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Glancing up at the sky as they continue to weave and wind their way across the vast stretch of black, I sigh.
“They’re stunning. What are they?” I give him a sideways glance. “More magick?”
He chuckles, giving my hand another kiss and then sitting up and reaching for his tunic.
“A natural phenomenon, as far as I can tell. But no less magickal in their own right.” He stands and hands me my corset, watching me hook it back into place and tighten the laces while he reties his breeches. “I wanted to show you the Shadow Realm holds its own kind of beauty.”
There’s a weight to his words, a meaning I can’t decipher. It’s not for me to understand. Not if I’m going to make a clean break from here. A choice I can’t stop second-guessing.
Slipping my arms into my gown, I reach around to try and tighten my laces, my fingers grasping the edges of the ribbon but unable to get a good enough purchase to pull them tight.
“Let me—”
Thieran’s fingers brush my arm and then grip it, tightening as he spins me so my back is exposed to him. I try to squirm free, but he holds me fast. I know what he’s finally seeing for the first time, what I’ve managed to keep hidden from him until now.
I didn’t know how he’d react, but his silence is enough to convince me he finds me as hideous as everyone else always has.
“Who did this to you?”
The venom in his tone surprises me, and I jerk around to look up at him as much as his grip on my arm will allow. The rage and possessiveness on his face are enough to make my blood hum, and it warms and soothes a place deep inside me. A place I thought had died a long time ago.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“The fuck it doesn’t.” His hold loosens slightly, but he doesn’t release me. “Tell me, Elora.”
“Most of them are from my uncle. Some are from other men who thought the easiest way to control a woman was to beat her into submission.”
He growls low in his throat, easing my hair off my neck and studying my back. The crisscrossing patchwork of scars left behind from my uncle’s leather strap and horse whips and tree branches and whatever else came to hand when he wanted to remind me what a burden I was to him.
“Your uncle is still alive.”
It isn’t a question, but I answer him anyway. “As far as I’m aware. I haven’t seen him since I was eleven.”
I close my eyes against the memory of when he abandoned me on the steps of the workhouse. You can be someone else’s mouth to feed now, he said before dropping a paltry bag full of tattered clothes at my feet, climbing back into his cart, and driving away.
Without a word, Thieran slowly laces up my gown, cinching it tight and tying the ribbons in a bow at the base of my spine. I move to step away, but he wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me back against his chest.
His hair tickles my cheek when he leans down to whisper. “I swear to you. By all the gods, I will never let harm come to you ever again.”
My heart somersaults into my stomach, and I lean into him when I should lean away. I can’t rely on his comfort or his vow, however much I want or believe them. Because as soon as I test my shielding ritual, I’ll be leaving the Shadow Realm and the God of Death.
My chest tightens at the thought. And when Thieran buries his nose in my hair, inhaling deeply as he shifts us back to the palace, I try to remind myself of all the perfectly good reasons I have for leaving. Only I can’t remember any of them.
Chapter Thirty-One
The man trudges back and forth across the field, snow clinging to the thick wool of his breeches. His coat, threadbare at the elbows and tattered at the hem, drags behind him.
I watch him stop next to a thin, sickly looking cow and drape a blanket over its back before slapping its rump and urging it toward a lean-to barn. The barn looks as pitiful as the cow, with wide gaps between the boards and wood rotting around the edges.
He gives the animal a rough shove under the shelter and mutters a stream of complaints as he grabs a pitchfork from the corner and sticks it into a meager pile of hay. The cow huffs when her breakfast flutters to the ground in front of her but leans down to take a bite, her shoulder bones poking out from her skin.
He’s already milked her, cleaned out the barn, and collected fresh eggs from a tiny troop of squawking hens. I’ve been standing here long enough to watch him toil away since sunrise, grumbling to himself nearly the entire time.
The dark brown hair on his head is streaked with gray, and his scraggly beard is also shot through with silvery strands. He looks older than his years, his face weathered and tired, his body bent from hard labor on a farm that’s seen better days.
With the cow munching dutifully on her breakfast, he picks up the pail of milk and carries it around the side of the house, letting himself in. Smoke puffs out from a faded chimney, and I shift to peer in through a window.
A woman stands in front of the fireplace, an old shawl draped around her shoulders while she pokes at something in a pot with a long spoon. She looks up when the man sets the pail on the counter, and they exchange terse words about how little the cow seems to be producing these days, barely worth its keep.
