by Ronie Kendig
A green cord of jealousy wrapped around her heart, reminding her of the anger she’d felt once when Trale had grown smitten with the Infantessa. But that was different.
Ah, Trale. How I miss you brother. What am I to do?
“Quit pining after a man and get to work,” she hissed at herself and spun toward a horse, who lifted his broad skull at the swift move. That’s when she saw Tili enter the stables. She bent close and feigned wiping down the horse. What was he doing out here? She glanced to the keep. Hadn’t he gone in with the beauty?
Best to skip out before he noticed her. She drew the stall gate closed quietly, then slipped around the wall.
Tili was there, coming at her. Avoiding his gaze, she determined to bypass him. He swung her around until her back thudded against the dividing wall. His arm rested over her head as he leaned in on her. Eyes sparked with amusement. “Say it.”
Blast, the man knew how to make her defiant streak rear to the fore. “What?”
He rolled his eyes.
She shoved him away.
He caught his balance and bounced back. “Ye’ve been brooding.”
“A person mourns when their brother is killed.”
“Is that why ye’ve been staring at me, yet avoiding me?”
“Might have more to do with your ill manners and distinct . . . smell.” She let her lip curl.
“Smell?” He sniffed his underarm. “Powder fresh.”
“Maybe powder keg, but not fresh that.” She started away. “I have duties to tend.”
“Did ye see her?”
How could she not? Astadia kept walking.
“It was wonderful to see her, hug and kiss her.”
She whipped around, seething. Narrowed her eyes. “Ye are that free with yer favors. With yer kisses, aye?”
“So it does bother ye.” Tili smirked, apparently enjoying this as he sauntered forward. “She is my sister, Astadia.”
Stilled by his words, by the fact he knew her thoughts—nay, not all of them. Like why he’d said nothing to his father when they’d made comments about her. Or to the men who taunted her.
Her heart beat a little harder than normal when he came around in front of her again. The way his toned torso blocked her view. Voices from the bailey poked the semidarkness in which they stood. He stepped deeper into an open stall and drew her with him.
He’s ashamed of me. The move riled her. Annoyed her. “Leave off,” she spat and turned. “I have work to do, and you have a prince and family to tend.”
“I would tend ye,” he said, hooking an arm around her and drawing her back against his chest.
“Nay.” Extricating herself, she jerked her tunic straight. “I will not be someone you steal kisses and virtue from while you play noble before your family and friends.”
Though shadows shrouded most of his face, she saw his gaze darken. “Steal? Kisses and virtue?” His voice pitched on the last word. “Is that what ye think of me?”
“’Tis what you have shown me. You give no care that your men mock me, that your father glowers, and yet you are here, trying to seduce me.”
“Seduce!” His eyes flamed. “Seduce.” He nodded then shook his head. “Seduce!” Shoving his hands through his hair, he turned a circle, muttering words she could not make out. “By the Flames, ye have judged me poorly.” His lips pressed tight. “Yet if I recall, Astadia Kath, ye neither fought nor refused my kisses. Not here, not south of Dorcastle. ’Twas not I who cornered someone for seduction.”
She smiled, her laugh hollow, her courage low. “Then you blame me.” She lifted her chin. “I knew you not, Thurig as’Tili. I heard said once that the way a man treats his mother is the way he will treat the one he l—” She gulped back the word. “—likes. You have not treated me as well as you treated your mother or your sister.”
He scowled.
She sounded petulant. But she cared not. Inched back.
He reached for her.
Astadia used a slicing motion to deflect his grab, then her other hand to shove the fist back at him, twisting and throwing him off balance. But for a second. He used her momentum and upended her grip. Spun her around.
She threw a punch, lightning fast. Nailed his side.
His breath exploded out of him, puffing the hair around her face, as he doubled with a grimace. She seized the distracting pain and hustled through the back of the stable yard, out the side foot gate, and hurried into the chaos of the villagers encamped about. Anything to put distance between them, between the vain hope that had spurted through her chest and the reality that bit her back.
Aiming around a small tent, she smacked away tears that blurred her vision.
You are not a weak, simpering female!
A tent flapped. She skittered aside—only to see something dark flying at her face. Her instincts blazed. She swept the leg of the attacker. Shoved out the heel of her hand for a nose strike. Heard the crack. Then heard another . . . seconds before her vision closed in, wrapping her in a terrifying cocoon.
42
Thiel had returned last eve, and he had yet to spend a moment alone with her.
The pain of that truth carved harsher words into his flesh than the words of the Kinidd—rejected. Failure. The words were not only on him but within. Haegan knelt before his bed, freshly bathed, and closed his senses to the world. The verses not branded on him were branded in his mind.
He uttered them as he had every day to keep them fresh.
Making war on enemies of Aaesh and freeing enslaved minds;
releasing from prisons of their own making,
and then he finds himself standing obediently
and violently between life and death,
living and dead
first and last
then and now.
He knew them all now, the verses he’d branded on his flesh. But it was the final verse that called to him now. He traced his hand across the lines on his left arm and recited them. “In the hall of iron and blood he takes his stand . . .”
Was that why he’d felt it right to remain at Ironhall? The Kinidd writings?
“With races past and present to reclaim their land. | The people wandering and lost—” That certainly fit their circumstances, considering they had Northlanders, Tahscans, an Iteverian assassin, Drigo, raqine . . . “Give witness as the one birthed from darkness | Decimates the poisoned and perverted line of Tharqnis.”
That hadn’t happened yet, and it confused Haegan. Would they—
A knock came at the door. Haegan rose and reached for his robe. He rushed to the door, one person in mind. One hope thundering in his chest. “Enter!” When no one did, he opened the door. She stood in a green gown—clearly a reminder from whence she’d come. “Thiel.” She, too, had bathed, though evidence of her trial remained—the cut lip, the staff she used. “How is your ankle?” he asked as he stepped aside to allow her entrance.
The fabric flared at her wrists and cinched at her small waist. Her brown hair, longer than when he’d last seen her, had been secured at her neck, coiling around and draping against her neck.
Mercy.
“We didn’t get to talk—alone,” she said.
She is nervous.
Strange that. She had been in his face and ordering him around since they’d first met in the tunnels of Seultrie. Though it had been but a few months since they’d seen each other, it felt as years.
“I’m glad you came,” he said. Why did he feel awkward?
“Ye cut yer hair clean off.”
His hand went to his stubbled scalp and he felt embarrassed, but only for a moment. Until he remembered why he’d done it. “It seemed necessary.”
“Seems I have much to hear of yer time apart from me.”
“Aye, as do I,” he conceded and indicated the fireplace sitting area. “Would you like to sit?”
She managed a smile. “Thank ye.”
When she slipped past him, Haegan caught her arm. Gently. Half telling himself to re
lease her. But she froze, her lips parting as she stayed there.
Haegan touched her chin and drew her face around, but still she denied him her gaze. Mayhap it would be easier this way. “Harsh words were spoken when we were last together.”
“Aye,” she whispered, her gaze on his tunic as she turned to face him.
“They were the words of a scared, panicked boy.”
Her hand lifted, she fingered his button, and a wave of heat crashed through him. “We were all scared.” Again she wet her lips, her tongue tracing the cut at the corner of her lower lip. “But ye know, do ye not, that I . . . that we . . . nobody wanted to steal the throne.”
Haegan sniffed and shook his head, rubbing a hand over his face as he remembered the night that felt a decade past. “I was a fool.”
“Aye.”
He grinned, peering down at her, noting the difference of the last few months—he taller, she curvier, her hair longer. His fingers itched for its softness. “When we met, your hair was shorter than mine.” He gave himself permission to touch the silky strands and brush his hand along her collarbone to lift a coil.
Her lips parted with a quick intake as she shuddered at his touch. “Not quite.”
He caressed the lock, amazed at the softness. Then smoothed a hand to the back of her neck and leaned in. Pressed a kiss to the satiny coif. Felt her lean in, too. Did she ache for this as much as he had, as he did?
But that vision. Her abed . . . “Speak to me of Cadeif.”
Thiel started. The blush that crept into her cheek vanished. “He’s—he’s dead.”
Haegan stilled. “Dead? How?”
“He set me free. Onerid, enraged, killed him.”
Haegan considered her, their eyes silently locked. “Freed you. Then you were his prisoner.”
She tensed beneath his hold. “I was.” She swallowed. “But he never . . .”
Relief rushed through Haegan. “I am sorry he is dead, but selfishly, I am relieved he set you free.”
Thiel wet her lips. Darted a gaze to his. “As am I.”
Haegan inched closer. Bent in and allowed himself another kiss—this one against her ear. Then the lobe.
She drew in a labored breath as she rolled into his touch. Haegan caught her mouth. Kissed her, enlivened as her fingers trailed up his chest and around his neck. He tightened her in his arms, then broke the kiss and hugged her tight. “I have missed you. Needed you.” He trailed kisses along her face, feeling a hunger.
“Ye are not so much a twig anymore,” she said, running her hands along his biceps. “If my brothers find us, they’ll murder ye.” With that, she leaned up and kissed him, lingering as she sighed.
Haegan felt the smile that tore the veil on the shadows that had engulfed his life since Kaelyria tricked him into the transference. Stretching his arms behind Thiel, he tugged off his signet ring. The only piece of jewelry he had. The only representation of who he was.
“What are ye—” Thiel glanced over her shoulder to see what he was doing. She twisted sideways. Then went still. Snapped her gaze up to him.
Holding her, the scent of her clean hair teasing him, he pulled her back against his chest. Peering over her shoulder now, he lifted her hand. Slipped his ring on her finger. “Now they can no more prevent us from this path.”
Her eyes flung wide. She smiled up at him.
Pleased with her delight, Haegan caught her mouth with his, brought her around. “When this is over, there will be no definable distance between us, aye?”
She smiled and melted in his arms. He lowered his mouth to hers again, this time deepening the kiss and promise to make her his.
43
Updates. Strategies. Reports. Contingencies. Suppositions. Propositions. It had been two rises since Thiel returned to him. Now, Haegan endured the singeing of his ears as the war council again convened. Pathfinders—Steward Tili included—gave reports of the outlying lands, the skeletal remains, the strategic layout. The good vantages. The weaknesses.
Haegan cared not, though he endured their discussions. During a break, he let his thoughts drift above to where Thiel was with her mother and ladies’ maids, he guessed. He was tempted to order an accelerant to bind them now. Especially since she wore his ring. It was, in essence, as if they were bound. But even as he glanced at King Thurig, immersed in conversation with Colonel Grinda, Aburas, and a very moody, annoyed Prince Tili, Haegan knew better than to insist on that just yet. His attention fell on the older brother, Aselan.
Which flipped his mind to Kaelyria.
Where are you, sister?
Swiping a hand along his beard, the cacique came toward him. The man’s expression always seemed terse and yet inscrutable. “I have seen Kiethiel.”
Haegan’s heart stammered. He swallowed.
Gaze sliding over Haegan’s shoulder, he stretched his jaw. “She has new ornamentation.”
“Aye.” His voice caught, but he would not back down. “I love her and intend to take her as my bound.”
Aselan squinted. “And ye think that’s a good thing? Our houses joining?”
“I do it not for the house, but for my heart. Her heart. Yet, aye—the alliance would be prudent and bring a peace between the two that has long been missing.”
Aselan nodded. “Then ye will grant yer mercy that by the laws of the Eilidan, yer sister claimed me as her bound.”
Startled, Haegan considered that inscrutable face. “Ye jest?”
With a snort, Aselan met his gaze. “She chose my dagger, me, at Etaesian’s Feast.”
“That . . . that was months ago.”
“Aye.”
“And she is not here.”
Aselan lowered his head, grief swirling through his eyes and face. “They attacked the Heart and stole her.” Fiery eyes speared him. “My leg and arm were broken. When the Rekken attacked Nivar, I had to help the Ybiennese flee.” Misery wreaked havoc on the man’s confidence. “But I would ask—what of ye and Thiel? When did ye look for her?”
Haegan drew up. Then nodded. “You are right.”
“War is unmerciful. Every breath I am not in war planning, I strategize how to find her.”
“I have a feeling,” Haegan said, a swirling fire deep in his abiatasso confirming what he was about to speak, “you will not have to look much longer. If Poired took her, he will come. They know I am here. They’ll come.”
• • •
Never had she felt so vulnerable, so . . . bare. Thiel smoothed a hand down her stomach, ignoring the flutterings. She stared at the ring he’d slipped on her finger two days past. Remembered his kisses.
Shouts from the window drew her to the shutters, which she eased back, hinges creaking noisily. Among the tents and shanties, Haegan strolled the paths. For hours he’d been locked in that council, and now he gave his time to the people, who clamored for his attention, his touch. The great warrior—the Tahscan was with him. Tili had mentioned that Haegan had taken the man as his bodyguard, something to do with him smelling fear or some such.
But the girls, the women of the villages, reached out to Haegan, too. Patted his broad shoulders. He smiled and caught their hands. Touched their shoulders as well.
Why would he do that?
“What ails ye?”
Thiel whirled to find Elan standing in the solarium with her, his stance beleaguered. “I could ask the same of ye.”
“’Tis no secret—my bound is missing.”
Haegan’s sister. It still surprised her, but she berated herself for being so self-absorbed. “I beg yer mercy, Elan,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “I am not myself since returning . . .”
“Tili said Cadeif died.”
She nodded, bracing against the memory. “He sacrificed himself to help me escape. They were going to kill me.”
“’Twas the only honorable thing left for him after holding ye captive.”
“Ye know not of what ye speak. He was in danger of losing his—”
“It does no’ matter�
�if he cared for ye, he should have done all to protect ye, not hold ye prisoner.”
She stuffed her arms over her chest. “Aye. As ye have for Kaelyria,” she spat, instantly regretting the words. Wondering how her tongue had become so cruel and loosed.
Elan’s face rippled with rage. But then he slumped. “She is as good as dead.”
Surprise drew her head up. “How dare ye speak such a thing!”
“’Tis truth. She has been in his grasp nigh unto a month. I am no closer to finding her.”
“Have ye even tried?” Thiel bit her tongue, hating the cruel words. It wasn’t like her. “And why did neither ye nor Father come for me? Is this what strong men do? Play the victim when their women are taken?”
Quick strides brought him to tower over her.
“Does it make ye feel important? To think he wanted her just to take her from ye.”
“Just as ye were held prisoner by that savage and ye expect us to believe he did no’ take yer virtue. Think ye Father will be able to bribe any fool to take his harlot daughter—”
Her hand flew true and sharp. Connected a stinging smack against his cheek. “I have a fool already ensnared.”
Elan surged.
“Enough!”
They both spun. Their father stood in the doorway, his face a mask of fury. Embers rippling off his hands. “’Tis no wonder Abiassa saw fit to take the Fire Throne from me. I canno’ rule my own blood, let alone nine kingdoms!”
“There a problem?”
They all turned to where Tili stood at the top of the stairs, just outside the chamber.
Thiel felt idiotic for the fuss she’d started, but could neither bring herself to be contrite nor to answer.
“Very well,” Tili said. “Thiel, ye might want to know Tokar is training a raqine. He could probably use help.”
“My help?” She balked.
“It’s Draed.”
“Oh.” Snickering, she left the keep and made her way out of the fortress to the training yard. It felt good to be out of the castle. Two days within those walls was almost enough to drive her mad, but here—the sun and wind made her heart light.
“Blazing pile of dung!”
