Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 152666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 763(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 509(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 763(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 509(@300wpm)
At the end of the entry, every day without fail, sometimes the only entry that day, was a memory of her mother. How her eyes sparkled. The flowing dress she wore. Her steadfast resilience against the aggression directed at them. I assumed that was because of the no-magic situation. I could feel the love through the pages, and choked up several times reading these snippets despite not knowing either of them.
Aurelia had lost her mother. And it seemed as though her mother had been her only family; it was clear from the anecdotes in her journal she had no relatives in this village. She’d found Granny sometime after and been taken in, an act of mercy.
Hard to envision the Granny I’d recently learned about giving anyone mercy. After hearing firsthand accounts of her behavior and breaking into her lavish estate near the castle to catalogue her possessions, it was obvious Granny’s actions were almost always self-serving. She didn’t do handouts. She didn’t offer charity. If she noticed someone, it was because they were necessary or special in some way.
I supposed it was possible she had a maternal desire to protect a younger Aurelia. But I wouldn’t know for sure until I learned more.
“We need to move out,” I said abruptly. “Pack up the books, and her drawings from the other room. She has a collection of spices, as well. Grab those.”
I tried not to clench my jaw.
And failed.
We didn’t actually need those drawings, and certainly not the spices but . . . I knew I was probably sentencing her to death, so there was no real point, but I wanted her to have them close, to maybe serve as a slight balm for having ripped her from her carefully cultivated world.
Before I regretted the decision, I stalked out of the house and headed toward camp. The others could handle things from here. I wanted to see the woman. Aurelia. I wanted to ask her—
I wasn’t even sure.
Fucking primal instincts. I felt like my brain had been leeched out of my skull and all I wanted to do was fall into this desperate need to knot her. To claim her. To own her for eternity.
How the fuck was I going to question her and keep my senses?
Chapter 9
Aurelia
Icame to consciousness slowly, uncomfortable in my position but feeling strangely fucking amazing. All the tension in my body had magically released. No aches and pains plagued my limbs and the stiffness I always carried in my lower back had completely dissipated. Something bit into my wrists, though, holding them together underneath me. My face rested on something soft, a blanket maybe, and the hard ground lay beneath my body. Nothing stretched overhead. I was open to the elements.
Memories flashed within my mind. The emberflies, running, the cottage, Granny . . .
Pain began to creep in around the edges of my awareness so I needed to take stock before it blotted out my consciousness completely. I couldn’t afford to lose myself to grief right now. I was clearly a hostage; I needed to assess my surroundings.
After wielding the axe I’d seen the stranger. The handsome, delicious-smelling, and incredibly real stranger. I’d moved to attack him, I remembered that much. Then everything went black. The attack had never landed.
I struggled to sit up, comforted by mellow yellow light emanating from two points overhead—lanterns, it looked like, suspended from the branches of trees in an unfamiliar area. A nightbird screeched somewhere off to the right, hidden within the darkness of deep night.
In front of me sat a person in a vibrant jacket with purple velvet lapels and matching velvet slacks. Shiny black shoes with a sort of tassel in gold adorned his feet, and a spear was hooked under his arm and leveled at my face.
“Good almost-morning, Highness. How did you sleep?” he asked pleasantly. Then he grimaced, a silly, pencil-thin mustache pulling tight over full lips. “Oops. Sorry, wrong job. Let me try again. Good almost-morning, prisoner. I hope your shackles are to your liking?”
I blinked at him for a moment, somewhat confused. I’d traveled a fair bit, driven from one home to the next before I’d found Granny, but those had always been poor villages and bankrupt towns. No one had ever had the sort of finery that existed in front of me. The man looked regal, despite sitting on a slightly wonky, battered chair in the forest of a humble, if well-provisioned village.
I had to say, the rich styled themselves very . . . colorfully. Or maybe he habitually used hallucinogens and his jacket was a constant source of entertainment. Either way, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of things.
“Are those . . .” I squinted in the low light. “Do you have . . .penises stitched into your jacket?”
“My goodness, look at you! You wake up with your limbs tied, in a strange place, and you immediately notice the cocks littering my jacket!” He tsked at me, leaning back with a smile. “I can already tell you’re going to push my limits.” He turned his face to the side a little, still looking at me, his smile now coy. “Yes, they are dicks. I have forty-three dicks on me at present. Given you’re a prisoner and have nothing else to do, I figured I’d give you a task while you wait for the alpha. Find all the dicks!”