HORNS (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 158

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Eight

Peace was a strange concept for me after being in danger for so long. It was almost unreal how anxious I'd been without realizing it.

I stared at the mid-morning sky with my hands behind my head, watching as sunlight filtered through the sparse red and yellow bunches of autumnal leaves still clinging to the canopies. With every unusually warm breath of the wind that crested across the lake, a litter of dead and dying colors rained towards the ground like fluttering birds seeking to sleep for the winter.

The tree I was nestled against really was the same one Huang had shown me in my dreams. I could feel it in the way my bare back pressed against the rough bark, nestled into the exact groove from the vision, right between two extremely thick roots. Sitting here calmed me.

I closed my eyes as a particularly strong breeze rushed across my face and tousled my bath-damp curls, heart pounding like crazy as it brought the scent of char, woodsmoke, water, fish, and strangers with unusual--if not downright peculiar--odors. I inhaled with the wind as I caught Luka's scent, a hint of bluebells and animal musk, tingling all over my body with pleasure.

Echo and I had made love for about twenty minutes pretty early on, and after taking a bath together in the big porcelain tub, he'd urged me to go have fun before retiring to the bedroom to sleep the day away. Aerin, to my knowledge, was asleep in one of the other cabins with Chi keeping watch.

I drew my claws against the bark of the tree underneath my body for what felt like the hundredth time. Memorizing it.

Feeling it.

"You seem to love this tree," someone murmured, so abrupt and jarring compared to the softness of the wind and dying leaves that it startled me; I didn't open my eyes, though I did try to relax my ears from the reflexive drawn-back position they'd fallen into.

I knew who was speaking to me, but to be honest, he made me incredibly uncomfortable. I'd met a lot of people in the course of my life, short as it was, but out of every single person I'd ever met, Thomas was the only one who'd never smiled, not even once. He was the furthest thing from the traditional legends that people still, to that very day, told their children around Christmas.

Saint Thomas, the Red Fairy... the Lover and Mate of Late Saint Nicholas was the source of the legend of Santa Clause... but there were most certainly no "Ho ho ho's" to be found with the statue-like gloomball of a guy.

I took a breath and finally opened my eyes, twisting to look up at him... but to my surprise, he was already sitting on the ground beside me, back against the bark. The contrast between the nature around him and his looks was... well, profound, to say the least. 

One thing's for sure, I thought with a shiver, skin prickling as the icy temperature around his body began to spread out. He definitely doesn't look like he belongs in warm woods.

Which, of course, was true. 

I didn't interact with Thomas very much even when I saw him, because of the people Sebastian occasionally invited over to his manor, this guy was among the top three most antisocial. He was almost always reading something. Chi told me once, about ten days after I'd first met him, that it was mostly for show. Reading allowed him to avoid having to speak to anyone.

I personally hadn't chatted with him very much as a result, but let's be honest, even if I had spoken to him I'd have eventually been put off. Thomas was, in a nutshell, melancholy on legs.

My eyes ached trying to adjust to his bizarre pigmentation and I squinted.

He noticed, but chose not to say anything, instead simply hooking a strand of hair behind his extremely long, pointy, elf-like ear. Hair like iridescent white diamonds rippled as it was adjusted, spreading like disturbed liquid to lay splayed against skin as white and undefined as a roman sculpture... at least, if the sculpture had been made of opals rather than stone.