Oh hell.
“I wasn’t –”
“No excuses, no lies, just take that to heart. Am I understood?”
God, I couldn’t win for losing.
“Understood,” I whispered.
His arms loosened and I rolled away.
He rolled out of the hides.
I watched him walk to the table and thought, I hate, hate, hate this f**king world and I hate, hate, hate Noctorno Whoever-he-is.
And I hate, hate, hated them both so much, I felt the tears spring to my eyes, I rolled to face the wall and prayed I didn’t make any noise with my crying as I listened to him stoking the fire.
Luckily, my prayer was answered.
* * *
“What are you doing?”
Noctorno was speaking from behind me.
I was at the mouth of the cave, the day had a hint of watery sunshine which was an improvement but nothing like the brilliant beauty of the fairytale world I woke up in two days ago and shattered because I inadvertently caused a curse to fall on the land.
I was also shaking out the bed hides.
“Cleaning,” I answered, not turning to him and continuing awkwardly to shake the heavy, huge hide.
“Cleaning,” he repeated after me.
“Yep,” I said, giving up on shaking and I decided to start beating it with my fist.
That worked. Dust flew out everywhere.
Brilliant.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why?” I asked back.
“Yes, why?”
“Because you’re tidy with your bone remains but the rest of the place is filthy.”
“Cora, it’s a cave.”
That made me turn to him.
“I know it’s a cave, Tor.”
I watched his mouth get tight.
Oh Lordy. For some reason, he was getting angry.
Jeez, with him it didn’t take much and this time I didn’t even know what I did. I could hardly be pissing him off by cleaning, could I?