hearts

I eyed him for a moment, then decided, what the hell. You only live once. “I don’t mind sharing a bed with Ruven, if sleeping is all that happens,” I said.

His eyes snapped to mine, ears cocked forward and nostrils flaring.

Syalin laughed again, a bright sound. “Gods, alright. Play with fire, then, you two,” he said, shaking his head. He got up and stretched, hands laced over his head. “The healer kit’s stocked. I’ll plan to bring you new clothes in the morning. Do try not to get into too much trouble.” He flashed a smile that suggested he expected us to get up to nothingbuttrouble. “Sleep well.”

“You, too,” I said, smiling at him with my cut collar still in one hand.

Syalin left via a narrow sliding door, entering a passage that looked like it was built between two walls. Ruven waited until he was gone to let out a shaky breath.

“Well,” he said softly. “Let’s get your foot cleaned up.”

Healing was one of the fae magics that I’d learned about in my primer on Faery, and luckily, if you had enough money, you could buy pre-prepared healing instead of getting it directly from the source. Ruven clearly had experience with first aid, which didn’t surprise me; despite being a rich nobleman, the life of a spy wasn’t a safe one. He undressed my foot with the worshipful touch of a man in the presence of a goddess and pulled not one, but two shards of olive-green glass out of my sole.

His thumbs traced circles across the bottom of my foot as he massaged the healing ointment into my skin and kept moving, turning necessity into pleasure as the wound on my foot closed and the pain faded into memory. Ruven treated each of my scrapes and bruises with the same focused attention, then showed me the small bathroom so I could get ready for bed.

He was dressed in only his underwear when I emerged and gave me one long, lingering look before he ducked into the closet-sized room to do his own ablutions. I didn’t have anything to sleep in but my clothes, so I peeled off my pants and tugged my bra out from under my shirt before getting into the bed. The cot was thin, but the sheets were clean and starched, and the light blanket would keep me from freezing to death, at least.

Ruven padded out and closed the shield for the lamp without speaking. He slid into the bed behind me, fitting his body to mine. The touch of his bare thighs against the back of my legs made me shiver, my stomach doing flip-flops as the heat of his body soaked into me. I tensed, though, when his arm went around me, halfway between wanting him to start something and being terrified that he would.

“Sleeping only, Avalon,” he said in a rough voice, sounding ashamed. “I promise. If it makes you feel better, I don’t even have to have genitals.”

I blinked. “Uh…”

“I’m an extraordinarily talented shapeshifter,” he said, relaxing against me. “Brilliant, even. Coveted by spymasters and houses of pleasure alike.”

“If only you had the least bit of humility,” I said, smiling despite myself.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Ruven asked airily. He nuzzled me. “Are you alright like this, or do you want me to slip into something less gorgeous?”

“I’m fine,” I said with a huffed laugh. “You can stay gorgeous.”

“Sleep well, then, soulmate.” I felt his lips twitch. “As well as one can on a cot suited for one, with a needy man plastered against your back.”

“Night-night,” I murmured, already drifting into sleep. The last thing I remembered before dreams took me was the gentle caress of his tail curling around my ankle, and the soft sound of his contented sigh.

Castellan

Iexpected the cotto be about as comfortable as sleeping on a red-eye flight, but to my surprise, I slept like the dead. The heat of Ruven’s body wrapped around me, and the weight of his arm across my ribs and the curl of his tail around my calves felt more natural than they had any right to. I didn’t even have any disorientation when Syalin returned and unshielded the lamp again, waking up into peaceful calm.

Ruven wasn’t quite so easy to please; he growled and buried his face into my hair, refusing to get up. Syalin practically had to threaten him to get him out of bed. I could have helped, but I liked having Ruven wrapped around me. He was warm and smelled like heaven.

Syalin got us into a carriage and out of the city. Despite having spent the night in bed with me—or perhaps because of it—Ruven was silent and sullen for the rest of the journey. He wore the face of a disgruntled human bondservant for the first leg of the journey, then changed into more formal clothing and his natural features once we got out of populated areas.

Syalin filled the silence, his dry wit and willingness to talk keeping me entertained, and despite the close quarters and the way I kept finding myself turning towards my grouchy soulmate, it made for a pleasant trip.

The whole region we traveled through was rocky and arid, dotted with juniper-looking bushes and dry washes lined with tall, graceful trees and tangles of dense brush. Now and again I caught sight of wildlife: white birds of prey hovering over fields, three-horned antelope browsing along rocky streams, a lean gray jackal trotting down a dirt road. Tall mesas and plateaus squatted on the landscape, reminding me of the parks in Utah, and most of the buildings we passed were built of the local reddish stone or in adobe.

Since one of Ruven’s titles was ‘Lord Castellan of Celedeis,’ I’d figured that my new home was probably a castle. Given the landscape and the buildings, I assumed that meant a large stone fortress, which wasn’t far off the mark; when Syalin pointed out the castle, it looked akin to European fortresses, with a heavy stone wall and squat towers at each corner.

What I hadn’t anticipated was that it was not merely on top of a mesa, but enclosing the whole damn thing, effectively turning it into a massive estate with soaring, four-hundred-foot-high walls. I gawped until Ruven leaned over my shoulder and told me he’d find something to put in my mouth if I left it open.

We swapped carriages at the base of the mesa, stopping at a collection of handsome adobe buildings shaded by soaring mesquite-looking trees. Ruven shapeshifted before getting out of the vehicle, swapping out his inhuman features for generically handsome fae ones: a straight nose, vivid teal-blue eyes, warm undertones to his skin, and silken, storm-gray hair that fell in tangled curls to frame his sharp jawline.

“Most shapeshifters are tied to the patterns of the sky, or have only a single second form. As far as most of the world is concerned, Ru has his natural form and the face he shows as Lord Kezorwyn, but most are used to dealing with his public face,” Syalin explained when I frowned at Ruven. “Wildlings have a reputation for being more… primal, shall we say. It’suseful for others to remember him first as Lord Kezorwyn, and only belatedly as a shapeshifter, if at all.”

“Beauty wins more than many imagine,” Ruven added, sounding moody. “I see little reason to forgo that when I can claim it with such ease.”

The switchback road up the mesa was the sort of eminently-defensible approach that probably had military commanders in the age of swords and bows salivating. Four heavy gates with associated squat towers guarded the route, and the road was steep enough that the switch to heavy draft horses had been necessary. Anyone trying to assault the castle would have a shit time of it.

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