★ Wattpad Featured: #FreshReads #InHerWords2022
❝You're not taking me to bed. Ever.❞
❝...Who said it had to be on a bed?❞
A disgraced immortal and a legendary folk hero are desperate to locate a blacksmith who can break the enchanted handcuffs that...
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All good things must come to an end.
The massive cart jerked to a stop by the shoreline, spelling an end to their free ride. The passengers inside groaned at yet another senseless delay but quietened once they saw who would be departing.
"Ta-ta, now! Off you go!" The cart driver waved jovially. Xosa and Sunkanmi grabbed their packs and clamored into the wet sand. White gulls cawed overhead and sailed the salt-slick breeze.
"Follow the coast by foot and you'll run right into the Temple of Reminenense. Can't miss it. Just don't stray into the brushland and you will arrive with your skulls intact."
"The Empire is in your debt," Sunkanmi straightened her spine and squeezed the woman's wrinkled hand. "We won't forget this."
Darkness reflected in the driver's eyes, tempered with sadness.
"Where you're headed, you just might want to."
She snapped the reigns, startling her horses onward, and within two minutes they could neither hear nor see the caravan they spent the last two nights on.
Wind blew sand across the wheel tracks and left behind no trace as if it all were just a dream and they'd floated themselves there.
Folk hero and death god stood at the mouth of the inlet, waiting for the other to move, to acknowledge that they were alone together again without the safe buffer of Other People. No one around to stop them from ripping each other apart.
Sunkanmi dreaded this precise moment and the weight of its implications.
Alone. Together. Again.
Their chain hung loose in the sand with enough slack for them to walk comfortably. Sun-baked humidity gripped their tired shoulders and pressed their heads low like weary cattle.
"You know what?" Sunkanmi finally broke the silence. "Hiring a cart was a good idea. Well done."
Xosa reeled back, shocked she would even utter such blasphemy. Tremors rocked his body and he sucked down air to steady himself.
(not now.)
(for the love of all that is good, not now.)
Sunkanmi noticed Xosa's reaction, because of course she did, and pursed her lips.
"That was actually a brilliant, time-saving suggestion. Thank you."
Again, Xosa shuddered violently as if those two words could sustain him for the rest of the year. As if he was starved and she just served him the tastiest morsel crafted with the finest ingredients, instead of the half-hearted, mean-spirited ploy that it was.
