Текст книги "The poison daughter"

Автор книги: Sheila Masterson

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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 48 страниц)

35HENRY

When I step out of the washroom, clean and ready for another day of trying to contain my new wife, Harlow stands in front of her bed, folded in half, stretching the backs of her legs.

I can’t decide if she’s trying to tempt me, persuade me, or if she doesn’t consider my presence at all.

Fortunately, she’s no longer fighting me on picking out her clothes. She’s wearing the sweater I laid out for her. Unfortunately, she’s forgone the pants, so I have a perfect view of her round, lace-covered backside.

She sways from side to side, shaking out her arms. “Can I go for a run today? I’m getting stiff. Surely word of my misdeeds has spread enough and everyone already hates me. May as well enjoy myself.”

My own restlessness has made me weak. I don’t like being stuck in this room, either, and after last night, I don’t want to deny her this simple pleasure.

It doesn’t matter that it’s a terrible idea—staying in this room and watching her stretch in her underwear is not an option.

“Fine.”

She straightens, and her face is immediately brighter. “Really?”

“Really. But you have to listen to me. You can’t just run off, and if I tell you to do something while we are out there, for the love of the Divine, don’t fight me. Just do it.”

She smirks. “Of course. I wouldn’t dream of disobeying my husband.”

I huff a laugh. “Get changed and I’ll run with you.”

By the time I walk back to my room and change, Harlow is waiting at the threshold of my closet, practically bouncing on her toes with excitement. If I knew that this was the thing that would make her agreeable, I would have considered it sooner.

Her dark hair is pulled back, and she wears a pair of fitted black pants, a wool sweater, and a pair of boots. I’ve seen her sleep-mussed, post-orgasm, and meticulously styled, but there’s something about seeing her in casual clothes, lit with excitement, that makes me feel like I’m seeing the real Harlow Carrenwell for the first time.

She looks down at her clothes. “Is this not appropriate attire for a run?”

I shake my head. “It’s fine. Let’s go.”

Gaven is waiting for us outside the bedroom door.

“We’re going for a run,” Harlow says.

A hint of surprise flashes on his face. “Are we?”

“You can stay here,” I say.

He crosses his arms. “I go where Miss Carrenwell goes.”

Harlow waves a hand. “We’ll run a loop. You can time me, Gaven.”

He gives her a long, hard look. “Fine. Tell me where you’re going and how long the loop is.”

“Is five miles too long?”

Harlow smiles widely. “Not for one loop.”

Fuck me. I wasn’t counting on running more than five miles. This is going to be painful, but maybe it will wear me out so I can get some sleep tonight.

“Fine,” Gaven says. “Check in after each loop, and if you’re more than two minutes off time, I’m coming to find you.”

Apparently, he knows her well enough to know her five-mile time.

Harlow starts down the hall without waiting to see if either of us is following. Several servants give us startled glances as we pass, but no one asks why the newlyweds are out of their room and dressed in activewear.

We head downstairs, and I stop in the kitchen for a water pouch, and then we head out into the cold morning. As I explain the loop to Gaven, Harlow stretches her legs and tightens the laces on her boots.

Then, we’re off, and I’m lost in the discomfort of the first mile of a run. Despite the fact that I’ve been running for years—that running distance is the first survival skill everyone at the fort learns—the first couple miles of a run always feel like I’ve woken up in a new body that I don’t know how to work. Every step feels out of time, my entire body in rebellion to moving at such a rapid pace. It takes the first few miles to settle into a rhythm.

Harlow doesn’t seem to suffer from the same discomfort. She’s grinning, her body moving with rhythmic grace as she jogs along the wooded trail behind the manor.

The run wouldn’t be a problem, except Harlow is fast. She starts at a sprint, and I have to race to keep up.

She dodges tree roots and low branches with ease—as if this is her normal trail and I’m the interloper. I struggle along, trying to breathe through a cramp in my side, pine-scented air sawing in and out of my lungs.

I keep expecting her to fade, but she just seems to get stronger and steadier as we go. Everything about it kicks my hunter’s instincts into high gear.

It’s been too long since my last true hunt night. I want to tackle her to the ground and fuck her however I’d like. I want to watch her pretend not to like it—to watch how well she takes it. She wanted me to be rough the other night, but I wanted to spite her by making her come from something more gentle. Now the itch to fuck her rough and dirty, to do what I want instead of worrying about some power struggle between us, is relentless.

When I look over at her, she’s still smiling. Her ponytail swishes behind her, and her cheeks are dark, flushed with cold.

I’ve never missed color as much as I do with her. I’d like to know exactly what shade of pink her face is right now—how violet her eyes are in the sunlight.

She takes note of the scenery in a way that’s both appreciative and calculated. “I’ll need to do this loop at least three times, and a couple of times a week, I should try to do four loops just to stay in shape. I can already feel myself lagging.”

“Four times! Slow down, you fucking menace,” I growl.

She speeds up to spite me, but then glances back, and with a roll of her eyes, slows to a stop.

I jog to catch up and step alongside her, pulling the canteen on my chest up to drink. My side is cramping. I run plenty, but not at an all-out sprint like this. “What on earth would possess you to run twenty miles in a day?”

She swipes the water from my hand before I can drink any more, unclips it, and gives me a look that says I’m a moron.

It hits me. Twenty miles is the distance between Mountain Haven and Lunameade. She wants to be able to run home.

“I thought I told you not to run from me, Harlow.”

She licks water from her lips and hands the canteen back to me. “Who said I was running from you? Maybe I just want to go home.”

“This is your home now.”

She smirks. “And what a cozy home it is, with my husband who wants to snuggle me to death.”

She glances at the granite rock face beside us and the bits of foliage strewn about the bottom, her eyes homing in on one spot.

The elaborate natural cover we’ve woven for the entrance to the mountain caves.

I try not to react, but she must see something in me because she cocks her head and smiles wickedly. “Something wrong, my wolf? Cramp? I didn’t expect you to be so out of shape.”

When I don’t say anything, she walks straight toward the entrance, as if she knows exactly where it is. I rack my brain, trying to figure out if I slipped up. I must have, though I can’t remember mentioning the tunnels to her. When she asked where we had been for ten years, I said underground, but that could be anywhere. How did she manage to find the primary entrance to the caves so quickly?

It’s not the only way in, but it is the most frequented and largest. It’s the primary evacuation route in case of trouble. I was going to have to show her eventually—the fort has fallback and safety protocols, just like Lunameade. Her job as my wife is to help ensure that all of our people follow the fallback plans and escape safely. I just wasn’t expecting her to know this a few days into our marriage—or, at least, not without me telling her.

“Harlow?”

She shoves her hand between the edge of the pine boughs and tugs.

“It latches to keep out animals.” I step up beside her, caging her between the granite wall and my body. I bend down so my mouth is right next to her ear and guide her hand to the latch, trying to ignore the Stellarium-Blossoms scent of her skin.

The latch pops free. The hinges squeak softly as the large, round door swings open.

We’re immediately assaulted by the musty smell of the caves and the faint noise of farmers working deep within the tunnels.

Harlow squints into the dim sunstone glow. “Bigger than I expected.”

“Not the first time I’ve heard that.”

She glares at me. “My wolf, was that a joke? Are you well?” She touches her hand to my forehead. “Did my exceptional speed disorient you too much?”

I swat her hand away. “How did you know this was here?”

She leans against the lip of the cave, one hip jutted out.

Divine dammit. I thought the lingerie stretching was bad, but the fact that I know she’s not wearing anything under those stretchy skin-tight pants is worse. She looks sinful.

“I didn’t know until you helped me open the latch.”

“Bullshit.”

She had to have found it. Maybe in the library archives. We have never needed to hide such things, so it’s possible that I missed tucking a map away.

She drags the toe of her boot across the dirt in an arc and licks her lips. “Gaven may have talked to one of your huntsmen when he was a bit in the bottle.”

“Divine deliver me,” I grumble under my breath.

“What’s in there?” she asks.

“Farms grown by sunstone. Small rooms for families. We spent a year fully underground and then slowly took back the fort level by level.”

She doesn’t tease me about that. For all of her terrible qualities, a lack of compassion isn’t one of them. It’s possible she just feels guilty that it’s her family’s fault we have to rebuild in the first place.

Still, I saw it when we first rode into the fort and she stared at the scar in the wall. I see it again now as she peers into the dim tunnel and listens. She respects our grief.

I feel exposed. Being here reminds me of the literal and figurative darkest moments of my life—of too much time spent in bed, my body strange and sick and restless at the same time. I can’t think about that time without feeling the same stomach-plunging sadness I felt when I first woke up and found out that Holly was gone.

There are many things I’ve elected to share with Harlow for the sake of building trust, but this wasn’t one of them.

She steps out of the doorway, brushing her finger over my chest as she strides back into the sunlight and swings the door closed.

“Don’t look so grumpy, Henry. It’s a bodyguard’s job to know the ways in and out and any evacuation possibilities. If he couldn’t get the information on his own, he would have already made it your problem.” She nods to the trail. “Come on, let’s go. Gaven will worry if I don’t check in when he’s expecting.”

“Does Gaven normally keep up with you?”

She grins as she starts down the trail, again at an all-out sprint. “Yes, and he hates every moment of it, but he must be the healthiest fifty-something man in Lunameade. We’ve been doing this since I was young.”

I’d assumed her constant whining about running was just to get under my skin or to see as much of the fort as possible. And while I do think those are added benefits to her, she really does seem happy now that she’s moving. This is a part of her routine that I can grant her here—probably the only part.

We cut down the narrow trail, keeping the fort wall to our right and the houses and businesses to our left as we descend to the next level through the perimeter gate.

“Are there gates like this on both walls of the fort?” Harlow hardly even sounds winded.

“Yes,” I gasp. “These smaller gates stay open during the day, but they’re locked up at night to funnel everyone through the central path.”

“So you don’t need as much guard coverage,” she says.

“Yes. But these doors can be opened during a breach, depending on where and how many people we need to move, and the final fallback is the caves. There’s a heavy, reinforced door on the inside that gets locked in place once everyone is safely inside,” I explain.

I’m grateful she doesn’t say anything else, not just because I don’t want to think about my time in the caves, but also because I’m embarrassingly winded.

We pass several off-duty guards jogging in the opposite direction. They ignore Harlow and nod at me. That’s not a good sign, but Harlow continues on, unbothered.

“Interesting that you let the trees grow within the perimeter of the fort. Don’t you worry it will provide cover if the Drained get in?” she asks as she leaps over a large rock.

“It’s not always practical to go beyond the fort walls for wood, and people miss nature. We tried to keep it as present inside the walls as it is outside. Everyone who lives here deserves to enjoy the wild without the fear of being attacked.”

She bounds through the narrow gate to the next level, seemingly satisfied with my explanation.

We run through the next two levels in silence, nothing to distract me from my panting but the sight of her fine ass in those tight pants and the desire to beat her in this race for no reason other than pride.

Harlow casts a glance over her shoulder at me. “Have I ever told you your aura is different?”

The question is so out of the blue and so unnerving that I stop breathing for a second. “Different how?”

“Well, all auras are unique, but yours is—” She stops and glances at me again.

The longer it takes her to describe me, the more afraid I am of what she’ll say. I knew she could see magic, but I didn’t realize the level of detail and the way it could ruin all of my well-laid plans.

“It almost looks like a burnt purple. Most people have auras that float around them and are most concentrated a few inches from their skin. But yours is such a dark, warm purple, and it’s very concentrated in a ball at the center of you.”

As we finally come to the bottom of the fort trail, Harlow slows to let me pass. I turn left and lead the way through the busy cobbled street toward the center route back up through the fort.

The first level is mostly community gardens and farming because it’s the only level that isn’t completely shadowed by the mountain in the afternoon. This is the least populated level of the fort, since it’s most susceptible to breach due to the expanses of agricultural land. Most of the people who work those plots of land are unblessed, but there are a few interspersed magical families who help with growing crops and distributing sunlight, as well as those who have protection blessings from Vardek to help with our defenses. A healthy smattering of newer guards is stationed in the barracks near the opposite fort wall.

Harlow looks at me expectantly. She’s waiting for me to respond to her comments about my aura.

“What does yours look like?” I ask.

She picks up speed to match my stride. “Like a golden cookie-cutter outline of my body. Like I could be one of the Divine myself.”

I bite my lip to keep from smiling at her casual blasphemy. I’ve been so focused on what she’s saying that I only now notice the eyes on us. And not just some of them. All of them.

Harlow smiles brightly and wishes them a pleasant morning as we pass, but all the warmth and teasing evaporates from her face as she notices just how many people are focused on us. Her eyes return to their usual intense vigilance, rapidly darting from side to side to search for incoming danger.

We continue up through the second, third, and fourth levels, met by a similarly cold reception. The people just continue to gawk at the two of us. Worse are the not-so-quiet murmured slurs. Maybe they aren’t loud enough for Harlow to hear, but it takes a lot of self-control for me to not react.

As we finally pass through the gates to level five, she cocks her head and smiles playfully at me. “I guess I was right about the rumor mill working as hard here in the fort as it does back at home.”

She hurtles up the steepest incline into level six and circles the manor with me on her heels.

Gaven leans against the solarium doors, his arms crossed like he’s on sentry duty. His face relaxes when he sees Harlow and she gives him a mocking salute.

“You were right,” she says. “The caves were exactly where you said.” She turns to me and jerks her thumb toward the trail. “Ready for round two? I’ll race you.”

I don’t know how she’s so unbothered. She had to have heard their words, though it’s possible this is what she anticipated from the start and it’s a relief their behavior finally matches her expectations.

Gaven lifts a hand. “You’re off pace. Is Henry slowing you down?”

I glare at the bodyguard. I can’t believe I didn’t realize he had magic. I sense something else strange about him that I can’t quite put my finger on. I don’t think I have the full picture yet, but I’d really like to before I try to kill him and am met with some unpleasant magical surprise.

“Gaven, start us off,” Harlow calls.

She’s bouncing on her toes beside me, the most energized and perky I’ve ever seen her—and, loath as I am to admit it, it’s actually very cute. If she weren’t such an unbelievable pain in my ass, she would actually fit in here. She has the right competitive spirit underneath all the snark.

Gaven pulls out his handkerchief, lifts it into the air with a flourish, and then yanks it down to signal the start. I take off, sprinting a few paces behind her on purpose. I’ll lull her into a false sense of security for the first few miles and take her on the uphill through town.

I shouldn’t be surprised how quickly she navigates the same trails as before. This is the reminder I needed that she’s not just a pretty girl to play my wife. She’s a calculating spy sent to get information out of me.

On the hill through the center of town, I pull ahead. It’s not until we enter the fifth level, when she charges ahead, that I realize she was holding back. Now I’m spent and she is fully sprinting. The sound of her footsteps triggers something animal inside me.

Not now. I don’t want to fuck my wife.

Except I really do.

The manor comes into sight, and I want to immediately drag her inside, up to my bed, yank down those tight pants so they trap her legs together, and fuck her like my life depends on it.

Instead, I watch as she races up to Gaven and taps his shoulder. I trot to a stop when I see Carter standing off to the side, whispering with Bryce. I know by their faces and their presence this early that something is off.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

Carter glances at Harlow and then back at me. “We received a dove.”

Harlow’s head whips around. She lifts her sweaty ponytail off of her neck and walks toward my friends.

Until now, we have made a point to intercept every communication from her family without informing her. I try to puzzle out why Carter would volunteer this information.

He hands me the note, and I have to read it twice to understand the full gravity of the words.

I look up and meet Harlow’s expectant gaze.

“Well?” she asks.

I look at my friends and clear my throat. “There was a breach.”

Harlow stills. “Which gate?”

I shake my head. “They said everything is fine. There were a few deaths and a few injuries and a couple of women missing, but⁠—”

“Which gate?” Her voice is so calm, but there’s a lethal edge to it.

I look helplessly at Carter and Bryce. I know when I tell her, this rare lightness in her will be gone.

“Henry,” she says softly. “Which gate?”

“North Hold.”

She’s so still, I’m not sure she’s even breathing. Finally, she tilts her chin up to the sky and blows out a slow breath. “The brightest part of the day is in an hour. If we leave soon, then we can arrive in Lunameade a before sunset and⁠—”

I hold up a hand. “Harlow, we just got married. You’re embroiled in a scandal. We can’t go right now.”

“Why? What will happen? People will talk about me?” Her voice is edged with sarcasm. “I don’t care.”

I lean in close. “Harlow.”

“Henry.” She looks up at me, her eyes pleading. “That’s my sister’s house. I need to see that she’s okay.”

The tinge of desperation and fear in her voice unsettles me.

“Please, Henry?” Her face is soft, her eyes wild, like she’s waiting for me to back her into a corner by saying she can’t leave.

“So you do have manners,” I say, hoping the teasing will bring back the levity we’ve lost.

This version of Harlow doesn’t feel like a performance. If she’s playing me, she’s just about the best actress I’ve ever seen and her parents sending her here is truly diabolical. But if she’s not pretending, she’s just like me—someone who would do anything to protect her sister.

The only difference is that her sister is still alive. Much as I want to even the score between us, it’s useful to grant her something she wants if it will win her favor in the long term.

“Fine.”

Relief relaxes all the tension from her face.

Before she can speak, I press a finger to her lips. “But there are rules, Harlow. You will do exactly as you’re told when we’re in the woods, and when I say it’s time to come back, you don’t argue with me. I’m doing this at great personal risk.”

She nods and bites the tip of my finger hard. The sharp sting of her teeth sends a jolt right to my cock.

“Yes, sir,” she says, drawing away with a wicked grin on her face.

I wait until she’s disappeared inside the manor with Gaven close behind her before I turn to face my friends.

“What possessed you to do that? Our people will think you’re totally under her finger now,” Bryce says.

“If I try to stop her, she’ll find her own way, and if she gets hurt doing it alone, I promise it will be much worse for all of us,” I say.

Carter sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. “Another journey through the Drained Wood for this girl. Naima is going to kill me.”

Bryce runs a hand through his dark copper hair. “Why can’t you just tie her to your bed and fuck her like a normal newlywed?”

“Because normal newlyweds don’t have a familial blood feud,” I counter. “Look, this is a huge risk, and you don’t have to take it with me, but this will be very telling. Her parents don’t protect the sister, but we could. If I can show her that, I won’t need to wrangle her. She’ll want to help us because it would mean getting her sister back.”

“Are you so sure, my friend?” Carter squeezes my shoulder. “Carrenwell family ties run deep.”

“Only one way to know for certain.”

I pat Carter on the back and enter the manor, happy at last to have something Harlow wants.

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