Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) by Christian A. Brown

of the smith’s work, impossibly detailed and manufactured by enormous fingers.
    “Resilience and beauty,” said Caenith, breathing over her neck. “The strength of steel and the beauty—and power—of fire. I was inspired to create them this morning. The metal’s song was clear with how it was to be made. Do you like them?”
    “Yes, they’re…lovely.”
    “I agree,” muttered Caenith, and he placed a hand upon her back, leading her farther into his den. “Cups,” he promised, but said no more.
    Silent and torn, Morigan’s heart raced, and she wondered if Caenith could feel the fear hammering through her ribs.
Who is this man? Who is this man who can reach into me and twist out my hidden sentiments? Stop walking and think! Think! This would be your chance, Morigan! To escape this before
… Before what? Something terrible? She did not sense a dark end ahead, but a precipitous cliff, and one that she wanted to leap right off. Images of wolves and sharp-toothed smiles, of metal flowers and moonlit forests flashed in her head. Before she knew it, she had leaped off the cliff, for it was only Caenith and she surrounded in the soft orange shadows of his forge. Only their gazes appeared to shine in the dimness, and those found each other like swords, clashing.
    Her scent had soured with panic. More than anything, he wanted Morigan to be at ease. He apprehended how confused she must be by the mesmerism between them. By the calling of old blood to old blood. He sought to appease the fawn with the clumsiness of words instead of the language of sniffing, biting, and howls.
    “I sense that you have reservations about me. About being here in the dark with a stranger. Please, do not fear me, as unusual as my manners might appear. I am an antiquarian, you could say. I honor customs that modern minds do not. I assure you that you are safe, that you have never been safer. What happens between a man and a woman should be as natural as the first kiss of frost on a lake. Close your eyes and imagine.” Morigan complied and was swimming in the dark honey of his voice. “Hear the first breath of winter…dry gasps punctuated by stillness. A song, should you listen, sungby Mother Winter. Tenderly, she hums the life beneath the water to sleep and slides a glittering blanket over her tired children. Mother Spring dawns, and she sings a different tune. One of tinkling water and cracking freedom, and the fishes and reeds stretch and celebrate their nourishing rest. Would one break that frost before Mother Spring does in her gentle way, would he smash at the winter skin and shatter it with ugly passion, the harmony of the music is corrupted. The purity is lost. Look at me, dear fawn.”
    Morigan rose from her imagining of chiming ice and wriggling lake children.
    “I would know you, I would chase you, and then I would claim you—should you allow it. That is the way of the Great Hunt,” said Caenith, bowing his head.
    The Great Hunt?
she wondered. Still more of his eccentricity, but she understood that he would not force himself upon her. He would not
break the ice
.
    “So this is a hunt?” she quietly asked.
    “What else would it be?” said Caenith plainly. “But in the Great Hunt, we must each choose to submit to our roles. A Wolf is nothing without a chase, without forest to overcome, or a fawn to catch. Will you be my Fawn?”
    The woods, the running, and the Wolf in her dreams came back to her. That sense of fleeing from a beast, yet giddy from the pursuit. If the animal had caught her, would she have screamed or sighed? wondered Morigan, and she had no answer. Caenith watched her silver eyes darken and wondered if he had overstepped his bounds or spoken too freely. She was a slow-walker, after all, or at least had lived as one and did not know of the gift she carried.
    You need to act more like a man. You are confusing her
, he cautioned himself.
    “Cups! Forget my request for the moment. I was to show you