“Matchstick?” Rowan blinked at me in the early morning of the sixth day. His sweat had broken, the red flush to his cheeks gone.
I regarded him from my corner next to the fireplace. I hadn’t slept well, and I felt like crap. The pounding headache behind my eyes reminded me that I had yet to find a source of caffeine. “You yourself again?” My voice had sank an octave with the cold damp of morning.
He pressed a hand to his forehead before sitting up to regard the room at large. Farrow, curled against his side, had slipped from heavy sleep to light with our voices. Rowan blinked down at himself, pulling the blanket away to look at what had happened to him. Then the blankets in general. His eyes widened at the bottles and pots on the table. “You took care of us?” He sounded almost indignant. He ran his fingers along the bridge of his nose and across his cheekbones before looking towards Farrow. Sagging at the fact that the man wasn’t giving him whatever attention he was hoping for, Rowan glared back at me.
“Only to within reason.” I grumbled, my teeth feeling sharp under my tongue. I rose and popped my neck.
He frowned, his glare only deepening. I pulled my chord over my head and tugged his key off. “Here.” I tossed it to him. He caught and held it as he kept looking at me. “You actually cognizant now?”
“Yeah,” his voice had turned thick. I raised an eyebrow at that tone. “I don’t remember much of the last few days. Was I…?” Rowan bowed his head, remorse wiggling it’s way in.
“You begged him to press you every chance you got.” Farrow muttered. Rowan swallowed, his eyes going wide. “And he wouldn’t give you a stripe. He got a lot of water and some food down your gullet at least.”
Rowan looked up at me like I had grown a second head. I leaned against the fireplace wall and crossed my arms.
“Why wouldn’t you? We aren’t related by blood or oath. And I-” His cheeks flamed red once again as he came to a strangled hault.
I shifted off the wall and walked over to him. He looked up at me like I had broken his heart. I traced a nail along his stubble. That frown eased. “Because I won’t take advantage of you when you aren’t all here.”
“Why, because you won’t go for someone aiming to become a demon king? Or a Rugoshi? Might kiss me, but you won’t-”
I pushed him down, my hand going to his throat. He stared at me, startled, as my thigh pressed between his legs. I had to be a sight. I dragged in a ragged breath. My ears hurt at how they had gone back with my anger almost flat to my head. “Because that’s fucking rape.” My teeth were showing, the sharp edges making my hiss deeper. “Don’t.” I got off him and stalked out of the room, not before lobbing my chord at Farrow’s buried head. He could take his own key off.
I escaped the inn and made for the restaurant and the Rugoshi restaurant owner. She had picked up on calling me lamb, which I thought was sweet. Two meat pies and a pint of ale later had me less jumpy. “What happened to the two soldiers?” I asked. The restaurant was empty save for me, and she didn’t have anything to do other than lean on the counter to look out the door.
“Back to work with them,” she shrugged. “Can’t stop my sons from looking for something better than this little town. But I’m glad they visit.”
“Oh, they’re yours? That was nice of them to come up.” I made for a bit of small talk. Anything to run out my time before I would need to go back to the inn. The warm room was better than the cold ground now that frost was settling more frequently in the mornings.
“One was, the shorter. The other is his partner. I call them my sons though, seeing as they practically grew up together.” A sad, nostalgic smile crossed her face.
I finished my meal and left her to her memories. I wandered to the edge of the village. Following a well worn trail up into the mountain, I found a small building, not much more than a hut, perched on the cliff. It didn’t look like storage or residential. A quick perusal revealed a little graveyard off the backside. “Will you talk to me here?” I asked the quiet morning. “No. My parents wouldn’t even given a damn ounce of their time. Why would you?”
Sitting, I folded myself into a meditative pose amongst the gravestones and tried tapping into tethers. I didn’t want to summon any of those buried here. What I wanted was to get Death’s attention. I found no tethers. Or blue wisps. It was peaceful and unaffected by the bustle of the village. “I’m not about to start worshiping you here, Death. You didn’t claim to be a god. You didn’t ask me to. But is it like Rowan’s prayers? He gained some powers for an exchange, but he doesn’t actually talk with his gods one on one? I figured you’d at least talk to me.”
A thought occurred to me as I sat with no response yet again after days of me begging. My fangs were sharp enough to get the job done. I bit into my pinky and smudged the couple of thick drops across my palm. “Talk to me, Death.”
The blood bubbled and evaporated. But no Death. It would collect the dead when I called, but it wasn’t liable to reply to my questions. “What? You just a slip ditch dad that only comes calling when he wants something or I’m doing your work?” I hissed. Gods, I was so exhausted. And it wasn’t getting better. I still had to actually talk to them about the plan I had hatched with the apothecary to get them safely through Findou. I just wanted someone to talk to. And a bit of relief. I wasn’t even willing to try that yet, though. That raised a different type of anxiety in me.
I trudged down the slope and back through the village. I snagged up some kind of tuberous vegetable-like baked dinner pie and meat pie for Rowan and Farrow on my way back past the lady who’d been feeding me for the last three days because I couldn’t take the inn’s cooking anymore. I found myself in front of Rowan and Farrow’s door, praying to Death, because so far he was the only thing close enough to be considered a god to me. At least it was no different from everyone else important in my life leaving me to figure things out on my own. “Let this be the right way to do this.”
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Chapel Orahamm 