Heart of the Forest (Arwn's Gift Book 1) (5 page)

Another week passed and market day came. Everyone was in a fuss. Carts rolled down the road all morning, making it impossible to sleep. Normally, I would have been up with the dawn, but I had spent the entire night with the aftermath of a particularly vicious tavern brawl. I was exhausted. When they finally left, I lay down on my dining table with bloody hands, instead of dealing with hassles of cleaning the cots and washing my hands. A groan broke my lips with every passing horse’s neigh.

The sun had risen by the time I gave up trying to sleep. A horse stopped outside, a noise that was entirely too familiar to me. Growling, I sat up and jumped off the table. While I was folding my furs, the door opened. A rider came in with a sealed note in his gloved hand. He held it out to me, and I snatched it away from him.

“Peace to you,” the rider mumbled in a hurry as he left.

Sucking my teeth, I stared down at the letter. The script on it was plain; I knew the hand well. It was from the apothecary of Edaen, a village roughly two day’s ride to the southeast. Usually, our letters were about various sicknesses in the region. This letter was different. It floored me. They had taken the elves from Edaen, rounded them up and put them on carts. Those who resisted were killed, and their heads were set on spikes in the square. It couldn’t have been in retaliation to what I did. Word would have barely reached the capital, and the death of an entire squad of elf hunters didn’t strike me as a rarity.

“Fuck.” I tossed the letter into the hearth. I knew the letter was a warning, giving me time to get the elves I knew out of town. I ran my bloodied fingers back through my hair.

“Are you all right?” Aneurin’s voice made me jump, a squeal escaping my lips—I had completely forgotten that he was there.

“Elf hunters were in Edaen. Apparently, they took or killed all of them.” I wet my lips and dipped my hands in the small bowl of rosewater I set aside for washing them. “Were they looking for you?” I didn’t turn to see if he was still lying in bed. My attention was focused on my hands and the stubborn, paste-like blood that clung to my skin. It seemed like my hands would never come clean.

“It’s entirely possible—they knew I was traveling.” That luscious voice was behind me now. His footsteps didn’t make a sound anymore; the famed elven silence had settled back into his movements. The break was healed. I had expected him to leave when Islwyn showed up two days before, but he didn’t. No, instead he lingered. We hadn’t kissed again, but we played dice often and took meals together. He had somehow become someone dear to me over the last month.

“Does this happen often?” I turned to face him.

“Would you like me to lie to you?” One corner of his lips tugged into a wry smile. “This is the life of most elves.” He shrugged. “We leave the safety of our forests, and we are hunted. Very few live like Ynyr does…very few can.”

“Could you?”

“I’ve never wanted to try before.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means there’s a small cottage outside the walls that’s vacant.”

“Isn’t that a little…assumptive?” I quirked a brow, and he chuckled for a few moments before sucking his plump bottom lip between his teeth.

“On your behalf, yes.”
Oops.
“It is fairly large, with a cellar and a handful of spare rooms. But more importantly, it’s outside the city walls.”

“Is that what you and Islwyn were talking about so heatedly?”

“Mhm, he thinks I’m foolish. Admittedly I am, but… I’ve never felt like this about someone before. I’ve had whores, common women. Some have even held my interest for a handful of weeks—but none like you.”

“Really? Most can’t stand being around me for long. Even my husband thought I was too…blunt.”

“He was a fool.”

“Oh, he certainly was. He was thankful for the war, I think. And I was thankful to get my dowry the fuck back when they sent me his body.”

“You didn’t love him?”

“Oh, we loved each other fiercely in our own way. But we couldn’t tolerate each other’s company for long stretches of time. He spent a lot of his time at court, and I was more or less thankful for it.”

“You’re noble?”

“No, but my sister married a noble. He met her in my father’s shop. While buying a gift for a lady, he saw my sister reading, her pretty golden hair illuminated by the sun. He was the favorite son, so they were fine with my parents’ status. But to elevate my family, I was immediately married to a lesser noble’s son. For three years I was technically the lady of the lands from the river to the western forest’s edge. It was horrible, and they treated me worse than they do here. I’d rather be spat on than spoken to like an utter moron.”

“Your sister must be incredibly beautiful.”

“She is. And I heard it every day since I could understand speech, until the day I was shoved into that knight’s bed.”

“Surely she heard the same about you?”

“No,” I clipped out, stepping around him.

“Not even your husband?”

“He used to say I would be amazingly beautiful were my complexion not so dark. Or rather what a beauty I’d be were I pale like my sister. He was an ass.”

“Your complexion adds to your beauty. Your skin is almost the color of honey… I admit I have contemplated whether or not it tastes as sweet.”
Oh, he certainly can be charming.
That lopsided smirk blossomed as he leaned against the table. Blush took my cheeks as I rolled my eyes.

“It’s market day, and I am running low on certain essential herbs—thanks to a certain elf who shall remain utterly nameless,” I stated, grabbing my basket from the shelf. “This means I’m going out. You can stay or come with me—it’s up to you” I offered as I ran my fingers through my hair. My gaze wandered down to my dress. The simple pale gray wool only had a few spots of blood on it, which was actually clean to me after a night of tending wounds. I grabbed my heavy, fur-lined cloak from a nearby chest and secured it around my neck, the dark fabric enveloping me in its warmth.

“Let me grab my cloak.”

* * * *

We strolled through the streets at a leisurely pace, enjoying each other’s company. I was mindful of the way Aneurin walked. He didn’t favor one leg over the other anymore. His gait was straight and sure, in spite of the somewhat boggy, slush-covered ground. Though we could see our breath in the air, water droplets dripped from bushes and the snow was soft. The smells from the baker and the competing clangs of Ynyr’s and the blacksmith’s anvils filled the air as we made our way to the cart stalls in the town square.

Aneurin froze as we neared the center of the square. It was like I could feel his sudden onset of anxiety. His emotions for the quickest fraction of a moment were tactile. You wouldn’t think rage and nervousness could coincide harmoniously, but for that brief blink in time they did. I turned my attention to him and tracked his gaze across the square. There, right in the middle of where the four streets intersected, was the mutilated corpse of an elven man.

From where I stood, I could make out the wounds that ended him. Someone beat his head in with their fists before sticking him on the spike. Nausea washed over me. The men I helped the night before probably did that. They were covered in far too much blood for the wounds they had.
Why the fuck hasn’t anyone taken him down?
I glanced over the crowd. No one seemed to pay any attention to the dead man in the heart of our village. No one seemed to care.

A man clad in robes of white and cream laid a crate in front of the body and stepped up onto it.
Please don’t say anything stupid.

“As it says in the Luminarium: ‘Those who harbor those festering shadows will, too, never feel the warmth of the rising sun.’”
So much for that.
“The good Monk Ansel warned us! He said that ‘those who live amongst witches and elves shall find their lives void of the light the Dawn provides! Their crops shall wither, and their children shall waste and die!’ Repent and cast out those amongst Laeth who have damned us all to the darkness! We should run out that whore who lives within our walls and calls herself a healer, or surely we will earn the ire of the Dawn!” The man was pointing directly at me now, and a crowd was starting to gather. My nausea stopped abruptly as my stomach turned to stone and sank to my toes.

Strong hands were on me, urging me to turn around. I complied, but my gaze remained locked with the massing crowd of my neighbors and so-called friends. The butcher was there with little Miksa. Nodding and agreeing with the man on the crate in front of the dead body as he called for my death or exile.

“Let’s go see Ynyr,” Aneurin spoke softly as he led the way, his footsteps leading me through the sludge, down the streets to where the thatch roof homes started to fall into greater disrepair.

The nonhuman district of Laeth consisted of the ten worst homes in town. It wasn’t because elves couldn’t fix them up. It wasn’t that they didn’t fix them up. It was because a group of drunkards routinely did their best to deface their homes. Windows were boarded up behind shutters, where they remained intact. Smiling children with dirty faces and pointed ears played in the snow. They stopped as we passed, staring slack-jawed and wide-eyed at us.

The ringing of Ynyr’s anvil had stopped long before we were in sight of the workshop. He wasn’t outside at the forge, but Rhosyn was. Her light hair was almost as white as the snow on the ground, making her pale skin seem the softest hue of pink in comparison. She would grow up to be a great beauty one day. Hair color aside, she favored her father greatly. Ynyr’s wife had died years before I came to town so that fair-haired, golden-eyed girl was all he had.

Aneurin grinned at Rhosyn, and her cheeks blushed bright crimson. They had a short conversation in their tongue—a conversation I didn’t understand a single word of. In the end, Rhosyn bowed her head to him, hopped off the stool she was seated on, and opened the door. Yelling something in that melodious language, she walked inside.

“One of these days I will learn the elven tongue,” I whispered to Aneurin with a sigh. He flashed me a quick, small smirk. Then Ynyr came outside, and that smile fell. One of those golden eyes of his was swollen shut, and his bottom lip was split. I gasped and couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty for some reason. “You need to leave… Tonight if you can. Even if it’s just for a few days. Please.”

“Why? Don’t tell me you’re here to try to run me off as well? I already had a similar discussion with a client earlier.” Ynyr sighed, rubbing his jaw.

“No, but last night some men killed an elf. They’ve stuck his body in the middle of town, and no one seems to care. Ynyr, I also got word from my friend in Edaen. They took all of the elves away in a cart and killed the resisters two nights ago.” I closed the distance between us and grabbed his hands. “Please, I just want you and Rhosyn safe.”

“Every elf?” he asked as his brows knit, and he stared down at me as if he were looking into my very soul. His hands fell away from mine. He and Aneurin started speaking in elven speech again, and my eyelid twitched. After a little time passed Ynyr started nodding. “All right. We’ll leave tonight. Should we tell the others?”

“Yes. Where are you going to go?”

“The only place that I can be certain Rhosyn will be safe—the forest.”

“There are towns within the trees, and they won’t have to worry about being run out…or beaten for no reason,” Aneurin offered, with that small smile returning, though there was a certain grim quality to it.

“Are you sure about that?” Ynyr glared at Aneurin. “I’ve lived with humans for the last seventy years. The last time I went into the wood they called me a
nynol’carwyr
and refused to do business with me.”

“Yes, you have my word. I’ll meet you and everyone else who wants to leave at sunset by the cottage outside the walls.” My heart actually hurt as Aneurin spoke. He was going to leave me. My gaze wandered to the side.
Maybe I should go too?
I watched the melting snow drip from tips of the bare branches of a nearby bush.

By the time we were back at my home, the sound of the crowd was almost deafening and I felt sick. Without thinking, I started packing my things. I wasn’t sure where I’d go, but I knew I wouldn’t be safe within the walls for a while—if ever.

“I—” Aneurin spoke after a few minutes of silence. He had been quietly watching me pack my herbs away off the shelves. I tucked each bundle and jar carefully into the bottom of a massive wooden chest. “If I come back in a few days…would I be able to stay with you? Not as a patient but as maybe something more than a friend?”

“If I’m not kindling, of course.” I paused my packing long enough to grin in his direction.

“You won’t be kindling. The cottage I told you about, you should take it. You’ll be safer there than in the village.”

“That’s generous.”

“It’s the least I could do. You saved my life, Valentina.” I shivered when my name left his lips, and dropped a pot of healing ointment.

“Damn…draft.”

“We both know there’s not a single draft in here.”

“What do you want from me?” I asked in earnest, closing the chest of herbs. It was odd to see the shelves empty.

“I told you already,” he stated plainly, stepping past me and into the bedroom.

He made no move to close the door before he stripped off the coarse woolen shirt Ynyr had lent him. I had an unobstructed view of his slender, toned torso and the slight scar from the wound that had brought him to my doorstep. The pale pink scar had already started fading. Soon there would be nothing that would tie him to me. Nevertheless, I devoured his nakedness with my stare, my gaze traveling over every ridge of hard muscle, and a wistful sigh escaped my lips that made me cover my face.

When I dropped my hands, I was in time to see him pulling his dark leather pants back up his bare thighs. There was nothing to suggest he had broken anything. No, he was certainly all healed. Next, he slipped a homespun shirt over his head; the laundress had been able to get out most of the blood and sew up where the dagger had pierced it. Watching him dress, I became more and more aware with each article of clothing that there had to be something wrong with me. It was clear from the end result that he could be nothing but a bandit from the forest. He dressed like they did. The olive over-tunic buckled tight to his lithe form with various belts and straps, and over that went a heavy, muddy brown–colored vest with a high collar. All he was missing was a sword, a bow, quiver, and red bandanna. He looked like a killer. His attire stripped all the boyishness from his features, making him look arrogant and dangerous.