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“No.”
The reply was so swift and curt, I tripped over my feet. The bastard didn’t even take a moment to think about it.
“Why not?” I barked, a little of Emiana’s patented pampered outrage bleeding in. “I’m your wife. You’re my husband. We should get to know each other.”
He said nothing. Didn’t so much as tip his head to look at me.
Irritation swelled up in my chest.
“Alright,” I forced through clenched teeth. “What about fair play? Every question you answer, I’ll answer too. Tell me about your mother and I’ll tell you about mine.”
“You are near perfection, my queen,” he said, surprising me with the compliment. “Your only flaw is you continue to bargain with worthless coin. It isn’t possible for me to care less about your mother.”
My fist went flying, heading straight for that bastard’s hard jaw.
Alisdair ducked me, laughing cruelly. I blinked and he was on Foalan’s other side.
“Beast,” I bellowed. “You make everything difficult!”
Eadaoin shook her head out of the corner of my eye. I knew what she was thinking because I was too. Making this dead-inside monster fall in love with me was not going well.
Eventually, we arrived in Bevin—another small township of Lumenfell proper. Bevin was similar to Lumenfell’s main village in that the warm, deep-brown cottage homes and attached greenhouses were shared by both, but that’s where the similarities ended.
No one passed us on the street, and while Bevin also had orblights, theirs were smaller. Dimmer. Casting barely a glow to beat back the shadows. I squinted, gazing around—searching for the whiskered couples walking hand in hand, the bustling square, or giggling children skating around the fountain.
Nothing.
The only signs of life were the lights trickling through the breaks in drawn curtains.
Alisdair took me on a tour of a few of the surrounding villages. I was beginning to see why he left this one out.
“Is everything okay?” I whispered to Alisdair. “Why is it so dark and quiet? We’re not in wolf territory again, are we?”
“Opossum faeriken.” Alisdair always answered my questions, unless they were about him. “A mix of solitary and nocturnal results in this. Everyone keeps to themselves.”
I swallowed the rest of my questions, although I was dying to ask how a solitary fae-beast living in a dark corner of Wind and Wild was supposed to help us.
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting at a kitchen table, clamping my mouth shut to keep in ever more questions.
A woman with round, beady eyes; a long, furry nose; and thin, spindly, almost-rat-like hands bustled about the small cottage, but it wasn’t her appearance that drew my wide eyes. Well, in a way it was, since her accessories were a sight I’d never seen before.
No less than six infants hung in slings on her person. Four sleeping on her back, and two babies in front freely nursing. It suddenly made sense why Alisdair had us go to her. Not even he was cruel enough to make a mother trek miles through a dark, frozen forest with six babies hanging off her shoulders.
Despite the dark and gloomy outside, inside the cottage was warm and inviting. A crackling fireplace dispelled the chill from my bones—prompting me to shed my coat. Paintings of rolling meadows, sunny skies, and crashing waves covered every wall, showing her babies the world beyond Wind and Wild.
“Well, don’t stand on ceremony,” she said, beaming brightly. Treasa was tall, thin, and flitted around on the balls of her toes as if she was a dancer in another life. “No need for formality here. Get comfortable, my lord, my lady. I’ll start the tea.”
“Please, ma’am, let me.” Foalan guided her to a seat by the fireplace and took charge of the tea.
Alisdair and I joined her at a slower pace. It was only the four of us—actually, ten of us in the cottage. Obviously, we didn’t need everyone knowing our plans.
“There are no cribs,” I murmured quietly. “Opossums carry their babies everywhere. Don’t tell me the call of the animal is so strong, she can’t even allow herself the rest of putting them down.”
“This community was among the first to change.” He spoke under his breath like me. “By now, the instincts are so ingrained, the entire town is made of only women and their children.” He noticed my confused look. “Opossum fathers don’t stick around after mating. The mothers are on their own.”
My brows blew. I couldn’t imagine that. Yes, I looked after Mama and my siblings, but the only baby in our cottage was Savia. Six infants at the same time was a humbling that would bring me to my knees.
My eyes suddenly narrowed to slits. “And what about the kind of beast you are?” I hissed. “Instincts or no, you better not have it in your head that you won’t stick around aftermating.”
