Page 51 of Prize of the Warlord
“I will get to him. You can’t stop me,” I tell them, and I take hold of the dream, banishing them from my path. I forge ahead, and the blood drains away from the distant figure, leaving the Warlord whole and unblemished, gazing up at the sky with his blond hair rippling in the breeze. I’m slogging through waist-high snow now, struggling across an open field toward him.
“Cronan,” I call.
He turns, and opens his arms. “Ixiana.”
I run to him.
But before I can fling myself into his embrace, he’s gone. I’m floating in a great nothing, an expanse of purplish-blue. “Cronan?” This time, my voice has dimension and power—it spans time and space.
He answers, low and rough. I can’t see him, but we can hear each other. Instinctively I know that we are communing through the ether again, this time while both of us are asleep. The realization floods me with mischievous delight. No one can interrupt us here.
“Do you think we’ll be able to speak to each other like this when I’m far from you?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” his disembodied voice replies.
“It would be wonderful and terrible if we could.”
“It would be torture. You will be married to someone else.”
“And you—you’ll marry Olsa.”
“Maybe.”
“You’ll have babies with her.” My ether voice sounds so much calmer than I feel. “You’ll take her body, like I wanted you to take mine.”
“And your Prince will takeyou,” he says caustically. “He will possess you and put his hands on you. He’ll slide his dick between your legs and push his tongue into your mouth.”
“Stop.” The picture he’s painting blazes in my mind, sharp and clear, and I panic. “I—I’m not sure I can let him do that. I don’t think I can marry him after all.”
“You are part of the deal. You’re the reason he is contributing money and soldiers,” says the Warlord. “Do you think he’ll let you go so easily, or that your parents will allow you to break the engagement?”
“My parents are good people. They’ll listen to me.”
He laughs, bitter and harsh. “If you want to get out of this, treasure, you can’t be so trusting. You have to be the woman who stole my horse and left me in a ditch to bleed out. The people we love disappoint us. They break us, sometimes without meaning to.”
“You think I’ll break you?”
His voice sinks low, fading into the distance. “You already have.”
My consciousness and his drift apart. Try as I might, I can’t connect with him again. I wake sometime later, wretched and cold, and I crawl out of Zeha’s tent into a gray dawn. I nearly gag on the foul grainy porridge during breakfast. Despite my fur-lined trousers, my inner thighs are chafed from riding, and a persistent ache thrums through my bones and skull.
Our crossing of the southern stretch of the Bloodsalt is uneventful. We climb the great range of mountains a different way this time, skirting close to one of my father’s watchtowers. The guards there can surely see us, but they have orders to let us pass unmolested. The Warlord and his people don’t leave anything to chance, though. They’re all clad in their dark, steely armor, roughly hammered pauldrons and breastplates and bracers. The Warlord and Zeha each wear helmets over their braided hair.
Once we’ve made it out of the pass, the Warlord calls a halt. “That must be the village. It’s called Three Bridges.” He points it out to Olsa and Zeha.
Three Bridges is a scattering of tidy cottages along a ridge a little way down the mountainside. The tiled roofs are bathed orange with the glow of the setting sun. A stream snakes between the buildings before spilling down the hill, and its flow is spanned in three places by small stone bridges. A thin line of wagons and people move slowly away from the settlement, down to the foothills.
“It looks as if they’re keeping their word, at least for now,” Olsa says. “The villagers are emptying the place for us.”
“Either that, or they’re getting everyone out so we can battle without civilian casualties,” Zeha mutters.
The Warlord grunts assent. “We haven’t raided this place before, but Erfyn and his people did. They took away plenty of livestock and grain. There may be some patches of ground worth farming here, after all. Olsa, tell everyone to beware, and have weapons ready, but stay back. Zeha and I will ride ahead and make the exchange.”
Olsa pulls her horse nearer to his. “I would like to be at your side for this, Cronan.”
My teeth clench. I don’t like the way she says his name in that intimate tone.
“I need you to make sure the warriors restrain themselves unless I call for them to attack,” he says. “I don’t want this deal ruined by an impetuous idiot. And ask the healer to be ready in case he’s needed. They may try to kill me.” He chuckles darkly, and a chill of dread runs over my skin. I wrap my arms tighter around his waist.
