Page 65 of The Blight of Hollowmire

“Don’t.”

I sigh. “Don’t what?”

“Look so amused while attempting to martyr yourself,” she snaps.

“Oh, now, really. It’s a night on the floor—I’m hardly martyring myself.”

“Renard,” she says, as though she is coming to the very precipice of her patience. “Need I remind you that you were very nearly mauled by a wyreboar not so long ago?”

“Ah, but I wasn’t! Only ‘very nearly’ as you say, and thus it was simply a minor inconvenience.”

“And before that, you were half-eaten by a bogunder.”

“Yes, I remember. I was there,” I add, helplessly enjoying the bickering, and the way her cheeks flush pink with her frustration.

“And before that,” she argues. “You were practically eviscerated by a lythettan.”

“Is it truly evisceration if the creature sucks one’s entrails out from its victim’s mouth?” I wonder aloud. “Or does that only come from one’s belly being split open?”

She pulls down her hood with visible irritation, and my attention catches inadvertently on the pale hair spilling loose around her shoulders. The braids concealing the antlers began to unravel during our walk back from Ursula’s cottage, and every time I catch sight of a lock of moon-pale hair, my fingers itch to thread themselves through the silky strands again. The skin around the base of the antlers is swollen and red, and my heart gives a pathetic thump.

Vireth sighs and immediately crosses her arms. “I truly do not have the energy to keep battling you about this, Renard.”

“It will cost you nothing to relent, then, Lady Fae.”

She groans in exasperation, and my cock immediately hardens at the sound.

“Then I suppose neither of us will sleep on the bed we paid for, and our stubbornness will land us both on this hard, wooden floor.”

“Is that the only solution you can think of?”

My honor fights me every step of the way—especially as her eyes widen with the implication of what I’m about to suggest, but before I can overthink all the reasons why this will be a terrible idea, the words leave my mouth and hang in the air.

“We can share the bed.”

Her gaze snaps toward mine.

“We are both adults,” I continue before she can object. “And we’re both weak from lack of sleep. Neither of us has the energy for impropriety.”

The gods punish liars, Renard.

“That confidence seems misplaced considering your recent tendency toward staring.”

“I stare respectfully. I am unused to fae companions, and merely accustoming myself to our differences.” Yes, and not at all considering how soft your skin looks and whether, when bare, you’ll still smell like a forest after a thunderstorm.

“That is not reassuring.”

“I’ve been a paragon of honor thus far and I have no intention of altering that now. I’ll face the wall.”

“You’re very large, and you have a tendency to glower. The wall may feel threatened.”

Despite herself, the corner of her mouth twitches faintly. Victory. Gods, listen to me. I’m counting tiny shifts in her expression like a starving man counting grains of rice.

Eventually she sighs and drops her arms. “Fine. But if you snore again, I reserve the right to smother you.”

“Turnabout is fair play, Lady Fae.”

“I told you, I don’t snore!”