Page 100 of Royal Captive
“What are you staring at? You may carry this if you must carry something.” She shook the trussed up chickens in my face, red beards flapping upside down.
Eve could hand me the chickens and send me off into the woods, and I’d likely starve. I didn’t know how to prepare them to eat. I’d always had a team of servants to do it for me. Ignoringtheir dead, cold eyes, I took them and the cloak and slung it around my shoulders.
Eve rolled her own eyes and turned toward a drying rack where rows of salted pork glistened, ready for the plucking. Eve stuffed as many as she could into her pockets, and even down the front of her dress.
“If I glance up from stuffing this pork down my bosom to see you staring at me with anything other than awe and thanks, I will punch you.”
I’d fill her with pork, all right.
Another chicken hit my chest, and I picked it up, trying in vain to rearrange my face into something she wouldn’t take issue with.
Eve said, “Come on. And no fae talk from you unless absolutely necessary. Got it?”
Feyanna’s eyes were huge as she nodded at Eve, who led the charge out into the woods and toward the imposing mountain line rising off into the distance, dead animals hanging off her shoulders.
I shifted uncomfortably as my pants tightened in a very inconvenient manner.
How cruel a fate to know she’d ravished me that night on the balcony, and I couldn’t remember how it felt.
You are free of drink. Woo her.
Right. Eve was the last woman to be wooed.
In silence, our unhappy trio left the chaos of the city and disappeared into the trees.
A few hours later, brambles covered the bottom of my breeches, and tears in my tunic were made worse by thorns and branches.
Eve was oddly quiet. Feyanna wasn’t talking either. The poor girl had taken to walking just a half step behind my right shoulder as if using me as a shield between her and Eve.
I wondered why.
And I was hungry.
Eve stopped suddenly as darkness surrounded us like a second cloak, making it harder to keep up with her in the burgeoning twilight. I should have expected it, but could only watch as Feyanna kept going, not seeing Eve stop.
I winced as she plowed right into the much larger, sturdier girl.
“Oompf!”
No language barrier got in the way as Feyanna collapsed backward on her ass, barely nudging Eve an inch forward. Or had Eve simply refused to budge? Either seemed probable.
The cloak tied up with supplies went flying, somehow opening and spilling everywhere.
“Oh, for the love of—”
Eve bit back what was likely a scathing retort, showing impressive restraint as she fell to her hands and knees to pick the bread off the ground, instead of calling Feyanna any name in the book. It wasn’t like the fae princess would understand it.
Feyanna sniffed and followed suit, gathering up the rest in her arms. Her eyes were wide and tearful. The urge to reassure her was strong, but I tempered it. Perhaps Feyanna needed adose of reality to wake up to the surrounding circumstances. If she traveled back to the Northern Realm with us, Viana wouldn’t have any more patience with her than Eve did.
A smile curled at the corner of my lip at the thought of the two most formidable women in my life sizing up Feyanna.
“This is as good a place as any to camp,” Eve proclaimed, setting down her things and sitting down for a moment, wiping her hair off her brow.
I inhaled the thick scent of pines, similar yet not identical to the ones back home. If I closed my eyes, I could half-convince myself we were in the woods just off the palace.
And not in this strange, unfamiliar world.
Eve’s brow wrinkled. “Heavy tree coverage, shielded from prying eyes, ground is pretty dry, so smoke from a fire will be nearly nonexistent. What is visible will soon become covered by darkness.”
