Zero Affection Behind His Vows Chapter 07

Zero Affection Behind His Vows Chapter 07 The Wound on Her Wrist

The sprites exploded.

Toly crap! How did Wren know?”

“There’s a wound on Clara’s wrist? Did she do that herself?”

“So she really did stage the whole kidnapping?”.

“It isn’t like that. I scratched it by accident.” Clara scrambled to explain, and the tears came harder.

Callum looked at her, then at me, and for the first time, something like real confusion crossed his face.

I lay back down on the straw and pulled a thin hide up over my shoulders. “I’m going to rest now. You can both see yourselves out.”

Callum stood there and didn’t move for a long time. In the end, he put an arm around Clara’s shoulders almost by reflex, turned, and pushed out through the curtain.

As the curtain fell I heard Clara crying under her breath, and then Callum, worn all the way through. “Clara, let’s just go home.”

The two sprites started cheering.

“Yes! That was so good!”

“He’s starting to doubt her!”

“Go, Wren! Make him regret it until he cries!”

I closed my eyes.

The countdown blinked at 6 days, 18 hours, 22 minutes.

The game was still running, but the rules had started to change.

Two more days went by, most of the scab came off my neck, and I could talk without fighting for it.

Verna brought it up while she was changing the dressing. “Caravan pulls out at first light. You going with them?”

I sat up on the straw and watched the light coming in from outside. “Yes.”

She didn’t push it. She pressed a small bundle of dried meat and herbs into my hands. “For the road. The caravan runs north to Crescent Lake. That’s outside the lion king’s reach.”

I took the bundle and weighed it in my palm.

There was one thing I wanted to do before I left.

The Dustmarket filled up at dusk.

I had Verna help me prop a flat slate against the wall outside the lodge door, and I wrote across it in charcoal, Six Years Caged in the Goldmane Pride.

Beastkin passing by craned their necks at it, and at first, only three or four crouched down to ask what it said.

Inside of a few minutes, 30 or 40 of them had packed in around the slate.

The ones stuck at the back went up on their toes and shoved forward, and the short ones climbed anything that would hold them.

Two young beastkin settled on the grass roof over the lodge door.

I raised my voice over the crowd. “My name is Wren Frost. Most of you know me as the female the lion king was about to bond with. That was true, once. I’ve got a few things to tell you, mostly about somebody who spent six years in a cage and nearly got choked to death in a lodge room.”