by Jessi Gage
“She showed no reaction. Some say she’d known somehow. They say when Gregor died, he took her soul with him to Danu’s breast, where they could finally be together with the goddess’s blessing.” He raked his fingers through the sand, ruining his pictures. “She died on the way back to Figcroft. Just stopped breathing one night while she slept in the cart between her pactmates.”
“How awful.” She shivered, suddenly cold. The meat was cold too. Just as well. She was no longer hungry. The extra would keep and make a fine breakfast. She wrapped it a swath of hide and drew the cloak tight around her. It felt late. She should go to the cave to lie down, but sleep would come reluctantly after Riggs’s story. “Why did ye tell me all that?”
“You asked why the trackers were after you and not me.” His voice rumbled softly in the night. Staring at the ashes of the fire, he sighed like he was steeling himself to remove an arrow lodged in his flesh. “Aine and Gregor lived almost a thousand years ago,” he said, slowly turning his head to meet her gaze. “Females have become more scarce ever since. Only one hundred and fifty-three remain. They all live in Chroina, under the protection of King Magnus. None has birthed a child in eleven years. It’s the longest period in our history without a birth. Some say it’s the end of the world. I’m just someone who killed a few Larnians who were up to no good. You’re a female. A miracle.”
Chapter 11
Anya kept waiting for Riggs to dissolve into laughter and say, “I’m jesting, of course.” He didn’t. He stopped talking, and silence settled over her like a blanket of ice.
Since he wouldn’t laugh, she did it for him. She cackled like a mad hyena. She laughed so hard she had to steady herself with a hand on the ground. She laughed until tears leaked from her eyes.
When the laughter died, she straightened to see Riggs looming close beside her. He’d scooted close enough for the heat pouring off him to penetrate her cloak better than any fire. The wash of moonlight made his expression appear hard. Instead of warm gold flecks in his eyes, she saw silver shards.
“End of the world?” she said on a chuckle. “Truly? You think the end of the world is at hand?”
He remained silent.
“The world canna just end. ’Tis impossible! Things will always go on.”
“Not without females.”
“Well of course females are necessary. But surely, you’re mistaken about the number.”
“The only way I’m mistaken is if a female has gone to Danu’s breast since the last report from Chroina.”
He meant if a female had died. If he was wrong about the number, ’twas because he’d overestimated, not underestimated it.
“One hundred and fifty-three?” An oddly specific number. If there were truly so few women, it would make sense to ken the exact number. Each one would be precious. Each death tragically mourned.
“One hundred and fifty-three,” he confirmed.
There were more women than that in residence between Ackergill and Wick. To have so few for a whole country of men? Impossible. Unless Marann was a wee country, though it didn’t feel so wee considering how far they’d gone, and they weren’t even half way to Chroina yet. “How many men are there?”
“About six thousand at the last census.”
That wasn’t very many men. She’d heard of armies ten times that size. “Six thousand,” she repeated. “In all of Marann?”
He scoffed. “No.”
Something in her gut relaxed. He was going to explain what he truly meant and put her mind at ease. ’Twas merely a misunderstanding they were having.
“In the world.”
A chill made the skin on her neck prickle.
Riggs had never struck her as a mad man before, but she feared for his sanity now. She scooted away from him and said in her gentlest tone, “That canna be true. What about Larna? What about beyond the sea?”
“Twelve of the females in Chroina were among the ones rescued from Larna in the last war. They’re all old now. There hasn’t been a female in Larna since our soldiers brought them out. There are no females left across the sea.”
“How can you be certain? Have you looked?”
“Of course we’ve looked.” He sounded like he’d just rolled his eyes at her.
“Well, how am I to ken? Mayhap wolf-men have never heard of boats.”
After a stretch of silence, Riggs began to chuckle.
Then she started up again.
Soon they were both chortling like fools, releasing the weight of all he’d just told her. Could it be true? Could that blasted box have brought her to a place where females were rarer than diamonds?
“You’ve been in my boat,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. “You know at least one wolf-man can cross water.”
“Mayhap you’re the only one. Mayhap your king ought to hire you to teach the rest of them how to go about it.”
“A pitiful armada that would be, if the king’s vessels were nothing but hollowed out logs.”
They both chuckled some more.
“How did it happen? Where did all the women go?” She couldn’t imagine a world like Riggs described. Her mind darted from one implication to the next. No women meant the men did everything, the cooking, cleaning, sewing. The tupping. Without warm cunnies, men would turn to each other.
Had Riggs ever been with a man? She wouldn’t blame him if he had. Urges were urges. One thing was clear to her now, though. He’d never had a woman.
He’d inched closer while she lost herself in thought. She felt his warmth again, and despite a mild wariness—because after all, he still might be quite mad and have made all this up—his nearness comforted her.
“There were fewer and fewer girl children born,” he said. “It happened slowly. Some think it started around Jilken’s time, because of his atrocities. Eventually, a full year went by without a female birth. Then ten. Then...” He looked into the banked fire. “The youngest female is eighty-three years old. Her name is Diana. She is one of only thirty-five females still young enough to breed. But time is running out. Even Diana may have only ten or twelve years left to breed.”
“Eighty-three?” she interrupted. “No woman that auld has conceived since Abraham and Sarah. If wolfkind’s hope rests on an eighty-three year old woman, then you’re all dead.”
He frowned. “Eighty-three is not old. Women breed well into their nineties, sometimes even to a hundred. And our hope no longer rests on Diana and the others of breeding age. It now rests on you.”
Cold sluiced her neck and chest. It felt as if he’d just dumped a great bucket of river water on her. She wanted to slap her hands over her ears and unhear what he’d just said.
He took her hands in his and squeezed them. She tried to pull away, but he didn’t let her. He captured her gaze as well. She’d never seen him look so serious. “King Magnus needs an heir. None of the females have conceived for him. You will. I know you will. You’ll bring life to Marann. To the whole world. That’s why I’m bringing you to Chroina. So you can save us all.”
She shook her head. “Nay. I canna.” She tried harder to pull away from him, but his arms went around her and sucked her in, pulling her tight to his chest.
“Please,” he said softly. “Do this for me. For my people. We need you.”
His plea snared her heart. She curled her fists in his shirt. Damn him. Damn him to bloody hell.
She should be furious with him for keeping his true intentions from her for so long. She should hate him for making her care about him when all the while he’d intended to give her to another man.
She should be elated because after years of pining for an honored place in the laird’s bed, she was now being handed something even better, a king’s bed.
But she didn’t feel any of the things she should. Anger and hatred burned like twin fires behind her breastbone, but their heat was directed solely at herself. Anger because if she had pieced it all together sooner, she never would have let herself grow so fond of this gruff wolf-man
, and then his plan for her wouldn’t feel like a betrayal. Hatred because even if she wanted to do what Riggs asked, even if she wished to lend her womb to his king for the survival of his people, she couldn’t. Her legs had not been the only things damaged in her fall. In the five months since, she’d not once had her courses. Her womb was damaged. She could not have bairns.
“Let me go,” she told him. She released his shirt and tried to push out of his arms.
“No.” He held her fast and stroked her hair. The dull points of his fingernails gently grazed her scalp. “Not until we get to Chroina.”
Despite his speaking them tenderly, his words were a slap to her face. “I hate you.”
“I know,” he said, and he held her even tighter.
* * * *
“You want me to do what?” Anya shrieked. Her voice echoed around the wee valley. They’d rested a full day and night. It was the second morning since they’d reached the cave, and Riggs was squatting near the river with his back to her.
“Climb on. I’ll carry you on my back today.”
She shook her head, but it was wasted on him, since he wasn’t facing her. “How would I stay on?”
“You’ll hold on around my neck, and I’ll support your legs.” He wiggled his fingers beside his hips. “Didn’t your sire ever carry you like this?”
“Nay. He didna.” She folded her arms across her chest.
Riggs peered at her, turning partway. He wore a smirk. Bloody infuriating, handsome man.
After his full confession the night before last, she’d wanted nothing more than to get away from him. She’d thought to escape this foolhardy plan of his and take her chances in the wilderness of Marann, but he’d refused to leave her side.
“I don’t expect your forgiveness,” he’d told her as he lay down behind her on the bed and tucked her tight against his body. “But please, lady, let me enjoy you. I may never know the company of another female. I’ll remember these days the rest of my life. They’ll be the best of my life.” How did a lass run away from a man who said such things? How did she tell him she couldn’t possibly be what he needed her to be?
“Are you afraid I’ll drop you?” he said.
“I’m afraid of being mistaken for a bloody monkey.”
“If anyone sees us, it’s not comparison to a monkey I’d worry about.”
They’d done nothing but rest and talk yesterday. He’d told her his plan to walk to a nearby village by the name of Valeworth where they could rent horses. Riding the rest of the way to Chroina would be quicker and safer, since it would give them the only fair chance to outpace the trackers, who were likely on horseback as well. While she was in no hurry to get to Riggs’s bloody king, she didn’t particularly want to meet the men who had set those wolves on them. Unfortunately, obtaining horses would mean entering a village where they must keep her identity as a woman secret lest the men in residence decide to make off with her.
“Would they nay bring me to your king like you’re doing?” she’d asked while eating her cold venison.
“I would like to hope so,” had been Riggs’s reply. “But I’m not willing to take any chances with you.”
“There really are no women outside of Chroina,” she’d said in a tone as grim as the expression on Riggs’s face.
“Only you.”
Desperate men made for dangerous men. It was by the grace of the saints she’d wound up with a decent one.
As much as she hated to admit it, from all Riggs had told her, Chroina really did seem the safest place for her. And if she was going to Chroina, she might as well live in luxury at the palace. ’Twould be the highest price she’d yet earned for her body: privilege and possession in exchange for becoming the bedmate of a king. ’Twas a far better price than she’d thought any man would pay for her again.
Of course, the king could very well take one look at her limping gait and scarred face and refuse her. In that case, mayhap Riggs would keep her after all.
“Come on,” he said. “We have a lot of ground to cover. I want to arrive with enough strength to flee with you if things go badly.”
Her neck prickled with the foreboding in his tone. “If any man tries to steal me from you, I’ll stab him in the eye.”
“Good.” He wiggled his fingers again, inviting her to climb on. “It’ll be best if we arrive soon after the men come in from their day’s work. They’ll be too weary and too intent on their beer to look twice at a man and his son traveling to Haletown for a doctor.”
She scrambled onto Riggs’s back, hugging his muscular hips between her thighs. He wrapped his hands under her knees. With her arms locked in front of his throat, she felt fairly secure.
The position might be undignified but ’twas not without its merits. Warmth from his back seeped into her stomach and breasts. Her nose dipped into the curls brushing his collar. His woodsy scent would make her drunk if she let it. But what she appreciated most was the way she’d be able to use the strength in her arms to support some of her own weight, saving Riggs from having to work so hard. It made her feel useful, clinging to him instead of lazing about in his arms. Speaking of arms...
She eyed the tear in his shirt, beneath which, his blood-stained bandage could be seen. His wounds were healing remarkably quickly, but they were still tender. “Does it hurt, holding me like this?”
“No. Hold on.” A powerful thrust of his legs brought him to standing. Axe tucked in his belt, he set off to the east, following a branch of the valley that wound between two wooded hills. He wasn’t even limping from the wound in his calf. Either Riggs was exceptionally hearty or there really was fey blood in him. ’Twould also explain how his people lived so long if they’d been made from immortals.
“Tell me more about your people,” she said. “You mentioned the youngest female is eighty-three. And she’s still within breeding age. I canna imagine such a thing. And how is it your wounds heal so quickly? Is it your fey blood?”
“I don’t heal quicker than anyone else.”
She snorted. “Three days ago, you were gored in the thigh. Two days ago, you were ravaged by wolves. Today, you’re walking about as if you’d never been injured at all. A human would be limping from those wounds at best, lying in bed with blood fever at worst, especially since you’ve not had the bites cleaned properly.”
He shrugged a beefy shoulder. “They are minor wounds.”
“Not to one of my kind, they wouldn’t be.”
He grunted, a sound of mild interest.
“How auld are you?” she asked.
“Sixty-three.”
“What?” she shrieked.
Riggs flinched. “Not so loud, lady, your mouth is right by my ear.”
“Sorry. But sixty-three? My da was only fifty-three when he died, and no person in their right mind would have considered him young. You canna be sixty-three. ’Tis impossible.”
He turned his head enough that she could brush his cheek with her lips if she’d wanted to. His hair had become damp with perspiration, and a bit of his ear showed through the silky black strands. The tip was pointed.
She had an urge to stroke the hair away so she could trace the shape with her finger. Why didn’t it bother her, that foreign shape?
“How old do I seem to you?” he asked, drawing her attention from his ear to his cocksure grin.
How sad that he’d never had a woman. A man like him, handsome, virile, kind and capable, should be fending them off with sticks. “I wouldn’t put you a day over thirty-five.”
“A pup becomes a man at twenty-five. A thirty-five-year-old man is barely into his beard. Do you know how old King Magnus is?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Seventy-five.”
“Most humans are considered blessed by the saints if they live to seventy-five,” she said quietly. Riggs’s people were much different from hers. “I take it, King Magnus isna auld.”
“He’s in his prime. He’s strong and fit and wise. He’s a fine ruler,
and a fine man. You’ll like him.”
She scoffed.
“You will. All the ladies like King Magnus.”
“I’m sure they do. He’s a king.” Wealth and position used to draw her eye too. Not anymore. She’d be happy to live out her measly short human life in a cozy cabin in the woods with a hearty, rugged wolf-man. Too bad the one she’d had her eye on didn’t want her.
“A good king,” Riggs insisted.
“Have you met him?”
“No. But in the fifty years he’s sat the throne, he’s led fairly and done much for Marann. He revised the lottery so almost any man could afford a ticket. He’s brought Larna under submission. No other king or queen before him has been able to do that. And he’s expanded the archives started by his mother, Queen Abigail. With so few people left, many trades were in danger of being lost, but King Magnus has collected a vast library of records so all trades can be relearned. He’s never given up hope.”
She harrumphed noncommittally. Of course Riggs would want her to like his king, so he’d talk the man up. She’d reserve judgment until she met him. “You mentioned the lottery yesterday as well. How does it work?”
“Every season men can buy tickets representing each of the thirty-five women of breeding age. Drawings determine which men get the honor of trying to breed. Before King Magnus, tickets used to be priced too high for most men to be able to afford them. My sire saved for twenty years to buy a single one. He got lucky. He won Hilda, my mother, for a season, and they conceived me. I’m one of the few men born to a commoner during that time. Now, thanks to King Magnus, almost any man can afford a ticket every season, and no one is permitted to buy more than ten per drawing. It means just about every man has a chance to breed.”
How many tickets had Riggs bought over the years? How many times had he hoped to become as lucky as his da? She wanted to ask, but didn’t.
He headed down a gentle slope. Heat poured off his neck as he kept up a brisk walk. Soreness lingered in her arms from rowing two nights ago. Now they were doubly sore from holding on around his neck, but ’twas a welcome ache.
