Page 21

TAKING LIFE BY THE HORNS

Ember

T hough Ember had thought it impossible, the realm’s most comfortable bed improved overnight despite the worst of her dreams still tainting her waking mind.

Something about the arrangement of pillows buoying her body, tucking her down into warmth felt like utter bliss even though her limbs ached and there was a burn in her throat like she’d been crying.

She didn’t do that, though, so it must have been the vestiges of her nightmares.

Except that when Heck’s morning moonlight streamed through her window, it fell on the crimson skin of a demon beside her, and she remembered everything.

Severath’s chest rose and fell with deep, steady breaths beneath her hand, his tunic untied and her fingertips just resting on his skin.

She was snuggled into the crook between his arm and body, his shoulder a firm yet cozy pillow, and something was heavy around her lower half.

She carefully glanced downward to see the thick length of his tail wrapped over her hips.

She held her breath, instinct telling her fear would soon flood her senses, but the panic didn’t come.

Something else crept through her veins and settled in her bones—something fuzzy and warm and new.

It’s all right , she heard echo into her mind in his low voice, and somehow it was.

Ember let her next inhale match Severath’s.

He smelled faintly of the savory herbs and butter from the meal the night before, but there was a smokiness on him too like the pleasant scent that lingered after blowing out a candle.

No one had ever held her before, not like he had done in the night, steady through her keening, unafraid and no sign of disgust.

She slowly extended her fingers, and they stroked up along the center of his chest. His skin might have felt just like a human’s, but Ember couldn’t quite recall the feeling from the last time she’d touched someone.

When things were better and she worked out in the country for Lady Adine, there had been a groomsman who was handsome and just shy enough to not be intimidating.

That reticence disappeared, though, when she’d finally worked up the courage to take him for a roll in the hay.

Her mind emptied as he rutted into her from behind, and then it screamed to fill up the hollowness, words that said to flee or fight but were always too muddled to really be understood.

Yet as she stroked the taut softness of Severath’s skin over the solid muscle beneath, the quiet in her mind was peaceful rather than anxious, and no shrieking panic loomed.

My duty is to protect , he’d said, words she never would have believed from a man, but somehow this demon’s painful dedication had convinced her, and in such a short time.

The others had helped too, the neighbor’s letter, the mail carrier’s gifts, the healer’s concern, all of it kindness she had never known or expected. But it was Severath who had broken through.

She traced the ridge of a muscle, the differing tone of her skin against his a pleasant contrast in the silvery morning light.

Ember enjoyed the feel of things in her hands, the smoothness of a well-worn spoon handle or the silkiness of a fine garment, but to feel life under her fingers—breath that moved, skin that twitched, a heart that beat somewhere beneath it all—beguiled her.

She didn’t dare press any harder than a light skim, but the desire to touch him more prodded at her mind.

When she had woken after that awful dream to the dulcet hum of Severath’s words as he read from the book that she couldn’t, the same desire had been overwhelming.

Sleepily, she’d reached out, and she knew she really should have asked, but his broken horn called to her fingers like it needed her touch.

And then she was burying her hand in his hair, desperate to feel as close as possible to him because she knew, somehow, it would be safe.

But then she had told him things, and she had cried, and… Oh, gods.

“Good morning.”

Ember jerked upward with a quickness at the rumble of his voice, or she tried to.

The heft of the demon’s tail made moving her legs impossible, and so she flailed as she fell, and her elbow collided with the spot she’d just been stroking.

Severath coughed out a swear, but his arm and tail both released her, and she rolled herself off the bed.

The floor was a lot farther down than what she was used to, and so when Ember landed on her back, the air was knocked out of her lungs.

Severath’s horrified face appeared over the edge of the bed, one hand slapping at his chest and the other reaching for her.

She gasped so fully that her breath came right back.

“Ember, are you”—his reaching halted just as abruptly as it began its descent—“all right?”

She nodded, eyes trained on claws hovering over her, and the fear unfairly came. Heartbeat flying madly and tears springing to her eyes, she cursed herself at being so damn afraid, at ruining the quiet comfort, at wrecking everything . And then that fear was traded for fury. “Get out!”

A few hours and a hot scrub in the bath later, Ember had calmed herself enough to creep down the stairs and to the back door.

She’d watched Severath from the window in her room as he took messy shot after messy shot, so much worse than all the times before.

Now he sat leaning against the massive tree in the yard’s corner, head back and eye closed.

The moon was at its peak, each blade of grass tipped with silver light.

She had seen the garden many times through the window upstairs, but as she opened the door, it came to life in a way she wasn’t expecting.

A warm breeze tugged at her hair, and a cricket chirped in a nearby bush, funny for midday yet fitting for a realm that was perpetually doused by moonlight.

She thought she was being quiet as she stepped out into the fenced garden, but Severath’s senses won out, and he immediately jumped to his feet. “Ember, I?—”

She held up a hand, and he clamped shut his fangs.

They weren’t always there, those fangs, but they’d come out when she scrambled away from him, and they were still lingering over his bottom lip.

His tongue flicked out over one, and his eye narrowed.

His claws did the same, a magically conjured response, and he flexed his hands until they disappeared.

That was for her, she assumed, though she wished she didn’t inspire them at all.

She made her way to where he stood, his bow abandoned beside a spray of white blooms bending toward the moon.

Clasping her hands behind her, her fingers refused to still, twisting over one another nervously.

She’d gone out barefoot and was glad for it, the dark-colored grass soft and grounding, but she couldn’t help but rub her big toes together.

At least that was something to focus on, eyes cast down as she took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry about this morning and about last night. ”

“You do not need to?—”

“Please.” She swallowed as she remembered how embarrassing it had all been.

“I know you have a job to do, and I haven’t made it easy or…

possible, really. And I know you”—her eyes flicked momentarily to the bandage over his eye and then back down—“made a sacrifice so that I—so that all of us can stay here. Thank you for that.”

“You…are welcome,” he said in a voice that was so unsure it sounded like a different language.

Ember stepped closer, lifting her head. “I really do want to be better at being normal.”

“I do not think you are abnormal.” He tipped his head, and the weight of his remaining horn took it farther than she suspected it might have gone otherwise. “Well, it is strange that you don’t have horns.”

“No tail either.”

“And your skin isn’t even blue.”

She snorted out a laugh then, and by Vitae, it felt good. “Maybe we can just start with greetings. Do you think we can try again at this morning?”

Severath’s eye flicked up over her head toward the house, and he pointed awkwardly at her window. “You want to return?—”

“Ah, no.” She shook her head quickly though it did little to hide the warmth flooding her face at the alluring thought of running fingers down his chest in bed again. “I just mean, you know…good morning?”

His face cracked into a smile, and it struck her how nice it could be under the moonlight. “Good morning. Breakfast?”

She glanced up at the brightness of the moon knowing full well it was lunchtime. “Can we cook it together?”

“I would like that very much.”

Ember was exceptionally careful with the knife she was handed, and Severath remained at least a foot away from her at all times, which she appreciated and found unfortunate all at once.

Severath shared specifics about the ingredients, and Ember demonstrated better techniques.

But instead of squirreling themselves away afterward, the two returned to the garden together.

Ember asked after the names of plants, and Severath couldn’t tell her because he was “not a gardener nor an apothecary,” but he was willing to make something up when she pestered him for what he thought the mossy ground cover or the great creeping vines should be called: bruised demon pox and sticky tendrils, respectively.

He knew the tree, though, a misty buckthorn, and showed her how the trunk and leaves wouldn’t catch no matter how much fire he threw at it.

Its limbs only singed, but he assured her they would heal in less than a day’s time.

“The most resilient tree in Heck,” he said with an approving grin, and Ember could only stare at how nice he looked when he smiled and actually meant it.