The man wanted Prim alive, that much was clear.

He hadn’t hurt her, not once, not even when she tried to kill him in the alley. And he had intended to save her, thinking the berries she’d collected were poisoned. She decided he must have been telling the truth about her abduction only being about money, then. If it had been a vendetta, he likely would have just slit her throat and be done with it. Or tortured her, depending on how much hate he held in his heart.

But he’d done nothing of the sort.

Prim watched as he made another bed out of twigs. He’d done it twice now, making her comfortable when he could have let her sleep on the ground. He’d fed her, even finding rabbits despite the plethora of squirrels running around. He’d given her privacy when needed. He’d even slowed his pace once he realized her short strides couldn’t keep up with his long ones. As far as kidnappers went, Prim supposed she’d hit the jackpot.

The man finished her bed and sat back down against the big tree in their little camp. He stretched one long leg out in front of him, bending the other to place his foot flat on the ground and resting his arm atop his thigh. “Sleep.”

She didn’t understand the need for him to tell her to sleep or eat. Whether he was a human or not, surely he knew that one will sleep when they are tired and eat when they are hungry without having to be commanded—same as shifters or fae. Even when they had stopped to slake their thirst throughout the day, he had uttered Drink as they approached the water’s edge each time. Given the debacle with the berries, perhaps he really thought she was just too dumb to know to do these things. She gritted her teeth at the thought.

“I’m not tired,” she lied. The man didn’t speak much while they were walking. If she was going to learn more about him and who he was taking her to, she’d have better luck doing it when they were resting.

“What’s your name?” She expected his silence and filled it cheerily. “Then I shall name you.”

He cocked his head to the side, almost imperceptibly, but she noticed.

Brody would be a good name for him, given how brooding he was. Blackie would be a little too on the nose for a man whose only distinguishable feature was his head to toe black ensemble, though there was a dog in the stables named such for his pure black coat.

“Are you human or shifter?” He hadn’t let her get close enough to him in the light of day to see his eyes well enough to tell. She couldn’t see his ears to see if they were pointed, but he couldn’t be fae because he had no wings. The silence dragged on, punctuated by the crickets and rustling of a forest at night. “Come on, you won’t even tell me that?”

“Does it matter? Given your love for Maria, I assumed you tolerated mith. Or is it only fae you consider your equal?”

Prim didn’t think about his words for a moment. She only thought about Roan, the shifter who would surely know by now that she was missing. Would Kallia and Bristol have told him she was out of the complex? He would never forgive her for putting herself in danger like that. For lying to him, making him think she was going straight back to her room after leaving him. She pushed away the sinking feeling in her stomach.

“Con. I will call you Con because you are so contrary and contentious.”

Con shook his head, obviously not as entertained by this conversation as she was. “Do as you wish, Princess. I’m sure you have your entire life.” He cleared his throat after, as if realizing she didn’t. The letter to Maria was proof of that.

“Is your brother older or younger?” He had already shared that he had a brother, so perhaps he’d be amenable to speaking about him.

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Con flexed the fingers of the arm he had propped on his thigh as they dangled down. “Older.”

“And is he proud of you? You must be good at what you do to be entrusted with such precious cargo.” She gestured to herself, allowing a smile meant to disarm him to play upon her lips.

The fabric covering his mouth shifted. Perhaps stroking his ego had loosened him up.

“My brother is long dead.” Or perhaps not.

Prim immediately felt guilty for pressing, though Con’s voice held no sorrow, only calm indifference. Perhaps they hadn’t been close. “I’m sorry,” she offered all the same.

“You should be,” Con said quietly before shifting his position, dropping his other leg.

Con’s comments about body counts fluttered through her mind and her chest tightened.

“How did he die?” The words seem to echo between them despite being barely more than a breath. Was his brother among those deaths he considered to be her fault?

Con stood up as swift as an arrow. “Sleep.”

He snaked through the brush that encircled them before she could apologize again, leaving her with nothing to do but curl up on the twig bed and obey.

#

Prim woke once through the night to find Con had returned and was sleeping on the ground across the clearing, not bothering to make himself a bed. Somehow, she found herself happy to see him, to know she wasn’t alone in the forest in the middle of the night with wolves--and perhaps worse--around. She drifted back to sleep, knowing she was safe. For now.

When the camp was filled with the golden light of dawn, Prim roused entirely. Con was already awake, watching her. He stood up as she shifted, warning her they would be off in ten minutes. She used the time to gather more berries.

The pair stopped midday to rest, Con cooking a single rabbit for them to split. Before he snuffed the flames, Prim dropped Maria’s letter in and watched the parchment burn. She had no use for it now. Con watched her as she took a seat against a tree, then sat next to her, the closest he’d ever come in the daylight, and held the meat between them. She saw his eyes now. They were brown and utterly human.

She didn’t comment on it, didn’t want to spook him when he was just starting to let his guard down. Instead, she picked off a piece of meat, murmuring her thanks. Con seemed to blink at that, not bothering to say You’re welcome, Princess in that insulting tone of his.

Then, the unmistakable sound of enormous beating wings filled the air. Prim’s neck strained on instinct, thrusting her gaze skyward as a dragon passed overhead, its charcoal scales glinting in the noon sun. The beast did not slow. It wasn’t looking for her. When she lowered her gaze, she found Con was still watching her.

“Is that the first time you’ve seen one?”

He must know that there were no dragon whisperers in the royal employ. That dragons themselves had been banned from Hogard for centuries, the enormous crossbolts on the tops of the turrets ready to strike down any that dared to approach the castle. The decree had been made immediately after a devastating attack that claimed the life of half the royal family at the time.

“Of course not.” It was actually the fourth dragon she’d seen in her lifetime. Her duties did take her outside the royal city on occasion, though dragons were still rare enough in the South that she hadn’t seen them often.

They finished their meal in silence, and Prim stretched her legs in an attempt to lessen the soreness of so much walking over the past couple of days. She supposed she would need to get used to it if they were going to be on the road for six weeks. Either that, or she needed to get the information about who hired Con out quicker so she could leave all this behind and get back to Hogard before her legs fell off.

She pulled out the berries she had collected from their last camp and placed them between her outstretched legs. She scooped up a handful and tilted her head back, dropping a few in her open mouth. Then she opened her palm toward Con, silently offering him some. She felt Con watching her from the corner of her eye, still sitting next to her, their legs only inches apart.

He gingerly plucked a few of the sweet round berries from her hand and, after examining them as he had last night, popped a couple into his mouth. “Thanks. We should be close to Sartu. I think we’ll be there tomorrow. I’ll buy you that tavern meal and we can stay overnight in an inn.”

Sartu was a town close enough to one of the major trade routes to have such luxuries, but far enough to not be a traveler’s first choice of a rest destination. Con knew what he was doing. It was unlikely they would find any royal guards there. But this was a good sign. He was definitely letting his walls down.

“That would be lovely. Thank you, Con.” She smiled at him in the way that had most men falling over themselves, but he only stood up, eating the last of the berries he had accepted.

“Time to go, Princess.”