Page 63 of Prize of the Warlord
“We can’t be apart,” I whisper, gazing at him.
Zeha says something in her language—I’m fairly sure it’s a swear. Olsa responds quietly, and picks up a bandage from a nearby table. I retreat when she approaches me, but then I realize what she’s doing, and I lift my hair so she can secure the bandage around my neck.
Then Zeha speaks to the healer. “Please keep working on Cronan as long as you can. I’ll have someone bring you food and drink, and we’ll have a bed ready so you can recover afterward. And you’ll be well paid. Again.”
The healer snorts. “I might as well travel with your clan from now on. Seems I’m to be the personal healer for this fool. He’s going to have scars from this one—I can’t make his skin seamlessandreplace the blood he lostandsave his frostbitten feet.”
“Save his feet and his life,” Zeha says. “The scars will remind him of his foolishness.” She hesitates in the doorway, looking back at me. “Thank you for saving him.”
“You’re welcome,” the healer replies. I smile and nod to Zeha.
She gives me the tiniest of answering smiles, shaking her head. “What are we going to do with you, Ixiana?”
She doesn’t answer her own question, and I have no response. She and Olsa leave together, talking in low tones. Probably trying to figure a way out of this mess.
I perch on the end of the bed, watching the healer work until my vision blurs and I sink down onto the blankets. It’s still the dead of night. If I leave now I could make it back to Hoenfel before sunrise and smooth things over with my parents and Havil—if that’s even possible—not that I want to marry him, but I should try to mollify him somehow, keep another war from beginning…
The bedroom is firelit and warm, and my thoughts drift into a sleepy golden swirl, like molten sunlight. My sleep is punctuated by splinters of pain through my ankle, interrupted by nightmare flashes of vomit spewing from Prince Havil’s mouth.
I wake with a jolt—an actual jolt as my whole body is flung over something bulky and warm. I’m hanging head-down, my long yellow hair swaying. The ground is moving, and all I can see is a pair of boots, two muscular thighs, and a well-shaped male butt clad in tight leather trousers. I’ve been flung over someone’s enormous shoulder, someone whose spicy, smoky male scent I recognize.
“Cronan,” I gasp. “Put me down.”
“No.”
“You’re healed! You’re walking! That’s so wonderful… but what is going on?”
“I’m taking you back to your father.”
67
“What?” I hammer the Warlord’s back with my fist. “I don’t want to go back to my family yet! We haven’t even had a chance to talk… Cronan, I want to stay with you. Just for a little while.”
He doesn’t respond. We’re out of the building now, in the cold pink air of dawn. Olsa is holding the bridle of my mother’s horse, and Cronan tosses me onto the saddle before mounting.
“I’ll return,” is all he says to his sister before spurring the horse southward along the road.
I keep fussing at him as we ride, but he refuses to answer me for a full hour. Finally, in a seething rage, I elbow him in the ribs as hard as I can. He doesn’t seem to notice, and pain shoots through my arm. “Ow! You big horrible ruffian. Why won’t you talk to me? I saved your life, you know, after you were dumb enough to get yourself caught—and this is just as dumb, riding back to Hoenfel after everything that happened last night! Havil’s guards are going to shoot you dead.”
“I’m honoring the deal,” he says roughly.
“Finally, he speaks,” I retort. “So you came all the way down the mountain and sneaked around through the forest in the middle of the night on the off chance you might get to see me again—got yourself caught and tortured and nearly killed—and now you’re just—bringing me back? What was the point of all that?”
“There was no point,” he says. “I was an idiot. My craving for you makes me a fool. So while I have the strength, I’m taking you back where you belong. Then I will leave Three Bridges in Zeha’s hands and go north, beyond the mountains, where I cannot be tempted. You will never see me again.”
“But you—you can’t do that.” My voice is strained, full of barely repressed tears. “How will you lead your revolution and spearhead your conquest of the South from so far away?”
“Olsa and Zeha are more than capable of handling it. I will return to our settlement and focus on building, hunting, and crafting. I’m useless as a warrior. You’ve ruined me. If I lead a raiding party, every villager I terrorize and every guard I slay will have your face. When I steal goods and food, I will hear your disappointed voice in my ears.” His mouth descends, hot breath sifting into my ear. “If I stay on this side of the mountains, I won’t be able to resist coming to you again.”
I want to tell him,Yes, come to me again and again, but it would be too dangerous for him. “What if I send my parents a message, that I want to stay with you? I told them how I feel about you last night—maybe they would understand. And I don’t care about the dangers of the North, Cronan—I survived them before, and I can do it again. I’m stronger than everyone thought, including me. I can be yours, truly yours. Havil is furious, and he won’t want to marry me after this, so the bargain is already wrecked. You don’t have to honor it. You can take me back with you—you cantakeme—” I grip his thighs and shift my hips, pressing my rear against him.
But the Warlord clamps an enormous hand across my mouth. “You’re talking foolishness,” he says. “You’re being as stupid as I was last night. It won’t work, Ixiana. You know it.”
I drag my nails across his hand until he releases my mouth. “Then be with me,” I gasp. “Right now, right here. Just once, before you leave. We can rut in the trees like a pair of beasts.”
He rumbles low in his chest. “If I do that, I won’t be able to leave you.”
“Perfect.” I grind against him again, and he vents a rough moan.
