Hazel's Promise (The Fey Quartet Book 2) by Emily Larkin Read Free Book Online Page A

Marigold’s rope. “I can’t thank you enough.”
    “You owe me a kiss.”
    Tam froze, and then turned his head to look at her. “What?”
    “A kiss,” Hazel said again.
    Tam tried to read her expression. “Um . . . it’s not necessary, you know.”
    Hazel’s face tightened, as if he’d slapped her. “You don’t want to kiss me?”
    “Well, yes, but you don’t want to kiss me.”
    Hazel frowned, her dark eyebrows winging together. “Why don’t I want to?”
    “Because you don’t fully trust me anymore. And you don’t much like me either.”
    “I don’t? Why?”
    “Because I told you why I kissed you last night.”
    Her face cleared. “Oh, that.”
    Yes, that .
    Hazel crossed her arms and studied him. “So you think I don’t trust you? Or like you overmuch?”
    Tam nodded.
    “Why?”
    “You stopped talking, after I told you.”
    “I stopped talking because we were walking too fast. My opinion of you didn’t change.”
    “Oh.” Tam began to feel more cheerful.
    Hazel examined his face, her eyes slightly narrowed, as if she wanted to see inside his skull. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t trust you?”
    Tam shook his head. “No,” he said emphatically. “I’d never do anything to hurt you. Ever.”
    A smile lit her face. “Then you owe me a kiss.”
    “Now?” Tam said hopefully.
    Hazel grinned, and turned towards the road. “I’ll let you know when.”
    Tam grabbed Marigold’s rope and followed her. There was a buoyant spring in his step. Hazel wants to kiss me . He felt like laughing out loud.
     
     

CHAPTER TEN
    A BERSERKER, TAM had said. Hazel turned the word over in her head and worried at it like a squirrel worrying a nut. Me? A berserker?
    Her memory of the fight was vague. She’d lost control, that she knew. Lost her temper, lost control. Maybe that was what it meant to be a berserker?
    Yesterday, when she’d been attacked, it hadn’t been anger that had consumed her, but terror. The outlaws had overcome her easily. Today, rage had obliterated fear and she had seriously injured—perhaps even killed—two men. That was sobering. Very sobering. But she wasn’t sorry for it. Not if it meant that Tam was alive.
    She glanced at Tam, sauntering alongside her, whistling under his breath. The cut made a thin, red slash along his cheekbone.
    Tam caught her glance, and grinned. “I have time for that kiss now.”
    To her annoyance, Hazel felt herself blush. “I don’t,” she said, and lengthened her stride.
    Tam whistled a few bars of a song, and then said, “I have time now, too.”
    Hazel cast him a stern glance. It bounced off Tam like an arrow bouncing off a breastplate. He gave her a wide, innocent smile.
    They walked another hundred yards. “Still got time . . .” Tam said.
    Hazel smacked him on the arm. “I get to choose when.”
     
----
     
    “WE’LL NOT MAKE it to Dapple Reach before dark,” Tam said. “May as well stop here.”
    Hazel looked around. A creek ran alongside the cart track, and on the other side of the creek was one of Glade Forest’s dells, the grass studded with wildflowers. It looked a good place to spend the night.
    She gathered firewood while Tam tended to Marigold. Now that they’d stopped, she realized how weary she was. And hungry. They’d not eaten anything since morning.
    Hazel crouched and dumped an armful of twigs and branches on the ground and glanced across at Tam. He looked weary, too.
    She watched as he tethered the donkey, as he scratched between her ears.
    Tam had a very nice face, full of kindness and patience and laughter. The face of a man you could trust.
    Hazel narrowed her eyes. There was something extremely familiar about the wide forehead, the high-bridged nose, the angular cheekbones. Where have I seen that nose before? That forehead?
    He said he had his father’s looks. Therefore, she must have seen his father somewhere.
    When? Where?
    Tam knelt at the creek and washed his hands, cupped them and drank,