“Come on, Ever. Give me one,” Maddox whines the moment he climbs out of the saddle and ties his mount to the post.
If he tries to stick his grubby hand in my box one more fucking time, I will cut it clean off.
“The ignorant Seelie clearly does not understand the implications of what she has done,” Gryff points out, tying his reins next to Maddox’s, his own beast snorting and shaking its massive head, just as surly as its owner.
Hearing him call Kerris “ignorant Seelie” makes me want to deck him, yet my fists remain at my sides. “I know that.” If she understood what it meant, she absolutely would not have handed the box to me—to any of us.
But the fact of the matter is, shedid.
Now this gift is mine and if anyone else so much as sniffs it, their life is forfeit.
Maddox crosses his arms and props himself up against the hitching post as our steeds lap at the fresh water we added to the trough. Some might think giving animals our immortal water is a waste, and to those people, I say: try to haul the jugs from Rosehill without them.
“What if shedoesunderstand?” Maddox taps a finger against his chin as if deep in thought. I almost laugh. The words “deep” and “thought” do not suit him.
For some senseless reason, I find myself hoping that Kerris might have known what this gift means. The female may be Seelie, but surely, she would have been taught at some point what it means to give an unmarried Unseelie a gift of sustenance.
Not that I would consider the box of whatever these are sustenance, but they are almost edible, so I suppose they loosely fit the definition.
Maddox clasps my face between his hands, squishing my cheeks like the elders do to the younglings in camp. “What if she saw this face and fell instantly in love?”
I shove him away, and the bastard uses my distraction to steal the box from my saddle bag.
I sweep my leg, catching him off guard and knocking him flat on his ass. The box skids toward one of the many puddles, but I manage to snag it before the thing gets ruined. Clutching the gift to my chest with one hand, I whip my dagger from my belt with the other, pressing the blade to Maddox’s bobbing gullet. “Touch them again, and I will slit your throat.”
The maddening fool twists his head to shoot Gryffin a grin. “I think you are right, Gryff. There is no way she knew what that gift meant.”
“Fuck you.” He cannot know that. When Gryff chuckles, I turn on him. “Fuck you, too.” They are supposed to be my best friends; they should be trying to help me figure this out instead of making fun of me.
I carry my box to my barrel-top and sink onto the stairs. The flat, round things inside smell strange. When I turn one over, crumbs skitter across my lap.
I take a bite and…
They are exactly as awful as they were at the well. The more I chew, the drier it gets, not to mention it is so sweet my teeth ache. By some miracle, I manage to swallow the chunk down without gagging.
Nyx nudges my shoulder with his muzzle, huffing and snuffling at the box. “You do not want one. Believe me.”
However, the beast is insistent. Maddox’s burst of laughter from whatever he just said to Gryff sets me on edge. Whether Kerris meant them as anything more or not, they were still a gift, and throwing them out is such a waste.
Although I would rather give the things to my mount than any of the other males in the camp.
So I lift the lid once more and hold one out to Nyx.
He takes the thing between his big, flat teeth and grinds them to dust, spilling even more crumbs down my trousers. One after the other, I feed them to him until they are gone, and then he goes back to the patch of grass between my home and Maddox’s.
Maddox meanders over, flopping himself onto my bottom step and giving my knee a nudge. “All jokes aside, can I at least try one?”
“They are gone.”
“Liar.”
I show him the empty box.
“You are some bastard, you know that?” His scowl is short-lived, replaced by a glint in his eyes. “What is Leah Locke going to say when she finds out another female cooked for you?”
I had not thought about that.
If I am being honest, I have not thought about Leah since the moment I heard Kerris’s name. I fiddle with the hilt of my dagger, this close to ramming the blade into his thigh. Would serve him right for sticking his nose where it does not belong. “Who is going to tell her?”