Page 84 of Feral Guardian
“Girl!” Igor calls again, poking his head around the corner into the kitchen.
I grab my tray and storm past Igor into the dining room.
Time moves strangely as I collect bowls and cups, cleaning the tables to draw out my separation from Alastair as my blood boils. There are a few people left in the tavern, bards included, when we push the tables up against the walls and make an open space near the hearth to sleep. Alastair has nothing more to say to me, nor I to him.
He lays out several of the tarps from our tents, then places the bearskin over it and gestures for me to get in. Indignation flaresthrough me and I decline. Alastair grabs my chin and points my gaze back up at his.
He leans in close, but there’s no intimacy in the motion. “Go to sleep.”
I stare daggers up at him, willing my eyes to spear through his and do physical harm.
They don’t.
“Now,” he growls, turning my chin toward the bed.
Tears prick the backs of my eyes and a lump swells in my throat. My knees buckle and I fall into the nest he’s created. So many comforts. But it’s still a cage. A long, barred tunnel that leads to the throne, and Alastair stands behind me, blocking my escape.
I look around at the other four people posting up near the hearth with their backpacks as pillows. The bards snuggle together with their instruments tucked near their feet. I could make them blankets. I could make them beds to sleep on. I could give them the comforts that so many are denied.
“Lilianna,” Alastair growls beside me. “Get under the skin and close your eyes.”
I glare up at him. “You’re a bastard.”
His lip curls back in a snarl for a brief flash, then his face falls to neutrality. “Sleep.”
I slide under the skin and Alastair slips in behind me. His arm comes around my waist, pulling me tight against him, but I don’t feel that fiery heat as before. There’s no passion, no need. His grip is possessive but not for me. He desires what I can give him.
Status?
Does he want to be royal guard to the queen?
Why would he crave that title? What purpose does it serve for him? What is he doing here? Why did he come to bemyguard? Whyme?
He’ll never tell me.
As the embers crackle out in the hearth behind us, so does the light in my heart.
I don’t know him at all.
Chapter twenty-five
Alastair
Lily is quiet when we leave the town of Sovosk. We got her a bar of soap, but she didn’t seem to care about it much. She denied knowing who had dosed her with krysanthem, and it made me all the more suspicious that she’d taken it of her own volition.
But why?
To “feel alive” for the last time before she goes home? The thought of what happens once we get there has me gritting my teeth. She’ll marry a prince or some lord, be coronated, and then become pregnant. It’s the way of things for her. And I must protect her at all times. It’s the way of things for me.
Her body rocks against mine as we ride the well-trodden path out of town. When we’re twenty minutes out, I steer us into the woods, finding the stream once more. It meanders a bit, but at least this way we’ll be off the path most likely traveled, and have a fresh source of water.
When the third day of silence passes, I’m near my wit’s end. I don’t know how to engage her, how to make her talk. She gives me yes or no answers to everything or says nothing. I’m so…angry.
Why won’t she talk to me?
Had the krysanthem really fucked with her that badly?
“She wants to kill me.”Lily’s voice echoes again and again.
