It wasn’t as though I’d never been in a situation like this before. I’d been betrothed and having an absent mother and a distracted father had given me a great deal of freedom, which I’d explored wholeheartedly. But despite the shadows there was a publicness to this moment, a rarity and a forbiddenness that was both terrifying and exhilarating.
It was perhaps that, more than desire or attraction, that made me step under the tree. Temerity gripped me, spurred by wine and injury over Rosser, the thrill of deceit and the sight of a handsome man, waiting for me.
I slid into his shadow. He took the cue, slipping his hands over my back, flat-palmed and open, holding me at the slightest distance as I plucked at the buttons of his coat for a few, bracing breaths.
Just one kiss. What harm was there in a kiss?
Planting my hands on his chest, I pressed up onto my toes. His lips were warm, a little dry but gentle, easing into mine in a heady rush. His hands moved, one cupping the back of my head as the other pressed into the small of my back, holding me close as we turned. My back met the tree, rough and familiar, and I eased into his embrace.
How many times had my fiancé and I met like this, in the Wold? How many innocent kisses turned to trysts, each joyous, forbidden moment in pledge of the life we’d spend together?
A pledge unfulfilled. A pledge lost to war and time.
What was I doing?
My lips stilled, but his did not. His hands were on my waist now, possessive and insistent. One crept up across my chest, fingers tucking under the edge of my bodice, dragging me into him.
My mind fizzled back to life, even as my body urged me to give in, to fall into a rush of instinct and desire. It would be so easy. Quick. But that was all it would be.
I turned my face away, tearing our lips apart. Benedict ignored the motion, transitioning his lips—teeth—down my throat and onto my chest, meeting the place where his fingers pulled my bodice insistently away from my skin.
“Stop.” I grabbed his head and pushed it away, but he still loomed.
“Let me give you this.” His voice was rougher now, edged with need.
Warning bells chimed in the back of my mind, my hands still planted on his cheeks, fingers digging into his hair. I hadn’t factored what might happen if he refused to stop at a kiss—a lifetime of lessons, of warnings, shed in one foolish impulse.
Fear ignited in my stomach. I pushed at him harder, hands scrabbling on his chest. My knife. I didn’t have my knife. Why hadn’t I brought my knife? All I had was my sewing scissors in my pocket, and they would only irritate him.
All my thoughts slammed to a halt as Benedict grabbed my wrists, pulling them away from his head and forcing them down to my sides. “Trust me.”
“Stop now,” I hissed, praying my voice didn’t shake. It didn’t. “Or I’ll scream.”
One hand found the base of my throat, huge and warm and threatening. “You do not want to do that. You want this. You want me.”
My clarity and determination wavered again, and my lips turned in a dizzy, listless smile. But I understood something was not right now—that knowledge had slipped past a barrier and rooted inside me, a weed that refused to be torn out.
I strained against the fog, my smile disassembling.
“Mary!” Grant’s voice cut through the hush of the garden, bright and a little drunk. “Mary, Mary, my lark. I saw you off this way! It’s almost eleven bells.”
Benedict stilled, hand still resting on my collarbone. “Who is that?”
I managed to smile again, though I doubted he could see it in the half-light. But that meant he also couldn’t see the fear in my eyes, or my horror at the situation I’d put myself in. “A friend.”
A few disgruntled voices replied to Grant in Usti, and I heard more than one tsk of disapproval as other intimate encounters were interrupted. Footsteps came closer, wandering the edge of the garden. “Sorry—Oh, dear, deeply sorry, ladies. Carry on. Mary!”
Benedict’s jaw flexed in frustration, but he stepped back. His hands left me, suddenly gentle again, and my head cleared like mist under the sun. “My sincerest apologies, Ms. Grey.”
“I’m sorry too,” I returned, stuffing my fear under a cold guise and stepping away. What had just happened? My legs felt terribly weak, my body slow to respond and my wits dull. But my tongue was tart as I added, “I see you and your brother are one and the same.”
Rage snapped onto his face. He stepped after me, grabbing for my arm. “I am not—”
I darted out of reach and up against the glass of the garden wall just as Grant swept into sight.
“Mary!” he said for the dozenth time, throwing his arms out. “What were you—Oh. Hello, large man in the shadows.”
Benedict, however, was already leaving. He vanished through the garden without another word, leaving me breathless beside Charles.
With every step Benedict took, my senses flooded back and my body cooled. He took every last thread of my desire with him, leaving me stunned and chilled in his wake.
That feeling. That power. I’d heard about it in stories, but this was the first time I knew I’d been influenced by a Magni.
My stomach sank and my nerves shuddered. How much of that encounter had been me, and how much a lie? Had he lied about Samuel too? Now that I was free of the man’s influence, doubt flooded through me, and with it a painful twist of hope. I didn’t want Samuel to be what Benedict described.
I could ask Samuel for the truth tonight, if he ever arrived, but sorcery was heavily tied to bloodlines. If Benedict, Samuel’s twin, was a Magni, there was a good chance Samuel was too.
I’d be wise to stay away from both of them.
“Who was that?” Grant looked me up and down. “Are you quite well?”
“I’m fine,” I answered, deciding it was true even though my shame burned on my cheeks. I slipped my arm through his, and if I held a little too tightly, he didn’t comment. “Let’s go find Demery.”
The Girl from the Wold
The Girl from the Wold breaks another stick and feeds it into the fire, watching the flames lick hungrily at the edges of birch bark. The evening is as quiet as all the others—as each of the five nights that she has spent alone among the trees have been. She still wears Abetha Bonning’s stolen name, though unwillingly now, and lives off that other woman’s reputation.
But she knows the sand in the glass is running low, trickling down to its final grains. She needs a new plan, a new place to hide, and it must be soon.
She contemplates what to do as she peers into a small iron pot at the edge of the fire. A stew that promises to be bland but hot simmers inside, and she has set out a loaf of bread on a fine silver platter at her side. The platter looks incongruous, perched on the log that serves as table and chair, surrounded by fallen leaves and reflecting the flames on its glistening silver surface. But it was the most valuable thing the last traveler had, stuffed into his sack, so she had taken it.
She’ll sell it at the next town, she thinks, along with the other valuables she has hidden in bags across the fire. She’s not sure how to sell stolen things without attracting too much attention, but if the villages in the Lesterwold are anything like her own village, the shepherds and woodcutters will turn a blind eye. She’ll trade the platter for a horse, and some shepherd’s daughter will find herself with an unexpectedly fine dowry.