Page 45 of Song of the Hell Witch

Twenty-Three

She wanted to go everywhere at once: to kiss the spot under his ear, the place that turned him to putty in her hands. To trace the muscles of his chest until she knew them by heart. To thread his hair between her fingers and know, at least for now, that he was hers.

But first. First, she basked in the haze of him, leather and smoke and pine and Puck .

His hand brushed her hair back from her face, and she folded her arms around his waist and pulled herself closer.

Their lips moved together in a rhythm all their own, one that felt at once familiar and entirely new.

Because he wasn’t the timid little boy she’d known anymore, scared to make the wrong move, do the wrong thing.

Every part of him, from his commanding tongue to how he broke away from her midkiss to print a pattern of stars along the side of her neck, was confident, certain.

Like he knew exactly what she wanted and exactly how to give it to her.

“Pru …” he breathed as she tilted his chin toward her, wanting to taste him again. “What are we …”

But she kissed him again before he could finish the question.

Because in truth, she didn’t know. She didn’t know what they were doing, what they might become in the wake of this, and she wasn’t sure she cared.

All she knew was that this was right —and she wasn’t about to let confusion or fear or memories of what she’d done twelve years ago destroy it.

“Pru …”

“I want you,” she whispered in his ear, and the muscles in his back tensed, encouraging her. “Don’t you want me?”

“Yes, but …”

“Don’t be nervous.” She closed her eyes, teased his earlobe with her tongue. “It’s you and me.”

“I’m not nervous.” His voice was tight. One of his hands, gentle but firm, clapped down on her shoulder. “I’m in pain.”

Her pulse, already racing, picked up speed again, like a drum echoing in a hollow space. Blushing with embarrassment, she pushed back from him. He smiled at her, but it was strained. A sheen of sweat glistened on his brow.

“Mother’s tits, Puck, why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“You really think I was going to stop that if I could help it?” He smirked and tried to move before his eyes pinched shut in obvious agony.

“But twelve years and one runaway later, I’m not looking to give you the grin and bear it treatment.

If we’re gonna do this, I’m gonna be at my best. Full range of motion. ”

She shook her head at his idiocy. Then, like with every other crisis in her life, small or large, she went to work.

The part of herself that craved him snapped shut, and the world shrank in around them.

At the moment, nothing existed outside of the cavern, just like nothing had existed in the days before her sister’s death, when she’d nursed her and bathed her and tried—and failed—to keep her alive.

“Here, let me see.” She eased his shirt open, moving as slowly as she could so she didn’t jostle his shoulder or irritate the skin. The bandage was secured with a pin, and she pricked her finger as she tore it loose.

“You okay?” Puck asked, taking hold of her wrist, but she shook him off.

“Would you let someone take care of you for once?”

He let out a laugh as she unwrapped the bandage, doing her best not to drip blood on the gauze.

“Jocelyn took pretty good care of me there for a while. Popping dislocated shoulders back into place whenever I vaulted a wall too fast. She set my nose once too, kept it from turning into a complete disaster.”

“Ah, yes. Let’s talk about your wife in the aftermath of our not making love.” It wasn’t fair, and she knew it. She winced as she reached the last layer of bandages. “Sorry, that was—”

But the apology withered on her lips. Because as the bandage fell away, her stomach heaved.

The stab wound itself was scabbing over exactly like it was supposed to, but angry red tendrils stretched out around the gash, like the legs of a baby kraken. They were short, each about the length of a fingernail, but still. She’d never seen anything like it.

“Don’t like that face.” Puck tried to take a peek, but moving his head must have sent a fracture of pain through the wound, because he grimaced and whipped it forward again. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s uh … it’s just a little inflamed is all.

” She chased the words blood poisoning out of her mind, terrified he might be able to read the truth in her eyes.

Slowly, so as not to give away the worry shuddering through her veins, she climbed out of bed and headed over to her knapsack.

She picked up the lambskin, then cursed.

It was only half full of water, and she didn’t have any wine or alcohol to cleanse the wound.

Make do with the water tonight and ask Arcadie in the morning.

Choking the lambskin tight, she headed toward the wardrobe in the far corner. Puck sat up a little straighter as she wrenched the doors open. A pair of emerald towels sat rolled up on the center shelf. She grabbed one and cradled it under one arm.

“Pru?” He studied her carefully as she made her way over to the bed. “Tell me.”

“It’s nothing.” But she couldn’t look at him as she sat down on the left-hand side of the mattress. He would see the concern etched on her face, and all she wanted was to keep him calm. He’d been so worried about Bea; he didn’t need something else to fray his nerves.

He stayed her wrist before she wet the towel.

Finally, she glanced up to find him glaring.

“Pru, my daughter almost died in my arms. Several times. And now some stranger’s whisked her away from an angry mob to be with a bunch of women who supposedly hate men.

Whatever it is, I can handle it—just give it to me. ”

“Fine. You really want to know?” Once again, she wrenched her hand out of his grip.

“It looks like blood poisoning. There are some scary-looking veins stretching out from the center, and with pain this bad …” She lunged toward the wound, but he caught her with his good hand and pushed her back, wearing one of his snarky smiles. “ What? ”

“First of all, the pain’s to be expected.

I know it feels like the Spheres did a full dance today, but I only got stabbed a couple hours ago.

” His thumb brushed across her collarbone, torturing her.

“Second, I’m no doctor, but the Hornsgate medic who treated me last time said blood vessels around wounds like this like to burst. Good washing, bit of rest on a cold stone floor, and I was good as new. ”

“Yeah, well, I’m not taking any chances.” She soaked the towel through, then punched it into the wound. He growled in response, which she took as a good sign. “How’s that?”

“Mm. Mm-hmm. Starpeaches and cream over here.”

She snorted out a laugh and shook her head. “All men are babies.”

“You’re telling me you’d be this jolly after some cockpuss noble stuck a knife in your shoulder?”

She pondered it for a moment, then wiped away some of the dried blood crusted around the wound. “No, I’d be a royal bitch about it.”

He chuckled at that. “I will say, you lot don’t get enough credit for the kind of pain you go through.

I thought you and your monthly courses were horrible—then I watched Jocelyn give birth.

” As she pushed back, his head dropped again.

“And then, you know, the Storm Lung, but that’s not so much a woman-specific agony. ”

Once again, she let the mention of his dead wife hang between them, unsure of what to do with it.

There were questions she wanted to ask. She’d caught the looks Bea would give him whenever she’d wake from a nightmare, like he was the puppet master behind her worst imaginings.

And then there was the Subversal. Watching a family member die was a trauma all its own; Prudence knew that firsthand.

But cases of Subversal were usually reserved for the kind of horror that turned a person inside out, poisoned their own soul against them.

You may not get another chance.

“Can I ask you something?”

His smirk widened into a smile. “Oh, here we go. Moving into serious territory now.”

“What does that mean?”

“You always ask if you can ask someone something right before you emotionally eviscerate them.” He blinked once, eyes still twinkling in the light. “Go on, then. Hit me.”

“How bad was it? Jocelyn?”

The smile around his eyes collapsed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I know Storm Lung’s probably a nightmare.

But still, Subversal’s pretty rare. It’s usually reserved for the kind of stuff girls see in war zones …

or, you know, back alleys at the tip of a knife, and even then, most girls change , they don’t become Subverts.

If Bea had time to wrap her head around Jocelyn dying, to understand what was happening, then … ”

“She was seven.”

“I know, but—”

“So you’re saying, what, something else happened? Something I don’t know about?” The laughter in his voice was gone.

“I’m not saying that.”

“Good.” In an instant, he became that stern-faced man from the boat again, the one willing to sell the necklace he’d given her as if it meant nothing to him.

“’Cause regardless of what you think, you don’t know me anymore.

And you’re the last person who gets to tell me I’ve fucked up with my daughter somehow. ”

“Hold on, that’s not fair. I only meant—”

“That I might have missed something? That I didn’t pay enough attention? That it’s my fault she’s broken?”

“Puck, no, I’m just trying to underst—”

“Back off, Pru.” He shrank away from her, pushing back into the headboard like he wanted to melt into the wall. “You left. And when you left, you gave up the right to ask about the shit parts of my life.”

“So you keep reminding me. But I’ve watched someone die slowly too, remember? This is the exact same trauma that turned me into—”

“It’s not. You lost Emmaline in a matter of weeks. Bea watched her mother waste away for months. She saw the woman she cared about most shrivel into nothing. And she isn’t you, not even close. We raised her to have a kind heart. A heart that gives instead of takes.”

The embers of their brief moment together sputtered and died in her chest as her own heart pushed up into her throat and pulsed like a fresh bruise. It wasn’t in her nature to let cruelty like that lie. But it hurt too much to come up with something bladed, something sharp enough to cut deep.

“Well, there you have it.” She sniffed, determined to keep the tears in. “Girls with weak hearts break easily.”

His eyes darkened. “It’s not weak to care about people.”

She took a deep breath. “No. But if you let that care devour you and what you are … maybe that’s not weakness. But it is stupid.”

When he went quiet, she knew she’d won. This was her chance to steer the conversation back to Jocelyn and Bea and her Subversal, but she was too exhausted. The sore places in her wings twinged, though she wasn’t sure if it was actual pain or regret fracturing through her recently healed bones.

“You know what?” Her lips seemed to move on their own. “Let’s forget whatever this was tonight and just keep moving in the morning. We tried something, it didn’t work. Let’s leave it.”

“Far be it for a thief to deny a duchess her wish.” With more effort than he should’ve used, Puck rose to his feet and began to amble toward the torch on the wall. Pru considered chasing after him, pushing him back into bed to rest.

No. Let him struggle. She didn’t move as he snuffed out the light.

They lay there for some time in the darkness, saying absolutely nothing. His breathing remained quick, which told her he was still awake. She wondered if his eyes were open or closed.

For her part, she stared at the side wall. The grooves in the stone converged into various shapes as she studied them: tree branches webbing through a gray sky, fish darting across the surface of a lake.

“I’m not ready.” His voice cut through the black, sharp as glass. “To talk about Jocelyn. And when people push me, I tend to …”

“Bite like a rabid dog?”

“Something like that, yeah. But when I am finally ready to talk about it, Bea’s got to be the one I talk to first. That’s the only way we can sort through what happened. How it broke her.” His sigh was long and heavy. “How it broke us. And what we need to do to fix it.”

She dared to move a little closer, shrink the gap between their bodies by a breath. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think either of you are broken.”

“No?”

“I just said that to hurt you. I think … I think you’re both doing your best.”

He took a slow, steady breath. “Thank you. And in case it wasn’t clear, I’m sorry. For the biting.”

She wasn’t sure what to do—or perhaps more accurately, what he wanted her to do.

Years ago, she would’ve been able to guess by the set of his shoulders, perhaps even the sound of his breath.

Now all she had to go on was what she would want.

And while she’d often been able to trick Frederick into needing what she needed, Puck had never worked that way.

It was part of what made him so frustrating.

And so fascinating.

“Will you hold me?” she asked, testing an instinct.

He turned toward her like he might be able to see her in the dark. Perhaps he could. There was a long, uncomfortable silence, one she thought might be broken by a cold, hard no.

But then he sighed, and it was kind, easy, as if he’d come back to her. “I never was very good at refusing you, was I?”

She reached for him, and he slid his left arm beneath her head so she could nestle into the pillow of his shoulder.

She tried to stay still, all too aware of how nerves across the body could talk to each other, but she couldn’t keep her fingers from drawing shapes in the divot of his sternum or trailing a path along the underside of his ribs.

“What are you doing over there?” He was tired, and so was she. And yet …

“Just trying to see if there are any more scars I should know about.” She leaned in, kissed the top of his shoulder. “Any more secrets.”

“Oh, there’s plenty. At least as many as you’ve got for me.

” He shifted a little, but only so he could kiss the top of her head.

He tensed, and she knew the move had cost him some comfort.

“And maybe, if you stop treating me like I’m going to shatter every five seconds, I can stop being a fragile little cockpuss who thinks every word’s a weapon.

And then we can actually get to know each other again.

” He took the ruby pendant’s chain between his fingers.

The jewel shifted on her chest. “See how right you were to keep this.”

“Mm. You forget yourself, Mr. Reed.” She closed her eyes, the exhaustion and the warmth of Puck’s body tugging her down into sleep. “A duchess is always right.”