Page 15 of Mischief Maker
Faela
Kireth’s clawed hand is like fire when it touches me. He runs it down my hair again, but that’s too distant, too far away from what I really want. No, I would feel that hand elsewhere, on other, more sensitive regions of my body.
“Tell me,” he says, stepping closer. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
He’s just asking me, directly, to my face.
Do I say it? My tongue feels sticky inside my mouth. Do I tell him where I want him to touch me? What might that bring along with it? I wet my lips, and his eyes dart down to them.
“Touch me again,” I say, feeling brave. I want to know what he feels like, how he would do it.
A low chuckle rumbles in his throat. He takes another step so he’s standing only inches away, then brings his clawed hand up to gently brush my arm. It’s just a teasing touch, a touch meant to urge me on.
“More.” I grow bolder as my heart beats faster, and my belly warms.
This time his hand is firm, dragging his claws up my sleeve as he reaches my shoulder. Then he strokes down again, trailing his fingers over my wrist, palming my knuckles. I extend my fingers to take his hand in mine, but he dodges them, returning to my throat.
“You did not specify what kind of touching,” he says, sliding his hand around my neck. He tightens it, and I try not to gasp.
“The good kind,” I say, swallowing hard. I know he won’t hurt me. “The kind of touch that you want, too.”
I know it’s not one-sided, not now. The way he so tenderly grazed my hair told me some of his truth. Does he long for me at all the way I’ve been longing for him?
Obediently, Kireth slides his hand away from my throat, instead tracing the curve of my collarbone.
“That’s two tasks, now,” he murmurs. “What will you have me do next?”
My heart falls.
I thought he had come to me because he wanted to, because he itches to feel more of me the way I desire him. But I would never call on his obligation just to sate this urge that I can’t seem to quell on my own. I am not one of those.
I step away and my drop my arms to my sides. This was foolish. There is nothing between us. The image I’d been building of the two of us together, joined in body of our own free wills, dissipates like smoke.
“I will not use you that way,” I whisper. Kireth’s eyebrows draw down low when I head to the stairs, like he didn’t expect me to react this way. “I will never!”
My chest aches as I head for my bedroom and shut the door firmly behind me.
I don’t know what I expected. There is no way that a god, an immortal, would ever want someone like me.
The next morning we are quiet, and I avoid looking Kireth directly in the eyes because I cannot face how silly I was yesterday. When I step outside the house, though, I freeze in my tracks.
The crops have all turned a sickly yellow. It’s as if overnight, they have begun to die, from the onions to the carrots to the wheat. I cover my mouth, unable to comprehend what I’m seeing.
Yesterday they were all fine, all green and growing. Today it looks as if these are their last breaths.
I fall to my knees in the dirt, cupping one of the dying leaves in my hand. A hopeless kind of fury takes over me, filling my body with a raging heat. I tear off the leaf and hurl it to the ground as Kireth approaches.
“What has happened?” He kneels in the soil near me to examine one of the plants.
“The same thing as before.” I am trying my hardest not to cry, seeing my salvation ripped to ragged pieces in front of me. “Every time I plant, they die, just like this. And there’s nothing I can do to save them.”
Kireth’s tail lies lifeless behind him as he takes in the field full of nothing but slow, agonizing death. What have I done to deserve this? Am I so slow, so stupid, so pathetic as to earn some greater god’s wrath?
I get to my feet, and they shake beneath me. Even Kireth cannot fix whatever blight I have called upon my land.
“I must tend to the livestock,” I say, but it comes out little more than a hushed whisper.
“Faela—” Kireth begins. But if I remain here, I will certainly cry, and I cannot expose any more of my vulnerability to him.
