Page 22 of WitchBorn
The man in stone should have killed me. I wanted it, if I couldn’t have peace and freedom, why stay? Why continue to run much as the Summer king had? At least he’d gotten his perfect match in the end. Was it too much to want a happy ending of my own?
That had been the elementals twisting his fate. Who had more power, the hags of eternity with their disastrous weaving or the elementals? Or did they work together?
“They cursed me to see everyone’s future but mine, and then tied me to a nightmare. Is it too much to hope for freedom if I can’t have love? Even if that freedom is an end to my life? Can’t they saddle another poor bastard with the curse of the Stag and my fucking Vision and save me the trouble?”
Finn flinched at my shouting, the two of us drenched from the rain. “You can see the future? Like you saw we’d be here?”
“No. I never saw you at all.” Ever. And wasn’t that strange. The moment he’d entered this world and across my path I should have gotten some inkling vision of his fate, especially if it were meant to be short and gruesome. My sight specialized in that nasty nightmare. “The last vision I had, beyond that dream of the woods dissolving around us, was meeting the dragon, and that’s already happened.” I gazed at him, young and handsome, but ordinary to my sight, a thousand unanswered questions about him. “Who are you? Why does this world want you? I know why it wants me. Thatthingthinks I’m its mate.”
“You don’t get a choice?” Finn asked.
“About what?” I demanded. Did I ever have a choice about anything?
“The mate thing. Is it because you’re fae? Can’t you tell it no and walk away?”
“Since we’re both trapped in this world, the answer seems to be no.” I turned away from him and stripped off my shirt. “Don’t look at me. I’m going to change and find us some shelter from the rain. Stay close if you want to keep warm.”
When I glanced back, he had turned away, giving me the illusion of privacy, but a shiver ran through his lean form. I had to get us both someplace safe for a while. I shifted into my Stagform, pawed at the ground to bring attention back. He glanced my way and hesitantly approached.
He snatched up my discarded clothing, then reached careful fingertips to my flank, my back higher than his head, and sank his fingers into my fur. A soft breath slipped out of him as he pressed himself to my side. His chilled body ached like an ice cube, but I let him lean into my warmth, and guided us toward the spot I’d slept when I first arrived. The field of clover stretched between a thick canopy of trees, and a layer of moss above eased the flow of rain.
Finn said nothing as I guided him to a narrow opening in the root of a tree. He climbed in, and I blocked the opening with my body, settling down outside as a barrier and heater all at once. The blaze of my renewing fae energy would last for days as long as I munched on the clover around us. He would need food and water. Once the rain stopped, I’d search for another way to help him escape before the world killed him. There was no reason my nightmare end had to be his.
Seventeen
WESLEY
Finn climbed over me at some point, muttering something about having to go to the bathroom. But the rain had stopped and the sun returned, for which I was grateful. I nibbled on clover and stayed in my Stag form, ears focused on the sound of his movement and searching for the sound of anything else nearby.
When he returned it was only in the sweatpants. He crawled into the hole of the roots, pulled out our clothing, and spread them out in the sun to dry.
“I don’t suppose this weird magic world will spit new ones out for us?” he asked as he returned to my side, immediately tangling his fingers in my fur. His stomach growled. “Sorry.”
Was the spot on his back smaller? Maybe it had been a bruise. I nudged him with my nose. He looked up at me, a single brow raised, a hint of scruffiness coating his jawline. Okay, he was handsome, hair a mess of dark waves from sleep and the rain; Shirtless, and not sculpted like Henry Cavill from theWitcher, but fine. I’d have tapped that in my less troubled days.
I nudged him again, pressing my snout at his shoulder, careful of my antlers, to get him to turn. He stepped away and presented his back to me, looking over his shoulder.
The mark was smaller, only half the size of his back. I shifted to my human form thinking I’d glamour myself some clothes for modesty, but I wound up naked. Was the realm preventing that, too?
“Don’t look at me,” I instructed. He faced forward.
“Is it worse?”
I traced the edge of the mark from the chilling center around the edge where the skin looked fine, better, and naturally warm. He shivered under my touch, but focused his gaze forward.
“It’s smaller,” I told him. “Healing maybe?”
“Because we didn’t have the same dream again?”
I hadn’t slept. “I don’t know why you had that vision. I’ve been having it since I was a child and have never shared a vision with anyone. It wasn’t a dream, more a nightmare of the future to come.”
He swallowed and looked up the sky. “Pleasant. This world is filled with so many wonderful things.” His sarcasm biting deep. I pulled my hand away knowing I was one of the unpleasant things. “I didn’t mean you.”
“It’s fine. The fae are a special type of monster. I’m well aware of what I am.” I tried to change back to the Stag form, but couldn’t. What the hell?
He began to turn my way.
“Don’t,” I commanded. He stopped. “I was going to change back into the Stag.”