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Gosh. How can he make that sound nice?

Still, she couldn’t think of anything worse. Suffocating andwrong.

She’d take Ingram’s lizard butt and tail over a big set of frightening dark wings any day.

Ingram rotated his neck to look over his shoulder momentarily, noting he was making a very obvious trail through the tall grass. Occasionally, bits of fluffy greenery, like animal tails on thin bits of grass, swayed just slightly taller. Most of it came to the bottom of his lowest ribs, and he knew he would have lost Emerie in it had she been wading through it.

She wasn’t.

She was securely in his arms. From the moment he’d scooped her up in them, he’d enjoyed carrying her.

Her weight was light, and her soft body easily moulded to him. Her breasts and thighs jiggled a little at the impact of each of his heavy footfalls, and her feet bounced along with them. Her hair danced as it swayed in the air, and her eyelashes flittered like the fuzziest wings.

On his back, he hadn’t been able to view these things freely. In his arms, he could leisurely stare at her as much as his heart desired, and it craved for him to do so.

The only thing that diminished it waswhyhe was carrying her. The blood-spotted white wrappings around her right thigh were obvious and unavoidable to look upon. They were always there, tarnishing his tantalising view of her.

I hope she will let me carry her like this in the future.

He would even like for her to request it, rather than him ask for it. For her to reveal she wanted to be held by him in this kind of embrace.

“I’ve been to that town,” Emerie stated, pointing off into the distance. “It’s called Greenshire.”

He drifted his gaze to the town situated in the middle of the valley they were passing. Since they were so high up, human dwellings were easily recognisable from their grey stones or their straw huts, even with the circle of log stakes protecting them from Demons.

It was a wise location, considering there were barely any trees except for a few small clusters of them here and there.

“The town is really well set up, and they actually farm land outside of it because it’s pretty safe to go outside the wall in the daytime.” Emerie pointed to a thick, lush area of greenery next to it. “Except for there. Those are the cornfields, and only a few are brave enough to pick corn since Demons can hide in there. During harvests, they send out soldiers first to kill them, but at least two people die every year while they pick the corn.”

“Then why would they?” Ingram asked, staring at the green stalks.

“It doesn’t look like it from here, but it’s a lot of food. To not pick it would mean most of the town would starve.” In his peripheral, her lips tightened into a flat line of disapproval. “However, they always send the poorest people by offering them the most amount of free food for doing it. I’ve always hated how humans exploit each other like that.”

“Should we go there to obtain food for you then?”

Surely he would be able to protect her while she picked thiscorn.

Emerie shook her head, causing her wavy orange hair to play across his forearm. “No. They’ll see us coming. I’d rather avoid human towns that can spot us approaching in case the guild manages to catch up, even if it’s unlikely. I also didn’t think to bring any money, and it’s rare for towns to have their farms outside of them like that one.”

He didn’t argue with her, figuring she knew what was best.

Before long, the town was gone from view once they went over the hill he’d been ascending, so he could go down it on the other side.

What lay before them were more fields, more meadows of grass – varying in length – and more hills. There was no forest in sight, not even the speck of one on the horizon. There were odd scatterings of trees, but nothing dense enough to hide a Demon, not if it didn’t want to get burned at some point throughout the day.

Ingram found it as peaceful as the first time he’d seen it all those years ago with Aleron.

At the thought of his kindred, his sight turned blue. That was quickly overshadowed by Emerie when she patted and rubbed at his sternum, seeming to do it absent-mindedly as she stared out at the horizon.

She must have seen his orb change in the corner of her eye.

He lifted his gaze in the direction hers was in.

Thick grasses moved like waves as wind dipped through their stalks, rustling quietly. Brown birds glided above them, before darting high in the sky in twos or threes, only to drop back down and fly above them. Their chirping didn’t sound panicked or aggressive, as if they were only playing with each other.

Ingram changed direction slightly, making sure to avoid that area so he didn’t disturb it with his imposing presence. Instead, he created a path to where he could see the grass was much shorter, and from there they climbed another hill. As they reached the highest point, he followed along it towards the tops of trees that appeared in the distance.

He was a little disappointed to see them.