29. Chapter 29

Chapter twenty-nine

A wareness settles around me slowly. I’m comfortable. Warm. My body is languid and spent. I’m happy. Deeply satisfied and content.

Then I feel how scratchy the sheets are. And the musty smell of the cheap hotel room invades my nose. Reality comes crashing down. I betrayed the Resistance for Mabon and now I’m on the run with him.

And last night we had fantastic, utterly mind-blowing sex, and I’ve never been more sated. I’ve never felt this proud, elated and smug.

I groan and rub my hands over my face.

“Good morning,” says Mabon.

I open my eyes. He is sitting up in bed next to me. Gloriously naked. And arranging small items on the sheet.

I blink in confusion. Some bottle tops. A few pennies and a cheap red plastic lighter. He is arranging them and moving them around on the vaguely white sheet like a small child playing with toys.

“What are you doing?”

He shrugs. “Admiring my pretties.”

I blink at him. It is too early for this. I don’t have the bandwidth to try to figure out what the hell is going on in that pretty head of his.

My gaze drops down to his purple nipples. I can’t help it. They are just too attention grabbing. My focus lingers and then suddenly my stomach rolls with unease.

“What happened to your piercings? And chains?”

He doesn’t look at me. He simply continues to rearrange his collection of rubbish.

“Your friends took them,” he says softly.

I scramble up into a sitting position. I’m going to be sick. I don’t need to look down to know that they didn’t only take his nipple piercings. They took all of his piercings. They touched him intimately. Violated him. Manhandled him without his consent. Because I know Mabon wouldn’t have wanted to give up his jewellery.

“They are not my friends,” I say feebly.

As if that makes any difference. As if it somehow absolves me of guilt.

Mabon says nothing. He just hums a tune and pushes his bottle tops around the sheet, making some sort of pattern only he can see.

I can’t deal with this right now. I need coffee and food and a functioning brain.

“I’m going to have a shower,” I say as I heave myself out of bed. Then I remember my manners. “Unless you want to go first?”

He shakes his head, and his messy, tangled hair flutters. My eyes narrow. He likes to be neat and tidy. I know he does.

“Shall I show you how to work the shower?”

Bright amethyst flashes up at me. His delicate nose wrinkles. “If you wish.”

I smile fondly and bite back my chuckle. He has guilelessly asked a thousand questions about the human world, but this particular lack of knowledge embarrasses him? It’s hugely endearing.

I take him to the shower, talk him through what I’m doing as I get it running, and then I leave him to it.

I sit down on the edge of the bed. I’ll grab a shower once Mabon is done. Then find coffee and breakfast. Then we will head to the train station. Five hundred pounds will be enough for two tickets to London. We’ll be there by evening. We’ll part ways and this will all be over.

My chest aches sharply, all of a sudden. I give it a rub while my thoughts meander on.

After dropping Mabon off, I’ll very carefully sneak in a visit to my mum, then spend the rest of my life hiding from the Resistance. My heart thumps, low and heavy. Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a future to get excited about. But it is what it is.

I stare glumly at the ugly carpet and try to stop my whirling thoughts. ‘Don’t borrow tomorrow’s problems,’ my nan always used to say, and it is a philosophy I should stick to. Heaven knows today has enough problems of its own.

Suddenly, the bathroom door flings open. Mabon is standing in the doorway, a towel slung very low on his hips. His exquisite hair is nearly all loose and down. It’s damp and slightly frizzy, as if he has been towel drying it. One hand is in his hair, near the top of his head, holding a fistful up.

He is giving me a strange look. And there is colour on his cheeks. He almost looks shy, but that can’t be right. I don’t think Mabon even knows what shy is.

“Give me a braid!” he says regally.

Yep. I was right. Shy and bashful are not words in Prince Mabon’s vocabulary.

I shake my head. “You can do it yourself now. You’ll do a much better job.”

His eyes grow wide. His face pales. A fine tremor runs over his body. My brows furrow in confusion. Unease twists in my stomach.

“Blake, give me a braid,” he whispers.

Hearing my name on his lips is startling. Like a slap. Sudden, unexpected and intense. He never uses it. The sound of it is doing strange things to me. Very strange things. I think I like it. Alot.

“W…why?” I stammer in answer to his demand, while my mind reels from the sound of Mabon speaking my name.

He sucks in a sharp breath, as if I am the one who has slapped him. I don’t know how or why this verbal sparring match has occurred, but here we are, in the thick of it.

“I was good for you last night!” he exclaims. “I pleased you well. You should want to give me a braid!”

Are those tears in his eyes? It can’t be. It has to be a trick of the light.

“Why else are you helping me get back to the palace if you don’t want me?”

I’m staring blankly at him, I know I am. But I’m so lost right now. Completely flummoxed. I have no idea what is happening. Words are flying around. We appear to be fighting, but no one has told me the rules.

Mabon draws in a big, shuddering breath that shakes his chest. He looks distraught. Devastated. Like he is teetering on the very edge of losing his shit.

My heart beats frantically against my ribs. I’m being an idiot. I don’t need to understand. I don’t need to know why he has got so worked up. I just need to do this simple thing he has asked. It clearly means a lot to him, and that’s all that matters.

“Okay,” I say.

He moves swiftly and sits on the floor with his back to me, between my spread legs. He releases his hair and hands me the shoelace, then hunches his shoulders and hugs his knees.

All of his glorious hair is loose and free before me. I know this means something. It’s important. Symbolic. It signifies a shift in whatever is between Mabon and I. But I am unable to fully decipher it.

Carefully, I pick up the silken strands of his hair and start twisting them into the best approximation of a plait that I can manage. As I work, his shoulders slowly relax.

Okay, this hair stuff is clearly very important, and I think I’m starting to get it. In that horrible duel I witnessed, Osian’s opponent undid his hair. I’m beginning to understand that it was a big deal.

So, I think when the Resistance took Mabon’s hairpins, and he couldn’t stop them, in Mabon’s mind, it was like he lost a duel? Is that what’s going on?

If I run with this theory that someone undoing your hair is bad, then someone doing your hair up, must therefore be good. And that’s why Mabon was so keen for me to do this.

Keen? Really? Bile rises in my throat. He wasn’t simply keen. There were tears in his eyes. He was shaking. He was on the verge of breaking down. Mabon was desperate. Why am I downplaying it by using the word keen?

His words echo around my mind. ‘I was good for you last night. I pleased you well.’

Oh lord. Heaven help me. Please tell me this isn’t true. Please tell me that I am putting together these puzzle pieces all wrong and coming to the incorrect conclusion.

I’m the one who is shaking now. My fingers are trembling so hard it is difficult to tie off this shoelace.

“Mabon,” I croak. I cough and try again. “Did you…was last night, so I’d do your hair?”

Why am I asking? I don’t want to know. Denial is wonderful. Ignorance is bliss. I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.

He stiffens. “No.”

It’s the worst denial I have ever heard in my life. The tone is all wrong. The inflection is off. He sounds like a toddler trying to deny that he got into the cookie jar. Mabon is a horrible, terrible liar.

As the meaning of his feeble lie sinks in, a cold, dark horror floods my guts. It churns and starts to flow along my veins. It freezes and paralyses me.

While I’m immobile, Mabon runs nimble fingers over his new braid. Then he exhales. And slumps. He rests his head on my thigh and wraps his arms around my leg.

His actions make me want to whimper, but my throat is so tight I can’t breathe. Conflicting, opposing emotions are crashing through me. Ice and fire raging against each other and birthing steam that is clouding my mind.

Here is Mabon. Being all small. Needy and soft. Clinging to me. Upset. Hurt and traumatised. By events that are all my fault.

Yet he used me. His passion last night was false. A means to an end. He thought he needed to seduce me so that I’d partake in this hair tying ritual. And the pain of this knowledge is immense. It’s tearing my soul apart. But it is no less than I deserve.

I don’t want to be used. I don’t want to be manipulated. But Mabon is sitting here on the floor hugging my leg as if his life depends on it. All his carefully built walls are down. No, not down. Scrub that. Broken. His walls have been broken. By my actions.

I force my frozen lungs to work. My hand reaches up and strokes the top of Mabon’s head as if he is a cat. He melts into it, and my heart pounds at his reaction.

What a fucking mess this is.