to my mouth and tried to be discreet when I inhaled. It smelled clean, no magic, poisons or other familiar dangers, and the whiff of mouthwatering fragrance perked up my stomach. The brown color made me think of beef. Living in Texas, well, everything made me think of beef. But there weren’t any cows in Faerie.
Instead of asking what sort of creature donated its bones to the pot, I waited for Raven to serve himself. Once he joined me at the table, I tucked into my meal.
The faint smile Raven wore as he ate concerned me, but not enough to bother asking him a question when I figured he would tap dance around the answer. Though I would have preferred some conversation to drown out the scraping of our spoons on porcelain, I wasted no time talking that could be spent eating. The faster I emptied my bowl, the quicker we left and the closer I came to going home.
Chapter Eighteen
My toes were tapping while I waited for Raven to finish his meal. When Bháin entered the room with a leather-wrapped parcel in his arms, I figured it must have been a delivery made while the lord of the manor was in the mortal realm. My surprise was genuine when he brought it to me instead.
“A gift from the master.” Bháin extended his arms so I could do the honors. “It won’t bite.”
This time the throat cleared was Raven’s.
Bháin lowered his head. “Forgive my familiarity, lady.”
“You’re fine.” I recoiled from the parcel. “I can’t accept that, whatever it is.”
“You must if you’re going to survive the rest of the journey.” Raven pushed to his feet and came to my side. He murmured in Bháin’s ear and then relieved him of the package. “You are dismissed.”
His response chimed like thousands of crystal glasses toasting the beauty of the sidhe language.
Raven’s expression darkened, and he responded in kind, his tone shattering the fragile beauty of the previous comments, a hammer that smashed those crystalline words into ragged shards.
Fascination tuned me in deeper to their conversation than was polite, but I lacked the facilities to understand their language, let alone speak it.
Raven raised his hand in Bháin’s face. “Enough. Your point has been made.”
Trying to affect a casual air before they deigned to notice me again, I faced straight forward and examined the frosted wall opposite me. Good thing I had glossed over its bleak portrait grouping before I ate.
I wasn’t much for beheadings.
Bháin cleared my place and then the rest of the table without uttering another sound. He finished and left me in the hall alone with Raven, who clutched the bundle to his chest while unlacing the ties.
“Be careful who you give your trust.” He snapped a knotted cord. “Even the guileless carry swords here.”
“I am being careful.” The broth had done wonders for clearing my head. “I appreciate what you have done for me so far, but I can’t accept a gift from you without further obligating myself.”
He dropped the bundle onto the table in front of me. “It’s your choice. Live to negotiate for your mother’s safe return. Or die before we reach the Halls of Winter and leave her at her captors’ mercy.”
“What you’re saying is I have no choice.” I toyed with the wrapping. “No surprise given how I came to be here.”
Well and truly stuck, I opened the parcel. “Is that armor?”
I lifted the topmost piece, a molded-leather breastplate I bet a month’s salary would hug all my curves. How those curves had been measured, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. A black shirt was under that. A pair of pants covered in lightweight scales sat on the bottom of the stack. No. I was wrong. Socks were in there too. What worried me most was the outfit reeked of magic...and elves. Not that it was wholly unexpected. Children’s stories limited elves’ creativity to footwear, but they crafted whatever struck their fancy. Armor included.
Those stories had been exaggerated in other ways too. Some fae were content to work for honey or other relatively inexpensive or common items. Cobbling elves weren’t one of them, and whoever went through the trouble of making and enchanting this outfit... They were walking around several gold bars lighter.
Raven caressed my cheek. “Try it on.”
“No.” I shoved the mound of clothing aside. “It’s too much. I can’t accept it.”
His other hand rose to smooth his forehead. “You are picking the wrong battles.”
“I’m protecting myself the best way I know how.” No