Anastasia opened up to him and he slid his finger quickly. "Ileus!" She moaned and her muscles clenched around his finger. He suckled her hard and pumped his finger in and out with intensity. Soon she came all around his finger with a loud cry. 

She realized that she was turning greedy for his touch. She wanted him madly.

And she had to leave before it got too late, before he became an addiction to her.

Anastasia got up next only to eat some food just because she had to survive. She couldn't believe after the whole journey she was this exhausted. It was Ileus who fed her something and then she went off to sleep again. 

A loud thud woke her with a start and she thought that someone had attacked them again. Groggily, she clutched her blanket and looked around as her head whipped in the direction where she had placed her dagger. But there was no one in the room. Ileus had left and the bed was empty beside her. She huffed and shook her head for overthinking. Her gaze traveled outside. The skies were still grey. Was it dusk or the sky was overcast with clouds? The hold on her blanket loosened and she flopped back on the pillow. 

Anastasia remembered last night and a warmth settled in her heart. She wanted to talk to him more last night, but then both of them were so lost in the throes of pleasure that thoughts evaporated. Her fingers brushed the crinkled bed sheet beside her as her lips tugged up. His woodsy and misty smell still lingered in the air. Where was he? 

She got out of bed. It was time to leave. She walked to the bathtub and washed her face with cold water. She pulled out the saddlebag, which Ileus had kept in the cabinet. The white shirt was too big for her and so were the slacks, but she stuffed the shirt inside, secured the breeches with a leather belt and wore a sweater over it. She remembered how badly it was snowing the previous day, so she wore a cloak over her sweater. Her dagger was safely tied just over her sweater beneath her cloak in a baldric. 

Emotions threatened to choke her as the thought of leaving him gnawed at her heart. But she had to… 

With one last look at the room, she walked out of it and closed the door behind her. Why was she feeling so heavy hearted when leaving him was part of a plan? As she walked down the corridor of the inn, she took in a deep breath and reminded herself of her task. She rounded a corner and went down the spiral of stairs that led to the main lobby of the inn. 

There were a few unknown faces chattering away as she walked towards the dining room. 

"Anastasia!" she heard a gruff voice from the salon and she stopped. She turned to see Robert waving at her. The man's brows were drawn together as his gaze bored into her. After a moment of staring at her, he left the salon and sauntered towards her. "Can we talk for a minute?" he asked gently, but it was evident that he was hiding his anxiety. 

She nodded hoping that everything was fine. He waved his hand towards the salon for them to walk over there. Anastasia pursed her lips and then walked there with him on her heels. 

"Is it something urgent?" she asked, feeling a little anxious. She wanted to find Kaizan soon to know about his contact. 

Robert offered her a chair to sit on. "It is urgent. I have been pretty keen to talk to you ever since you came." 

A frown appeared on her forehead and she looked at him with a question in her eyes. She shuffled her feet with restlessness. 

Robert perched himself on the edge of the table she was sitting at and crossed his hand across his chest. He exhaled heavily and started, "I am going to cut the chase." 

"Okay…?"

"Anastasia, Óraid is a place that is visited by faes very often, and by often I mean once every year. They come here to collect the tithe. They collect tithe from various other villages that are spread outside Sgiath Biò." 

At first Anastasia was surprised that he knew about the charmed realm, but then wasn't it expected? She liked his directness but didn't like the way he spoke about the tithe. He sounded tired and disgusted. Ileus had told her about the tithe, so his emotion about it was understandable. The whole idea of taking tithe was deplorable. What was it required for when Vilinski was one of the richest kingdoms in the Lore? 

"My story begins long back, about twenty years back, when an incident happened in my family. It shattered us, ripped our family and things became extremely difficult. And it happened because of a fae."

"I am sorry about it," she said, guilt filling her. Did they know that she was a Fae? Did anyone leak that information? Because if it leaked, then she was in deep trouble, starting from now. Her breath stopped as she waited for him to continue. Should she just flee?

Seeing her anxious mien, he chuckled. "You don't have to be sorry." Then he lowered his eyes to the floor for a moment before lifting his face. "In that incident, my sister was taken away from us." He shook his head. "She wasn't taken, she was forced to leave us and go to the fae realm." His wintery blue gaze pierced hers. "And ever since she hasn't returned to us. It is misfortunate, and is partially my father's mistake, but when she left we were just ten years old—Shawn and I—and we didn't know what was happening. We were too young. Our father took her to the border of Sgiath Biò and left her there to—" His voice choked and he didn't complete his sentence.  After that we never heard about her." He glanced at her again.

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