Page 49 of A Court of Hearts and Hunger
He strokes his dick through me one more time, urging out the last of his cum, and then he pulls out—flings a pair of sharpened peppermint sticks at the Heartless. One flies wide, but the other sails straight through the creature’s eye. It wavers, then topples over, its light fading.
Breath shudders through my lungs as I start to tug my pants back into place, but Fin stops me.
“I need to use a cleaning spell, or other Fae will be able to smell me on you,” he says. “The Fae mark their scent on their lovers with lips, tongues, blood, and sex.”
“And we don’t want the Unseelie to know we’re together.”
“Exactly. The White Rabbit and his friend have to think you’re alone—a young, rebellious Seelie curious about the Unseelie lifestyle. Utterly vulnerable to them.”
I’d rather have Fin’s cum inside my body, drying on my panties—but he’s right, so I wait while he crushes a cleaning pellet between his fingers. Instantly all traces of his release and mine disappear, leaving my clothes dry and fresh. I pull my pants back into place and adjust my weapons.
“The cleaning spell also removes my alteration of your scent, revealing your human fragrance. Hold still a moment, and I’ll fix that.” He cups my shoulders briefly, his brow puckered in concentration. “Done. From this point on, we can’t risk that lovely human scent being noticeable even for a moment. That was the last time I can kiss you and be inside you.” Fin’s eyes turn wistful.
“Until we’ve finished what we came here to do.” I infuse as much hope and strength as I can into my voice, and I’m rewarded with a smile from him.
“Until then,” he says, nodding. “On we go, sugar.”
“You have to stop calling me ‘sugar’ and ‘dearest.’ That will give us away just as surely as your scent on my body.”
He sighs. “Fine.”
That night, we make camp in a hollow among four huge, gnarled trees, protected by a magical, dome-shaped shield Fin places around us. We eat a cold dinner of salted fish, bread, cider, fruit, and cheese. Though Fin complains about not being able to risk a cookfire, every bit of the food tastes delicious to me after a long day of walking and fighting.
When we traveled in the Seelie kingdom, Fin used to set a watchman spell so no one would have to stay awake; but here, he doesn’t seem to trust his own magic against the Heartless, and he insists we take turns keeping an eye on the surrounding forest.
During my watch, my heart nearly stops when a titanic form, big as a mountain, moves through the dark past our dome. And later, I almost scream when two hulking, hairy beasts with skulls for heads come loping out of the night. The red balls of fire in their chests betray them as Heartless, but they’re not like the others, the ones who were once Unseelie. These two were monsters even before they lost their hearts.
The terrifying beasts sniff and poke at the dome around me and Fin, but they lose interest quickly and bound away into the dark, leaving me sweaty and shaking.
The next day passes quickly, with more attacks from the Heartless and more avoidance of the many dangers in the Fae forest. In between skirmishes with the monsters, we step around patches of explosive poison pods, jump across a sludgy, acidic-looking stream, and navigate a rocky slope dotted with scorpion holes. We circle the den of some great Unseelie monster, whose reek is so strong even I can smell it from a distance.
We stop only once, on a hillside thick with purple moss, where we eat a brief meal in the sunshine. Then we move on, crossing a stretch of bare earth and stepping between pieces of a gigantic abandoned nest. We walk through a meadow of feathery pink grass, slide down into a ravine and trudge up the other side, climbing to the peak of a long ridge of broken rock.
For a whole three hours we travel, without any Heartless slavering for our vital organs. But as we’re crossing marsh that bubbles with a horrid-smelling green gas, shrieks erupt from somewhere nearby, mingled with the wordless groans and mindless howls I’ve come to recognize.
I look at Fin, wide-eyed. “Someone is being attacked.”
“We’re already on a rescue mission,” he points out. “And we have to reach the tower by nightfall.”
“We have time to save lives. I’m going to help.” I march toward the sound.
He’s in front of me in a second, barring my way. “They’d see us together.”
A terrified cry rings through the forest. The voice is young, almost childlike.
“Let me go, Fin.” Drawing my knives, I duck under his arm, pushing past his wing.
He relents, and as I run toward the sound, I hear his following footsteps and his light voice, half merry, half frustrated, “You brave, impossible girl. I’m right behind you.”
14
Not being able to track the time bothers me more than I thought it would. I’m used to marking time by the angle of the sun over the garden and the fields, or by the battered timepiece on the mantel in our farmhouse. I marked the hours from one feeding to the next—shorter spans for the baby, regular mealtimes for my other siblings.
I walk the cell, from edge to edge and then corner to corner. I bathe as best I can in the washbasin I’ve been given, with the bar of soap my captors gave me. And sometimes, I sit in the corner to the left of the door, where I’m not visible through the barred window, and I touch myself. Since it’s my one real source of amusement, I become quite good at it.
Whenever I do sleep, someone leaves food and clean water for me, and empties the chamber pot. They must do the tasks soundlessly, because despite my best efforts, I can’t catch them in the act.
My captors are purposely avoiding me when I’m awake.
