Branded

by Clare London

  Whether they wanted that or not.

  “And where’s Takk?” I imagined that if they’d moved their base, they would have moved it together.

  She sighed, and there was pain behind the sound. “He’s dead too, but he was killed in a raid, a few months after you returned to the city. Some of your precious Silver Captains ran their swords through him and others of our men. I helped drag many bodies back to the burial ground that day.”

  I breathed carefully for a few moments, disturbed by her blunt tales of death and disease. “There must be other ways for your group to live.”

  “My group?” She sounded bitter. “Yes, we could surrender to the city, or we could move even farther away and die among the rocks from cold and starvation. I expect you’d prefer that.”

  “No. That’s not what I mean.”

  She smiled, but sadly. “You would be like Flora, then, preaching her ideas of merger with the city again? There are times I wish I were still there—and then there are times I remember I’ve been an Exile for much longer than I was a Mistress, and that this is my real home. It’s not an easy life… but it is life, not a royal illusion.”

  I glanced quickly at her. “So now you’re in charge here?”

  She shrugged. “Partly. I look after the camp and the community. It’s much larger now. Our military forces are no longer under my control, but Hann is a good leader. He’s brought a lot of expertise to the camp.”

  “He’s your partner?” There was something about the way she spoke the name of this Exile that alerted me.

  She smiled in a rather twisted way. “No. He has other liaisons.” She looked me full in the face and put a hand to my cheek. “I never thought you’d come back here, Maen.”

  I was silent, my hands loosely fisted at my sides. Eila lifted her hand tentatively again and ran a finger along the line of my throat. I didn’t resist her this time. Then she dropped her arm and moved a step back. She nodded as if I’d spoken. I looked down at her, steadily.

  “I’ll send someone to show you to a spare tent,” she said. And then she left the cave, moving along the path outside until she passed out of my sight.

  I STOOD just inside the cave, my back to the entrance, wondering how Kiel was, wondering whether Eila would send someone to me or would just leave me to fend for myself, wondering whether to settle here for the remainder of the night, using the blankets for bedding. A chill breeze wafted in the cave mouth, licking its tendrils around my ankles. The night outside was still.

  I didn’t hear any loud noise or any other alarm, but suddenly the shadows at my feet shifted and reformed, and I knew there was someone else at the mouth of the cave, behind me.

  I never spoke. I knew it wasn’t Eila or Flora, returning to question me. I knew it wasn’t Kiel, however quietly he could move around if he chose. I wasn’t scared either: I didn’t feel any of the instinctive reaction to fight that I might have felt at an ambush.

  Instead, I felt… shock.

  And something else. Something more primitive, responding deep in my heart—in my soul.

  I turned around very slowly, desperate to see my visitor and yet horribly chilled at the thought, the two emotions conflicting inside me.

  A male figure stood in the entrance, the fading moonlight behind him casting his face into shadow. But I knew the shape: the young, strong build. I knew it as well as I knew my own.

  I also knew he should be dead, yet I could see him in front of me, standing stock-still, his eyes glinting in the darkness with a shine that I knew in full daylight would be sharp and blue.

  I saw Dax.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “YOU’RE MEANT to be dead,” I said. The words sounded ridiculous, and my voice was hollow in the still atmosphere. I felt disoriented, as if the solid rock had shifted by magic beneath my feet. “They said you’d been killed in a raid against the city.”

  The figure stepped farther inside the cave. The light from the torches had gradually waned but still lit up his face. Shadows eddied around him and revealed the solid shape of a real man. I could see weariness in his expression, equal shock in his eyes. He moved slowly toward me, and not just from caution.

  “It is you. I didn’t believe Eila.”

  He spoke softly, but the deep tone of his voice still startled me. Had he grown so much in the year since I’d last seen him? I’d imagined him in my dreams so often—but in them, of course, he had never aged, never changed. Now I was in the face of reality and could see how life had altered him. He was taller and broader, as I might have expected, now barely half a head shorter than me. In the rough clothes of an Exile, he looked more thickset, but I didn’t know how much was due to his muscular development and how much to the harsher lifestyle outside the city. His hair was still that astonishing white blond, and a flicker from the nearest torch lit up his eyes, and yes—they were still the blue of the morning sky before dawn. But he looked far older. He’d lost the boyish facial shape he’d had as a Bronzeman; there were lines across his brow and a set to his mouth that had never featured in my dreams except in memories of when he was troubled. That led me to look beneath the fall of loose hair, to look more closely at his face.

  The marks were still there: a crosshatch of fine lines on his cheek. The wounds had healed, but the skin would always be puckered and raw. We’d both suffered, and his scars were a painful reminder to me of what we’d been through. I stared at his face and felt my throat tighten up with anguish and amazement and….

  Need. Love. I hadn’t used the words for so long that I wasn’t sure I knew what they meant anymore.

  Dax stopped a couple of feet away from me, breathing heavily. He bent a little awkwardly at the waist as if his side was troubling him. “Are you real?” he said.

  And then I had to smile, for that awed tone was one I remembered particularly well. “I was about to say the same thing.”

  He smiled back—suddenly, and with genuine pleasure—and for that second it was as if we were back in the city and I was on the training ground with him, developing his sword work or watching him ride under Fremer’s tuition, or he was provoking me gently about some Household matter, or it was dark and we were alone together, and we were moaning and touching, and holding, and grasping, and—

  And then the illusions passed just as swiftly, and I was standing back in the cold bare cave, isolated from my peers and in the middle of Exile territory. I shook my head, trying to clear away the sudden grip of sorrow.

  “Sit down,” he said sharply. He looked uncomfortable. “This is… very unexpected.”

  I sat down on the floor again and waited for him to join me. He knelt carefully and then sat down fully, still keeping the same distance between us.

  “You’re injured?” I could see the way he favored his left side. I thought I could also see the edge of a cloth bandage under his jerkin, wrapped over the top of his torso. “They said you’d been in a raid to the city some months ago, and a Silver Captain brought you down.”

  They said you’d been killed.

  He straightened as if determined to look well and strong. “My own fault. I was tired of staying back here in case I was seen, in case someone in the city recognized me as a fugitive. We needed more men too. Our numbers had been badly hit from the previous raids, so I thought I’d be useful at the front for a change.” He grimaced from the memory rather than from bodily pain. “It was foolish to attack so soon after the previous attempts. We mount offensives often and fiercely. It’s a strategy that brings us some success, but not always. This time, we were outnumbered and ill prepared. It wasn’t only I who was injured, or—”

  “Killed.” My voice sounded brittle.

  His gaze was on my face and had been since he sat down, as if he were searching for something specific in my expression. “Yes, killed. Many of our men and women have died in the raids over the last year, only adding to our troubles. Your soldiers fight fiercely, but then you know that already. Every single body gets dragged back here, Maen,
however mangled or bloodied. We never leave a soldier on the field, dead or alive. They dragged me back that day, and Veli was able to mend my wounds.”

  Veli? “The girl you knew before.”

  He nodded. “She has special skills in healing. I needed plenty of them.” He still stared at me, though his eyelids now drooped, narrowing his gaze. “You need to sleep. The nights are cold out here, and there are still several hours until the camp wakes fully. We can talk tomorrow—”

  “No sleep!” I snapped. For Devotions’ sake, did he think I’d miss a minute of his company? Did he think I could find him resurrected from the dead and not want to savor every second of his life? Did he think…

  I didn’t care?

  He laughed, but bitterly. Its echo glanced off the walls, falling away into a numbed silence. “Your voice, Maen… it’s so good, so strong. I never thought I’d hear it again. The voice of a Gold Warrior.”

  “No longer. I’m a civilian now. Less of a soldier than you are.”

  He frowned at me. “How could she do that to you?” Then he seemed to regret the words escaping from him, biting quickly at his lip. We both knew who he meant. “You were the best. She wanted you in her Guard. She insisted on it.”

  I knew it was more than that, to us at least. Seleste had taken me for herself, as both soldier and man. She’d taken me from him. But I nodded, struggling for calm, fighting back the confusion and nervousness of talking with him again. “I helped her win the battle for Queenship, but now she has her own soldiers.”

  “And do you share the glory with her?” His voice was as bitter as his laugh had been. “Was it worth it for that?”

  “No,” I said softly. “She’s still the Queen. The only one.” I could feel his anger and resentment as a tangible thing, a sharp bite in the already frosty air. “But it was still worth it.” I held his gaze. “It was worth it because you lived.”

  Something slowly changed in his eyes, hardening them, and he started to shake his head. “You look the same,” he said wonderingly. “You sound the same. And the words are the same cruel ones you said a year ago when you pushed me away.”

  The chill that ran through me owed nothing to the rocky ground beneath me. “It was all I could do. They were going to execute you. We couldn’t be together.”

  He stood up slowly, without reply. By the time he was upright, I’d scrambled to my own feet and stepped toward him, closing the gap between us. I could see beads of sweat on his throat, the rapid rise and fall of his chest. “Dax.” I was lost for the right words. “I’m so glad you’re alive. So glad to see you.”

  He sighed then. “I wish I could say the same.”

  When I tried to step closer, he put out a warning hand. Did he feel he had to guard himself from me?

  “Sleep now,” he said. “You might as well stay here in the cave. It won’t be used again tonight. But make the most of the time, for when the camp does rise, there’ll be no peace for you then.”

  I watched him as he walked away from me, leaving the cave. I couldn’t think what to say or do to make him stay, for he so obviously didn’t want that. He didn’t look back at me, but walked with pride, hiding his injury—maybe hiding so much more. But however brave his bearing, I could see there was no peace for him either.

  FOR A long while afterward I didn’t sleep. How could I? The shock of seeing Dax again had shaken everything within me. Had I really believed Seleste’s tale of his death? Maybe I’d come here so willingly with Kiel because I hoped to learn news of Dax—to catch sight of him, after all. Maybe I’d been less than honest with myself and what had driven me.

  There’d been no word of Dax since the day he escaped the Detention Quarters. I hadn’t known where he’d go or what he’d do, but all I wanted was to keep him away from the city and Seleste’s wrath. His only chance had been to leave the city; mine had been to subject myself to Seleste as my Mistress.

  That had been the only option for us both, just as I told him at the time.

  Hadn’t it?

  I assumed the Exiles had been less hostile toward him because of his Remainder heritage. Even then, I knew he could have a future with them, and it seemed I’d been right. Not only had he found shelter here, but I suspected he’d brought his soldiering skills to the camp. Eila’s men had been far below the standard of soldiers in the city then, but this time they’d been good enough to surprise me and Kiel on the mountainside.

  The camp had indeed retired for the night, and the background murmur of voices and occasional shouts ceased. The excitement of capture had passed, and Kiel and I were confined in the appropriate manner for the moment. The men outside the cave watched me, I was sure, but they didn’t intrude. The smell of dampened wood ashes drifted on the night air, and the only sounds were from nocturnal creatures and the occasional creak from the indigenous shrubs outside, their roots clinging precariously to the rock face.

  I sat on a blanket with my back against the far wall, drew my knees up to my body, and dropped my head down onto them. It was cold inside without the protection of a thick fabric tent and the lingering warmth of a daily fire, but I’d known worse. I trailed my fingers over the coarse fabric of the blanket and remembered the feel of it from long ago, tugged up over my body, covering my naked skin as I lay against Dax. I shut my eyes, all the better to hear his whisper in my head: my laughter, his gasp of shock and fierce delight as I’d entered him for the first time.

  I could hear it all as clearly as it had been a year ago. What a fool I’d been to think I’d put it all to the back of my mind, treasuring it as just a memory and convincing myself it could be detached from reality! What a fool, thinking I could continue my life, content with the knowledge Dax had the chance of life elsewhere. Not just a fool, but a selfish, greedy one—one who longed for that touch again, for my own satisfaction and pleasure.

  The ache in my body was a physical one, not just the pain of remembrance. Tonight he’d looked so much older, his bearing wearier than such a young man deserved. And yet I knew how fast he could run, how gracefully he could turn to block a sword strike, how masterfully he could pull on a horse’s bridle to direct it across the training ground. Or at least, that’s how he’d been in those days. I slipped my hand slowly down the inside of my thigh, tracing the tightening muscles. He’d teased between my legs like this, cupping me, stroking me. He’d rolled his body underneath me, wriggling and laughing with the fear of first-time nerves, and then arching up with sudden, shocking pleasure.

  I could smell his body scent in the cave, although he’d been gone for hours. I could hear the cadence of his voice; see in my mind the glint of his eyes. Tonight there’d been distress in those eyes, and hostility too. He wasn’t the same man, and neither was I. And yet….

  I rested my hand on my groin, feeling the stirring between my legs. My cock was no respecter of confusion, either mine or Dax’s. The sight of him—the nearness of him—had disturbed me more than the presence of anyone else ever could, and I couldn’t help the physical response from my body. I kept my eyes shut, sinking into the memories, and slowly stroked myself through the fabric of my trousers. I slid down so I lay on my side on the blanket and the dank chill of the rock teased at my nostrils. But I was comforted. I could still smell his warm skin, and I knew how it would feel against mine, how his muscles would tense and his hands grip me with surprising strength. How we would come together as two men at last.

  My thoughts transformed into sensations as the aching promise of orgasm uncurled in my belly. I gripped myself, pumping harder, the clothing around my cock adding to the friction. I knew the thought of no other lover could ever be this dear to me, could ever give me such poignant pleasure. In my mind, Dax was underneath me, grunting with effort, whispering my name and demanding more. He fought within my grasp, trying to press himself against the whole of me, trying to pull me closer, to take more of me—to feel more of me. He was with me, there in that cave… or at least his memory was. He was all I could see. With my free hand I
clutched at the blanket on the ground, and my body stiffened as I came, the climax shuddering through me. The thickness of my cock filled my palm, making it sweat with the sudden warmth and activity, and my seed spat out stickily inside my clothes. I gasped his name aloud, but the sound was swallowed by the echoing emptiness of the cave.

  And then, somewhat miserably, I slept.

  THE MORNING brought no hint of the night’s damp. The dawn burst its way through the cave mouth with a sharp, clear light that made me wince, even in my sleep. Rolling out from under my blanket, I smelled the thin smoke of fresh wood fires and heard the calls of people at work outside. I stood up carefully, my knee protesting from the exercise the day before and the uncomfortable sleep, but it wasn’t the first time I’d lain on a stone floor, nor would it be the last, I suspected. Someone had pushed a bowl of water and a bucket inside the entrance, and I washed and relieved myself hurriedly. Then I stood just inside the mouth of the cave for a while, keeping hidden and watching with some amazement as the Exile camp came to life in front of my eyes.

  They were living in a network of caves set in the rock face. I’d suspected this was the case, but I hadn’t seen direct evidence when we arrived. Now in full daylight I could see the entrances were camouflaged with screens made from branches of the sparse shrubs, anchored by boulders. Now that the morning had arrived, the coverings were pushed away, the stones rolled aside, and men and women passed in and out of the caves. The whole side of the mountain climbed upward in a series of broad steps, each platform adding its own corridor of caves to the community. Paths and handholds had been carved out of the rock so people could move more easily between these levels. It was all very different from the Place.