Page 3 of Tashama
“No, just like us.”
“I remember your chambers and the teaching rug.” The sorcerer’s room had smelled like mint and thyme, cinnamon and peaches, pleasant and welcoming. The sun’s rays seemed to warm the room in a wash of golden light even on cold, gray days.
“Yes, while I served your father and mother, you learned your spells through my image there.”
“And Loralee. I was teaching her a new trick when?—”
“You were late for dinner.”
Tashama nodded, and tears filled her eyes. Her pet dragon. Never would she see her again. Nor her family. “You came for me and took me away.”
“You do realize, returning home will be fraught with danger?” His dark voice was touched with concern.
She turned her eyes up to gaze upon him. Her teacher, her steadfast companion, her protector. “We have to find the murderers and deal with them.”
“You have an inner strength, Tashama, that will get you through. Always remember that.”
“But youwillbe with me?” Panic tugged at her heart. “You won’t desert me?” She couldn’t imagine finding her killers and taking her place as leader of her people without her loyal advisor at her side. He was the only one she could trust with her life.
He inclined his head. “I’ve been your guardian all these many years. I’ll remain your advisor ‘til the end of your rule.”
Returning to rule over her homelands appealed, but what would she find when she returned? An unending war between Karthland and her neighbors, the Maldovians? But worse, who were the assassins? And what about the man she was to wed? She ran her finger in a circle on the counter. “Why do I have these dreams ofhim?” Tashama looked up at Balthazar.
“What dreams are those, Princess?”
Tashama exhaled her breath, exasperated. “You know very well what dreams these are.” She settled on the barstool across the counter from Balthazar and studied her long, pearl-polished nails resting on the tile top.
“He’s a handsome devil of a man with hair as brown as dark chocolate, hanging in thick waves over his broad, bare shoulders. His equally rich brown eyes sparkle with flecks of amber, but seem haunted at times. He’s as tall as you, too. Well, maybe an inch taller. I swear he looks like a sexy version of Hercules without the beard, smooth-faced, square-jawed, chiseled features…a gift from the gods.”
She looked up and stared right through Balthazar. “He stands nearly a foot taller than me, waiting to see what I’ll do. His eyes consider my lips, and I know he wants to touch them with his own.”
Just as much as she wanted his mouth pressed firmly against hers, to have his fingers touch every inch of her skin, to caress her breasts, to roam lower and ease the ache that had already returned between her legs. Just thinking of the dream…
Her eyes gazed at the counter. “His mouth parts slightly as if to speak, but no words ever pass his lips. His gaze locks onto mine as if he’s tied to me in some inexplicable way. Then the faintest of smiles brightens his golden complexion, but in the next instance, he vanishes from my sight.”
Night after night, she wanted to be swept into his arms and vanish with him, but she couldn’t follow where he must go.
“You’re twenty-three, Tashama. That’s why you have these dreams. Your soul aches for a mate.”
“Is he the one then?” She shook her head as if to answer her own question. “He cannot be. He’s not one of ours…too dark, too dangerous.”
“We must go,” Balthazar said, though he spoke no word, and she nodded in silent agreement.
She took a deep breath and reached her hand out to him. She’d already told her girlfriends she would be leaving for Europe and wouldn’t be able to return. Balthazar had never permitted her to have male friends, though she’d fought him over it for years. Now she was glad she hadn’t found someone she truly loved, because she could never have taken him to her homeland when she had to return.
Balthazar’s white brows knitted together, and he turned his head toward the north. “What’s that sound I hear—like the gallop of 10,000 horses in battle?”
Tashama listened. “The ice maker just dumped some more ice into the?—”
“No, listen.”
She hurried over to the kitchen window and peered out. Boiling green clouds rolled toward them, darkening the sky. Lightning struck the plowed-under cornfields in jagged spears while their voices boomed with thunderous discontent. A blue sheet of rain grew closer, hiding the menace behind it. Takinga deep breath, she sensed the storm’s power. She rubbed her forehead and concentrated on the front. “A blue norther.”
The rain suddenly ceased as if a waterfall had been cut off at its source. Blackbirds caught up in the wind flew in odd patterns.
“What’s wrong with the birds?” Without waiting for Balthazar to answer, her heart picked up its pace. “They have no voice…they’re not birds, but…remnants of a farmer’s barn.”
The rotating transparent cloud of mist transformed into a solid brown mass and raced across the plowed fields. She gasped. The swirling funnel appeared like the star of the storm, ripping cottonwoods from their homes where for years they had divided the farmers’ fields.
