Page 13 of Captive

His hand clamped over her mouth. She growled into it. He was hissing something harsh and rapid at her. His tone alone made the words’ meaning clear enough. She tried to snarl something back at him through his hand, which came out as a muffled groan. She wriggled and kicked furiously, which did nothing but make her shoulder hurt more.

Amid her thrashing she became vaguely aware of something hard at his hip level pressing into her backside. And then, having noticed it and realized what it was, she became very aware of it.

Shocked, she stopped moving. They both went still, with only their hard breaths moving them. She was first struck with indignation and then, bizarrely, curiosity.

She became very cognizant of the feel of his fingers on her face. His chest heaved against her back. His thigh pressed between her legs. His breath was on her hair.

His holds didn’t aim to hurt like Zaiur’s did. For a man keeping her against her will, his hands were surprisingly cautious. Inexplicably, his presence became reminiscent of something else entirely, something she hadn’t had with anyone in a long time.

A sharp, empty feeling had settled in the pit of her stomach. She was uncomfortably torn between wanting to throw him off and wanting him to grind against her.

What an absolutely absurd thought.

The entire moment lasted only a few seconds. Aruna hurriedly shifted sideways so that his hips weren’t directly touching her—which she found pointlessly considerate for someone keeping her prisoner and escorting her to her inevitable execution.

The group of humans below had resumed moving. They were not coming toward her. If anything, they were moving away faster now. Novikke went limp and rested her head on the ground.

Aruna held her for several more minutes, until the torch was out of sight. Then, with an annoyed huff, he got up, dusting off his hands.

Novikke was tempted to just lie there. She couldn’t summon the motivation to continue. She shot the night elf a hateful look.

But then he nudged her foot with his boot, snapping something that sounded like chastising, and reluctantly she got up to follow him along the ridge.

???

They stopped for the day in the shadowy part of a rocky clearing as the sky was turning a garish pink with the approaching sunrise.

Aruna made a fire but didn’t cook anything on it. Novikke took the food and water he handed her without looking at him. He was trying not to look at her too, as far as she could tell from her peripheral vision.

She wondered how the elves managed to make such strong fires with the forest’s wood—wood that never burned right when humans tried. Maybe it only burned for the right people.

Once they’d stopped walking, the cold had seeped into her skin. She sat close to the fire, despite the sparks it threw out. They ate in silence which, after what had happened earlier, felt significantly less comfortable than it had at the beginning of the night.

As Novikke was finishing the last of one of those gray chunks of dry bread, Aruna suddenly got up. Novikke’s eyes snapped up to follow him. He picked up a charred stick from the edge of the fire and was using it to scratch something onto the vertical face of a large, flat rock.

When he’d finished, he stood back and looked at Novikke, nodding toward the markings he’d made with the blackened wood. Novikke squinted at it.

“Dreioni?” he’d written, in the Dreioni language.

It was an ancient trade language that had no spoken component. Once, it had been widely understood throughout the continent, though it was rarely used these days since everyone in nearby countries spoke Ardanian or Ysuran. She’d learned it when she was young and then seldom used it, like most people. She hadn’t thought to use it to solve their communication problems until now.

She nodded. He started writing again.

“It just happens sometimes,” he wrote, and turned to look at her.

She read it several times to make sure she’d read it correctly, and still didn’t understand. She shrugged at him.

He looked uncomfortable, and his hand hovered in front of the stone in indecision as he thought of what to write next.

“It was because of the touching. Not because of—” His hand paused as he searched for a word. “Not because of violence.”

She stared at him, tired. That was what he was worried about? “Why do you care what I think?” she asked.

He held out the burnt stick and gestured to the rock.

She got up and took the stick from him. She drew the unfamiliar shapes slowly because of her tied hands and sore shoulder.

“Let me go,” she wrote, passive aggressive in her sidestepping of his almost-apology. She glared at him, waiting.

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