Monsters Under Mistletoe

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

N ettle had been enjoying the cozy warmth of sleeping on top of Silver, his large hand gently caged over her, his thumb under her cheek. It had been a while since she'd slept so well.

There was a sense of security, even gentleness, in feeling the rise and fall of his chest under her. His presence simply enveloped hers. She had heard other fey speak of the world falling away when they were with their lovers, but she hadn’t heard anyone say how a lover could become the world.

Oh, what was she thinking? How could she let her heart be so easily swayed by a night together? Nettle winced in memory. She had been na?ve before, and she knew the consequences.

She had not meant to cuddle up to him, but what had started as a precaution was quickly becoming far more personal.

As she blinked awake in the dim morning light, she found herself watching Silver’s throat, the long, slow breaths nearly putting her back to sleep.

Then a glint of light off a gossamer strand, and a black and yellow striped spider dangling near his cheek, lowering itself.

She pushed up on her elbows immediately and flitted upwards. The spider started scrambling in midair as she plucked the silk a few inches up the strand, lifting it away from the bounty hunter’s face. It failed to climb back up the silk as she flew it over the diminished campfire, and she watched it curl up into a ball as she dropped it on the embers.

Silver wouldn’t know she just saved him from a venomous bite, not that she was keeping score.

She glanced back at him, still asleep on the ground.

There was something almost sweet about the way his face looked, relaxed instead of glowering. The night before had been something else. It scorched her cheeks and flooded her belly with heat to remember riding his cock piercing.

If she was at her Fey Court, it would have been her utmost priority to find a mulberry bush and find one berry that was ripe to bursting, so that even the lightest touch stained her fingertips. She would have dabbed its color on her cheeks, her lips, the way she did whenever she had wanted to make another fey jealous with the illusion of being freshly kissed.

What do you care? He’s not going to be jealous of anything. Not for you. Silly fey.

Still, she found a puddle in one corner of the dried well bottom to watch her reflection as she combed her fingers through her hair.

Behind her, Silver groaned and woke, pushing up on an elbow. She met his eye and dropped it just as quickly.

She’d been so brazen last night, but something about the flicker of firelight had emboldened her. Now she could barely look at him without blushing. Something about the morning light made it seem presumptuous to just land atop his morning wood and ask if he’d like another round.

Nettle dared a glance at him when he separated the remaining embers of the fire with the leather toe of his boot. His eye caught hers again, and he raised his brows at her. “Ready to get going?”

A tension that had been building between her shoulders eased.

“Sure,” she said, standing and brushing herself off. She was about to take to the air when he offered out a hand. She took a step up to his palm, balancing herself with a hand on his thumb.

He brought her up to his shoulder. Nettle might have leaped out of his palm a touch faster than she should have, but she'd only been eyeing the expanse of his shoulders since first setting eyes on him.

Nettle sprawled across his shoulder, looking at the world from his height.

Or that was what she pretended as he set off down the winding tunnel, the carved ruins of the gauntlet becoming tall and expansive. But her attention kept returning to his tusks, wondering what it would be like to sit herself between them.

It was extremely disorienting to wonder how she would make that a reality. When would she find the time to burn incandescent under his precise and careful attention? The thought of returning home loomed, along with the knowledge that she’d never know an experience like that again.

There also wasn’t any good way to ask if he’d consider desecrating a pile of gold with her. Perhaps that wasn’t done.

“Silver, um. Was last night the sort of thing that normally happens on adventures?”

She watched the profile of his face as he raised a brow. “You mean do I make a habit of sleeping with clients?”

“No,” she said quickly, and stammered to add, “I've … never, I mean, not someone I knew only so briefly.”

Silver chuckled. “Sometimes all it takes is being two bodies alone in the wilds. I stopped letting people come along. Only took jobs from the board.”

“Oh. I’m … sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault I’m easily persuaded. Something lonely in me thought: it’s been a while since anyone knew me long enough to remember my name.”

She wasn’t sure what she had expected his answer to be, and perhaps it didn’t really matter. There was always going to be a chasm of differences between them, and all her question had done was widen her view of the gap. She’d hoped, perhaps, for a moment, that it would have been as special and unique an evening to him as it had been to her, that she wasn’t alone in all the fluttery feelings she’d been starting to have.

It was just another thing she wasn’t suited for outside the Fey Court.

They walked in silence a long while, until the final chamber door came into view. Nettle slipped off of Silver’s shoulder, darting through the air to it.

The door was smaller than Silver, but several times larger than herself, a circle carved into the wall. A pinprick hole in the center let out the smallest amount of light, an unfocused peek into the chamber.

Nettle placed her hands around it, working her magic into the lock. She gritted her teeth, summoning her glow. It was like trying to light damp tinder.

“Easy does it, Firebug,” Silver murmured. “We’re not in a rush.”

Her wings drooped, despite his reassurance. “And if I can’t unlock it?”

He shrugged, and flashed that tusked smile at her. “We break it down.”

Nettle couldn't help but smile back a little. She doubted her Fey Court would let her back in if they learned she vandalized the sacred spring, but she appreciated his tenacity all the same.

It took several more moments to summon her magic, but like stagnant blood into cold hands, finally it came. Leaves of mistletoe, in the palest of greens, unfurled inside the lock.

A heavy grinding noise came, stone against stone as the magic worked, and the shape of the door pushed out from the wall.

It should have kept opening, but like last time, the door stopped.

This was as much as she'd accomplished the previous time she had reached this far, but it hadn't been enough. Even though this was the whole point of bringing someone else along, she couldn't help but feel she had failed again.

“That’s my girl,” Silver said, even as her wings drooped again. His words wicked off her like water on duck feathers. He stepped forward and grabbed the stone door.

A mean thought pierced her for a moment, as he pushed and readjusted his hands on it, that he wouldn't be able to open the door either. She didn't truly want it, but maybe it would have made her feel better about failing.

But Silver's sheer muscle succeeded where her magic had not.

The entire wall at the end of the tunnel shifted, a mechanism taking the weight of it and rolling into an underground pocket. Silver looked to Nettle with a grin, and gestured for her to go in.

The spring was just as she'd been told. The cavern was large, the ceiling obscured by a swath of hanging roots and vines. They were deep under the Whispering Woods. A few stray beams of light shone through the mass, the largest of them highlighting the spring on the far end of the chamber, shining on the Fey Spring. Small rivulets of water glimmered as they ran down a raw amethyst wall, gathering in a carved basin below.

She looked back at Silver, ducking through the low door behind her, watched his face as he looked around, taking the scattered piles and chests of gold doubloons, bejeweled rings and crowns spilling out across the ornate stone floor, carved in the same style as the gauntlet leading to it.

She flitted down the path, landing just on the edge of the basin. Nettle tucked her wings in. Her heart beat rapidly.

This was it, everything she had been waiting for. Finally, she could stop worrying about what was wrong with her. She would glow again.

Nettle scooped up a handful of the water, drank it, and waited.

And waited.

“It’s not working. It’s not ... it didn’t fix me.” Her voice choked on the words.

She hadn't found what she had wanted out in the world. She couldn’t go back, and she couldn’t move forward. Maybe when she first set out on this pointless quest, she’d wanted adventure and new experiences, only to discover she wasn’t built for them.

All of this had been for nothing.

Silver’s footsteps echoed off the cavern walls, the crackle of gold under boot. With every passing heartbeat, she felt smaller, less.

“Nettle, what can I do?”

“Go. Take your treasure. Your job is done.”

“Nettle …”

“I said go .”

He stayed.

“You can’t help me. I should have done this alone. But … it’s all too big for me. I can’t get anything right out here,” Nettle said, her voice wobbling over every word, sobs threatening to break past the dam in her chest. She couldn’t even speak right.

“C’mon, Firebug. We got this far, haven't we?”

He took another step forward, his expression soft and full of concern, trained on her.

Click.

He froze. “Well, shit.”

Click click click. The sounds grew louder, deeper, running beneath the chamber, gears winding, mechanisms being triggered. The floor began to shake, the soft jingle of coins as the piles of gold rattled and spilled into the cracks between tiles. Soon the tiles themselves were becoming unmoored, falling away as easily as the treasure.

Silver dashed back towards the entrance tunnel, diving for the doorway as all but the last steps of the floor crumbled away. He caught himself on the edge, his legs dangling off the edge.

Nettle shot after him, catching hold of his sleeve just as one of his hands slipped.

She knew she could never hope to lift him, but she didn’t know what else to do but try. Her hands burned as the fabric of his sleeve yanked through her hands. Squeezing her eyes shut, her wings worked furiously. Every muscle screamed, but she couldn’t stop.

“Nettle!” Silver exclaimed, causing her to look up.

The roots from the ceiling, the ones that had been bare and dry and craggley, were suddenly a vivid green–no, something else had sprouted from them. A thick tangled mass of little oval leaves on crisscrossing stems, peppered with little waxy white berries.

When Nettle saw them growing down to her, aided by the coppery sparkles of her magic, she nearly let go of his sleeve.

“For the love of–don’t stop now,” Silver growled.

He grabbed a fistful of the hanging plants. Some branches snapped, but most of them held. He let go of the ledge and grabbed another handful of the mistletoe growing down to meet him.

Nettle clutched his sleeve as he hefted himself onto the ledge, back into the gauntlet.

A thousand apologies on the tip of her tongue along with worries that he’d gotten hurt, she flitted to his side as he laid on the tunnel floor and caught his breath.

“My pixie protector,” Silver grinned between heavy inhales. Nettle blinked. She hadn’t been prepared for that.

After several more breaths, Silver propped himself up on his elbows, glancing at the massive chasm in the ground. “I doubt ‘sorry’ covers all that. But also, who rigs an entire cavern to collapse?”

“You’re sorry? I risked your life for nothing.”

“You also saved me. We’ll call it even.”

“We’re not even. You’ve saved me many times already. The centipede, t-the toadbird at the b-bar would have eaten me in one gulp if you hadn’t stopped it–”

Even as she listed them, her voice started to falter with emotion.

“Needing a little help isn’t a sign that you can’t handle being out in the world. I brought the toadbird inside,” Silver reminded her. He glanced from the spring behind her, back to her. “Look, you’ve led us through the gauntlet. You’ve saved me from blunders I would have made without you here.”

Nettle didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what response she could give but an unconvinced hum. She stared deep into the chasm numbly. The amethyst wall and the spring were buried under the rubble, as well as all the treasure.

“Did you at least get some gold out of it?”

“A few coins. A bit below my day rate,” Silver shrugged, “But it happens. Least it’s not less than what I started with.”

She closed her eyes, counting down the seconds until she felt Silver pinch the tips of her wings, pulling her off the ground to perch on his chest. She couldn’t help but lay down on him as well, after all that chaos. His heart beat fast underneath her.

“You’ve got your glow,” he said, running his thumb absently along her knee to her hip.

Nettle looked down. She hadn’t even realized, she’d been so concerned with getting out of there alive. It was there, flickering with the heart pounding thrill of having escaped.

She saw now the pattern that was emerging: every new, exciting thing she tried brought it back. Living in a court she'd long outgrown, the passion in her life had faded, and with it, her glow.

But his next words cut into the triumph of having it back.

“Back to your Fey Court, then?”

Nettle was silent for a long time. She felt like her heart might fall out of her mouth if she said any of the ways she was falling for him, bit by bit. Already she had to let what had been building between them go.

“Maybe ... not just yet.”

He caught her eye and raised a brow.

“You know … there’s a crypt not too far from here. It’s got a lock I haven’t been able to pick,” he offered, voice low and soft.

Her wings perked up, as he traced the tip of his finger up and down her leg. Her glow flared again under his touch, at the thought of more adventures to come.

“I suppose I could do you the favor.”

Silver suppressed a smile, badly. “You’re sure? It’s awful dangerous.”

Nettle flitted forward a little, buzzing in the air above him, placing a hand on his cheek to steady herself. “That’s ok, you can protect me.”

“Volunteering my services, now, am I?”

“While you’re at it, you should buy me another drink when we get back to the tavern.”

“You know, I never aspired to be a doormat,” he murmured as she took a step onto his chin.

“And yet life has provided you inspiration?”

Silver glanced up at the ceiling of the cavern, the mistletoe sprouting down from the craggley roots. He grinned wide, “I'll drink to that.”