by Rowan, Cate
After a moment, he seemed to savor her words and his massive shoulders eased. “I suppose that’s true. You’re stuck. Well, good. I’m glad you know it.”
Ass. Corralled fury hovered just below her breath.
He released her suddenly and she wobbled, unbalanced. He caught her shoulder and waist to steady her.
Well, at least he’s not an ungentlemanly ass. Most of the time. His nearness overflowed her brain. She closed her eyes and swallowed.
“Let’s go back to camp, then,” he said gruffly, gesturing for her to walk in front of him.
She spun away so she wouldn’t be tempted to sever his hand. I wonder where I should wear my slave chain. She imagined it clinking behind her as she stalked toward their fire pit. Around my ankle? My waist? No, my neck. He’s already forced a necklace and pendant on me—but the real chain is much heavier. In defiance, she flipped her hair back to expose her neck, taking strength from her silent joke.
But her imagination, traitor that it was, substituted the cold neck-chain with a line of warm, nipping kisses from Alvarr.
Arrgh! If I weren’t walking, I’d have to stomp on my own toes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A touch on Jilian’s shoulder woke her. She opened her eyes to the frigid dawn—and Alvarr’s gruff expression—and shivered.
He studied her. “Today we might climb high enough to find the starlace.”
“Really?” Maybe I can go home soon. She beamed a smile.
His gaze sharpened, and without a word, he walked away.
She was tempted to yank her cloak’s hood over her face and give no more clues about her thoughts, but still her mood soared. Today we might find the starlace. She grinned and rolled to her feet. I’m coming, Mom—hang on!
The climb that morning was all too steep, and she was thankful they weren’t on foot. The fydds didn’t seem thrilled with the terrain, either. Alvarr’s Blerra was mostly well-behaved, only wringing her lion-like tail at the bottom of a particularly tough upgrade. Halbeth hesitated and grunted as he heaved Jilian up the steeper slopes. Patting his downy neck, she murmured encouragements and promised him an extra helping of parren-nut treats when they stopped for lunch.
Alvarr rode ahead, and she watched his silent back for a while. The brisk wind blew into her eyes and slid icy fingers around her neck. She removed her hat to snuggle into the gray cloak, but its hood had a tendency to catch the breeze like a windsock and slide off in the gusts.
Tiring of trying to retrieve it, she let it stay down and simply squinted into the wind. Heat bled from her exposed ears and her thoughts turned morose.
What if they couldn’t find the herb? Varene had said it was rare. Perhaps it had already died out. They could be here days, or even weeks, looking for something that might no longer exist.
Alvarr probably couldn’t spend that much time seeking the herb, anyway—and she doubted her mother had that much time left. What if she never found it? She might be stuck on this world for good. Or worse, what if she did find it—but it was too late?
She hunched her shoulders and pulled the cloak close around her neck, but her worries found her as easily as the wind.
At last they rounded a twist in the path and Alvarr reined in closer. “If the old reports are true, ahead is the first meadow high enough to carry your herb.”
Anticipation prickled in her chest. With a glance at the prince, Jilian pushed her fydd to speed up his gait. “I know,” she muttered as Halbeth grunted. “Two helpings of the parren-nuts tonight, and a nice rubdown for your legs.”
They entered the wide canyon at the fydds’ pseudo-trot, and Jilian scanned—as best she could while feeling like a bobble-headed toy—for the type of rocks on which the starlace grew. She spotted a cluster of boulders with flat tops gathering the alpine sunshine and urged her mount toward them.
Alvarr rode up behind her, and after dismounting he grabbed something from her pack. “Varene’s sketch,” he said, unrolling a sheet of parchment to compare it to the vegetation.
She spared him a brief smile and nodded. “I memorized the look of it back in Ysanne. I didn’t want to screw this up.” After a quick walk around the cluster, she climbed carefully over the boulders, peering into the cracks and crevices.
Alvarr did his own reconnaissance for a few minutes, sketch at the ready, then stopped next to her. “I don’t see it,” he murmured.
“I don’t either.” She stepped down from the rock cluster and kicked the dirt with her toe, then scrutinized the rest of the meadow. “This looks like the only possible spot here, too.”
He glanced at the sun’s position. “We’ll do a quick survey and keep going. The next spot is about an hour up the trail.”
The next meadow yielded nothing, nor the three after that. Jilian even scanned the rocks along the path, to no avail. As the day shrank to squalling wind and meager light, despair snaked into all her thoughts.
“We have to stop for the night,” Alvarr said. “A site ahead will shield us from the gusts.”
Jilian nodded and twitched her cloak over her cold hands. “How are you so familiar with this trail, anyway?”
He shrugged. “I’ve spent time traveling my realm. It pays to know what you must protect.”
When they reached the new campsite, she barely looked at the surroundings. It was too dark to see much anyway, and she was too cold and depressed to care.
They prepared their camp in near silence. Alvarr created the fire—a normal-sized blaze this time, complete with the two chairs—and together they cooked a jackamunk he caught and vegetable omelettes with the last of Mellec’s green eggs. Despite the tasty meal, Jilian mostly picked at her food with her horn fork and stared into the flames. She shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up. Even if they found the starlace, her mother could be dead by the time she returned.
She’d be truly alone.
“Are you still sore?” Alvarr asked.
Startled, she glanced at him. “A little. The salve helps.”
“Good,” he said, then busied himself with his plate of eggs.
Sometimes a fire could be cheery and cozy, she thought, but tonight it seemed only to illuminate her solitude.
Recalling Resara and Mellec’s loving touches, she shivered. Some people managed to forge a bond like that, but how? Her parents’ love hadn’t lasted. Neither had her own with Matt.
She studied the prince beside her. “Tell me about your parents.”
The fork load of omelette raised halfway to his mouth returned to his plate. “Why?”
She pursed her lips, reluctant to delve into her thoughts. “Just curious. Did they love each other?”
He searched her face, then shifted his gaze back to the fire. “Very much. But theirs is not a story for a time like this.” His eyes seemed dark as the night around them.
She bit her lip. “I’d like to hear it anyway, if you’re willing.”
He shot her another inscrutable look. With a resigned sigh, he lowered his nearly empty plate to the ground and settled back slowly as if the memories were scrolling through his mind. Finally, he spoke. “My parents were a true love match, from the first time they saw each other. Mother loved to tell me the story. She was the Crown Princess, Heir to Teganne. Visiting a cousin in our southern lands, she was riding along the borders of the estate when my father, the son of the neighboring lord, spied her.
“Smitten by her laughter and the way she sat her fydd, he followed her. When she turned and looked into his eyes, it was as if they’d known each other always.” Alvarr fell silent for a moment and the light of the flames flickered across his profile.
“My mother’s father, the Ruling Prince, disapproved of the match. He wanted more than the son of a provincial lord as the husband for his only daughter. But his wife, my grandmother, persuaded him that love comes in all forms. She had a thick romantic streak, and could be very…persuasive when she set her mind to it.”
“Seems to run in the family,” Jilian quipped.
/> He smiled. “My grandfather acquiesced and my parents married. And ruled Teganne well, together, when the time came. But as Resara said, there are people who do evil things because they can. Maybe they despise the happiness of others.” His expression went blank. “My parents were killed while traveling to visit the cousin at whose estate they met. An arrow through each heart.”
A soft gasp escaped her. “Who killed them?” she whispered.
“The caravan was on a forest road. It had been safe in Teganne for so long, no one thought their lives might be in danger. Their guards scoured the area, but found nothing.”
His shoulders drooped as he stared into the flames. “The captain of their guard brought the bodies back to me in Ysanne. He knelt and apologized to me, and to Teganne…then unsheathed his knife and plunged it into his own heart.”
Her breath caught in her lungs. He’d been just twelve years old. Newly orphaned, suddenly the Ruling Prince—and witness to a gruesome suicide. How much could a mere boy be forced to endure?
At least her mother had always been there to anchor her during childhood, a rocky adolescence, and even the shock of Matt’s betrayal. Throughout it all, Jilian had only needed to worry about herself, not an entire realm and its people.
Her hands twitched in her lap. She ached to reach out to Alvarr, to soothe his boyhood, that hellish moment of abandonment and the unsought path his life had taken. But she didn’t know how to touch the part of him that had suffered such pain.
Somehow he’d survived and ascended the throne, accepting all the responsibility that went with it. How had he managed that and still taken care of all those who needed him?
“So much at once, and you so young,” she murmured into the silence, feeling keenly how inadequate those words were.
He gave a small shrug. “I was born to this life, and to my duties.”
The dancing flames illuminated the chiseled planes of his face and the muscled glory of his body, but now she realized that for all the beauty of his form, it was a mere shell for the courageous heart inside him.
She shook her head. “Your parents died and left you all alone to lead Teganne. It was more than just being born to it. Your heritage pulled you through, yes—but that’s because your heritage and your duties were all you had left.”
He glanced at her, and for a moment the truth she’d only guessed lay naked and vulnerable in his face. In his charcoal eyes she spied the core of him: the grief-ridden boy who’d grown into a powerful mage and a warm-hearted ruler, but who was still so alone…
The window clicked shut and he turned away.
She sucked in a breath of cold air. No wonder he’d do anything to protect his realm. It was his responsibility to it that had kept him going when his life fell apart. Duty wasn’t an abstract concept to him—it had been seared into his soul by the most terrible of lessons.
Jilian might be loving and loyal to her mother, loyal as the leaf to the tree that had nurtured it and gave it life, but Alvarr’s loyalty was to all the people of Teganne—an entire forest of them, trunks of every size and age, their spreading branches, shading canopy and high crowns—all bound together by their deep, interwoven roots to form his realm.
She reached out for the hand of the man who suffered and bled for duty, honor, and the love of his people, and threaded her fingers through his.
He didn’t turn, but he slowly placed his other palm over hers and let it rest there a long moment, accompanied only by the pops and crackles of the fire and the expanding of her heart.
Then he pulled his hands away.
“It was years ago. Life continues.” He picked up a twig, broke it in two, and threw it onto the fire. The twig flamed and blackened. “But the arrowheads were a vicious red, just as you might recall from your own arrival. Red is Bhruic’s favorite color.”
He rose and strode from the campfire’s light.
She remembered standing with him in the FireRing, staring at Gurdan’s red arrow…the one that had nearly sent her to her grave.
As Jilian watched Alvarr disappear, she envisioned an enormous gilded scale before her: in one shallow cup lay her paralyzed mother, and in the other, Alvarr and all the people of Teganne. The scale wavered back and forth as if tapped by a god’s hand, and the pendant Alvarr had given her hung heavy upon her neck.
Restless dreams tormented Jilian. Her dozing mind turned the crackle of twigs in the wind into the steps of unseen assassins coming for Alvarr.
She woke groggily to a cold dawn and resolved not to let her fears get the better of her. Her task was to find the starlace. It was all she could do right now, and perhaps it could still save her mother. She saddled up both fydds and mounted Halbeth, her mouth set in a firm line.
But the day’s search was fruitless. Each herbless higher canyon and valley wore away at her determination. She slid back into melancholy as the wind continued its assault on her exposed skin.
Alvarr seemed off-kilter, too. He spent much of his time in the saddle wearing a far-off look. He said he was searching for holes in the wardweavings, Teganne’s spell-woven border protections. He didn’t seem to find any, but that failed to improve his disposition.
Staring at his back through the lengthening shadows, Jilian wondered if he was growing as pessimistic as she was about finding the herb. If he was, would he make them return to Ysanne without it?
How fitting, Jilian thought, waking to a foggy dawn. Mist drifted across her face and she hunched back into her damp cloak, wishing for a nice plastic rain slicker instead.
Hours passed before the fog finally melted away. With a sigh, she looked around at the walled valley into which they rode. A thick carpet of green dotted with wildflowers spread before them, but all she could think was, another meadow, another chance to crush my hope. She slammed her eyes shut against the mental image of her mother on the stark white hospital bed.
They approached the nearest rock formation and Alvarr dismounted. Jilian waited a few moments to gather energy, then slid down Halbeth’s side. “A wild goose chase, huh,” she said to the fydd and patted him. “Well, maybe there aren’t geese here. You probably wouldn’t appreciate them anyway, since they’re much too big to ride on your neck as Kalen did. But that’s what this feels like to me.”
Alvarr tugged sharply on her arm.
Irritated, she turned to see him pointing down at the outcrop.
She followed the line of his finger, then took another look. A long one.
She dropped to her knees. “Hand me the sketch,” she said, extending a shaking hand without taking her eyes from the rock.
“I thought you had it memorized.”
She looked up in annoyance, but softened when she saw Alvarr’s smile. A grin crept toward her mouth, but she couldn’t let it out, not quite yet. “Please hand me the sketch.”
Instead, he knelt beside her and held the parchment beside the herb—the starlace.
Her joy exploded into sound. “That’s it! That’s starlace!” She swiveled, flung her arms wide and launched herself at him.
Alvarr, unbalanced by the frontal assault—albeit a delightful one—tipped backwards, sketch still in hand. Jilian followed him to the ground. “Starlace!” she shouted, mouth wide with laughter, and hugged him tight.
Astonished, he stared up at the blue sky. A rock dug into his right kidney…but by Fate, he didn’t mind. Not one bit. He dropped the sketch and enfolded her, enjoying the way she felt in his arms.
“We found it!” She crowed the words against his chest and her vibrant voice echoed through him. Her dark hair, fresh from a morning wash in a stream, flowed across his body. He turned his nose into the silky strands and breathed in.
She sat up, her face glowing with happiness. Alvarr’s heart thumped. I wish I could make her feel this way all the time.
Jilian released him and crawled back to the starlace. He pushed himself up on his elbows, trying to quell the new emptiness.
“Mom,” she whispered, tracing the leaves of the her
b with her fingertips, “we found it. I’m bringing it home. Please, please hold on.”
She looked up at the sky and took a deep breath. Then several more. And then, of all things, she began to cry.
Oh, Fate help me. He rose to his knees, hands spread as if to ward away her enemies. “What is it?”
Tears slid down her cheeks and she shuddered with each new sob, her eyes on the starlace. “My mother. What if I don’t make it home in time?”
Thrown, he rubbed the back of his neck. “Er, well…”
“I can’t even be sure the starlace will cure her, and it’s been so long already. What if I’m too late? What if she…dies?” Her voice broke.
He eased beside her, his thigh pressed to hers as he stroked her back. A knot of unease tightened in his chest as he wondered how to comfort her. He’d never had much experience with crying women and had thought himself fortunate about that until now.
A tear fell on her wrist and glistened in the sun. He slid his hand around hers and she turned to him. The worry in her eyes made his insides ache.
She curled up against him, sobs shaking her body. He carried the motion into a slow, regular rocking. “Shh,” he soothed, and laid his head on hers.
The herb they’d come to retrieve stared up at him.
Am I right to accept her bargain to return to Teganne? To have her do something against her will—even if many may die without her?
No answer came as he gazed down at the starlace, holding Jilian in his arms.
He just hoped she’d never let him go.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Alvarr woke from sleep with all his senses alert. Staring into the darkness, he waited for some motion, some sound.
Nothing. Not even the wind. And up here in the Nerils, that was strange.