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But for Barbasa—she would happily reward him in that way, but she wasn’t sure how to begin with. Although he often cuddled with her during the night, they didn’t trade kisses or touches. In fact, other than curling around her at night or the brush of his hand or hip against hers, he rarely touched her. She knew he would touch her sexually since he flirted so heavily with her as if intentionally building up to that, but would he even welcome an unexpected touch when there was nothing sexual leading up to it? He wasn’t human and she didn’t know if his species had gestures of affection. It would be awful if she flung her arms around him and he interpreted it as an attack when there was no sexual buildup to it. That was one aspect of being with a monster that she hadn’t considered.
She was tempted to try it anyway and went so far as carefully setting the material with the others and lifting a hand with the idea of pulling him close. It was his curious glance at her hand that had her courage fail her. Instead, she plucked up one of the blankets he brought her and dragged it around her shoulders. Snugly into it, she gave him an embarrassed smile from behind the thick material. He cocked his head, his expression becoming more curious as he watched her.
“This is a lovely blanket,” she rushed to explain. “So warm. If you can get stuff like this, I don’t know why you don’t stay wherever you went to. We don’t even have anything so nice in the town where I lived.”
His lips tipped in an answering smile but there seemed to be a new hesitancy to it. “It is a nice settlement with an interesting mix of species. That blanket there was made by a lupi family that rear sheep.” He chuckled at that. “Imagine wolven males and females, and their sheep, but they are the best guards and caretakers of them. And the weave of their cloth and blankets is uncomfortable.”
She blinked at the fabric. It had been so soft that she hadn’t even guessed that it was made of wool. What was more, it had an entirely different texture from the blanket around her. “This is all from their sheep?”
He nodded, his smile widening at her surprise. “There are also carvers who make great things of wood, though the furnishings would take multiple males to cart this far into my woods,” he added with a rumbling chuckle. “Asterion, a minotaur who raises bees, comes through once a month with his supplies—I was lucky to catch him this time.” His smile fell a little at those words but returned quickly, though when it did, it wasn’t quite as bright. “There are nymphs who make ciders and ales. Pies. Oh, I’ve brought a pie!” He started to stand but Tiffany grabbed his hand, wound her fingers with his and tugged him back down to her side.
She peered at him in confusion. “Why don’tyoulive there then?”
His smile disappeared and he gave her an uncomfortable look. “Satyrs don’t do well in settlements. We are not comfortable having too many around us who are not flock.”
“Flock?”Was this a sheep thing again?
His lips twitched faintly as if he had some idea of what direction my mind drifted off into. “A flock is a family group of satyrs,” he explained after a several minutes of strained silence. “At times a flock will adopt new members but generally most are blood related and descended from a single mated couple who split from their own familial herd with their own line.” His eyes crinkled slightly. “Of course all satyrs only father males, who are in turn satyrs, so we tend to mate with females who join our numbers by choice. Shepherdesses that we come across, usually,” he continued with a hint of his old mischievousness returning.
Of course it would be. Tiffany snorted as she attempted to hold back her laughter. She was not going to be distracted.
“Okay, so where is your flock?” She was suddenly very confused. Why was Barbasa all alone? “Surely if you are that social to where you live in a large, extended family groups, no satyr would willingly live alone like this. So why are you?”
Pain flashed through his eyes, dulling their yellow hue. “I had a flock. I took over as king with the passage of my grandsire and the responsibility for their care fell to me. And I failed them.”
“What happened?” she whispered, her voice dropping at the gravity of the situation.
There was pain there that he obviously didn’t want to look at—and she wouldn’t push him—but felt like this was something that happened to him that was important. Something that she needed to know.
He cleared his throat and slanted an uncertain look at her. “It’s not a pretty tale. You may be happier not knowing.” He shook his head as he appeared to struggle with his thoughts. “I shouldn’t tell you. It has nothing to do with now.”
Still holding his hand wound tightly with hers, she rubbed her thumb across his knuckles, dragging his attention back to their joined hands. “I would like to know,” she admitted.
He pinned her with a hard look. “Be certain of this. It will change how you see me—how you feel around me.”
That sounded ominous but she was there with him, living with him and enjoying his protection. It didn’t seem right for her to just blithely continue on without helping to relieve him of a small part of the emotional burden he carried. Whatever had happened to his flock, it had left deep scars within him.
“I’m certain,” she murmured.
Holding her gaze with his pale eyes, his lips barely moved as he whispered, “I killed them.”
Tiffany stared at him in shock, for a moment certain that she misheard them. Upon realization that she hadn’t, her first impulse was to recoil away from him and put distance between them, but she forced herself to remain still as she worked through it in her mind.
“Okay.” The word left her in a drawn-out whisper as her stomach threatened to heave. The male she had spent weeks with had killed not only one person but many from the sound of it. He was a murderer. “You killed your entire family.”
His lips twitched and lifted into a sad smile that was more of a grimace. “You are afraid now.”
She shook her head but immediately followed it with an uncertain shrug. “I don’t know. I mean, yes… maybe. You just admitted to killing them.”
“It was the only way I could save them,” he rasped. “I was the strongest, the king of my flock and I think that is the only reason I escaped the taint… in a matter of speaking,” he added with a humorless laugh as his eyes continued to bore into her eerily. “You don’t know what it is like to spend centuries captured in the belly of a labyrinth, kept alive and driven mad by its spirit until all you know is the hunger that crawls through you insidiously.”
“A labyrinth,” she repeated, his reaction to her use of the word suddenly becoming clearer.
“A place that had developed a lust for death and vengeance which those that lived within it, that survived within the bowels of its deep corridors, carried out for its satisfaction.” A long, weary sigh escaped him and with it she imagined she heard centuries worth of struggle, pain, and sorrow. He did not flinch away, however, as he spoke. “I did terrible things. I feasted on the pain and terror and enjoyed it.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “You see now the monster I truly am. I wasn’t entirely truthful with you before. A satyr enjoys the taste of fear and panic… all in good fun. It is part of our passion and lust for life. And we are lusty,” he added, a dry chuckle following on the heels of his observation.
“Really? I never would have noticed,” she remarked, grasping desperately at humor to alleviate some of the tension tightening between them.
Barbasa laughed again, that time with a touch of genuine humor. It was fleeting, however, and returned to regarding her silently.
