THE HOLLOW VOW
Chapter Five: A Night That Should Not Be
The hounds were close enough that Elodie could hear the individual pitch of each bark by the time she and Rosalind reached the old millrace, close enough to know they had perhaps a quarter hour before the men holding their leashes closed the distance for good.
It had taken Thorne only three days to recover from the humiliation of watching his own forged letter smoke into ash in front of the whole of Thistlewick, three days for his wounded pride to curdle into something considerably more dangerous than the patient legal cruelty he had shown her before, and to decide that if he could not convict Elodie of sorcery in front of witnesses, he would simply declare her a fugitive from a lesser, uglier charge, theft from the magistrate's own strongbox, easy enough to fabricate a second time now that the town's fear of her had only deepened rather than lifted, and this time he had not waited for a hearing before sending men after her.
Rosalind had wanted to come. Elodie had not had the strength, in the frantic quarter hour of gathering what little they could carry, to argue her out of it, and now regretted it with every stride, her sister's breath ragged beside her, neither of them built for this kind of running.
Elodie had not slept properly since the assembly square, had spent the days since watching every face in every doorway for the particular stillness of a man deciding whether to raise an alarm, and still the actual moment of flight had caught her unprepared, Thorne's men arriving at her door at an hour when even the bakers had not yet lit their ovens, forcing her and Rosalind out through the narrow back window with nothing but a half-packed bag of bread and thread and the few coins she had managed not to spend. The lane behind the house had been empty when they dropped into it, but the hounds had picked up their trail before they had gone half a mile, and Elodie had spent the whole of the run afterward doing arithmetic she did not want to do, how far the millrace was, how fast Rosalind could manage on legs still not fully recovered from a fever that should have killed her, how many of Thorne's men would think to bring dogs at all on what he had likely told them was a simple errand.
They found Caelan, or rather he found them, at the edge of the old orchard where the trees had gone wild and untended enough to hide two fleeing women from dogs that relied on sight as much as scent, and he did not waste time on questions.
This way, he said, and led them through the dark at a pace that seemed to bend the ground itself more kindly beneath their feet than it had any right to, until they reached a ruined watchtower on the far side of the orchard, one of the old border towers abandoned since some forgotten peace treaty had made its purpose obsolete, its upper floor half collapsed but its base still sound enough to hold a door that Caelan sealed behind them with nothing more than a spoken word and a press of his palm against the old stone.
They will not find this place tonight, he said. The hounds will lose the scent at the orchard's edge. I have seen to it.
Rosalind, exhausted past the point of fear, curled into the corner beneath Elodie's cloak and was asleep within minutes, the particular boneless sleep of a child who trusts, entirely and without reservation, that the adults around her will keep watch. Elodie envied her that trust even as she was grateful for it, because it left her alone, in the narrow, close dark of the tower's ground floor, with nothing to occupy her but the sound of her own breathing and the presence of the man seated across from her with his back against the cold stone.
You should rest as well, Caelan said.
I don't think I can, she said, which was true in more ways than the obvious one. She was tired in her body and wide awake in every other part of herself, aware of him in the dark the way she had been aware of little else since the herb store-room, and she thought, with the particular recklessness that comes from a day spent running for her life, that she was tired, too, of pretending she did not notice it.
This is not wise, he said, though he did not move away from her, and she thought that of all the things he might have said in that moment, the fact that he had chosen a warning rather than a refusal told her something important about which of them was actually deciding what happened next.
Very little about tonight has been wise, she said. Rosalind is asleep four feet away and there is a price on my head large enough to tempt half the kingdom, and I find, strangely, that none of it frightens me half so much as the thought of going back to pretending I do not want to be closer to you than I already am.
You said once that it should not matter to you, whether I live or die, she said. That the Hollow's ledger records the taking, not the grief of the one who takes it. Do you still believe that.
He was quiet long enough that she thought he might not answer at all, and then he said, low, I have not believed it since the crossroads, if I am honest with you, and I have very little practice left in being anything else.
She crossed the small space between them before either of them had decided she would, drawn by something that felt less like choice than like the simple, gravitational fact of two people who had spent weeks circling the same unspoken thing, and knelt in front of him in the dark, close enough to feel the cold that clung to him even here, close enough that he could have stopped her with a single word and did not.
I am afraid of what happens to me, she said, quietly, when the ledger has taken everything it means to take. But I find I am more afraid of what happens if I never once, before that day comes, let myself have this.
His hand came up to her face slowly, as though he expected her to flinch away and wanted to give her every chance to, his palm cool against her jaw, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone with a care that undid something in her chest more thoroughly than any declaration could have, and when he spoke his voice had gone rough at the edges in the way she had heard only once before, in her own kitchen, the night he told her no one had asked in three hundred years whether the taking hurt him.
I have spent three centuries being told what I am permitted to want, he said. I find, tonight, that I no longer care to ask permission.
She closed the last of the distance herself. The kiss began slow and searching, far gentler than the cold formality of him had ever suggested he was capable of, but it did not stay gentle for long. His hand slid from her jaw into the loose fall of her hair and tightened, tilting her head so he could deepen the kiss, tongue sliding against hers with a hunger that made her breath catch. She answered it, fingers curling into the dark fabric at his shoulder, then higher, into the short hair at his nape, pulling him closer until there was no space left between them.
Somewhere in the tower above them the wind found a gap in the broken stone and sighed through it. Rosalind slept on, undisturbed. Caelan broke the kiss only long enough to drag his mouth down the line of her throat, open and hot, teeth grazing the sensitive skin just below her ear. Elodie gasped, hips shifting against him without thought. His free hand found the small of her back and pressed her tighter to him, letting her feel the hard length of him through the layers of cloth. The contact drew a low, almost pained sound from his throat, and he rolled his hips once, deliberate, so she could feel exactly how much he wanted her.
Tell me to stop, he murmured against her skin, voice rough. One word and I will.
She answered by catching his mouth again, biting lightly at his lower lip, and sliding her hand down between them. When her palm cupped him through his trousers he exhaled sharply, forehead dropping to hers.
Not stopping, she whispered.
They undressed each other in the dark—clumsy with urgency, hands shaking with more than cold. Fabric whispered to the floor. When he finally had her bare against him, skin to skin, he stilled for a moment, simply feeling the heat of her. Then he lowered her onto the narrow space of their makeshift bed, following her down, one thigh pushing between hers.
He kissed her again while his hand slid lower, fingers finding her already wet and open for him. He stroked her slowly at first, learning the exact pressure that made her breath hitch, the circle of his thumb that drew a broken sound from her throat. When he pushed two fingers inside her she arched, nails digging into his shoulders, and he made a low sound of approval against her mouth.
Christ, he breathed, watching her face in the dark as best he could. You are—look at you.
She reached between them and wrapped her hand around his cock, stroking the hard length of him once, twice, feeling him pulse against her palm. He shuddered and caught her wrist, pinning it gently beside her head.
If you keep doing that I will not last, he warned, voice strained. And I intend to take my time with you.
He settled between her thighs, the blunt head of him pressing against her entrance. For a moment he simply held there, breathing hard, giving her every chance to change her mind. When she lifted her hips in clear invitation he pushed in—slow, controlled, until he was buried to the hilt. The stretch made her cry out softly into his shoulder; the fullness made him drop his forehead to hers with a broken sound.
They stayed like that for several heartbeats, adjusting, feeling each other. Then he began to move. Long, deep strokes at first—almost reverent—then harder as her legs locked around his waist and she met every thrust. The wet sound of their bodies filled the narrow room, quiet enough not to wake the sleeping child a few feet away. He kissed her through it, swallowing her moans, one hand braced beside her head, the other sliding down to grip her thigh and open her wider. When she clenched around him he cursed under his breath and drove deeper.
Harder, she whispered against his mouth.
He gave it to her—faster, rougher, the careful control fraying. His hand found her clit again, rubbing in tight circles that made her thighs tremble. She came with a sharp, muffled cry against his shoulder, pulsing around him, and he followed a few thrusts later, burying himself deep and spilling inside her with a low, raw sound that sounded almost like her name.
Afterward they lay tangled together in the dark, sweat cooling on their skin, her head against his chest and his arms locked around her in a way that felt, absurdly, safer than anything the ordinary world had offered her in years. He pressed his lips once, lightly, to her hair, and murmured, so quietly she almost missed it, that he had not known, until tonight, that a man made of ash and accounting could still feel something so entirely, dangerously alive.
This cannot happen again, he said afterward, into the dark, in a voice that did not sound as though it believed itself.
I know, she said, and did not believe it either, and felt him tighten his arms around her instead of releasing them, which told her everything his words had failed to.
She woke once, deep in the dark hours, to find him still and watchful above her, tracing the spiral mark on her wrist with one careful finger as though he might, by sheer attention, will it to stop growing, and when she asked him what he was thinking, he told her only that he was trying to memorise the shape of her hand before the world outside the tower remembered to come looking for them both, and she found she could not decide whether that answer frightened her or simply made her hold him tighter.
They did not sleep, in the end, so much as rest in the particular suspended peace of two people who both know a reckoning is coming and have decided, for one stolen night, not to let it arrive early. It was Rosalind who woke them near dawn, her voice small and frightened in the grey light filtering through the broken roof.
Elodie. Someone's posted something on the tower gate.
They found it nailed to the outer door when they crept out to look, a broadsheet bearing a crude likeness of Elodie's face and a sum of money large enough to feed half of Thistlewick for a year, and beneath it, in Thorne's own unmistakable hand, a promise that any soul in the region who brought her before the magistrate's hall, alive, would want for nothing ever again.
He has made me a hunted thing in front of the whole kingdom, Elodie said, staring at her own crudely drawn face staring back at her from the nailed paper, and thinking, with a lurch of nausea, of every farmer and toll-keeper and hungry traveller between here and the coast who would now look at her twice before deciding whether the coin was worth the risk of crossing a woman rumoured to consort with the Hollow itself.
Caelan's hand found the small of her back, steady, and when she looked up at him his eyes had gone the hard, banked colour she had seen once before in the market square, and he said only, then he has made a mistake he will not have long to regret, in a voice that told her the quiet, patient accounting of the Wraith King had, for her sake, begun to give way to something considerably less patient.