She had cat eyes. Green-gold, with a hint of amusement and disdain in them that was ridiculously arousing.
She was slender, almost delicate, with narrow arms, narrow hips and only the slightest of curves. Her mouth was bow-shaped and full—very soft, very kissable.
Her eyes weren’t the only catlike feature, either. The smile on that very kissable mouth, her softly pointed chin, even the way she held herself.
She studied him, her gaze lingering on the hilt of the long knife she could see over his shoulder. Xan held silent as she finished her survey and then looked at him. “Interesting blade you have there—it’s a bit larger than the standard-issue ones we have on hand. Pulsars and blasters are more widely used here than knives.”
“I can use either,” he said, absently touching a hand to the pulsar strapped to his left thigh.
She lifted a brow and nodded toward his knife. “And how good are you at the blade?”
He just smiled. The knife fit in his hand like it had been made for him. And it had—he’d made it himself. He’d been crafting his own blades for years.
Syn’s smile widened and then she looked away from both Vena and Xan, dismissing them. “Commander, we’re scheduled to meet with Elina and Lee in the next few minutes.”
The commander nodded. Neither of them spared Vena or Xan a second look.
Xan only lingered long enough to admire the view as she walked away. Then he let the crowd swallow him, leaving Vena standing there, still blushing furiously.
“It’s not going to happen,” Kalen said shortly.
He didn’t even bother glancing at the report disc Elina had put together for him.
Lee, Elina and Syn stood in front of his desk. Elina didn’t look surprised, but Syn could tell the woman was pissed.
Lee glared at her husband. “You didn’t even read the damn report.”
“I don’t need to,” he said flatly. “I’m considering the safety of all in making this decision, and the answer is no. No amount of reports will change that.”
“Well, of course not,” Lee replied. “Not if you don’t bother to read them.”
Kalen flicked a glance up at her. The silver of his eyes flashed, but Syn couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He was too good at hiding his emotions. “Is there any solid, concrete information in there about whether or not the Warlords will feel Lee’s magic? Or whether or not you know for a fact the energy is safe and isn’t going to suck a weaker witch inside, drain her dry?”
“No.” Elina spoke for them all.
“Then there is nothing in those reports that will change my mind.” He shoved the disc off to the side and focused once more on the reports the weapons master had provided. “Now, since that is settled, we need to start preparing for our next supply run. Unless somebody from back east finally decides to respond to my last dozen requests, we’ll have to make a run within the month.”
He focused on Syn’s face.
From the corner of her eye, Syn could see Lee and Elina’s expressions. Elina’s face was impassive.
But Lee looked mad enough to spit nails.
Syn suspected she was going to make Kalen’s life hell for the next few nights.
Good.
Why couldn’t they convince him?
Why wouldn’t he give them a chance?
That cold, empty ache inside her spread, took up a little more ground.
He had to give in. Had to listen . . .
Shifting her gaze to Elina, she just barely managed to keep her thoughts shielded. He’s killing us and he doesn’t even seem to understand it.
Elina’s face was impassive. But she knew.
Kalen didn’t understand. He didn’t have the magic inside him. He wasn’t a witch. He couldn’t know. When he didn’t let them use their magic, he was cutting off a part of them, and sooner or later, it was going to have consequences—for the three witches left in camp, they could be devastating.
“Your report, Syn,” Kalen said, jerking her to attention.
Syn had a hard time maintaining her composure as she delivered the supply report to the commander. She was so furious, she could hardly see. So cold, she felt sick with it. “We can hold out a few more weeks, then?” Kalen asked after she’d given him a quick rundown.
“Safely, yes. Possibly longer,” Syn replied. “Will that be all, Commander?”
He gave her a narrow look. For the most part, when they were discussing things among themselves, Syn rarely called him Commander. She called him by his name—they were friends, friends who’d bled together, sweated together, come close to dying together on more than one occasion. Commander was saved for times when they were out among the troops, rarely for discussions such as these.
Unless she was pissed. And she was. Kalen leaned back in the seat and studied her face, then glanced at Lee and Elina. “I’m sorry. I know this is hard.”
Syn said nothing. Lee glared at him.
Elina tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. In a polite, amicable voice, she said, “You don’t fucking know what hard is . . . Commander. You think you know. But you don’t.” She reached up and tapped her brow as she continued. “Imagine if that psychic gift of yours just suddenly went away. Poof—gone, just like that. It’s part of you. You rely on it. Magic is even more intrinsic to the soul than psychic skill—but you know how hard this is. You know what it’s like to have part of your soul taken away.”
She shifted in her chair, drumming her fingers idly on the arm of it. “No, Commander. You don’t know. So let’s just drop it.”
“Fine.” A muscle jerked in Kalen’s jaw. “Lee, Elina, you’re dismissed. Captain, update me on how the search for Dais is going.”
Dais Bogler rammed his knife into the belly of the buck and cut upward. It had been a while since he’d been forced to hunt, kill and clean his own dinner, but he hadn’t forgotten how. That kind of skill wasn’t easily lost.
Blood, hot and slick, coated his hands.
For a moment, he imagined it wasn’t the blood of a corcer, one of the herd beasts that lived in the Roinan Mountains.
In his mind, it was Kalen’s blood.
In his mind, it was Lee’s blood.
In his mind, it was Morne’s blood.
Morne—damn the man. Why hadn’t he seen it?
Morne—a fucking Warlord. Sirvani. Whatever in the hell he called himself. The bastard had hailed from Anqar and not a one of them had realized it.
It was a vile twist of fate that the people from Anqar didn’t truly look any different from those in Ishtan. Humanoid. As a whole, Warlords and the Sirvani were tall and lean, strong—they were a conquering race, so naturally they were strong. But they looked human. Nothing save their language, their dress, their customs, set them apart from the peoples of Ishtan.
Morne had hidden himself with the rebels, and he’d done it all too well, too easily. He spoke their tongue, and he did it without an accent. He did not wear the garb of a Warlord, and he most certainly hadn’t adhered to Warlord customs. He’d made himself seem as one of the rebels.
A wolf among sheep.
And because of this particular wolf, more than any other, Dais was well and truly screwed.
There were nights when he lay awake and wondered if he shouldn’t just end it, put a blade to his wrists and be done with it. Sooner or later, the rebels would track him down. As long as he was in Ishtan, he was a man marked for death, and unless he was very lucky, it wouldn’t be a pleasant death.
But Dais wasn’t about to give up quite so easily. Not when he’d worked so long, so hard. There had to be a way. There still had to be a way.
He even had a glimmer of a plan. But until he found the right people, he couldn’t very well put it into motion.
Tomorrow, damn it.
He’d find them tomorrow—
But that was something he’d been telling himself for weeks. The Roinan mountain range was huge, heavily forested, and the Warlords knew they couldn’t risk being found by Kalen’s men,
so they stayed on the move. Far too quietly.
A noise, far off, muted, caught his attention. Instincts kicking into high gear, he gathered his gear and abandoned what would have been his first decent hot meal in weeks. The game was slowly starting to drift back in the mountains, but it was still scarce. He’d been existing off scrawny rabbits and cokrels and what precious little vegetation he could harvest without being noticed.
Except he had been noticed. He kept his growl behind his teeth and took off into the undergrowth of the woods, moving in an uneven line that would eventually take him to the river. The water level was lower than normal and the current was moving slowly. If he had to, he could take to the water and let the river carry him farther away.
“The river,” he muttered, tugging at his lower lip, forgetting the buck’s blood that still stained his hands. “Just take to the river for a while, maybe.”
Might be best, actually.
Safer.
Away from the people who’d kill him without blinking an eye. For now. Perhaps if he lay low for a time, they might stop continually combing the forest for him.
Damn them all.
Damn them straight to hell.
With a feral smile curling his lips, Morne emerged from the brush and eyed the dead buck at his feet.
Faintly, very faintly, he could smell something other than the forest, something other than the dead corcer’s blood.
Man.
A man had been here, and not long ago.
He could think of only one man it could be.
Morne already knew that Kalen had the camp under heavy lockdown. One single soul wouldn’t come out this far on a hunting excursion, and even if one was that stupid, one buck wouldn’t do much to feed the camp.
But it wasn’t one from the army. The commander wouldn’t allow anybody to leave the camp alone, and Morne could only sense the presence of one.
So either it was one of the foolish few who hadn’t yet abandoned this forsaken land or it was a traitor.
Dais.
Morne had heard the whisper of sound, the soft sigh of man’s presence, as he searched for Dais. He’d been searching fruitlessly for weeks, but this time, he’d been close and when the earth sensed the presence of a man, it had whispered to Morne. Through his healing gift, he had a connection to the earth. It spoke to him, called to him almost the same way it would call to a witch.
Closer. He was getting closer.
He followed the track to the river, and there, he found more to guide him. Again, his gift roused and whispered to him. It was a different aspect of his power this time, though—his empathy. He’d missed Dais only by moments. Mere moments, not enough time for the residual emotion to clear.
Anger. Fear. Desperation. It was strong enough that he could even pick up on some of the remnant thoughts connected to those emotions. The river—take to the river for a while. Damn them. Damn them straight to hell . . .
“If I go to hell, I take you with me,” Morne said quietly.
A breeze kicked up, blowing his hair back from his face as he stared at the river. If he reached, if he focused, he could almost pick up on Dais’s emotional trail. The man could only ride the river for so long.
“You’re a dead man.”
TWO
It wasn’t quite dawn.
Xan was already up, sitting in silence on the bedroll in the dormer he’d been assigned to. There were nineteen others sharing the same area. Seven women and twelve men. He had the pleasure of listening to loud snoring, soft moans, the occasional grunt, and one man had even talked in his sleep.
He hadn’t slept much, but he had stopped needing more than a few hours of sleep years earlier. Now he just waited.
Often, it seemed as though he’d spent most of his life waiting. For the next fight. For death. For a second chance. For hope.
Now he waited for the sunrise.
Come dawn, he’d start on this new phase of his life.
Serving in the rebel army.
What the bloody hell had he been thinking?
But it hadn’t had much to do with thinking. It had come down to a lack of options. Xan had to wonder if this lack of options would be the death of him.
From behind him, there was another snore—sounding like something between a wild animal’s growl and a person struggling for breath. It was that snore that was responsible for waking him.
He hadn’t expected his lack of options would land him in a squat, narrow building with nineteen others. If he had known this was what awaited him . . . Halfway through the thought, he cut it off.
He was here, like so many others, because he had no choice.
He’d learn to deal with it.
With that thought in mind, he rose from his bunk and slid his blades into place, strapped his pulsar to his thigh. It wasn’t easy leaving his personal belongings—what precious little he had—secured in the small footlocker, but he did it.
On his way out, he strode by the bed of the snorer and delivered it a solid kick. The man came awake with a start, and as Xan disappeared outside, he heard somebody behind him call out, “Thank you!”
“You bastard—”
That was all Lothen managed to get out before he ended up flat on his back with all of the breath knocked out of him. He lay there choking and sputtering for air. His opponent stood there expressionless. Lo came to his feet and shoved sweaty hair back from his face. “That was a dirty fucking trick,” he wheezed.
“Sometimes it takes dirty fucking tricks to stay alive,” Xan replied.
Syn stood off to the side, with her arms crossed over her chest. The man had some serious moves on him. She called out to Lo and gestured for him to leave the sparring circle. Catching Bron’s eye, she nodded toward their newest. Bron cocked a brow—she saw the question in his eyes. She answered with a smile, and as Bron entered the circle, she stripped away her weapons.
Bron kept him moving. A fellow captain, a lifelong soldier, Bron fought with speed and stealth. He’d started out as a scout, but now he was in charge of one of the combat units. He was good. He was fast. But he wasn’t as fast or as good as their new guy. Syn could only think of one other guy who fought so naturally—like it was as natural to him as breathing.
“He’s good,” Kalen murmured from just behind her shoulder.
She grinned. “Now, why am I not surprised to see you here, Commander?”
“Just passing by and caught sight of our new boys. Decided to take a look.”
Calling Xan a boy didn’t fit, Syn thought to herself.
“You playing today?” he asked.
Syn lifted a shoulder. “Unless you plan to.”
Bron went flying past them—literally. He landed with an “oomph” and lay there for a few seconds, a dazed look in his eyes. His lean face went red as he tried to breathe.
Syn and Kalen grinned at each other. Then Kalen said, “I’ll pass. Lee and I are doing some hand-to-hand tonight. I’d rather not start off injured. I’ll let you have the fun today.”
“Coward.” Syn clucked her tongue. She watched, gauging the distance, as Xan started toward Bron. As he offered a hand to the other man, Syn moved.
She went for his feet and as he went down, she slid away.
It was like hitting a brick wall, she decided. A heated brick wall. She was so used to being cold, but the moment she touched him, even though her touch was an attack and not a caress, his heat chased away the chill and left her entire body suffused with warmth.
He outweighed her, outreached her, and stood nearly a head taller than she did. Which pretty much described every sparring partner she’d ever had.
That unreadable gaze of his didn’t change, but she sensed some surprise coming off him as he came to his feet. Bron was up, too, and he moved so that he stood just a little behind Syn and off to the side. It was a choreographed move—they’d done this a thousand times and they’d do it a thousand more.
“So now it is two on one,” Xan said, his voice emotionless.
“It can be a lot of fun.” Syn flashed him a cheeky smile, keeping her weight on the balls of her feet. Her heart was racing. Her skin felt warm, edging close to hot as she waited.
Xan didn’t make a move toward her, even though she stood the closest. He circled around, trying to make for Bron. Even after he had Bron back down, he didn’t engage with her. Syn lifted a brow and asked, “You do have a second opponent you have to take down.”
“I’m not putting a woman on the ground.”
“Okay.” It wasn’t the first time she’d been told that, and she’d handle it the same way she handled it every other time. The cold knot tried to settle back inside her, but it faded when she attacked him—when she touched him.
He deflected her next attack. And the next. Bron was back on his feet at that point, though, and as he moved toward Bron, Syn went for another takedown. Xan went down and as he did, he tried to catch her feet.
She was prepared for him, though, springing away at just the last second. Xan got back on his feet, and this time, the look he shot her seemed a little bit perturbed.
“You can either spar me straight on, or I’ll keep coming at your back.”
“I’m not fighting with a woman.”
“Then get out,” she told him. She wasn’t touching him now, and as she crossed her arms over her chest, the cold knot returned. “The gate’s that way. You can walk out now. If you move quickly enough, you can probably catch up to the convoy. But you don’t get to pick and choose your poison here, my friend. You do it my way, or you hit the road.”
His eye narrowed on her face. “You sound very certain of that fact.”
“With good reason.”
With the exception of Xan and Syn, everybody turned to look at Kalen as he entered the circle. He stood a few inches taller than Xan. He wore cavinir—a light, formfitting armor that clung to a hard, leanly muscled body.
Kalen had been born a warrior, forced to become a leader. At a time when he should have been dreaming about girls and dreading his impending adulthood, he’d been on the front line of their war.
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