Page 72 of Master of Storms
He shot her a mild look over his shoulder. “Don’t listen to rumors, Solveig. I like drinking and gambling. I enjoy pleasure.Drekilook at me and instantly suspect all I’m interested in is chasing after a woman.” He cut her off before she could speak. “And maybe I was that sort of youth. Once.”
“You kidnapped a female during her mating ceremony in France,” she pointed out, because she’d made it her business to track him.
“Is that what your resources say?”
“You deny it?”
“No. I kidnapped Khadija from her mating ceremony.” His mouth thinned. “She was barely of age, and her uncle—thedrekiwarlord of a tribe in Morocco—had arranged an unwanted mating for her. Her mother begged me to rescue her, and I couldn’t just walk away. Khadija is now happily putting arrows through the throats of her uncle’sdrekiin the Jbel Saghro mountain range with her grandfather. My smuggler friend, Hassan, is her brother.”
This time, it was her turn to be surprised.
“What?” There was a faint edge of amusement on his lips. “I’m handsome, charming, a rakish, unthreateningdrekiprince who can make even the sternestdrekilaugh. They watch their females when I’m around, but they never suspect I’m working against them. I’m just a pampered prince, after all. It’s almost too easy.”
Solveig thought her way through everything she’d ever heard about him. “You were caught in a princess’s bedchambers in Germany.”
“Now that,” he said, “istrue. I was trying to steal back a relic that was important to a witch in Zagreb, but my information was inaccurate and I climbed through the wrong window. Amelie was happier to see me than I expected, and I had to distract her somehow.”
“You burned down a monastery in the Kingdom of Romania.”
“It was just one tiny little monastery,” he said with a shrug, reaching back to help her down a narrow section of stairs. “It wasn’t as though it was run by a group of monks who’d captureddrekikits and were seeking to ‘burn the devil out of them.’”
Solveig stopped, with her fingers in his. “You’re saying all these rumors of women in your bed are wrong?”
“Oh no, there were women.” He arched a brow at her. “For both of us, clearly. I’m just saying, there may not have been quite as many as the stories say.”
She stared at him.
His ability in the sky was breathtaking. He moved like adrekiwho’d learned stealth from the best. He fought better than she’d have expected.
She had never, ever suspected he was more than an arrogant wastrel, and it was a little embarrassing to realize she too, would have underestimated him.
I had visions of being some dashing pirate somewhere….
“What’s wrong?” he teased. “Did I just shatter all your preconceptions?”
“Why do you hide it?”
He continued walking. “Because nobody knows who I am. My friend in Oslo trades far and wide. When people are desperate they know they can contact him, and hire a certain, elusive figure to rescue someone they love, or recover something that was stolen. I like the work. It pays well and I’m good at it.”
It was more than that.
Maybe he liked being the hero. Maybe he felt welcomed for the first time in his life. He risked his life for people and they were grateful.
“You rarely mention your brother, either.”
There. There was the tension in his shoulders. This time she caught a glimpse of his profile as he gave her his attention. “My brother?”
“Rurik.”
For the first time there was a certain heaviness about his steps. “I spent a good portion of my life thinking my brother guilty of my father’s murder. You were the one who forced me to confront certain truths about my mother.”
“I did?”
“We were swimming in a mountain stream, and you said something like ‘my father never did trust your mother’ when I mentioned his death.”
She remembered that moment. That stream. Though her focus had been on other things at the time.
The kiss that hadalmosthappened between them.
