Return of the Warrior

by Kinley MacGregor

  “How do you figure?”

  “Who is next in line after you?”

  “Thera.”

  “And if she dies?”

  “There is no one to take the throne.”

  “Then why would he kill her if he could rule the throne through her?”

  She settled down a bit at that, hoping he was right. “So you think she’s safe?”

  “As long as you live, aye.”

  “It’s true,” Lutian chimed in. “He would not dare harm her until he’s sure of your fate or lack thereof. To kill her would make everyone mad, especially the lady Thera. She would be most put out to find herself dead by their hands.”

  It was a small hope, but one she seized gratefully. “Are you completely certain?”

  It was Christian who answered. “Nay, not truly. But if he intends her harm, there’s no way to get to her in time. We can only hope for the best.”

  Adara wanted to cry as pain engulfed her. She loved Thera and had never intended to put her in harm’s way.

  Damn Basilli and Selwyn for this. And damn herself for being so foolish. When she returned home, she would make certain the beasts paid dearly for their treachery.

  Provided she made it home again…

  “Thank you, Christian,” she said quietly.

  “For what?”

  “Saving my life.”

  Christian inclined his head to her, but didn’t speak.

  As they rode, Adara glanced down to his hand that held the horse’s reins. Tanned and scarred, it was a large, strong hand, well-shaped and masculine. It was obvious his weren’t the hands of a courtier or prince. They were the hands of a capable warrior who was unused to pampering or mollycoddling. And yet the sight of that hand warmed her greatly, far more than any soft, gentle hand that she had seen on other noblemen.

  His was the hand of a rugged man.

  He turned his hand slightly so that she could see the back of it. Adara frowned at the sight of what appeared to be a crescent moon and scimitar branded into his tanned flesh.

  Without thinking, she reached out and touched the raised mark. “What is this?”

  Christian couldn’t speak as bitter agony assailed him. He glanced down to his hand where the permanent reminder of his past mocked him daily, just as his enemies had intended.

  “‘Tis nothing,” he said, unwilling to share that horror with a stranger. Even if that stranger was his wife.

  What had gone on during his captivity was no one’s business except his and those friends who had escaped with him.

  There in the deepest pit of the Holy Land, he and his friends had banded together to survive the unimaginable and return home.

  Then again, not everyone had gone home. Some had been unable to face those they’d left behind. Since their escape, like him, they wandered constantly, trying to outrun the demons of their past.

  But then, it wasn’t that he couldn’t face his past, his cousin, or his people. It was more that having lived in hell, he’d only wanted to save others like himself. Something he couldn’t do while enslaved to a throne.

  Kings and princes were never free to do as they pleased. They were politicians who must curry favor and make treaties.

  The only treaty Christian wanted was the one he had with his sword. If someone got in his way, he removed him. He owed no one anything and he lived only to serve his brothers-in-arms.

  As a king, one wrong step wouldn’t just endanger his own life, but the lives of everyone in his kingdom. It was a burden he’d never wanted.

  He’d spent the whole of his youth in captivity being told when to speak, where he could go and how to live. Those days were long past. His life was now his own and he intended to keep it that way.

  Adara tried a few times to engage Christian in conversation, but he made it readily apparent that he wasn’t willing to speak as they traveled through the foreign countryside.

  By nightfall, she was exhausted. Christian refused to stop.

  “Your horse is tired, my lord, as am I.”

  “We will reach a village within the hour.”

  For the first time since their mad dash from the inn, she felt a modicum of relief. “Will we stay there this night?”

  “Nay. I will leave you and your fool to eat something while I trade my horse for another, and then we shall continue onward.”

  “With no rest?”

  He shrugged. “I have no desire to give our enemies time to catch up to us. Do you?”

  “We can’t fight them if we’re exhausted.”

  “You’d be amazed, my lady, at what you can survive and how hard you can fight with no sleep whatsoever.”

  Adara hesitated at his dour tone of voice. There was something in it. A hidden piece that she could sense he didn’t want to retread. “And what have you survived, to feel so confident?”

  “Life, my lady. Sooner or later, it does make beggars and pawns of us all.”

  Lutian applauded. “Spoken quite well, my prince. Quite well.”

  Adara opened her mouth to contradict him, then caught herself. He was right. Here she was, a queen of great renown, far from home and being hunted like a frightened rabbit, and all because of one man’s lust for power.

  She was a pawn…

  And a fool.

  “You have a wise prince, my queen,” Lutian said from beside them. “I would give him my fool’s scepter, except that I no longer have one, since I left it at home so that no one would know I was a fool.” He pulled a piece of lint from his tunic and held it out to Christian. “Take this as a token of my esteem.”

  She half expected Christian to scoff and mock Lutian, as most people did.

  Instead, he took the lint, thanked him for it, then put it on his shoulder as if it were some kind of prize.

  She smiled at his actions, which made him even more handsome to her. And he was a handsome man who held her. One who made every feminine part of her feel alive and on edge.

  “How long have you been on your own, Christian?” she asked him.

  He didn’t respond.

  Nay, he was a man of few words. A brave man who had left behind everything he’d ever known to travel about for reasons she could only guess at.

  It must be awful to be a stranger in foreign lands.

  “I can still feel the sting of my father’s death,” she said, confiding in him what she had seldom confided in anyone else. “He was a good man. A competent, merciful king who always placed his people first and lived his life in service to them. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him and wish I had his guidance and strength. I cannot imagine losing both parents so young as you di—”

  “Enough,” he said, cutting off her words. “I don’t care for idle chatter, my lady. It plagues me.”

  It was the underlying hurt she heard in his voice that kept her from being stung by his sharp tone.

  “You travel alone?” Lutian asked.

  “I have my horse.”

  Adara sank her hand in the coarse black mane of the beast that carried them effortlessly. “Hardly a fitting companion for a prince.”

  “True, he would be more fitting for a king or emperor.”

  She smiled at that and was struck by the thought that she was currently traveling with her husband. A man she had spent countless nights trying to imagine.

  But the prince holding her was so much more than the pale, gallant man she’d envisioned in her mind. She had imagined him as a polite, courtly youth like the ones in her palace. A man of poetry and culture.

  This one was real. He was hard and serious. Deadly. Rugged.

  Dangerous.

  Christian of Acre was nothing like the other nobles she’d known who were pampered and frail. He lived his life like a pauper. Denied himself the luxuries he could have at home.

  And yet he still carried himself with all the commanding presence of a king.

  “Do you ever miss Elgedera?” she asked him.

  He clenched his teeth before looking
down at her. “Why do you persist in asking me questions?”

  “Because I’m curious about you.”

  “Why?”

  “You fascinate me. I can think of no other noble who would refuse his destiny or a throne. Most men spend their entire lives trying to gain the very things you shun…You’ve never been home, have you?”

  Christian focused his attention on the road ahead of them as old memories sifted through his mind.

  In truth, he’d never had a home to go to. His parents had chosen to be pilgrims who traveled about. Before their deaths, the most he’d ever spent in one place was six months. Everywhere they went, his parents were always careful to let no one know their identities.

  He’d never been to his mother’s home of Elgedera. He knew nothing of her half of his family except for his uncle Selwyn, who had come to tell him of his parents’ deaths.

  Only a child, he hadn’t understood why the man had hated him so. Selwyn had shown up unexpectedly at the monastery in Acre where his parents had left him while they went to meet a friend.

  “The boy is mad,” Selwyn told the ancient abbot after the abbot had refused to allow Christian to leave. In the event of their deaths, his parents had granted a trust to the monastery that would only be paid so long as he was a resident there. “He thinks himself a prince, but he’s just a Norman by-blow.”

  “Have no fear, my lord. We brook no liars in a place of God.” The old abbot who proved himself true to his words. If Christian ever spoke of his parents or their heritage, he was beaten for it.

  Then again, any time he spoke, he was beaten for it. So in time, he’d learned not to speak at all.

  But it hadn’t been all bad. Brother Angelus, one of the Templar knights, had taken him under his wing and had taught Christian much. He’d been a good friend, and he had died trying to keep the Saracens from killing Christian.

  “Nay,” Christian said at last to his “wife.” “I’ve never been to my mother’s homeland.”

  “Not even when we were wed?”

  He shook his head.

  “But you were so close.”

  “And my mother said there was too much political turmoil in her house. She didn’t want any of us there until it was resolved.”

  Adara nodded her head as if she knew exactly what he was talking about. “The Latraimo. Your mother must have sensed it was coming.”

  He scowled at the unfamiliar word. “The what?”

  Lutian answered him. “It is an Elgederion term for bloodbath, my prince, and it has become synonymous with Selwyn’s rise to power.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was just a girl,” she said quietly as her hand brushed against his while she stroked his horse’s mane. Christian tried not to notice the softness of her cool hand touching his skin, or the gentle, feminine smell of her that filled his head. It had been far too long since he’d last had the pleasure of holding a woman for any length of time.

  This one in particular was incredibly soft.

  Not to mention, she was completely naked beneath her cloak…

  That thought alone made him hard and aching. Especially since he knew she was more than eager to give herself to him for his pleasure. All he needed to do was push back the soft fabric a bit and he could touch the bare flesh of her stomach.

  Move his hand lower and he could brush his fingers through the soft triangle of hair so that he could stroke her…

  His groin jerked at the thought.

  “I remember my family evacuating our palace in fear that the Elgederion hostilities would spill over onto us,” she said, oblivious to the painful havoc she caused him. “For reasons no one knows, your uncle Tristoph killed your grandfather late one night. In a rage, his brothers drew swords against him and slew him before they turned on each other. In the course of a year, every royal member of their house, save you, was dead.”

  “Dead and gone,” Lutian repeated. “The Elgederions need more than a king, they need a warrior-hero to release them from their tyrant.”

  Ignoring the fool, Christian was confused by her words. Not all of his family was dead. “What of Selwyn? He’s my uncle, too.”

  “Nay,” Adara said, “he calls himself that, but he is really only a distant relation who was a grand marshal to your grandfather. His only claim to the throne is that he married your grandfather’s third cousin, who died shortly after Basilli’s birth. There is no royal blood in him which is why he is trying to place his son on the throne. Only Basilli carries a blood tie, and it’s faint at best. After your parents’ murders, Selwyn came forward as regent, saying you were too young to be king, but that he was seeing you well schooled and trained for your future duties.”

  Christian frowned at what she was telling him. “My parents weren’t murdered. They died in a fire.”

  Her dark gaze burned him as she looked up at him. “Your parents were murdered by your youngest uncle, who was then slain by Selwyn.”

  He couldn’t breathe as those words echoed in his ears. “Are you certain?”

  She nodded. “It is well known by all what happened. Or at least Selwyn’s version of it, since he was there. Truthfully, I wonder if he didn’t kill all three of them at once and just claim that he was trying to defend your parents when he slew Carian.”

  Christian’s head swam at what she was telling him. “Why did no one tell me?”

  “Have no fear, my prince, they never tell me anything, either. Of course, I am simple and they fear I will forget it. Are you simple, too?”

  “Nay, Lutian,” she said kindly before she looked back at Christian. “You never came home, my lord. When I was ten-and-four, Selwyn said that he had sent for you, only to find your monastery in ruins. Everyone thought you were dead.”

  “Then why are we still married?”

  “I refused to believe it without proof, especially since Selwyn immediately suggested that I marry his son to maintain our border and treaty. Somehow, I knew you were alive, so my father stirred up your people and demanded they present him with your body and with proof that the body was you. Selwyn couldn’t produce a body with your necklace and so our marriage stood.

  “As your wife, I was to be accorded due respect, which kept them from invading our kingdom. Not to mention that as long as your people believe you are alive, neither Selwyn nor Basilli can formally ascend the throne or take control of the military. By ancient law, only the rightful king, not his regent, can command the Elgederion troops. When the letter of your survival came a few years back, it was intercepted by an Elgederion steward, who made it known to all. My father and I had our proof that you lived.”

  “For that we will always thank you,” Lutian said. “Otherwise my queen would be married to the beast and I’d be skewered on a pike for his pleasure, since he hates me.”

  Part of Christian could understand that sentiment, since Lutian did seem to ramble on about nothing, and yet his words were harmless enough.

  He turned his thoughts back to Adara. “If the army will only follow me, how is it that you are in danger of invasion?”

  “Some grow weary of waiting for their prince to return and be crowned king. They are the ones who listen to Basilli. Unlike his father, he is charismatic and persuasive. He is slowly convincing your people that you should be abandoned and that a true, full-blooded Elgederion should be on their throne. Meanwhile, he is pressuring me to declare you dead so that he can, in turn, marry me.”

  He scoffed at that. “And now you want me to return to a homeland I have never seen and depose him?”

  “Aye.”

  Christian was aghast at her simple logic. “Have you really thought this through, my lady?”

  “Of course.”

  Christian shook his head as he tried not to mock her plan. “So you propose that I just walk into the Elgederion throne room and demand my kingdom back?”

  “Well, nay, it won’t be that easy.”

  “It won’t be easy at all,” Christian said. “I have found in
my life that no one gives up a throne willingly.”

  “No one except you,” Lutian said.

  Keep that up, fool, and there’ll be a wringing of your neck soon enough.

  Christian cleared his throat. “Aside from me, most are more than willing to fight unto the bitter death for their powers. It would take an army.”

  Adara’s brown eyes burned into him with her fiery passion and unyielding belief in her rightness. If only he shared her beliefs. “The Elgederion army will ride to your side, Christian, when you return. It is the law of your people.”

  He snorted at that. “I assume it is also the law of my people that their royal family not murder each other so that a distant cousin can be regent, and yet that is what has transpired.”

  “He has a point with that one, my queen.”

  She directed a glare at her fool. “Fine, then. If you’ve no wish to be king, then give me an heir.”

  Christian actually sputtered at her unexpected words. Did he hear that correctly? Surely she hadn’t just said what he thought she did. “Pardon?”

  “If you refuse to be king, then allow me an heir to take your place. Someone that the Elgederions will be forced to accept and follow.”

  “And what makes you think for one instant that I will agree to hand my child over to you?”

  “Because it is the right thing to do.”

  Christian was aghast. “You think so?”

  She didn’t respond to his question as she glared at him. When she spoke, her voice carried the full weight of her royal status that was used to commanding those around her. “You have to decide, my lord. Either you return and be king or you give me an heir to rule in your stead.”

  “Nay, lady, I have a third choice. I do neither.”

  “That is not an option in this matter.”

  “Aye, but it is, and if you think for one moment that I would allow you to carry my child off into that nest of vipers, you are sadly mistaken.”

  She glared at him. “I need your heir.”

  “And that, Adara, is one thing I will never give you.”

  Three

  Adara stared at the man who held her. “I’m not asking you to be a father, Christian, nor am I asking you to be a king. I ask you for nothing more than a few nights of passion, which I am sure you have given any willing female who has offered herself to you.”