Queen of Skye and Shadow complete box set : Queen of Skye and Shadow Omnibus books 1-3

by Thea Atkinson

  I was pretty pleased with myself to have thought of it, actually. There's a certain stupidity that comes from sheer exhaustion.

  I really should have known better.

  But now I was done and I was hungry.

  I headed back home, walking toward the aged-brick house with a casual step, knowing all the booby-traps had been removed, filled in, or sprung days ago by Lance and me. That meant those things I'd set to keep prowlers away from the house and my vulnerable self weren't there anymore to worry about.

  Indeed, it seemed a good idea to rid the property of them. They hadn't just kept me isolated. I simply couldn't be sure anymore that it wouldn't be some kid tripping across the yard or a young mother wanting me to proclaim judgment on some bit of townsfolk squabble that got caught in one of them.

  I still wasn't used to the idea that people would be dropping by. Apparently, leadership didn't just mean I helped run Hunter Wolfe out of town. It meant they brought their arguments to me to settle or asked advice. I wasn't comfortable with either one, but the one saving grace was that it also often came with a bit of fruit or bread.

  So it was sort of nice that I didn't have to watch where I was stepping or what tree branch I brushed aside. No one would anymore. Just the act of clearing the property had been one of trust and and it came from a newfound acceptance by the townsfolk after we'd worked together to reclaim the town from the threat of Hunter and his Ruby Skulls.

  We were safe. But for how long, I wasn't sure.

  He'd return, that was certain, but I wasn't ready to risk a kid or his mother coming to the house and getting hurt anymore on the traps I'd put in because I didn't trust anyone.

  If Hunter wanted me, he could come for me.

  I'd said as much to Lance when he'd suggested I move into town instead of staying at my mother's run-down ancestral home.

  I recalled stealing more than one quick peek at Lance as he worked bare-chested and sweaty over the dozens of traps I'd set during the months I'd been back in New Denver. It had been a long while since I'd enjoyed a man's company and even longer since I'd voluntarily let anyone touch me.

  Not that he did touch me. He kept a safe distance as he worked, humming as though he was alone, but boy did I want him to brush against me. I hated that I found ways to sidle closer to him in the hopes that he'd accidentally move against me as we worked, and then when he did get close, I'd scuttle off like a mouse terrified of the eagle's beak she'd tempted by poking out her hidey hole.

  I was a mess over it and as I lay awake at night the way I usually did, what haunted my thoughts wasn't the memories of the awful things I'd done during my lifetime, but the feel of his touch as he'd embraced me after Hunter fled the town.

  Thoughts of Lance were enough to make a gal thirsty as well as hungry and I picked up my pace, reasoning that if a gal couldn't sate herself with man-flesh she might as well have a gorge on some apple pie and tea.

  I was a dozen yards from my stone porch when the sight of a rather large reddish shape at my doorstep stopped me in my tracks.

  My spine tingled at the base. I hadn't left a reddish anything on my step. I'd left my doorstep clear. Not even a leaf drying on its slate surface.

  Whatever it was lying on my step now, it was almost as large as the pig had been.

  I closed the distance between my door and the perimeter of the yard pretty quickly then. No stink of rot met my nose. Nothing to indicate that it was anything other than freshly killed. It was russet colored if not a bit bloody and my throat constricted as I considered what it might be with each step I took.

  I felt only remotely better when I saw it was a yearling buck on my doorstep.

  The hide wasn't torn to pieces like the boar had been, but it was bleeding from a wound a few inches above it's front armpit.

  Whatever had struck it had entered its heart and killed it instantly, not damaging anything in the way of meat.

  My blood ran cold as I contemplated what, or who had put it there. A pig on my doorstep was an anomaly. Two dead beasts was a threat.

  I spun on my heel and scanned my yard. The trees on the perimeter were laden with leaves and clusters of young and unripe nuts. Mid-summer was fast approaching and the leaves hadn't changed color yet. None of them had fallen from the branches to the soft and mossy ground beneath.

  That meant anything could be out there hiding in the lush foliage, using the cover of the woods to watch me.

  "Okay," I mumbled to myself. "Officially freaked out here."

  I glared out at the yard, daring whatever it was to come out and face me.

  "What the royal fuck?" I demanded of the yard. "Show yourself."

  I waited, braced with fists clenched at my sides. The spade in my right hand clanged against the stones. I'd forgotten I still held it.

  I ran through a hundred possibilities as I mentally stormed my house, recalling exactly where I'd left Excalibur, the hammer that had been left on the table, the pot of steaming water I'd boiled for tea.

  Would the spade be weapon enough if something lunged at me? It might buy me time, at least.

  I imagined the swipe I'd make if anything leapt at me and the steps it would take to spin and dart into the house to grab the best weapon. I was already slamming and bolting the door in my mind.

  Sweat trickled down the back of my neck.

  But nothing in the yard moved except a cold shadow as the clouds buffeted the skyline.

  A breeze moved the fronds of wildflowers that had taken over the garden.

  I eyed the deer with more than a modicum of suspicion and nudged it with my toe. It wasn't torn to pieces. It was a fresh kill. Venison jerky might make the winter go a bit easier.

  Might as well make the best of it.

  "I damn well hope you're not a hiding an army of tiny, magical Greeks in your belly," I grumbled to it.

  I stooped to hoist the carcass with both hands, and grunting, yanked it up to my waist. The legs stuck out in front of me and I felt like a Scotswoman wrangling an awkward hoist of bloody bagpipes.

  The thing was heavy and slippery in places, and creepiness notwithstanding, I did my best to sling the beast over my shoulder.

  The weight of the thing made me seriously doubt my need for jerky.

  Even so, one does not look a gift deer in the mouth.

  My mother had a second outbuilding attached to the house by a wooden pedway. She had used it to slaughter lambs and chickens and salted the meat or dried it in the smokehouse she'd built years before brigands worked her to death.

  I had the front door flung open and stepped inside, muttering to the deer about the mess I'd have to clean and all the water I'd have to lug when I realized I wasn't alone.

  -2-

  It wasn't so much a sound that alerted me, more than the way the back of my neck tingled. You don't live as a mercenary as long as I had and not know the feel of being watched. You certainly don't ignore it.

  I let go the deer and swung to my right. The carcass made a flat thudding sound as I dropped to a low squat out of instinct.

  The door banged back on its hinges with a rusty squeal before it slammed into place.

  I shoulder-rolled in order to get out of the path of anything that might strike, and found my feet again a few feet away. My back was at the wall with the door to my left. My eyes widened enough to adjust and take in as much they could.

  Whoever, whatever was there would have to be in front of me. They'd have to come straight at me.

  I was ready.

  "That was fancy," said a familiar husky male voice.

  "Fuck me," I said at the sound of it.

  I wasn't sure what I expected, but it sure as heck wasn't Lance, reclining in the ancient and threadbare rocker my grandmother had been so fond of. It hunkered down next to the table she'd said came from her mother, a delicate wooden one with three legs and she'd used it to hold China teacups of orange pekoe.

  The mental image of her sitting there was so strong I thought I smelled the lemon
she put in the hot fluid.

  I slumped against the wall out of sheer relief.

  When Lance saw me sag against the wall he pulled the wooden lever on the side of the chair that turned it from a recliner to an upright. The look on his face at the awful crunching noise it made might have been comical if my heart wasn't speeding like a rabbit on the run.

  "What the veritable fuck?" I said testily. "What are you doing here?"

  I almost laid my hand over my heart to check it was still beneath my ribcage except I noticed how bloody it was from carrying the deer.

  I grimaced, scanning everything in the nearby vicinity for something to wipe off the blood on and, coming up empty of anything handy, squatted to swipe my hands back and forth over the cleanest parts of the deer's hide.

  Lance stood up and gave the chair a wary look before striding toward me.

  "You always leave your door unbarred?"

  "My door," I said in answer as though the simple statement should say it all. "My house."

  The shock was still wearing off and it made me irritable. More at myself than anything else. I'd left my guard down and that wasn't like me.

  Apparently, acceptance by the community made me soft. It made me nostalgic for things of the past.

  It also made me stupid.

  So I did what I do best; I doubled down.

  "If I want to leave my door open, it's no business of yours."

  I sat back on my heels as I watched him approach.

  "You asked a certain interesting thing of me when you saw me," he said and a broad smile widened his mouth enough to make a dimple play in one cheek. "I'm game."

  "What?" I said, distracted as I realized I was getting more blood on me than I was wiping off. I looked up at him.

  "What you said. Forget already?"

  He canted his head to the side, taking note of the way I was busily swiping my hands across the russet fur and coming away just as bloody.

  I stared down at the mess and sighed.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

  His mouth twitched as though he wanted to laugh.

  "I thought it was too good to be true," he said as he headed to the sideboard and started digging around in the drawers he opened at random, I assumed, searching for a clean cloth. He wouldn't find one. I was not much of a housekeeper. I'd had enough of that menial labor as a kid.

  He was making me nervous. I didn't get nervous. I needed a diversion.

  "Help me get this out back will you?" I said, grabbing for the front hooves.

  If I was going to stay bloody, I might as well make the most of it.

  "You seemed to be doing fine by yourself," he said, but he came forward anyway and hefted the thing in one easy motion over his shoulder.

  The animal's spindly legs stuck out awkwardly and I had to duck to avoid getting knocked in the cheek by a stray hoof.

  He hunched over just enough that the carcass couldn't slip down his back, and even then, he was a head taller than me. My eyes were level with his chest and I could see his pecs tense and let go beneath his shirt as he balanced the thing on his shoulder.

  He'd been bare-chested the first time I'd met him. I had a pretty good mental image of exactly how he looked without a shirt. Maybe too good a mental image.

  I needed to tear my eyes away, busy myself searching for a cleaning rag.

  But I couldn't.

  "Where do you want it?" he said.

  Everywhere, I wanted to say and then I realized exactly what he'd been agreeing to while I'd been struggling to comprehend his meaning. And then I did manage to pull my gaze from his chest because I was suddenly swimming in an entirely new mental image and I needed to change focus or I'd end up making a fool of myself.

  I stabbed my finger in the general vicinity of the larder, which was really just an attached outbuilding with a wooden table and a few cupboards.

  "On the table out there."

  I followed him and caught sight of an old tshirt from the back of a chair. I snagged it on my way by and ran it over my hands.

  I waited until he'd flung the hide onto the wooden table before I searched out my mother's butcher cupboard.

  I'd not taken the time over the months to spend any time in the larder. It was on a strictly need to use basis. And since there wasn't anything in there that I needed, I stayed clear. I could be perfectly fine munching the occasional apple from a bowl on the counter or a bit of nuts, the dandelion leaf salad that I shared with Gentry and berries in season.

  None of it required storage beyond my kitchen. I was happy with that.

  I had no intentions of canning and storing.

  Leave that to the women who had families to worry after.

  Plus, there were ghosts in the larder. Born of memory and visceral reaction, those ghosts barred the way as surely as a locked door. Even with Lance in there with me, my skin crawled. I navigated my way to the cupboard where I knew my mother kept her butcher tools with all the caution I'd not shown barging back into my house.

  I stood before the rustic wooden cabinet chewing my lip. It was a cupboard as tall as I was and about two feet deep. Dust coated the surface of the wood and spiderwebs clung from one corner of the wall to the rope knots that passed for handles in the front. Those were looped into holes in the wood and used as pulls and repeated openings of the cupboard doors had frayed the hemp. The threads had grayed over the years and since no oily palms skimmed their surface in the last decade to keep the fibers pliant, the fibers were brittle.

  All I had to do was reach out. Grasp the things. But try as I might, I couldn't lift my hand to grab the pull. Everything around me tumbled down into one pinprick of light and I thought for a second I might faint.

  As though there was nothing unusual in opening a cupboard door, Lance came up behind me and gave me a gentle shove to the side with his hip as he sought to rummage within.

  "This where you keep the tools?" he said.

  I swung to face him, knowing that the set of my jaw was rigid and tight. I expected him, a man who measured at a glance exactly how powerful back muscles were and how they should swing a sword, to see every thought written on my face too.

  But if he did, he said nothing.

  Instead, his glance lighted on the cupboard as though it were no more than a gauzy curtain keeping a great treasure hidden. He yanked the knob open without pomp or ceremony.

  I winced involuntarily as it creaked open.

  Nothing inside but knives and a few rusted and dull hatchets. A bone saw hung on the inside of the right hand door.

  Even so, my boots scuffed backwards, making a noise against the floor that seemed too loud in the dead stillness.

  Lance plucked the saw from the door and tested its weight in his palm.

  "This is nice," he said as he faced me. "We'll make short work of the ribs."

  I stared at him, aware my eyelids would not blink.

  His smokey brow furrowed as he watched me.

  "We should get moving on that," he said in a befuddled tone. "It would be a waste of a good bit of meat and I don't hunt well ordinarily. We don't want it to rot. "

  "No," I said, amazed I was able to speak with any sense of clarity. "Certainly not."

  I dropped my gaze to his feet and laid a finger against the wall to steady myself. Nothing had happened. Nothing. That was a victory, right?

  "Well?" he said. "You want thick or thin?"

  "What's that?"

  "Thick or thin? Jerky or steaks?"

  "Thin," I said as I followed him to the table. "There's a smokehouse out back."

  That made sense, right? I'd answered him fine?

  "Perfect," he said and I sighed in relief that I'd sounded normal.

  "Mind if I keep a nice steak? The brazier back at the forge sears a nice cut if I lay a rack over it."

  I might have mumbled out a sure, sure.

  I blathered on about the blood on my step and the deer hide having to be buried or burned to keep predators fr
om scenting it. I supposed it made sense, and maybe the looks he gave me weren't borne of confusion and concern, but all I could register were his hands working over the deer with practiced ease as his gaze darted up to my face over and over.

  I tried to comment on the way he handled the blades and the meat. I was glad he was there. I was hopeless at dressing game.

  All that sort of inane chatter. I peppered him with commentary as though they could season the very atmosphere.

  I sounded like a fool.

  He answered and responded to each question and comment indulgently.

  Memories swam over my vision. I had to remind myself I was a grown-ass woman. This was a perfectly normal activity.

  It was only when he ran the blade through the belly and the viscera slid out that I lost my calm.

  I stepped back involuntarily and blurted out the first thing that struck me, in a way that was about as rude as he was patient.

  "So what are you doing here anyway?" I said.

  He looked up at me, mid-motion of fingers plunging into the deer's belly. His eyes flicked to mine, narrowed as though he were considering something.

  Whatever it was he wanted to say, he buried it. Instead he answered my question the way a doting lover might. And that made my face burn because he wasn't my lover and even the ones I'd had were not doting. Not by a long shot.

  "I brought you something."

  I ground my teeth as the viscera spilled on the floor. I thought my own stomach might come up.

  "Yes," I said through a flood of water. "I can see that."

  "Not just the deer. A bow and arrow. I've been working on it for a while."

  "A bow and arrow doesn't take a forge," I said.

  He grinned but didn't look up. I could see the corner of his mouth turn up.

  "I don't just blacksmith," he said. "I'm an amateur weapons smith. I wanted to try my hand at a bow and arrow."

  I looked down at the hide he was dressing.

  "It was you who shot the deer," I said as realization struck.

  He looked at me. "Of course," he said. "Who else?"

  I shrugged but couldn't meet his eye. It was almost ridiculous now to think I'd been afraid. He'd probably practiced on the pig too and left it where I would find it as he went back out hunting.