Chapter 4

Four

Lorik didn't wake again until nightfall. He found me out in the garden, tending to my glowflies.

I didn't sense his presence until Peek came sauntering out from the Black Veil and then immediately hissed, his eyes pinned on something behind me. Thinking it was a Sever, I stiffened…until I looked over my shoulder and found Lorik regarding me from the stone bench wedged against the back wall of my cottage.

"How long have you been there?" I asked, surprised, straightening from the garden bed, my arms covered in rich, black soil as a shadevine glowfly nearly got tangled in my wavy hair. I shook him out, getting his dust in my strands, making them gleam. Had he heard me singing to myself?

"Long enough," Lorik grunted. He was hunched slightly, his wings looking uncomfortably squished against the wall of my home. He looked tired, dark circles under his eyes, though he'd slept the day away. "You're horribly unobservant. I've decided you must have had Severs come onto your land—you just haven't noticed them."

"So you admit that Peek isn't from the Below and doesn't have magic that keeps Severs away?"

Lorik grumbled something under his breath, in a language that sounded familiar but new, and I grinned.

Being out in my garden always lightened my mood. The dust from the glowflies possessed calming qualities and their buzzing lulled me into a gentle trance, but it was the gardening I enjoyed the most. Tending to the plants my glowflies were growing, weeding, snipping away weak leaves that would only take more energy to heal, watering where needed.

"You're different out here," Lorik remarked. "This is you, little witch. In your garden where you sing, where you are free."

The grin died from my face, even though his words filled me with a strange, fluttering warmth.

"You have a beautiful voice," he complimented. "You were singing an Allavari poem, weren't you?"

The Allavari poem Aysia had always liked. I'd often sing it at night at Correl's home for the other children as they'd drifted off to sleep. I'd been the oldest there. I would tuck them all into their beds at night, and they would always want a song or a story.

The poem was about love…on its surface. That had been Aysia's favorite part. But the last verse was a dark warning, for the Allavari girl's lover consumed her heart like a feasting Sever, though Aysia had always thought it was interpreted as the girl giving her heart away. Romantic, she'd sighed, and I'd always bitten my tongue, not wanting to disappoint her.

Perhaps I should have,I couldn't help but think, a prick of guilt making me stand from my kneeling position. I journeyed to the garden bed closest to Lorik, kneeling down at its side as I began to pluck away fallen leaves from the trees overhead that littered the soil.

"Severs don't feast on hearts though," Lorik said quietly, watching me work. "Not anymore, at least."

"How are you feeling?" I asked, ignoring what he'd said.

"Like death itself," he replied, though he grinned, his fangs flashing in the moonlight, making my breath hitch.

Deep down, I knew he would need to feed again and soon. I was dragging my feet, however, not wanting the confirmation of what I already feared.

Another day,I thought. Surely he could go another day. I would feed him a hearty bone broth tonight to nourish him, and then he could feed on blood tomorrow.

"You were on the brink of it," I told him, feeling a tightening in my chest at the thought. I didn't know if he understood how dangerous night nettle poison was.

"I'm stronger than I look, Marion."

There was something in his voice, a muted confidence that had nothing to do with bravado and everything to do with fact, that reassured me he was telling the truth.

And the way he said my name made a warm shiver stroke down my spine.

"Who shot you with the arrow?" I asked, the question I'd been pondering since I'd found him last night finally out in the open between us.

"Perhaps I did it to myself so that a beautiful human witch would take pity on me and allow me to warm her bed," he said, "when I have been dreaming of it for so long."

His words brought a dizzying rush of heat to my belly.

"The arrow tip pierced all the way through your shoulder. Even with your strength as a Kylorr, even if you somehow were in your berserker state—which you weren't—you would've needed a bow for that. Quite impossible to shoot yourself," I pointed out, if only to distract from the rapid beating of my heart.

"Is that what your beloved logic tells you?" he asked. I'd looked down to the brightbell plant I was tending to—ironically, the plant that would have been the antidote to the night nettle poison had it been fully grown—but I heard the smile in his voice.

I shrugged a shoulder.

He chuffed out a small sigh. When I looked back at him, he had his face tipped back to the night sky, his eyes closed. I paused in plucking out leaves to watch him. My gaze drifted down the long, thick column of his throat, over his shoulders, one of them tightly wound in clean gauze, down the slabs of muscles lining his chest.

"Who do you think shot me with an arrow?" he asked.

"There is an Allavari who lives in the village," I said quietly. Swallowing down my hatred and bitterness, I said, "His name is Veras."

Lorik laughed, but there was an edge to it. "You think that useless piece of flesh managed to shoot me with a poisoned arrow?"

I frowned. "If he heard you speaking about him like that, he surely would. He's a dangerous male. You should be more careful with your tongue."

"I welcome him to try," Lorik rumbled. "It would give me a reason to tear him limb from limb."

I nearly shuddered at the bloodlust in his voice…and yet…

"You like it when I'm bloodthirsty, little witch?" he teased, his voice morphing into velvety softness. "You hate Veras. Would you like me to give you his still-beating heart? Perhaps that can be my repayment to you. For saving my life, I will give you his. I will give you one favor, Marion, and it can be whatever you want. I vow I will grant it."

I couldn't tell him just how much I was tempted to say yes—because there was an instinct in me that told me Lorik meant it. That this male was much, much more dangerous than Veras could ever hope to be, even with his henchmen carrying out his bidding and his manipulative pull within the village.

"Don't," I said quietly. "I am a healer, not an accomplice."

"Even after what he did to your sister?"

I couldn't contain my sharp breath. It was no secret. Lorik had obviously asked about me throughout the village—and I didn't know how I felt about that.

"I would do anything for my sister—you were right earlier," Lorik said, his tone turning savage and I leveled him a sharp look. "I imagine you would've too."

"Then you're not so selfish as you insisted," I pointed out, filing away the fact that he had a sister, one I'd never seen. Did she live in the village? Where did Lorik even live?

"Did I say that?" he asked, his mood unreadable.

"You implied it." And he knew it too.

Lorik stared at me, and then his mouth slowly drew into a grin, his teeth appearing even sharper in the moonlight. For the first time, I had the instinct to run from him. Warning bells in my mind battled with the warmth in my chest.

"A Sever shot me with the arrow."

I jolted, gasping. "What?"

I always felt out of control with him. Even when I'd met him at the market all those months ago. He'd always made me feel like I was walking on trembling ground.

It was unsettling. Exciting. Unpredictable.

Unless he's lying,I thought.

"But…but why?"

"How should I know?" Lorik asked, holding my gaze, his blue eyes glittering again in the silver light.

"So a Sever just…came up from the Below, tracked you down in the Black Veil in the middle of the night where you happened to be, and shot you with a poisoned, metal-tipped arrow they just happened to have prepared?"

"It would appear so," he said.

He's lying,I thought. Of course he was. That story was ridiculous. Severs hunted with their claws and fangs like wild beasts. Not with a bow. It still didn't explain what Lorik had been doing in the Black Veil at midnight.

"Whatever it is that you're involved in," I started quietly, "don't pull me into it. I helped you. I saved your life. I don't need your problems spilling into mine. Veras already took the one person I loved most in this world. And if you're involved with him, in any way, I need to know. Right now."

Lorik held my gaze, his features sobering for a brief moment.

"I'm not involved with Veras, Marion," Lorik told me, his voice gruff and soft. "Not now, not ever."

My shoulders relaxed. Maybe I was a fool, but I heard truth in his voice.

"Does that mean you'll let me stay in your bed?" he asked, the question helping to ease some of the tension that had risen between us.

I tried to hide the way my lips quirked.

"Just until you heal," I told him. "And I'm convinced you're free of infection."

"Perhaps you'll even join me there tonight," he rasped. "I'll keep you warm with my infected, feverish body."

The laugh that bubbled up my throat…that one I couldn't help.

All the amusement left Lorik's face, and he stared at me until my laugh slowly died, until I pushed a strand of hair behind my ear, grazing my cheek with soil.

"What is it?"

"You have a beautiful laugh too," Lorik said. But gone was the teasing lilt in his voice. The words were guttural and raw and honest. An honest compliment, devoid of any expectation. I didn't know if anyone had ever spoken to me like that before.

"Oh," I whispered, pleased, embarrassed. "Thank you."

"Will you sing again for me?" he asked, settling more fully against the wall, though I was concerned about the growing chill in the air and the sweat slicking his chest. He paused. "Though maybe not that poem. I'm not fond of tragic endings."

I studied this half-Kylorr, half-Allavari male, wondering where in the world he had come from. I suddenly wanted to know everything.

"All right," I said, thinking that with those glittering blue eyes, he could ask me to go to the Below itself and I would.

And so I sang for him. I sang as I tended to my garden, as the moon slowly rose, as my glowflies buzzed all around me, and as Peek even settled close by without hissing at our guest once.

All the while, Lorik never took his eyes off me.