Page 4 of Artemysia

“I’m not a smiler.” - Riev

W ell, damn.

The ale must be stronger in the city. It’s not like me to engage with any stranger, no less a beautiful woman of rank, and suddenly want to show off and fight her.

And then almost kiss her? With her face glowing from the fight as if we’d just done something indecent, I wanted her lips on mine, and I think I had a chance.

She threw me off with that angelic smile, coupled with fighting skills like a damn Syf. Fierce. Confident.

In turn, I acted like the village idiot. For what? Attention?

Why didn’t I have more self-control? The idea displeases me. Still, for someone to make captain so young is impressive. It’s damn sexy, is what it is.

I can count on one hand the women I’ve wanted to kiss in any situation, but one I wanted to both kiss and fight?

None. Never .

And I’m not sure which I want more, her lips or her fist on my face…

I must be deranged.

Captain, huh. She and courageous others like her protect the people and the towns. They deserve the glory. Me, on the other hand, well—

I lied when I said I was a messenger.

I’m just a wild beast in the shadows. A dangerous one.

Now, I follow her obediently as she leads me through a long corridor of shops.

She has long, lean legs and the sweetest round ass that fills out her riding breeches.

I keep getting glimpses of it when her short cloak ripples behind her.

Her hair is shaved short on the sides, but long on top and braided into a loose, pale fishtail from forehead to midback.

Her hair is the color of salt.

Salt? No, it’s better than that. Starlight. The color of her hair is starlight.

What am I, a fucking poet now? Either way, it’s almost colorless, and it’s alluring.

She glances back over her shoulder at me. I avert my eyes in time, pretending to peer into a window of a closed furniture maker’s shop. Despite myself, I can’t help stealing a second glimpse of her large brown eyes. She has the same concerned expression she did when my eye started bleeding.

No one is ever concerned about me. People take one glance and look away.

Maybe because…I’m not a smiler. Fuck that. I know I’m not.

Maybe I’m intimidating. Definitely. Years of training as a spy taught me it’s best if people look away, and I’ve cultivated an aura that warns turn away, I was never here.

Not her. She’s not intimidated. She hasn’t looked away, the clever creature. She’s got me following her like a damn puppy and agreeing to let her deal with my eye. If she’d put it any other way, I’d have said no. Admitting I needed help? No thanks.

But I wasn’t lying when I said I was intrigued.

How in the world will she—at the last minute—fix me up and show me the entire city? It’s not as if she expected to find me in the alley, but she’s already come up with a plan to get me to do what she wants like it’s my own idea.

We stop in front of the highest clock tower in the entire kingdom.

I’ve seen it from the villages. It’s the tallest thing around this valley except for the watchtowers at the city gates, until you get to the mountains surrounding our country.

She jiggles the door handle at the base of the tower. I’m only a couple inches taller than her, so I crane my neck to look over her shoulder. It’s locked.

“You didn’t see me do this,” she says, her lopsided grin the sweetest thing I’ve set eyes on in a long time. Sweet and deadly, my swollen lip reminds me.

Two large hairpins come out of her braided hair. A few loose strands fall along her temple, but she doesn’t bother brushing them away. She picks the lock as if she’s done it a thousand times before and ushers me in. The thick wooden door shuts with a creak behind us.

“Up the stairs,” she directs.

A thin iron stairway spirals up the inside of the impossibly tall and narrow tower.

“Are you going to push me off when we get to the top?” I ask flatly, half-joking.

With the day I’ve had, it would be a fitting end.

“A downhill attitude will never get you to the top of the mountain,” she says brightly, pushing past me to climb the winding staircase.

Well, that’s alarming.

How anyone can be that optimistic in a world like ours is beyond me. I don’t know how to react to such unexpected cheer. My morose thoughts usually keep people uncomfortable, and therefore, silent.

Silence is peace.

I want to reply that her sunshine will never make it through my cracks where no light ever goes, but she’s so pleased with herself that for once I don’t feel like being mean.

She chuckles as she marches up the wooden stairs. “You probably hate motivational sayings.”

Yes, I do.

But she can’t help herself. “Every summit is within reach if you keep climbing.” She snickers to herself as her eyes crinkle into a grin. Something about this place relaxes her, and her strangely buoyant personality emerges from under her trained-soldier exterior.

It’s unsettling in a slightly pleasing way.

I snort, suppressing a laugh. “Please, no more. I’m motivated, I promise.”

She leads me past the mechanical clock room, the exposed gears clicking rhythmically. We must have taken at least two hundred steps, but she treads upward tirelessly. I try not to limp on my sore knee that was slammed by a mace-wielding Syf earlier today.

We spill out onto a landing that resembles an attic, with four glass windows and a steepled roof.

A flick of a wrist later, a match is lit, and she reaches up to a large lantern hanging from a rafter, igniting the oil. Only the newer buildings in South Kingdom are outfitted with gas lighting.

“Open the windows,” she says. “Both full moons are out now, so you can view the entire city from here—like I promised. On a clear day, you can see Serpent’s Moon Mountain to the south and the Syf forest to the north and east. Royal castle to your left.

Welcome to Stargazer, the largest city on the peninsula and the center of the valley. Population 20,000 or so.”

She rummages around a wooden chest under one of the windows—almost knocking over a high stack of books piled on the floor—and tosses out a pillow and blanket. Shifting aside what looks like a disorganized collection of personal items, she pulls out an Academy first-aid kit.

She shuts the lid and taps the chest. “Sit.”

Instead of protesting, I surprise myself by obeying.

She kneels in front of me, dipping cotton into pungent green liquid from a bottle before dabbing it around my eye. It’s cooling and soothing.

“It’s not a cut from a blade. It’s ragged,” she assesses.

“Syf claws are sharper than a sickle,” I mutter. A bloody image flashes across my mind.

I don’t want to think of my fallen mates. It stirs my hollow insides in a way that makes me want to retch, so I clear my throat and change the subject. “What is this place?”

She seems to understand and doesn’t press for more details. “Found it years ago when I first joined the Academy. Sometimes I sneak away and sleep here to escape my dormmate’s snoring.”

A dropper bottle is next. “This will sting, but it should stop the bleeding,” she says.

Her small fingertips tap gently around the wound without getting any in my eye, filling in the gash with the sticky stuff.

It burns like hellfire, but I grit my teeth without letting out a sound.

My early training forced me to endure pain silently.

Nobody cares if the shadow gets hurt. Shadows are silent. No one wants to hear it.

She notices and gives me an apologetic look. She’s so damn sweet.

She leans in, and a loose tendril of her pale, radiant hair falls out of her braid and into her eyes.

I get a whiff of her hair. It smells like heady florals, the ones that blossom in the summer by the riverbanks.

Dammit, she makes me feel so warm. I’m about to break into a sweat.

Perhaps infection has set into my wound.

I haven’t thought of that scent since I was a boy, and it stirs memories I don’t allow myself to think about.

Good memories, that is.

I find myself breathing deeper, the tightness in my chest easing. Strangely, her scent soothes a part of me even as it unsettles me.

She swipes her hair away with the back of her wrist and continues patching my forehead.

With her face inches from mine, she’s concentrating so hard on my eye that she’s biting her lip.

It’s adorable, and I need to look away but there’s nowhere else to focus.

The apples of her cheeks are pink from a blend of drinking and the chill in the autumn air.

She crinkles her nose, which slopes at the tip.

When she gets to the deepest part of the cut near my cheek, I wince. She apologizes, her forehead creasing in concern. Her long, dark lashes finally flick up, and the gold flecks in her brown eyes glint in the low lighting.

She’s astonishingly beautiful.

Small strips of bandages come out, and she sticks them above and below my eye.

“Done. Now it doesn’t look like you’re crying blood. You’re a lot less scary.”

She unscrews a small jar next to the trunk and shakes out a few pieces of dried fruit into a bowl. Then she rises off her knees and places it in the rafters above us.

Everything she does confuses me.

“Sometimes an owl comes by, so don’t be startled,” she announces. “You can stay here for the night. If you want to shower in the morning, go by the dorms or the tavern where we were drinking and tell the innkeeper I’m forcing you to clean up. They’ll let you use the facilities.”

She looks me up and down and adds, “Everyone knows I don’t tolerate messy soldiers. Even if you’re not under my direct command.”

Holy shit. Did this woman solve all my problems in ten minutes?

She fixed the damn eye I was half-resigned to losing to infection.

Who knows what disease that dirty Syf had in his claws when he tried to slash my face off after slaughtering my companions.

And now I don’t have to sleep in an alleyway and show up to my meeting with my superiors looking like elkshit because I didn’t sleep or bathe.

I realize I’ve said nothing for a long time.

“Thank you,” I finally murmur, remembering she’s someone who deserves manners. I’d almost forgotten those two words.

Hell, I’ve lost sight of what there is to be thankful for in my life. The attack left me with nothing. My failures eat away at me like acid on my already charred soul.

She draws my attention to the exposed gears. “The clock doesn’t chime, so it won’t wake you up every hour. There’s a mechanical ticking, but I find it comforting, like a heartbeat.”

That grin of hers flays me. Skins me alive, leaving me bare and bleeding. In a world ruled by selfishness and fear, she’s learned to fight like a mountain lion—tough as iron—but still maintains a soft heart.

I’m fascinated.

She doesn’t have to help me. She doesn’t need someone like me in her life, and yet here she is, caring for a stranger.

She goes on. “The owl. If you see him, feed him the dried berries. Don’t approach him too fast, or he’ll claw your other eye out.”

I smile. My face doesn’t know how to anymore, and I guarantee it comes out as a scowl.

She gives me a funny look, like I’m a wild animal she’s taken in. She isn’t wrong.

I’m bleeding, dirty, hungry, angry .

She turns toward the stairs to leave. “Sleep well,” she says.

I want her up close in my face again.

I’ve never been to Stargazer, and it’s likely I’ll never be back.

Say something, you bastard.

It’s too late, and she’s treading down the spiral stairs, out of my life for good.