“Shhh, fear not. Just drink. You need it for your fever.”
Phantom had barely consumed it before their guard found them.
Christian immediately took the cup and pretended that he was the one drinking from it.
“Thief!” It was one of the very few Arabic words that Phantom knew at the time. The guard grabbed the cup and then commenced to beating Christian for it.
Christian took the blows in silence until Phantom tried to tell the guard that the water was his.
The guard paused and asked Christian something that Phantom didn’t understand. Christian answered in Arabic and then was beaten even more.
Phantom wanted to stop it, but knew from experience that the guard would only beat Christian longer for Phantom’s interference.
When it was over, Christian crawled back to his side. His lip was split, his eye swelling. “Here,” he said, his hand trembling as he gave Phantom a small skin that had been tucked into his breeches. “There’s more water for you inside it.”
To this day, Phantom cherished that sacrifice. It had been the first time since the death of his father that anyone had ever shown him such kindness. Christian had had nothing to gain and everything to lose by helping him.
It was why Christian of Acre was the only man alive he’d give his life for. He was the only man alive who held Phantom’s cynical loyalty. The rest of humanity could burn in hell as far as he was concerned.
Forcing those thoughts away, he tore pieces of Christian’s robe into strips for a tourniquet against the worst of the wounds…a sword slash down Christian’s right shoulder and arm.
“What happened?”
He looked over his shoulder to see Adara entering the room. “He was attacked.”
She knelt by the cot. “What can I do to help?”
“Keep this pressed against the cut and let me see if there are any others as deep.”
Adara did as he said. She held the cloth with as much pressure as she could without hurting Christian more and watched as Phantom removed the mail leggings and breeches. “Thank you, Phantom, for saving him.”
He responded with a subtle nod. If she didn’t know better, she’d think that her words embarrassed him.
Phantom had just covered him with the rough blanket when Brother Thomas returned with another monk, who looked as if he’d been asleep. Tufts of bright orange hair were standing on end as the rotund man squinted at them.
“Not good, not good,” he muttered as he neared the bed where Christian lay. “Brother Thomas, fetch my kit.”
“I already have it, Brother Bernard.” He handed it to him.
Bernard looked at it as if it were a stranger. Scowling, he took it into his hands and shooed Adara away from the small chest beside the bed. “Best take them out while I work.”
Phantom looked less than agreeable. “I think I should stay and—”
“’Tis God’s work I do. Now go.”
“It’ll be all right, Velizarii,” Thomas said. “He won’t allow anything to happen to Christian.”
“Velizarii?” Adara asked as sudden recognition hit her. No wonder she had thought this man looked familiar. She had known him well when they were children.
How could she not have realized it the moment she glimpsed those pale eyes? “You’re not Velizarii yon Kranig?”
His face hardened. “I’m no one of consequence.” He turned and left the room.
Adara rushed after him. By the time she caught him, he was halfway down the hallway, headed toward the refectory.
She pulled him to a stop. “Velizarii?”
“Velizarii is dead,” he said from between his teeth as he wrenched his arm free of her loose grip. “He died a long time ago.”
Tears gathered in her eyes as she heard the hatred in his deep, raspy voice. “’Tis indeed a shame, then, since I loved the boy I knew. Greatly.”
A muscle worked in his jaw as he glared down at her. He looked as if he were fighting within over whether he should talk to her or run.
She searched his face for some semblance of the pretty little boy who had once come to her palace with his father. While their parents spoke of politics and treaties, they would play in her back garden. There was nothing of that innocent child left in the man before her. He was hard. Callous.
And that broke her heart.
When he spoke again, his words were as harsh as his cold stare. “How could a princess have ever loved a peasant?”
“You weren’t a peasant.”
He laughed bitterly at that. “My mother was.”
“Your father was a prince.”
“And all that got him was an early death at the hands of his own brother.”
Her heart ached for him. She knew exactly how much his father had meant to him when he was a child. Never once had she seen his father Tristoph that Velizarii wasn’t with him.
Many times over the years, she had wondered what had become of her playmate. But no word of him had ever reached her and so she had assumed that he, like the rest of his family, had been slain.
“Does Christian know you are his cousin?” she asked.
“Nay,” he growled, “and he is never to know it.”
“Why?”
“What good would it do him to know?”
“You are all the family he has left.”
“Nay, Adara, you are all the family he has left. I am a felon and a ghost. Like Christian, I have no desire to return to Elgedera, where I live under a death sentence and where I will be reminded of how my father died, fighting for his life against his very kin. Our blood is tainted.”
She refused to believe that. “Yet you saved Christian this night.”
“I saved a man I owe my life to, that is all. Need I remind you who is out to kill both of you? Our family. Yet again they strike, and they will not rest until all of us are dead.”
Perhaps. But that still didn’t negate the fact that Velizarii had twice saved Christian this night.
“What happened to you, Velizarii?” she asked, desperate to understand how such a happy child could become the angry man before her. “When last we spoke, all you wanted was to make your father proud. You were going to join the hauen gras and be a captain someday.”
Bitterness darkened his eyes as he pulled down the leather piece that obscured his throat. There below his Adam’s apple was a deep, vicious scar, which explained his deep, gravelly voice. It was a gruesome mark that made her cringe in sympathetic pain for him.
“What happened? My father killed my grandfather, and in the middle of the night, under Selwyn’s command, the wasps descended on my dormitory and slew every man and boy there to make sure we didn’t retaliate against the bribed Sesari who had allowed the murders to take place.”
Adara remembered the night the hauen gras, the royal Elgederion knights who protected the country, were slain. “How did you survive?”
“Foolish persistence is ever the hobgoblin of fate.”
His flippant comment set her ire off even more. “How did you survive?” she repeated.
Releasing the leather piece on his neck, he shifted his haunted gaze to the floor. In the depths of his eyes, she could see his horror. His agony. “I crawled out from under the bodies of my friends while Selwyn’s men burned down our quarters. Half dead, I crawled out the back, fearful that at any moment they would see me and finish me off. I found a place in the woods and hid until they were gone. I lay in a stupor for days until a farmer found my hiding place and took me to his wife to nurse back to health.”
“Then how is it you ended up in Outremer with Christian?”
“Dame Fortuna. She forever spits on even the most resourceful.”
Adara sighed. “Velizarii—”
“Don’t call me by that name. I’ve no wish to recount that part of my life, Majesty. The kindest thing that happened to me there was having my throat cut. Believe me, you’ve no desire to know what really happened to me after the death of my father.”
She patte
d his arm gently, wanting to console him, but knowing that nothing could. “Did they train you and Christian to be so evasive or is this a talent the two of you picked up on your own?”
“It was a necessary skill we cultivated so as to survive.” He turned and headed toward the refectory where she had left Lutian eating before she went to see to Christian.
“You’ll have to forgive him, Your Highness,” Thomas said from behind her. “Both of them, for that matter. Neither of them has ever known comfort or solace. They’ve seen enough tragedy to make any man mean.”
She smiled at the old monk. “And yet both men have your loyalty.”
He nodded. “They were mere boys when I met them and yet they fought like seasoned, fearless champions. I was lucky to be a man full grown before I was taken. They grew to manhood under the lashes and abuse of our tormentors.” He motioned for her to join him. “Come, and I shall talk Brother Bernard into letting you stay with Christian. He needs the tender touch of a woman to comfort him.”
Adara returned to Christian’s bed, where Brother Bernard was finishing up the dressing of Christian’s wounds. His skin held a grayish cast to it. The wound on his shoulder was already bleeding again.
“How does he?” she asked Brother Bernard.
He harrumphed at the question. “Somebody wanted him to die, that’s for certain. God’s will be done in these matters.” The monk made the sign of the cross over Christian before he gathered his kit and headed for the door.
He paused beside her. “If you wish to aid him, my lady, you can bathe his brow this night and make sure his fever doesn’t rage too wildly. If he begins to thrash, send for me immediately.”
“Thank you, Brother Bernard.”
He nodded and headed out of the room.
“I shall be with Velizarii if you need me,” Thomas said.
Alone now with her husband, Adara approached the cot slowly. She pulled the small stool that Brother Bernard had left closer to the man who, even while unconscious, looked imposing.
He was a prince who refused his throne. It was inconceivable to her. All her life, her royal responsibility had been impressed upon her. She’d never once considered just shrugging it off and turning away.
Christian had and she wondered what it must feel like to live that way. To not have the constant, nagging weight of making the wrong decision hanging over her head. She was all that stood between her people and tyranny. Her people and slavery.
At times that burden was more than she could bear. She was still considered a young woman, and yet in the dark of night when she was alone she felt ancient.
But then, Christian didn’t know his people. He’d never seen the beauty that had been Elgedera before the bloody coups that had left his family completely destroyed. There in the green hills and golden valleys was more beauty than the very Garden of Eden. Like her parents before her, she would ride through the villages that surrounded Garzi in disguise so that she could talk to her people, meet them as one of them, and know their troubles.
Christian had no idea of their customs or their skills. They were faceless strangers to him.
Just as she had always been.
Her heart heavy for him, she went to the small bowl where Brother Bernard had left water and a small cloth. She wrung out the cloth and took it to Christian. The instant she touched his forehead, he came awake with a curse as he grabbed her hand and held it in a powerful grip that bit into her flesh.
“Easy, Christian,” she breathed.
Christian blinked as he recognized the face of a dark angel…His wife.
“Adara?” he asked, wondering when they’d arrived at the monastery.
She covered his hand with hers. “Aye, now please release me. Your grip hurts.”
He let go immediately. “Forgive me, my lady. I don’t wake well to touch.”
“I noticed. How do you feel?”
He grimaced and forced the pain away as he lay back down. “Truthfully, I’ve felt better. How long have I been unconscious?”
“Not long.”
She placed a cool cloth to his head. Christian savored the warmth of her touch. The gentleness of her actions. It’d been years since he last had a woman touch him like this. For comfort.
She still wore the gown of a pauper and yet only a fool would fail to recognize the inherent nobility of the woman before him. She was graceful and kind.
“Where is Phantom?” he asked.
“I believe he went to eat.”
“Have you eaten?”
She nodded. “Would you like me to get you something?”
“Nay, I am fine.”
“Really, you should eat. We didn’t have time to even taste the pies I bought.”
She was so close to him that all he could do was stare into her eyes. They weren’t a simple brown color, but rather they had specks of gold in them. Her long black hair fell forward over her shoulder, down to his hand. The silken ends of it tickled his flesh. Before he could think better of it, he let the sable strand wrap itself around his finger.
There was something extremely surreal about this moment. Something peaceful. Calm. Friendly. It awakened a foreign part of himself, a part of him that desperately craved moments like this when someone cared for him.
Since escaping his prison, he’d never thought about home or family. His only thoughts had been to stay away from any binding ties.
Yet what she offered him this night…
He lifted his hand to his lips so that he could inhale the sweet, feminine scent of her hair. Feel the softness of it against his flesh.
Adara couldn’t breathe as she watched him savor the feel of her hair. It was as if he’d never beheld anything so precious, and that tugged greatly at her heart.
He reached up with his other hand to cup her cheek gently in his roughened palm. His thumb brushed against her lips in a sensuous caress that caused chills to spread all over her.
“Have you ever been kissed, Adara?”
“Nay, Christian. I have kept our vows most sacred. No man has ever touched me in any fashion.”
He stared at her in wonderment. And then she saw the guilt that came into his eyes as he dropped his hand. “I didn’t know we were married.”
She took his hand into hers. “I know and I don’t hold you at fault.”
“There is no absolution in ignorance. Adultery is punishable by death.”
“I don’t want you to die, Christian.”
“Nay, you want me to return home with you.”
She nodded.
“Would you have waited out your entire life for me to come home?”
She let out a long breath at that. “Honestly? I have to say that I have long grown impatient for a husband and child. Had we not been on such tremulous terms with your country, I would probably have sought an annulment years ago and then married another.”
Christian wasn’t sure if he was happy or not that she had maintained their marriage. But lying here, staring into her eyes, feeling a peace the likes of which he’d never known, he wondered how he could feel anything but pleased.
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the tender flesh over the delicate bones of her knuckles. She stared at him with a guarded look. His body sizzled with her nearness. Every part of him craved this brave and noble woman who had come for him. She lured him with a snare that was most irresistible.
And yet, like a caged beast, he couldn’t survive in chains. He couldn’t. Not again. His time in prison had taught him well the madness that came with captivity. The price. No matter how gilded the cage, it was still a cage.
Adara saw the light fade from his eyes a moment before he released her.
“I need to rest, my lady.” He rolled away from her.
Adara clenched her teeth in frustration as she stared at his broad, well-muscled back. At least she did until she noted the scars that ravaged the once-smooth skin.
Her heart hammering, she reached out to touch the puckered flesh. “What caused all thi
s?”
“Life, Adara,” he said without looking at her. “It scars us all in some way.”
Nay. Not like this. She’d never seen anything like this in her life and she remembered Thomas’s words about their tormentors. Her hand paused at the bandage where he’d been wounded tonight. No wonder he didn’t complain of it. Compared to the rest of the wounds he’d suffered, it must be paltry indeed.
And in that moment, she had a profound epiphany.
“I am truly sorry, Christian,” she whispered softly.
“For what?”
“For all you have suffered. It was very selfish of me to come to you and expect any more of you. You have given enough for your people. I shall ask no more.” She leaned over and placed a chaste kiss to his whiskered cheek. “Sleep well, my prince. God speed you on your recovery.”
Christian listened as she paused to blow out the small candle on the table beside his cot. She left the room and drew his door shut, but as he lay there thinking, a part of him ached with the loss of her warmth.
He didn’t even know her. But since the moment they’d met a few hours ago, his life had careened into chaos. And yet he’d never felt more alive than he did right now, with the scent of her still lingering in the room. With the memory of her touch still warming his skin.
“Focus,” he whispered to himself. He mustn’t think of her. He had other, much more important matters to think on. Men were out to kill them and he needed to rest so that they could continue on in the morning.
This night had taught him well that there was no escape for them. No escape for her.
He had to get the queen to safety and then get her home again.
Adara’s heart was heavy as she returned to the refectory to find Brother Thomas sitting with Phantom and Lutian, who were passing snide comments back and forth.
Phantom sneered at Lutian. “So you came into her service by falling off a wall because you’d stolen a horse and were running from the guards?”
Lutian made a grand show of chewing his bread, then swallowing it before he answered. “Well, we can’t all be the king of thieves, can we?”
Moving like lightning, Phantom shot out with his eating knife and buried it into the table between two of Lutian’s fingers. “I don’t suffer fools lightly.”
Return of the Warrior Page 7