Heart of the Forest (Arwn's Gift Book 1) (8 page)

“Every. Last. Inch,” he purred as he rocked against my hips. My body spasmed wildly. Practically screaming, I thrashed in the mud, speckling us with earth as he groaned against me, “That’s it… Come for me.” He panted darkly as my body writhed violently.

My hands smeared mud over him, leaving ruined handprints in their wake as I tried to grasp something tangible while he made me come yet again. I felt my inner lips flutter wildly around him as my consciousness grew spotty. He sucked in air sharply through his teeth as he began once more to coat my sex with his viscous elven seed. I blacked out mid-orgasm. All I remembered was the crack of thunder over us, a blinding flash of lightning, and then nothing.

* * * *

Shivering, I woke to the sounds of footsteps splashing in the mud. Blinking against the light, I felt rain continuing to pelt my body. Squinting, I made out the form of an elf standing over me. Groggily, I sat up and looked around…and then panicked. Aneurin lay asleep beside me, with one leg possessively curled on top of mine. We were both coated in the almost black mud, but that wasn’t what caused my heart to beat like it was going to explode. The garden had bloomed overnight. Full-grown plants with the greenest leaves I had ever seen stood in rows where I knew the meager crops had failed.
Well, they are certainly going to burn me now.

“Aneurin!” The elf yelled his name, his voice echoing off over the rolling hillside. With a growl, Aneurin sat up and gasped as he looked around.

“Fuck,” he cursed as he quickly stood, almost tripping over a lettuce plant that I knew had died a week ago. He did a double take as he looked at me, and before I could say anything he gathered me into his arms. He took me inside and set me down in front of the hearth. The elves started yelling at one another. The other four were dressed and dry and clearly pissed at Aneurin. I couldn’t help but smile as Aneurin stood with his arms crossed, naked, covered in mud, and unashamed, as he argued with his friends in their tongue. The word “Dy’ne” was thrown around, and I knew enough to know it was derogatory, and something made me think they were referring to me when they said it.

Once I was warm enough to move, I stood, and the conversation paused as I stretched. I could feel their stares trailing me as I poured water into a clean kettle and set it on the fire. Maybe I should have felt self-conscious about being naked around four strangers—five if you counted the whore who was passed out on one of the cots—but I didn’t care. The only thing I was focused on was getting warm and washing the mud off myself.

The moment I left the room with my bucket of warm water, the arguing commenced again. And they were still arguing when I returned, free of mud and in a nice dry lavender dress that matched my eyes. Letting them argue, I put on a kettle, took out a small linen pouch of fisher’s root tea, and tossed it into the water.

“Is anyone going to tell me why I now have a garden in full bloom when yesterday everything was dead? Or are you all going to argue about Aneurin fucking me?” I asked, my voice silencing the room. They turned and looked at me once more.

“Have you heard that old story about…” Aneurin sighed and stopped, looking around. “I’m a
Swynwr
.”

“A swinor?”

“Swynwr. It’s a mage supposedly naturally gifted by the gods. The ways of the Swynwr are long dead. I can’t do anything with my power, and no one can teach me how to use it. Essentially, I’m a remnant of elven society before we fell. Before, I would have been a druid; now I’m a bandit. And some, like Islwyn, still consider me and my person sacred. Others think I should be put down like a rabid animal.”

“Call me crazy for refusing to let our culture die,” Islwyn grumbled narrowing his crystalline irises at Aneurin. They shared a long look for a handful of moments and then Aneurin turned his attention back to me. “He’s also not telling you all of it. A Swynwr is born to be our king, not a tribe’s
mhenaduriaid
, but the one king to all of us.”

“If you are raised in the old ways—which I wasn’t. I was raised godless and quite happy for it,” Aneurin groused as he left the room.

As I opened my mouth to say something I was silenced by pounding at the door. I gestured for everyone to go into my private rooms, and they all filed passed me—but not before Islwyn grabbed the whore and slung her over his shoulder like a sack of grain. It seemed someone was here to see me…my questions would have to wait.

The wound was infected, red and weeping. I had seen a lot, and even I didn’t want to touch it. The yellowish-orange puss that drained from the decomposing flesh smelled of turned meat and feces; it was a smell I knew well but never became immune to. Still I had to fight the smile from my lips. It had started out as the simplest of cuts, probably a tiny scrape while working with pigs or goats or whatever animal he and his family kept. It now festered, and when I touched his arm the flesh squished. I could have prevented this…

“You’ve gotta help me, Miss Witch. It hurts somefin’ bad. I went to the Barber Surgeon, he said ‘tis noffin’ and sent me on m’ way. Went back las’ week an’ ‘e bled meh.”
Serves you right, sheepfucker.

Grumbling, I turned from the body on my cot, snatched a potion from the shelf, and went about gathering herbs. I might be able to save the man’s arm, maybe. If he had come to me first, I could have told him to keep the wound clean, or wrapped his arm in gauze to give it a chance at healing without infection. Now his odds were fifty-fifty, but in reality closer to thirty-seventy because I wasn’t certain he wouldn’t run to tell the priests about my flourishing garden. Admittedly, a part of me wanted him to die from the wound and another part wanted to help him along.

Still, I gave him the potion. While he was unconscious, I scraped the putrefied flesh from the wound and flung it into the fire where it sizzled and filled the room with acrid smoke. Then I cauterized the wound and bound it in gauze. He’d live and probably keep the arm. The smell in the room was thick and noxious. Sage and decay made the air stifling, but it fit my mood. Staring down at the man’s dirty, unconscious form, I started doing simple mathematics in my head. If the priest sent a pigeon to the capital it would reach there tomorrow. It took two weeks to reach Laeth on the main road. If they decided to burn me, I’d have—

Footsteps broke my train of thought. Whipping my head around, I found Aneurin standing in the doorway, clean and wrapped in dry clothes. Thunder rolled overhead as the storm continued to rage.

“He’ll live,” I stated plainly, washing my hands of blood and pus. The rancid stench made me queasy.

“Oh joy,” Aneurin snarled, padding over to me. Turning, I glared at him. “The choice was yours, and I won’t speak a word against it.”

“But you’ll think it.”

“Right until the moment I have to kill half of Laeth and cut you from the pyre if it comes to it.” He kissed the top of my head and as if on cue my body relaxed against him. Closing my eyes for a handful of moments, I savored the ache in my body and the memory of our lovemaking from the night before. “I’m going to clean up my mess.”

“Your mess?”

“The garden.”

“So you’re a bandit and a gardener. You are a man of many talents, Aneurin.”

“I try.” He flashed me a charming grin and disappeared out into the rain.

Aneurin wasn’t gone but minutes before Islwyn entered the room. In Ersland, he would be considered the height of beauty: milk-pale with almost silver-blond loose curls and bright icy-blue eyes. There was, however, something about him that ruined all that. His gaze was a bit too scrutinizing for my taste. It was like he was trying to figure out what my worth was beyond what he knew already.

“Don’t forget to drink your tea.” His voice made me jump, but he didn’t look at me. His attention was fixed outside the window, probably watching Aneurin.

“Tea?” I quirked a brow.

“So you’re not graced with a little half-elf bastard in eight months.” He spat the word “half-elf,” and I in turn practically growled at his tone. Unfortunately, he did have a point. I walked over to the kettle and poured the tea into one of my mugs. I stared at it for a moment; it tasted vile even when watered down, and this had steeped for a few hours. I sipped the tea with a grimace. The moment that bitter brew hit my tongue I had to fight my gag reflex to get it all down.

We sat in silence. The only noises in the room were the crackle of the fire and the muted sounds of the debauchery that continued in my private rooms. After a while, Islwyn turned from the window and sighed into his hands before passing his fingers through his curly locks. After staring at me for a few moments, the corners of his lips turned up in a slight smile.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been in a mood all morning.” He took a seat at the table.

“Hungover?” I tilted my head to the side.

“A bit.”

“I have something for that.” I stood and walked over to my shelf of herbs. Grabbing one of my linen tea pouches, I placed a pinch of dried lavender, milk thistle, and honeysuckle into it, then set water on to boil.

“He doesn’t understand that he’s putting himself at risk. If he loved you as he claims, he wouldn’t have pierced your secret flower with his mutton dagger or whatever it is you humans say these days.” The best part of it all was that he said it with a straight face. I couldn’t maintain my composure and soon cackled with peals of laughter.

“Yes. Of course! Verily he plunged his gleaming, rigid, mutton dagger into the heart of my dewy secret flower sending me quivering into bliss.” I turned my gaze to the ceiling. “Mutton dagger? Secret flower? Do I look like some sort of delusional, drunken, deranged trobairitz to you?” I chortled, tossing more sage on the fire. “Does that really seem the sort of thing that would leave my lips at any given time? But thank you. Thank you for making me laugh. Speaking of mutton daggers…” I stood and walked back to my shelf, retrieving a small white pot of ointment. “For your chafed meat dagger. I can only imagine how sore it is after a night of vigorously piercing the not so secret flower of what is now a well-used whore.”

I set the small ceramic pot on the table. Islwyn took it without a word. His luminous blue gaze never left mine the entire time he unlaced his leather trousers and smeared ointment over himself. It was a battle of wills. We glared at each other, but still I caught out of my peripheral vision the erection that stood proudly from his slender white hips.

“I think you might have forgotten what I do for a living, Islwyn. I’ve seen plenty of dicks.” I couldn’t stop a grin from spreading over my lips. Islwyn swallowed and tucked himself back into his trousers. Pouting, he set the ointment back on the table.

Minutes later Aneurin returned, soaked to the bone and carrying a basket of herbs and vegetables from the garden. His muddied boots squished with every step as he made his way to the table and pulled back the dark hood of his cloak. Islwyn’s face practically lit up when they settled on Aneurin’s dripping form. I had seen true zealotry before, like when the villagers took to staring at the sun as it crested with the dawn. The look in Islwyn’s eyes wasn’t the look of a zealous fanatic… It was love—or at least it seemed that way to me.

“That rain is fucking cold.” Aneurin shivered. “The road to the gate is almost washed out, so you should send your friend there on his way.” Gesturing at the villager on the cot, he picked up the basket before going back into my private rooms. Islwyn ran after him like a happy puppy, leaving me more or less alone.

The fetid smell of the unconscious villager started to prove distracting. It reminded me that I should have put some maggots in the man’s wound to aid in ridding it of the infected flesh. But if I did he’d probably say I put some spell on him or something equally as laughable or ridiculous.
Gotta love it when zealotry and fear get in the way of healing.
I snatched the vial of hartshorn from my shelf and waved it under the sleeping villager’s nose. Sitting up with a start, he looked around in a daze.

I gave him gauze and a pouch of herbs for tea, and sent the poor unfortunate soul on his way with relative certainty he was going to—at the very least—lose the arm.

Standing in the doorway, I watched the villager leave as the cool rain misted my body. There were torches in the trees, and in the distance on the road was a wagon with an armed escort. Squinting, I shielded my gaze from the stinging frigid rain and tried to see what kind of wagon it was. I caught of the glint of golden robes and quickly closed my door.
Fuck.
I slammed my head back against the door.

For a while, I sat there in front of the door listening to the rain hitting the roof and the muddied stones that lead to my door. Was I afraid of the witch hunters? To me, it seemed a rather stupid question. My little stunt with the nightshade wasn’t something repeatable. If I was honest, I had gotten lucky. Oh, I had no intention of going quietly. I refused to die on some pyre in the middle of town.

Deep in thought, I missed the sound of footsteps on the stones. So when there was a knock at the door, I practically jumped out of my skin. I couldn’t even guess who was there. I would have seen another villager, and the witch hunters on the road were too far away. The only explanation that made any sense was that the knock was from someone carrying one of those torches I had seen in flickering at the tree line. Sighing, I opened the door, only to be instantly shoved to the side as a group of about ten elves entered my home without speaking a word. They were all soaked to the bone and wore long, heavy tunics and bloodred bandannas wrapped around their heads.

“Sure. Come right on in,” I grumbled.

With my cocky utterance, the leader snapped his attention to me. His face was gaunt and all hard lines and angles. His bandanna covered the entire top of his head and slumped down to cover one eye. The other eye gleamed red in the candlelight. His hair was dark enough that it seemed almost black but still managed to hold a hint of a warmer tone. His lips were a touch on the sensuous side, but they turned in a naturally disapproving frown that was readable through his sneer. On his back was a massive recurve bow and at his side a long curved sword with a scabbard that glinted dully in the firelight.