Author's Preface
Clive rushed around the stairs at her. She squealed, tried to get to her feet, but her boots caught on her dress. She fell into the mud. He got closer, so she threw the sheathed machete at him. It bounced off his legs as he recognized her.
“What are you–Delilah?” he asked, utter exasperation dripping from his voice.
Lighting revealed Clive’s worried, confused expression as much as her own shock.
“What are you doing out here? Let’s–come on, you can’t stay out here like this,” he told her, his voice softening as he offered a hand. She clung to her bag, shaking her head.
“I’ll fight you like a black-toothed fae! Don’t you touch me!”
Clive grabbed her arm. She yelped, jumped at him, and bit his forearm through his shirt. He recoiled and held his bite mark. He glared at her, resisting the urge to tell her exactly what he thought of her family.
“I won’t let you take me!” she yelled.
“I DON’T WANT YOU!” Clive thundered.
Delilah froze in shock, the rain filling the silence between them. He held the bite, panting and hating her.
“I only want Claudia, not you. Stop being like this and get inside,” he grumbled.
“Just let me out of the gate. I don’t–”
“Climb the stairs and go inside, now.”
He pointed with a rigid finger at the staircase with a hard glare. She huffed and puffed, getting to her feet and struggling with her bag. Clive grunted, picking the bag up with one hand from behind, so she unsnapped it, letting him take it.
“It’s not heavy, just awkward,” she said.
“Go!”
Delilah pouted, but went. She climbed the stairs, went through the large door, and stopped in the center of the guard tower, dripping rainwater on a circular blue rug. A large bed, a desk with a stack of books, candles, weapons hanging on a wall, and a large drawstring that led to the emergency bell above them filled the inside.
“Where do you go to the water closet?” she asked, looking around while holding her soaked braid. Clive set her things by the door and latched it closed.
“There’s an outhouse. Here,” Clive said, slinging the huge chair from the desk to place it in front of her. “Make yourself at home and dampen more of my things.”
“Don’t be rude,” she snapped.
“I’ll be as rude as I want to be when you’re in my guardhouse after curfew. Sit.” Clive plopped on the floor against the wall, and she sat. “Where are you trying to go?” he asked. He sat with his knees up, his wrists resting, and his head cocked to the side, already tired of her presence.
With a strong chin and heavy brow, he was the ideal man to guard things and hate enemies. Delilah noticed she did not draw blood where she bit him, and regretted not biting harder.
“I’m leaving for Caldea. I have my things and a plan,” she said, her gray eyes set on him.
“Right,” he drawled out, “And you plan on selling yourself or?”
“How deplorable!”
“What else do you have to do?” he asked, flinging a hand at her.
“I make and sell soap!”
“ Soap ?”
Her cheeks flushed. “I’m really good at it!”
“Delilah, you’re not that simple; please don’t be this simple.” He groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You’re running away to avoid me, right? Well, take heart, peaches, you can go home and rest assured I will not come for you in the night.”
Delilah flipped her braid behind her head with a headshake, and Clive sighed.
“It’s not to avoid you as much as it is to escape an unwanted marriage. You have Claudia and I don’t want to get in anyone else’s way. If you don’t come for me, my mother will find someone else, and I doubt he will be half as agreeable as you.” She shrank in her seat, feeling silly as she admitted it. Clive’s eyes softened, part of him admiring her honesty.
“I know you’re not the type to play the games your mother sets. Going to Caldea in a storm, alone and without money, isn’t wise–no matter what plan you have.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, her tone taking a desperate edge. “It's to marry someone that my mother chose, or stay alone in my dowry house, preventing my brothers and sisters from marrying while living in debt. I’m the only one who’s not sought after, and I am a stain on my mother’s reputation. I would prevent them from marriage as much as I would be under my mother’s glare daily if I’m not married.”
Clive rested his hands on his knees and considered her words. Delilah shivered and hugged herself with a frown.
“I can’t marry you because I need to marry Claudia as soon as possible. I am waiting for my grandmother to finish making the wedding quilt, but I don’t know if I have time. She’s…eight weeks.”
Delilah’s jaw fell a little, and a part of her judged Claudia.
“She’s expecting?”
Clive nodded and shrugged. “We were supposed to be married in the spring, but her father did not approve of the house until recently.”
“So I need to go, or I would break apart a family. Fine. Just–open the gate and I’ll leave.”
“Nope. Listen, do you even know the way to Caldea? I doubt your father let you go on trading trips, did he?” Clive asked.
“No, but I’m sure there are signs.”
“There’s not,” he said. “Besides, you’ll be attacked by the cursed ones ten yards from the gate. They lurk out there waiting for someone they can kidnap.”
Delilah grimaced. “There’s no such thing as cursed beasts. That’s just what they told us so we wouldn’t leave the village as kids.”
Clive cut his eyes at her, holding her in a glare for a moment, debating telling her he had seen them himself at the gate and heard them whistling to the midnight moon.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
Delilah squeezed her arms and watched the storm through the windows. “Maybe in the morning I can leave for Caldea. There should be traders I can follow.”
Clive chewed on the side of his cheek and dropped his gaze to the floor.
“If you’re determined to go, I might have another option for you.”
Delilah perked up, dropping her hands to her lap and giving him her rapt attention.
“What is it? You’ll take me tonight?”
He shook his hand at her. “No, no–not me. I, um, found a fae inside after curfew and had to throw him in the jail for safekeeping overnight.”
Her eyebrows furrowed, and she nodded for him to continue.
“He said that he is the son of a fae lord and is here looking for someone without a burden. He had a contract with him saying he would pay a lump sum of the person’s weight in gold if they did a job for him.”
“A job?” she asked quietly, watching him shrug.
“Yeah, my point is, if you’re sure you’re leaving, I bet he’d hire you. He called it an adventure, but it’s more or less a job.”
Her eyebrows raised. “I can't trust him; fae are tricksters and liars. Their burdens make them untrustworthy, and they hate us because we have perfect bones,” she regurgitated quickly.
“I know, I know, but if you’re determined to make money and leave the village, this could be it for you. You can go do this job with this nice guy and then come back with enough money that you won’t need to marry. It would give me time to kidnap Claudia.”
“It would,” she whispered, thinking quickly. “Do you think I should?”
“Yes, honestly. I have him in jail if you want to talk to him; I’ll take you to him tonight.”
Delilah paused in languid thought, watching Clive.
“Okay, let’s go talk to him. I can decide when I’m there,” Delilah said.