Ugly Girl Read online

  He hiked me up so my head was resting on his shoulder, with my arm wrapped around the nape of his neck to steady me. I held tight to him, feeling exposed on too many levels as he carried me over the threshold of Remy’s home and out into the openness of nature. The birds overhead sang to me, letting me know Dahu sent them to watch over me and make sure I was granted safe passage. It was the sweetest thing.

  Hamish ran in circles around us at warp speed, chittering his excitement at finally being able to interact with nature. Abraham Lincoln whined at Bastien’s heels, wishing Bastien would put me down so he could give his daddy a bear hug and be carried.

  Bastien backed up, clutching me with a snarl as he glared at the sky through the trees. “What’s happening? This isn’t normal. If Morgan bewitched the birds to follow you, we won’t get far.”

  “Nah, they’re alright. They’re here for me. Dahu, the deer-unicorn in charge sent them.” I reached out my hand, letting one of the smaller birds rest on my finger. I brought her up so she could address Bastien. She chirped and tilted her head to the side as she explained that Dahu was worried I wasn’t being looked after. “See? She just said the same thing.” I took my arm from around Bastien’s neck and stroked her delicate brown spotted feathers, wondering if spots were to birds what freckles were to humans. “Sweetheart, could you go on ahead and scout out the path? And please have a few of you trail behind, if you don’t mind. We need to make sure no one follows us. You’re such a pretty little bird. Thanks for this, by the way. You guys are off the charts wonderful.”

  She chirped her agreement and flew off with her flock. Bastien frowned as he watched the birds split into three groups: one to go ahead of us, one to trail behind and one to fly overhead. “I don’t like this,” he muttered, his jaw tense.

  I leaned my head on his shoulder, allowing myself to feel safe in his thick arms that I’m sure had never dropped a girl on her head. Pretty sure. I sighed heavily. “Oh, you know, I don’t care.” Then I took a chance and tilted my chin up so I could plant a kiss to the side of his neck. The seed of kindness and gratitude for him helping me while I had snake babies spilling out of my leg planted itself in his skin. He smelled of hard soap and Christmas trees. I wouldn’t let him slip back into his surly I’m-a-tough-guy dramatics if I could help it. I nuzzled my nose to the side of his neck until I saw goosebumps break out on his skin. He tried to suppress a shiver, but I caught the cuteness.

  “Knock it off,” he groused quietly as he walked down the path from Remy’s home toward the thick smattering of trees that lined the forest.

  “Do you really want me to stop?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But I might drop you if you keep it up. That feels… Save it for the next time you get me in your bed.”

  The very adult turn the conversation took made me introvert afresh, but there was nowhere to hide. I was in the hot guy’s arms, with no clue of what to do with him. “Okay,” I said stupidly.

  Remy was carrying a burlap sack on his back. “How far is it to the council?”

  I asked his question for him, and Reyn responded. “It’s pretty deep in the woods. It’s on the border between Provinces 1 and 3. We’ll be there before midday.”

  “No one’s actually told me what we’re walking into, you know. A little heads up goes a long way if you want me to perform like the princess monkey I’m supposed to be.”

  Reyn held his elbow out for Lane when he reached a tree with a complicated root system that jutted out into our path. She took his offer with a girlish tint to her cheeks that I rarely saw on her. Guys hit on her all the time at the gym where she was a personal trainer, but those passes barely registered with her. A simple touch from Reyn’s hand, and she’s as bashful as a schoolgirl. “We’re going to a private tribunal of sorts,” Reyn explained. “It’s all unofficial and hidden from the army and Morgan le Fae’s eyes and ears. It took us a long time to fish out the right spies, but there’s someone from each province who’ll meet with us where we’re going. Think of them as the official and unofficial chiefs. Sure, the Daughters of Avalon rule the provinces, but not much of the day-to-day stuff goes down without these guys’ say-so.”

  “Yikes. Then why’d you dress me up in this gown? Shouldn’t I be in my jeans or in something that shows them we’re not useless aristocracy?”

  “I’ve got a change of clothes packed for both you and the Duchess.”

  “Remy’s got your stuff, plus a few things for the road,” Bastien confirmed.

  “You’re coming, too?” I asked Remy hopefully, glad our team was growing.

  Abraham Lincoln was getting sidetracked watching the birds. He almost ran into a tree, but Hamish caught him in time.

  Reyn replied, “We couldn’t talk him out of it. Honestly, having a healer in our group wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

  “The Duchess won’t let me take the vow to be your Guardien, but that doesn’t stop me from staying with you till the end. You can hear me. I haven’t had a voice in years. Even if you didn’t have so grand a quest placed on your shoulders, I would still follow you, no matter where you ended up.”

  I reached out and chucked Remy’s shoulder, sharing a smile with him before holding onto Bastien’s neck again. I pressed another kiss to the space between his jaw and his ear, my fingertips slowly tickling the unruly brown hairs at the base of his neck. Bastien tripped, but caught himself before we both toppled forward. The pain of my leg moving too much tore up the left side of my body. My arms wrapped tighter around his neck as I breathed through the sting. “You only have yourself to blame for that, you know,” Bastien whispered to me.

  “I know, I know.”

  “You keep that up, and you won’t just get your first kiss. I’ll take you behind one of those trees and let you do whatever your hands want to me. This dress should come off easily enough.”

  I wanted him. Maybe not the whole getting freaky behind the trees part just yet, but the kiss for sure. I watched his mouth as he carried me through the woods behind Lane and Reyn. His sculpted lips were tempting me, luring me in. I’m not sure if it was the whole surviving the snake babies thing or if it was our constant back and forth, but I began to sorely wish he wasn’t engaged. I lifted my head, suddenly remembering that I was in another woman’s fiancé’s arms, toying with his neck and teasing him as if I could do anything about my crush.

  But I couldn’t, so I wouldn’t.

  It was as if Bastien could sense my daring warring with my conscience. “Put your head back on my shoulder. I liked it there.”

  “I like it there, too,” I admitted, indulging in the intimacy I’d spent my whole life without. I was finally the girl in the hot guy’s arms. If only Judah could see me now.

  We walked for a long time without speaking, instead listening to the birds overhead and trying not to overhear Lane and Reyn being cutesy with each other.

  “I can’t believe you raised her all by yourself in a foreign land. You’re amazing.”

  Lane waved off his compliment. “Rosie was easy. It’s the foreign land part that was hard at first. Adjusting to life without magic. Learning the law of the land. Trying to stay hidden long enough to get my bearings. It wasn’t easy. We were homeless for a while, you know.”

  I swallowed hard, wishing our baggage wasn’t being spilled out for Reyn, Remy and Bastien to dissect at will.

  Lane continued, and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t begrudge her taking this one opportunity to vent. She’d been through a lot, more than I could’ve guessed with the whole having her feet in two different worlds thing. I mean, it’s not like she could run off to a shrink and vent. “Rosie and I snuck into abandoned homes when we first came here. It was scary, and we had nothing. Absolutely nothing. For a while, I was terrified I’d taken the royal daughter and would have to watch her starve to death in my arms.”

  “Slow down,” I whispered to Bastien. “Let’s give them some space.”

  “Quiet. I’m trying to listen.”

  My fing
ers gripped the meat of his shoulders. “But I don’t want you to listen! This is private. It’s my childhood, and I don’t want it spilled out for everyone to hear. Lane can vent to Reyn just fine, but you don’t need to know this stuff.”

  “Daisy,” Bastien said in a voice that was laced with pity. That stupid pity was the reason only Judah knew about my childhood.

  I struggled against him. “Let me down. I can walk fine on my own.”

  “You know that’s not true.” He looked down at me with an unfathomable expression, as if trying to figure me out without having to dodge around all my obstacles. “Why don’t you want me to know you?”

  I slumped in his arms when it was clear he was stronger than me, and that I was being a donkey about the whole thing. “Because it’s not pretty. It’s not princess stuff. And it’s private. You don’t need to know my business. Would you want me poking into your childhood? You want to talk about your time in the army? You want to sit there and listen while someone tells the guy you… Just let me have a little privacy. It’s my life, and you don’t need to know about it.”

  I squirmed inside of myself with every sentence Lane divulged to Reyn, praying she wouldn’t mention my low GPA, the fact that I’d been suspended for fighting four times, expelled once, or that despite my best efforts, I still had a hard time reading above a kindergarten level. I really didn’t want Bastien to know about the reading thing.

  “You’re a real pill,” Bastien murmured under his breath. “If I’m going with you through Avalon, it doesn’t hurt to know who I’m working with. Who I’m protecting.”

  I closed my eyes, listening to Lane confess all the things I hadn’t had to think about. I hadn’t had to find food for us. I’d been barely old enough to walk through the whole transition. I heard the passion in Lane’s voice and knew that as mad as I wanted to be about the whole secret life thing, I couldn’t hold against her all that she’d kept from me to ensure I had a childhood. We’d made it. It was because of her I was alive.

  “Being homeless in Common isn’t the same as it is in Avalon. You can just cut down a few trees and build yourself a hut to get you through. In Common? You have to have money first. Identities. It’s a whole process that took me a while to figure out. It was worth it, though. My Rosie’s in college. That’s a big deal. Only really smart people get college degrees, and my girl’s up there at the top with the best of them. She’s going to get a degree and make something of herself. She’ll have opportunities I never could’ve dreamed of at her age. So all in all, I call the whole thing a success.”

  “I think you’re amazing.” Reyn held back none of his admiration, his hand atop hers that was wrapped around his elbow. “And no man ever caught your eye?”

  Lane chuckled, blowing a raspberry. I could tell she was nervous. “Nah. I never had time for any of that. Being a mom was the best thing in the world, and I wasn’t about to screw it up by gambling on the wrong guy. Besides, Rosie’s abilities were harder to hide in the beginning. I didn’t want to start something with a guy that was based on a lie. Didn’t seem right.”

  “Strange that her magic stayed active when you went to Common. I wonder why that is.”

  Lane shrugged. “My theory is that it stayed in her because it wasn’t just magic, it was her birth blessing. All the magic that wasn’t part of her blessing faded away, but the Compass stuff and the talking to animals? That stayed. That’s my guess, anyways.”

  I wanted to shove cotton in my ears to keep from hearing the theories and all the talk about me. I didn’t need to be part of the conversation. The birds distracted me just in time. Two of them flew down and chirped that no one was around us for a long distance, and that we were safe for now. I cleared my throat. “Hey, the birds are saying there’s no one around us for a good long while. We’re not being followed.”

  Abraham Lincoln whined at the bird who’d garnered my attention, and Hamish harped on him to can the drama. Hamish was mesmerized by the forest. The trees were green from root to tip, and the bark had a sort of armor-looking scaly quality to it. The bark looked like an old person’s skin, sagging off the trunk and wrinkling to show its true age. I wanted to touch the flaking off bits, but knew we couldn’t stop for a nature exploration.

  I felt terrible for Bastien, making him carry me for as long as we walked. It was way longer than I thought the hike would be, but Bastien didn’t complain. When Remy asked (through me) if he could carry me so Bastien could have a break, my arms tightened around Bastien’s neck. Bastien replied with a curt, “No. I brought her into Avalon. She’s my responsibility. I’m fine.”

  After several hours of Lane and Reyn flirting, and me cuddling Bastien midair, the birds began to chirp to me that there were people up ahead. “Are we getting close to the Council? Because the birds are saying we’re headed straight for a few people.”

  Bastien’s arms were starting to shake, so he hiked me up. “Good. Shouldn’t be too much farther.”

  Reyn dropped back next to us. “You know, Bastien’s not really known for being under anyone’s thumb.”

  “Your point?” Bastien groused.

  Reyn cleared his throat and met Bastien’s eyes. “It might help her make a good first impression if you were, you know, submissive for once,” Reyn suggested to his bestie.

  It was a thing of luck Bastien was carrying me. Otherwise, I think Reyn might have seen a far more violent reaction than a mere grimace. “Think again.”

  Reyn held up his hands. “Hey, I’m just thinking about how it’ll look when you start arguing with her like you do in front of the others. They’ll think they have license to talk back to her, too. We have to set a precedent.”

  Bastien’s teeth ground together behind his lips. “It’s your lucky day, Commoner. Enjoy this. It won’t be happening again.”

  “Excellent,” I said in my evil villain voice. “So if I ask you to dance for me?”

  “Do you want me to drop you on your head? Because I’ll do it.”

  Reyn groaned. “Oh, this is going to go swimmingly. I can already see the Council’s respect for you going down the drain. Well, it was a nice idea while it lasted.”

  I leaned up and pressed a kiss to Bastien’s cheek, holding the other side of his face so I could stroke his jaw and relax him. “I’ll play nice,” I promised. “Relax your butthole.”

  Reyn sniggered, but Lane did not. “You can’t talk like that as a ruler, babe,” she informed me. “It’s my fault for not grooming you, but try to think proper British royalty, rather than palling around with Judah. The Queen of England probably doesn’t say ‘butthole’.”

  I frowned. “Now, how do you know that? I bet those royals say all sorts of saucy things behind closed doors.”

  Lane sighed. “They’ll follow you if they think you can be the next ruler of Avalon. But if they can’t respect you, they’ll see you as a ruler they can manipulate and walk all over.” She tapped the bottom of her chin. “So keep your posture straight, chin up, don’t let them talk over you, and don’t say things like ‘butthole’.”

  “Well, there goes half my vocabulary.”

  Bastien looked morose, like he was carrying me to my doom. “This was a bad idea. We should’ve gotten Roland first.”

  I fiddled with his flannel shirt’s collar. “I have to wait for the animals to tell me when they find the Cheval Mallet first. You guys are seriously overestimating my Compass skills.”

  Reyn led the way, making sure to secure Lane to his arm. I wasn’t sure if it was so she looked like a proper lady with an escort, or if it was to ensure no other man tried his luck with her. Either way, she seemed happy on his arm, which was the only thing I cared about. “Tell me I still look the part,” she said quietly to Reyn, her voice tinged with uncertainty. “Tell me I’m not the homeless teenager with a one-year-old.”

  Reyn stopped our procession and turned to face her. “You’re a queen if ever I saw one. The first time I laid eyes on you, I knew I would follow wherever you led. The other
s will see it in you, too.” His gaze was intense, as was the nature of their instant connection. He pulled her arms to loop around his neck, and his hands fell to her hips, luring her closer. He was gentle with her, his lips touching hers so delicately that I heard her whimper softly into his mouth.

  I closed my eyes and buried my face in Bastien’s neck to give Lane a little privacy. Bastien chuckled at my obvious squirm. “You’re such a maiden,” he whispered, teasing me.

  “Is that like, slang for virgin? Because no kidding. I don’t like the public love stuff.”

  “One day you will.”

  Though I wanted to argue, I took him at his word. “I’m nervous, Bastien,” I admitted. “I’m not so great with new people.”

  “Stop fidgeting, and no one will know you’re scared.” He softened, resting the side of his chin to my forehead. “You’ll be fine.” He carried me forward toward the Council, who stood at attention when they saw Lane enter the clearing.

  29

  Bayard the Butthole

  Being an introvert is a tricky thing. You have tons of stuff you want to say, that might even be the right thing to say, but you find you can barely open your mouth to mutter a meager “hey, guys,” without thinking it through ten times. It took me a while to open up, but we didn’t have that kind of time. I had to fake it. I had to pull on my inner chatty Judah and summon the decorum of the Queen of England.

  Or I could chicken out and play the Incredible Mute Rosie Avalon, which was nothing to sneeze at. I rock pretty hard at charades.

  Bastien sensed me clamming up, so he slowly lowered my legs to the grass, leaving me his arm to lean on. He stood at attention by my side, and the stiffness of his hard body made me stand straighter. He was so casual with me, I forgot that he’d been the right hand of the captain of the Queen’s Army once upon a time. I wanted to drop his arm and run away from the new eyes that fell on me, but guessed that wouldn’t be super appropriate. Plus, you know, I couldn’t walk all that far on my own yet.