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Chapter Thirteen
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The Villain's Hero Chapter Fourteen
“Daethie,” Aien stroked my hair back from my face. I opened my eyes. It was still dark, and his face was almost obscured in the shadows of the room, picked out by the fragile light of the embers of the fire. “It’s just dawn,” he told me.I rolled out of bed automatically. It had become the pattern of our mornings, to wake early and leave the castle before it stirred to the day and return to have our evening meal in the kitchen with the servants, avoiding anyone who might have noticed our absence during the day. It would not last, I knew. Our absence had to have been noticed. Whilst they could not find us, they could not punish us for our truancy, but sooner or later someone would decide that enough was enough and would go out of their way to trap us on our way in and out, and demand answers as to what we did.Aien slipped out of the room to go to his own as I used the chamber pot and splashed water on my face before dressing, pulling on my heaviest cloak against a morning that I knew
The Villain's Hero Chapter Fifteen
“It’s snowing,” Aien murmured against my hair. We lay naked in the master bedroom, on top of the covers, the fireplace against the wall crackling cheerfully keeping the room warm although Aien was right and fragile drifts of snow drifted past the windows.“So it is,” I agreed, content to lay and watch it fall.The bedroom was vastly different from how it had been just over a month before. The former owner’s possessions had been removed and placed in chests in the attic, and we had wiped the surfaces clean, evicted the spiders, and had well and truly claimed the bed as our own. Our chests of clothing stood side by side against the wall, the lid of mine still open.The firewood was tumbled over the hearth carelessly in evidence that Aien’s arrival with it had interrupted my unpacking, leading to the breadcrumb trail of clothing strewn over the floor and the two of us lazy and naked upon the bed.“We should get up,” he sighed. “Make sure everything is ready outside before the snow sets i
The Villain's Hero Chapter Sixteen
I decided not to tell Aien about the baby.I loved him. Oh, how I loved him. I could not imagine my life without him. He felt as much a part of me as my own body. I believed that he felt the same and that he, too, imagined a future together. However, neither of us spoke of such things, and the longer that it went without the words uttered, the harder it seemed to be to bring them onto my tongue.There also existed a fear, a small burrowing thing that was nonetheless insistent in its presence – that we hadn’t spoken about such things because he didn’t feel like that about me. Were we friends, companions, who shared our bodies? If I told him that I loved him, that to a dragon marriage was as simple as two people agreeing to be together so to me it felt that we were married, would he tell me that he felt the same and was happy to share that understanding, or would he tell me that he did not return my feelings.If he did not share my feelings, telling him about the baby might force him in
The Villain's Hero Chapter Seventeen
I woke Aien from sleep when I burst into his chamber. He was reclining against an impressive number of pillows, his arm immobilized between splints and bandages. He had a black eye and a knife wound that narrowly missed his other eye, scoring down his cheek to his jaw.“Oh, Aien,” I sobbed out.“Daethie,” he smiled, wincing slightly as it pulled on the scabbed wound. “It’s not as bad as it looks. Isyl returned this morning and is working on a potion in the kitchen as we speak. Ecaeris says that by tomorrow I’ll have a scar and some weakness in my arm, but I’ll be…”I crawled onto the bed and buried my face into his chest. I felt him press a kiss to the crown of my head. “I’ve been so scared all night,” I whispered to him.I felt him swallow hard and his uninjured arm tightened around me. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice hoarse. “It was stupid of me. I walked right into it…”“Well, isn’t that lovely?” Tarragon drawled from the doorway as she and Rue carried in Aien’s chest. I sat up, gu
The Villain's Hero Chapter Eighteen
The night was a restless one, filled with Aien’s moans, and the spice of spell-component scented sweat as his body worked through the magic of Isyl’s potion. There was little that I could do but make him drink in order to replace the fluids that he lost and wipe the cloth over his face and chest in an effort to keep him cool and comfortable.I found that I could distract him from it with my hands, my mouth, and my body on his, confusing his senses with a combination of pleasure and pain. In the morning I awoke, therefore, bare, and in a tangle of sheets stained with tides of sweat and passion. Aien lay on his back, his face turned my way, the light that crept through a kink in the curtains picking out that faint silver-white scar that ran down his cheek, and his arm propped upon cushions.He was beautiful in the soft morning light, and I lay for a long time, as he slept, lulled by the rhythm of his breath, and watching the sunlight creep over his skin. He was exhausted from the night,
The Villain's Hero Chapter Nineteen
There was a natural flow of people from the main hall out into the courtyard and I shivered in the cold of the air, my dress not up to holding off the lingering chill of the fading winter. Rue started to take off his surcoat for me, but Aien placed his coat around me first. Rue shrugged, sliding me the shadow of a smile before pushing his way into the crowd. Aien’s arm rested on my back, using his greater size to protect me in the movement of eager courtiers. It was a breathless crush until we passed out from under the balcony and the crowd spread out. The courtyard was already busy with people. Every servant and guard within the castle it seemed, from the lowest rat catcher through to the captain of the guard had gathered to gawk at the frozen monsters. The wagons that had been used to bring them to Nerith had to have been specially made, as the monsters were massive in scale, easily as big as my father and siblings in dragon form. That was not something that I had realized before
The Villain's Hero Chapter Twenty
Aien did not want to talk to me and actively avoided doing so, locking his door each night, and either leaving in the morning before me or, when I tried to out-rise him, stubbornly refusing to leave his room until I was forced away by my own embarrassment at being caught by the servants scratching at his door like the distraught rejected lover that I was.He did, however, spend a lot of time in the training courtyard, practicing his sword skills with anyone who shared the grounds with him, attending classes although he did not need to do so as he was meant to be preparing for the campaign, and I even saw him attempt the gauntlet several times. If he saw me, he would turn the other way, and I wasn’t sure what was worse, the pain in my heart at his rejection, or the embarrassment that surely everyone had noticed.I concentrated on preparations for the campaign in order to distract myself and make his abandonment of me less noticeable. There was much to do, I found. Not only were there n
The Villain's Hero Chapter Twenty-One
“In this…” Daerton said anxiously to me.All around us in the grey dawn light, those joining the campaign hurriedly added their last belongings to the wagon caravan, whilst the knights and their squires adjusted their saddlebags and weaponry. I saw Aien, the hood of his cloak pulled up around his face, cross the courtyard to the wagon behind mine, throwing a bundle of clothing into the back before climbing onto the seat next to the driver. They talked casually as they waited, and I saw Aien offer the driver sunflower seeds from a bag.He did not look my way. I did not know if he knew I was in the wagon, or if the arched canvas cover of the tray hid me from his sight. “I know,” I told Daerton, focusing on the mage and not the man I loved. “The anti-venom for the spider creatures.”“And this…”“I know, Daerton,” I told him gently, placing my hand over his. “I have listened and paid attention to the entire process. I know what each vial contains.”“Of course, you do,” he said, meeting
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