Page 28

Britches

Callum

Callum woke to the patter of rain around him.

He stretched, every muscle in his body sharply protesting the movement.

A spongy mass cradled his aching body; the coppery scent of blood filled his nostrils.

Fuck.

He jerked up and frantically looked for the source.

Blood wasn’t a good sign.

The Arryvian was curled up beside him, nested against the depression where his torso had been.

Above them was a dome-like structure that kept the rain outside, the tightly woven vines and broad leaves not only shielding but also redirecting any drops that snuck through.

Swathes of copper had dried on the Arryvian’s arms, the color repeated in the broad leaves that surrounded them.

Worry and a strange bloom of pride grew in his chest as he studied her handiwork.

A nearly hysterical laugh threatened to claw from his throat.

He’d never seen such a sight, such magic.

“Damn.

You actually did it.

Good job,”

he whispered gratefully.

His fingertips trailed down the length of her bare arm, studying the new gash in her skin.

Already, she was healing.

Incredible.

He looked up from her arm to her face.

So close to him, eyes closed in sleep, she looked…different. A surge of longing came out of nowhere and nearly bowled him over, making his heart bang against his ribs and his blood hot. He leaned back and took a deep breath, frowning. What the fuck was that?

Maybe Jameson had been right, and he just needed a good lay.

Fucking a felon hardly seemed his style.

He swept the thought away, but that deep, peculiar longing faded slowly.

Barlow had been right, loneliness didn’t suit him.

Moving against the wall, he leaned against the leafy shelter, relishing the smell of moss and rain.

This…this was a gift.

In more ways than one, really, since the rain would ensure they were safe from pursuers, at least until the rain let up.

Then, they would need to hurry.

But now, they could rest.

He closed his eyes, swearing he was only resting when a shuffling noise woke him.

He cracked open his lids, scanning the small enclosure.

He watched the Arryvian move, listening intently to discern what she was about.

Her back was to him, plucking some leaves from the dome-shaped shelter.

Using the knife from Fyn, she sliced long thin strips into the broad leaves until she had several strands.

Her fingers moved with practiced ease, weaving the strands together into a large sort of sack.

He observed as she dug her fingers into the ground until she found a clay texture and slathered that on the inside of the sack.

She wove a second smaller shape and set that inside, sandwiching the mud between the two woven baskets.

As she worked, she hummed softly, the fibrous material listening to her whims and aiding her crafting until she had a large bag.

He was willing to bet it was waterproof.

Damn, he had to admit that was clever.

The rain still pattered outside, and her breath sent clouds of vapor dancing in the air as she hummed.

Another whispered word he didn’t understand, and the vines of their hovel parted just enough for her to snake an arm out.

She folded and shaped the leaves until a little stream of water poured from outside the dome, trickled down her leafy path, and dribbled into her fashioned waterskin.

She monitored the water stream for several moments before she stiffened, likely sensing him watching her.

Cautiously, she turned toward him, a wave of pink dusting her nose.

“I did not mean to wake you,”

she said quietly, glancing at him and then away.

“It was the thunder,”

he lied, combing his fingers through his hair.

Even that slight movement caused his arms and fingers to ache.

She bobbed her chin and turned back to the waterskin, her lower lip tucked under her teeth.

She shivered but didn’t complain, her clothes damply clinging to her skin, the oversized shirt held to her waist by the rope still tied around her middle.

He could see nearly every curve beneath the plastered cloth.

Outside, the pelting rain created a percussive harmony that made their little shelter that much more peaceful.

At least, it would have been if she were literally any other woman.

He frowned at her as another command closed the leafy gap, the waterskin now full.

“You know we can’t drink that,”

he said when she set the waterskin between them.

“I don’t wanna have any nasty changes.”

She sat on the farthest stretch of moss, still nearly touching his foot in the small space, and began unbraiding her hair, the grit of mud making the strands stick to her fingers.

When the long curls hung around her shoulders like a damp sheet, she began combing her fingers through it.

There was something eerily comforting about her, something that made his thoughts quiet and put his body at ease.

Like some fucking spell.

The damn witch was playing with his mind.

“You can drink this.

I do not know how I am certain, but this rain is…less.

Much less.

There is magic, I can sense it, but it is not enough to harm in such little amounts.

I can feel it. Try it.”

“You first.

I ain’t about to grow ears and a tail, Arryvian,”

he grumbled, crossing his arms.

She sniffed. “Coward.”

She lifted the waterskin to her lips and took several greedy gulps.

A few droplets traveled from the corners of her mouth down her neck and her throat bobbed with each swallow.

He shrugged and stretched his arms above his head, trying not to yelp in pain from his overworked muscles.

“Not a coward.

Just not thirsty.

I had enough lefiin juice.”

She was not convinced, judging by the look she shot him.

Dropping his arms back down, he tugged his pack close and pulled his flint and tinder out, glancing about at the vegetation.

“Don’t suppose you can grow us some firewood with your witchy powers?”

he asked, his tone slightly flippant.

The woman scowled at him, reaching out to touch the vines as if comforting them in the face of such rudeness.

“How could you even ask that?”

she said, her eyes narrowed in anger.

Callum shook his head, putting the flint and tinder back in his bag.

“Yeah, didn’t think so.”

He stood up, as much as he could in the little hut anyway, then gestured to the vines as he asked, “Mind letting me outside, Twiggy? Gotta get a fire going somehow.”

Her eyes remained narrow as she glanced in the direction he’d indicated.

She had that slow tone people used when questioning insanity.

“It’s raining outside, Colonel.

That means the wood you find will be wet.”

“Well, prepare to be amazed at my own magic tricks.

Now, are you going to open this place up, or should I get to chopping?”

He drew a knife from its sheath for emphasis, a grin on his face.

She shrugged, feigning nonchalance, though her brow remained creased and her mouth twisted.

The vines shifted just enough for him to crouch through, the sound of the rain louder than before.

“Fine, if you wish to wander the rains as the Song Seekers, be my guest.

You would fit in with them well, I think.”

“Sure, whatever that means.”

Callum ducked out into the rain, shielding his eyes as he did.

The view had changed.

The dry, red landscape had transformed into a vast array of olive hues and rust mud and spiky, spindly leaves that greedily soaked up the rain.

It was easy to imagine some of the reed-like stalks slurping it out of the sky as if from a straw.

In their small section of the plateau, vines wove and twisted over the wet earth.

The plateau they’d ended up on seemed fully flat from below, but it would appear that this was the base, as another tier reached up into the drenched sky.

Callum headed toward the leeward side, hoping to find something that was relatively protected from the downpour.

He would never admit this to that woman, but he doubted he would have risked the rains if it wasn’t for her determination that the rainwater wasn’t overly dangerous.

Instead, he would have made do and hoped they wouldn’t freeze once night fell.

Thankfully, he didn’t feel anything from his exposure to the rain—at least not yet.

As he drew closer to the leeward side of the plateau, he spotted a leaning shadow, obscured by the storm.

“Hell yes,”

he grunted as he picked up his pace, his body protesting at the movement.

The shadow grew clearer, and he came upon what he was hoping for: a deadfall.

A lefiin had collapsed against the rising plateau, creating a natural lean-to.

It was a relatively sizable lefiin as well, especially for this high up, and Callum thanked his good fortune.

A grin stretched across his face imagining the shocked look on the Arrivyan’s face as he brought back enough fuel to last as long as they’d need.

Wasting no time, he got to work, using his knife when necessary.

This lefiin had been here a while, so progress was a little slower than he liked, but that meant it was bone dry.

Gathering up a nice armful, he hurried back toward the little vine hut.

The direction the wind was blowing meant he had to crabwalk sideways to keep his armload from getting too wet, but it didn’t take long for the hut to materialize out of the rain.

Knocking on the side with his boot, he announced into the wind and rain, “Firewood delivery!”

A muttered curse from inside, and then the small gap opened once more.

He ducked in and dumped the lefiin slabs on the ground to the side, the whisper of vines moving at his back as she commanded them close.

He’d never get used to that. Uncanny.

He looked around the space and his brow furrowed.

“How should we do this?”

He muttered under his breath.

“We?”

She huffed and turned back to…whatever she was doing.

“You cannot make a fire.

The space is too small.”

Callum glared at her, biting his tongue to keep from sniping.

He could figure out how to make something tiny that would work in the space, but he didn’t have the tools necessary, and this lefiin wouldn’t work anyway.

He took a deep breath.

“Then fix it, Arryvian.”

Rumi drew herself up, lifting her chin.

“I am not your servant, nor is the Ti’la mine.

We do not bend to your whims.”

She paused then, just as Callum was about to rip into her, the curse on the tip of his tongue.

“Also, I am tired.”

Tired? He thought, rubbing his palm over his face, feeling the deep ache in his shoulders.

Of course, the lady is tired.

Heaven forbid.

“All right, princess, get some beauty sleep.”

He sat and leaned back against the wall, slumping into the curve.

“Just know we’ll both freeze our asses off if we can’t get a fire going before nightfall.”

He looked up to find her watching him with wide eyes, a flicker of surprise, before she schooled her face and looked away.

“I only need a little time,” she said.

With a shrug and another grumble, he peeled off his boots and removed the soggy mess that used to be socks.

Blood and blisters reddened his feet with cracked mounds.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and sighed slowly to ease the pain, then dug in his pack to withdraw and open a metal tin.

The viscous oily substance had a sharp smell that burned his eyes, leaving a cobweb of sting across them, making them water a bit.

He slathered the wounds with the balm and leaned back against the lush wall, his knees bent, wincing slightly as the welts on his back brushed the leaves.

He removed his piercer from the holster and began taking it apart and carefully cleaning each piece with sections of his pants, though the process had him inwardly cursing.

He wouldn’t be able to clean it properly with just his grimy pants.

He needed a clean cloth or something.

He felt her smoky eyes burrowing into his skin for the entire process while she rebraided her hair.

“Want some?”

He looked up, gesturing with the tin.

“For that gash on your arm? It’s calendula and aloe with some honey and menthol.

It eases the sting and makes infection less likely.”

He glanced at the long cut on her forearm.

It had scabbed over but remained clearly raw.

“You’ve probably got some abrasions from that rope, too.”

She took the tin cautiously, her eyes locking with his for a moment before she looked down and sniffed it curiously.

Her grimace made him chuckle, but she took a bit on her finger and spread a thin layer over the cut, and the places where the clothing hadn’t protected her skin, before handing it back to him.

“What are you doing with your piercer?”

“Just cleaning it out.

There’s enough mud and gunk in here to make it malfunction.

Last thing I want is for it to break when I really need it.”

He sighed as he gave up on using his pants and began digging through his pack for something more suitable.

With deft fingers, she untied the rope from her waist.

“I am going to step outside while you…do that.”

She stood, stooped at the low ceiling of their dome and turned toward the wall, already whispering to the door to open once more.

“Where’re you going?”

Cal asked, pulling back from his bag as his eyes narrowed on her, muscles tensing to pursue.

She flushed crimson all the way to the tips of her pointed ears.

“I am going to take care of my needs,”

she replied, not meeting his gaze.

Ah, she needed to piss.

This would actually be perfect.

While she was gone, he could use his shirt to clean up his piercer before she returned.

“Now who’s the Song Seeker?”

Callum smirked.

He still had no idea what it meant, but she would.

Her only response was a glare.

“Don’t go too far,”

he said cheerily.

“Where would I go, Colonel? A fall to my death?”

She tossed her braid and stepped into the rain.

He wasted no time at all peeling off his shirt and finding the cleanest parts he could, then began swiping the mud from the pieces and putting them back together.

Any grain of sand could affect accuracy if not the entire functionality.

He lost himself in the process, the methodical swipe of cloth over metal and stone serving as a meditative and calming procedure that his hands had long ago memorized.

He was nearly done when the leaves rustled and parted suddenly.

His heart leapt to his throat, but he kept his gaze on his task, feigning nonchalance, even though the heat was creeping up his neck.

He had nothing to be ashamed of.

This was a survival situation, for fuck’s sake.

“You should see—oh,”

she stammered and shielded her eyes, turning her back to him.

“I did not know you were, um, indecent.”

“It’s not like you ain’t seen it before,”

he said, grateful he sounded more bored than he felt.

“Besides, I’m almost done.

Don’t get your britches in a knot.”

“Britches? I do not know this word.”

He saw from the corner of his eyes that she peeked over at him, and he had the foolish desire to flex a little.

He heard Jameson’s voice in his head, “Flexing for criminals now, Callum? Really? There are better ways of meeting women, you know.”

Instead, he leaned over his piercer as he worked the cloth of his shirt into the crevices.

“It means undergarments, or pants, or trousers.”

“My trousers are not knotted, Colonel.

So I will assume that is some sort of insult.”

The look of innocent curiosity turned to a heated glare that slashed over his skin.

“I’m finished, Twiggy, don’t get all worked up.”

He turned to the side and set his weapon, cleaned and reassembled, back into his holster.

When he turned over, she had her arms crossed.

“You are wounded.”

“Only a little sore.”

Cal shrugged, ignoring the way it ached.

“Men.

You are the same even across the Deep.

Give me that stinky balm.”

She didn’t wait for him to object, rather crouched, grabbed the tin, and shifted to have better access to his back.

He looked over his shoulder, watching as she studied the welts and sores slashed across his back.

Her fingers trembled as she timidly applied the salve, despite her brave face.

Her motions were methodical, starting from his shoulders before traveling lower.

Cal kept his eyes trained straight ahead, trying, and failing, to ignore the softness of her touch.

She was a beautiful woman, he told himself.

Totally natural to be attracted to her.

Instinct and…well, it meant nothing.

Just his body reacting to a female.

She sighed and shuffled away when she’d finished, averting her eyes from the bare skin and wiping the remaining residue on the backs of her knuckles.

“Thank you.

It’s feeling better already.”

Jameson would have a field day if he knew just how much better it felt.

Thoughts of his friend brought with it a familiar pang of loneliness.

He missed Jameson.

She hummed a response and settled against the plant wall.

The silence was thick and heavy, the already small space seemed to shrink.

His large frame was enough to make this shelter stuffy, but it was nothing compared to the goliath amount of awkwardness suffocating them.

“Could you…put your shirt back on? Please?”

Her voice seemed strained and oddly high.

“Does my skin make you that uncomfortable?”

He asked incredulously, before recalling her reaction at the farmhouse.

Oh, this would be easy.

“Or perhaps you find me attractive.

I think that must be it.

You think I’m pretty and you can’t keep your eyes off me.”

She sputtered and stammered, followed by a quick shaking of her head.

Way too easy.

“No, I do not! I—what I mean to say is—not…no, I am betrothed.”

She tucked her hair behind her ears and bashfully looked around the small space.

“I am spoken for.

I, I mean we—my people—do not share skin.

It is intimate.”

She rambled on, growing more and more red with each passing second.

“I think you look fine…But I should not be seeing…and…I…”

She sucked her lip into her mouth, looking comically unsettled, realizing her dilemma.

Wry amusement and sympathetic concern, in equal parts, tugged at his cheeks, drawing the corners of his lips upward.

“All right, don’t hurt yourself.”

He forced the grin back into a scowl.

“But, what’s in it for me?”

“In it for you?”

Her eyebrows rose, wrinkling the tattoos on her forehead.

“Yes.

I’ve saved your life—twice now—and here I’d be doing you a favor,”

he raised a single brow.

“I think I’ve earned a reward.”

“A reward,”

she parroted.

“Yes.”

“What do you want?”

she said slowly, as she leaned back slightly, hugging her elbows.

“Your name.”

The air pushed from her lungs, and her eyes widened.

Then her lips pursed, considering, it seemed.

“Unless you preferred ‘Kitty,’”

he added with a shrug.

She rolled her eyes and turned her face away, but he could have sworn he caught the slight hint of a smile.

For several heartbeats, there was only a thick, weighty silence.

Finally, she conceded. “Rumina.”

Her arms lowered gradually as she spoke.

Her voice was soft, low, like she was afraid to trust him with it.

She hesitated, then added, “My friends call me Rumi.”

Cal couldn’t contain his victorious grin.

“I’ll put my shirt on.”

“Thank you.”

She fidgeted with her own dirty shirt, the whisper of cloth as he tugged his shirt back on replacing the sound of her sigh of relief.

She lowered herself back to the mossy ground, as far from him as she could be, desperately trying not to touch him despite the cramped space.

She clutched her hands under her chin, like a child.

It nearly made him break into another grin.

Poor thing.

Probably cold.

He wanted to bring her closer, if only to stop the chill.

Her body betrayed her with another shiver that made her teeth clack together.

Surely, survival came before etiquette and protocol.

No one would speak ill of her for trying to keep warm under these conditions, and she’d be no use to her people if she died of hypothermia because she was too proud to ask for help.

He almost offered to keep her warm.

But he didn’t want another knife buried in his flesh. Oh, well.

“Would you make me a door?” he asked.

She opened one eye and her forehead pinched in focus.

The leaves nearest him quivered.

A soft sound like wind whispering through trees filled the space as the vines unfurled to create a hole just large enough for him to crawl through.

The bitter wind, redolent of dampness, mud, and wet grass, snatched away the little warmth they had managed to create.

“When you get back, ask nicely and they will open for you.”

“Right, the plants will just listen to me if I say please. Sure…”

She squinted up at him before rolling over.

Guess their almost friendliness was back to cold shoulders.

Worked for him.

Once he stepped outside, his piercers and knives strapped to his legs and hips, the leaves and vines knit themselves back together, closing him out in the rain.

He padded away from their bubble of green, intent on finding food.

Cal drank in the air, rich and fragrant with rain.

Rumi.

It suited her.

He spotted the movement.

Low to the ground, a dark mass crept through the rain, gorging on the moisture.

Callum smoothly drew his boot knife.

The hunt began.