Page 81 of Reap & Sow

The Embel Morrowstones were a short ways through the trees. They stood nearly as tall, these ancient monoliths: silent sentinels guarding the forest in a neat half circle. Much debate was held as to how exactly such colossal structures had been arranged during such a primitive time and for what purpose. Eda liked the mystery of not knowing for sure.

She had no reason to think Kit would be here—only a feeling. She should go back. Women in fables didn’t tend to live long by wandering through dark woods at night. Little that mattered anymore.

“Kit?” The moon’s pale face peeked between the clouds, casting pearlescent light across the clearing. The sounds of nature’s melody were still so new to her: the breeze rustling through the dogwood boughs, a nightingale calling, small animals scurrying in the undergrowth. Eda stepped gingerly through the clearing’s snarl of protruding roots and riotous ivy. The growth lay so thick it swallowed her steps to the ankle.

“Kit?”

The shadows revealed nothing. If he could hear her, he was ignoring her. One more try. “Lord Arsehole!”

A low snort had her casting about.

“Up here.”

She found him then, squatting in that funny way of his atop the centermost monolith. With the horns and tail he looked like a disgruntled gargoyle looming overhead. Eda was sure he hadn’t been there before. Perhaps he’d been in one of his smaller forms, spying on her.

She put her hands on her hips. “I’d like to talk about your strangulation of my brother.”

“What about it?”

“I trust that isn’t a serious question.”

“He started it.”

“Ben’s just concerned for me. You didn’t have to antagonize him.”

Kit’s eyes were twin pinpricks of flame. “And you shouldn’t have to pussyfoot around him like a pot in danger of boiling over. He owes you his life. He should prostrate himself at your feet.”

“You think less of me for not reprimanding him?”

He looked away, churlish. “Who said I think of you at all?”

It stung as a nettle might, brief and depthless. She figured this was simply Kit’s way of pushing her away. He’d lashed out at Ben—that easy return to violence that so unnerved her—but had stopped when she asked it. For all his blood and bluster, he was not cruel. He was not heartless. His curse, she suspected, was a heart that felt too much.

Eda approached the towering stone. Ran her hands over the gnarls of ivy clinging to it like a second skin. “Can you come down?”

“What for?”

“To talk in a civilized manner.”

“No.”

“Fine.” She grabbed a tangle of vines and began to heave herself up.

“The fuck are you doing?”

His alarm only spurred her on. “You might have been raised a lord, but I won’t stand so far beneath you on your great rocky throne. If you won’t come down, I’ll come up.”

“Don’t be a fool, you stubborn little—Stop it!”

“What for?” she parroted.

He made a sound like an angry serpent. In the next instant he was beside her, standing perpendicular on the vertical face on the monolith like a branch spearing from a tree. He bent down and grabbed her arm.

The air fell heavy in a new direction. Eda’s curls drooped forward.

All at once she was kneeling soundly on the rock face rather than trying to scale it, as though it were the ground beneath her. She planted her feet where once her hands had fought for purchase. The gravitation of the earth had changed around them with his touch alone. She held out her arms for balance, fearing she might fall, but Kit’s grip was steady and his power true.

She wondered what someone would make of it, if they wandered into the clearing then. Demonic nonsense, probably—and they’d be right.