Quench the Day (Red Wolf Trilogy Book 1)

by Shari Branning

  “Well of course you had a choice. You could have run away and become a fugitive. You just chose the lazy option. For all your preaching about being smothered by men, you went and chose a man.”

  She set the brush down and leaned her palms on the dresser, bringing her nose-to-nose with her reflection. “And now you’re talking to yourself.”

  She picked the brush back up, but by that time her hair had become a cloud, puffing out like flaming dandelion fuzz. She sighed.

  The door leading out into the courtyard rattled suddenly, and Rowan froze, staring at it in the mirror. Who would be coming in from the outside? When the latch moved again, she spun from the mirror, made it back to the bed in one leap, and swooped up both throwing knives and her dagger, spinning back to the door as it creaked open.

  The first blade left her hand and embedded itself in the doorframe next to Aaro’s head at the same second that she recognized him. He jerked sideways, blinking at it.

  “What in the…” He turned back to her, and his blue eyes widened.

  That was about when she remembered she was wearing nothing but her shift, whose translucent white silk didn’t leave much to the imagination. Face flaming, she tossed her other throwing knife back onto the bed, though she held onto the dagger.

  “Don’t scare me like that.”

  “Where you aiming for me?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t know who would be sneaking in from outside, and a knife beside the face tends to give people pause.”

  “Yes it does.” He tugged the knife free and tossed it onto the bed. “Do I have to knock from now on when I come into our bedroom?”

  Rowan tilted her chin up a fraction. “You never specified that it was ours, and not mine.”

  His eyes traveled the length of her figure before coming to rest on her halo of wild red curls. “I thought the marriage ceremony made that obvious.”

  “And I thought the fact that we’ve known one another for all of a day made it ambiguous.” She caressed her dagger’s tip with her fingers. “Why did you come in through the courtyard?”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her as he stepped fully into the room and closed the door behind him. “Because you had the other door locked.”

  “Of all the… So instead of knocking, you thought you’d just sneak up on me from outside? How does that make sense?”

  “My thought was that I didn’t want to wake you.” His eyes twinkled as he rounded the bed toward her. He reached for the dagger. “May I?”

  She stepped back out of his reach. “Not until I finish deciding whether to stab you for scaring me like that.”

  “I could think of better things to do.”

  “You’re insufferable.” She turned her back on him to hide her grin, but he stepped up behind her, his hands going around her waist as he rested his chin on her shoulder. His breath brushed her cheek as he stepped closer, and goosebumps raced over every inch of her. His work-roughened hands snagged at her silk shift and warmed her skin. Her heart stopped for a moment, then she whirled on him, bringing them nose-to-nose, and stabbed a finger into his chest.

  “What happened to being patient?” She drove him backward with her finger until his back thumped against the wall. “You think you can barge in here and scare the starch out of me, and then do that, whatever that was, and expect me to fall into your arms?”

  He put his hands up in surrender. “Fine! I can be patient. But if that’s what you really want, then find something else to wear.” He winked.

  Rowan’s lips parted. For a moment she had nothing to say. A phenomenon that only ever happened when she was with him.

  Scream, laugh, stab him or kiss him. Land sakes! Figure out what you’re going to do, and do it.

  She raised the dagger she still held and used the point to draw small circles in the air over his heart. He wore a shirt that laced together at the neck, but the laces were undone, dangling down his chest, baring a generous amount of skin below his neck.

  “Very well.” She set the dagger point at the base of the V where his collar hung open, angled the blade, and sliced downward. The shirt fell open as Aaro sucked a startled breath. The view was not disappointing. “If you can catch me, you can have me.”

  She leapt away from him, vaulted the bed, and was out into the courtyard and running in under two seconds, stabbing the dagger into the log wall outside so she couldn’t kill herself with it as she ran.

  The door slammed open behind her.

  He caught up with her in a moment. Her bare feet skidded sideways in wet grass as he grappled her from behind. She twisted in his arms, bringing them face to face, hooked her foot behind his leg, grinned, and gave him a shove. She sprang away again as he flailed backward, heading for the stream that crossed the back side of the courtyard. This time when he caught up, Aaro dove for her legs, toppling her, shrieking, into the water. The shock of cold went over her head, and then she was up, spluttering, while he knelt on the grass, hands on his knees, laughing so hard he sobbed.

  She lunged out of the water, wrapped her arms around his neck, and shoved backward.

  * * * * *

  It was well past dawn when Rowan drifted into a disoriented half wakefulness. She lay there with her eyes closed, sensing that she wasn’t home, and wondering where she was. Flickers of memories tickled the edge of her consciousness. Something had happened yesterday. Something big. Something that…

  She felt someone stir in the bed beside her, and shrieked, trying to jump away. But she was tangled in blankets and ended up on the floor, taking most of them with her. Blue eyes blinked down at her blearily as she struggled.

  “Good morning, my love.”

  She stopped struggling.

  Aaro. Her husband. She pulled the blankets over her head and groaned. “Ohh. What have I done?”

  “Got married,” Aaro said from above her.

  “I thought I dreamed that.” She uncovered her face and looked up at him. He lay on his stomach, his chin propped on his forearms, looking over the edge of the bed at her. He gave her a sleepy grin. She groaned and rolled further into her blanket cocoon.

  Aaro yawned. The straw mattress shifted, and his fingers brushed her hair. “Come back to bed with me?”

  Rowan sat up in her cocoon and crawled back onto the bed, where he tried to pull her back into a cuddle, but with all the blankets wrapped around her, it didn’t work. He started unrolling them, and by the time they found each other again they were both giggling. She tucked her head into his chest.

  “I thought all of this was a dream when I woke, and it made me so sad. I can’t believe it’s real.”

  He kissed her forehead. “And you’ve ruined me. How can that happen in just one day? You’re my world, Red.”

  The swift thud of boots in the hallway intruded itself, followed by pounding on the door.

  “D’Araines!”

  He rolled over and sat up, groaning. “What?!”

  “Better come out here. We’re getting visitors.”

  “What time is it?” Rowan asked as he rose and pulled on trousers and boots.

  “Near noon, I’d say.”

  She slid out of bed and lifted her shift off the floor. It hung from her fingers, wet, muddy, and torn. She dropped it back onto the floor with a snort. Thankfully her gown was layered enough that no one would notice the loss.

  Aaro finished buttoning a fresh shirt, then came over and put his arms around her as she was lacing her dress.

  “That isn’t helpful.”

  “Kiss me then, so I’ll go away.”

  “I have doubts as to whether that would help.”

  He tilted her chin up and kissed her, blue eyes sparkling with a new kind of danger. “Come join me when you’re done.”

  He slipped out the door, leaving her to finish cinching her gown and trying to tame her hair. Without help and without anything to smooth it after her dunking last night, the best she could do was put it in a braid.

  She checked the mirror, hoping she l
ooked more put-together than she felt, then stepped into the hall. The strangeness of it all pressed on her. That everything outside the bedroom felt so unfamiliar, that she could hardly remember how to get back out into the front room, and that this was her home.

  Voices helped to guide her, and she paused in the hall next to the kitchen and listened.

  “What can I do for you, Cousin?” Aaro’s voice.

  Another voice, similar yet very different, replied, “I believe you stole something of mine.”

  Rowan’s joy popped like a soap bubble in a hurricane. She felt her face flame, and her breath hissed out between her teeth. Ormand. If he had heard about the wedding already, it could only mean that he had come to her uncle’s house to collect her either last night or just after dawn this morning. The pig. But there was nothing he could do about their marriage now. And no forced annulments, since it had been consummated. She was suddenly fiercely glad for that. Whatever Ormand did now, he couldn’t take away what they shared in each other. She lifted her chin, becoming every inch the proud and gracious new wife, and opened the door.

  Chapter 6

  “Stole something?” Aaro feigned innocence while rage stabbed through him. “I don’t believe I’ve stolen anything of yours.”

  A soft footfall sounded behind him, and he half turned as Rowan slipped her hand around his arm, giving it a squeeze. Even with Ormand there, she made his pulse spike. She looked like a queen, straight and regal, with her hair braided and pinned into a crown around her head. She kept her arm linked with his as she dropped a half curtsy.

  “Ormand, I believe you’ve met my wife, Rowan.”

  Ormand’s eyes snapped. “I see it’s too late for an annulment. You’ve already ruined her. Very clever.”

  “King of the West you might be,” Aaro said softly. “But you shall not speak about my wife as if she were your dog. Not to my face, not in my house, and certainly not in her presence.”

  Aaro was treading on thin ice, and he knew it. A part of him demanded caution, that he bide his time and follow through with the plan to go to Heymish. Another part of him was done with patience and caution. Ormand’s arrogance had gone on too long, and spread too far, and he wished to end these little games, confront his cousin, and be done with it. He had the backing of the entire county, and probably the entire West Talva.

  Ormand studied him for a moment through slitted eyes. Silent. Calculating. “You pose an interesting problem,” he said finally. “You defy me at every turn. You’re untamable. You withhold the respect due me…” he paused.

  “My respect goes to those who’ve earned it.”

  Ormand held up a hand. “Please. I already know how you feel about me and my methods of keeping the peace. No need to rehash.”

  Manipulation and intimidation. And murder, Aaro wanted to say, but he held his tongue. He looked past the king and the half dozen guards who’d come in with him, out the front window. It looked like half an army out there, waiting. No matter what happened, the outcome of this meeting wouldn’t be a good one. Not for him, or for Rowan.

  “I have not dared to kill you outright,” Ormand went on. “Somehow you attract loyalty—whether you seek it or it seeks you I have not discovered, but that’s irrelevant. Most of the West would put you on the throne, if given reason. If I were to make a single bold move, such as a king should be able and willing to make, and the people didn’t like it, they would revolt and rally around you. So I can’t let you live. On the other hand, killing you could upset my position too much to mend. What would my brother do if I killed you outright, unprovoked? You see the tenuous situation I’m in? I can’t kill you, and I can’t let you live.”

  He lifted the silver circlet from his head and ran his fingers through his hair before replacing it. His gaze shifted from Aaro to Rowan and back again before he continued. “Now you defy me openly, marrying the woman I intended to make queen. Indeed, I called on her last evening, intending to make my intentions known, and even informed my friends of my decision. That changes a few things. Defiance. An open strike against me.” He smiled.

  “I made my intentions clear when I sent Lance Keir my proposal,” Aaro said. “You had made no claim to her.” Beside him he felt his wife stiffen, though she remained outwardly calm. He squeezed her hand, trusting her to know he spoke at Ormand’s level, and not that he considered her a property to be claimed. “We met, loved each other, and wished to be married.”

  Ormand smiled a tight-lipped smile. “Still, I can hardly let the matter go. I can’t let you win. Perhaps you fail to understand the situation completely. The moment I let you win, I am no longer king.”

  Aaro’s gaze flicked from Ormand to the soldiers awaiting his command outside. “Let my wife go then. She can return to her home back east. Western politics don’t concern her. She’s innocent in all of this.”

  “It’s always the innocent who shoulder responsibility for the rest of us. She should have thought of that before she came here and married you.”

  “But if she hadn’t married me by choice, she would have married you because she was forced. That’s hardly her fault. Let her go, and we can figure this out as we should have done months ago.” He glanced at Rowan. Her lips had thinned out. She still held herself like a queen, and she was wisely biting her tongue, but if a person could spontaneously turn to sculpted ice, then she was in danger of doing it. Her hands on his arm felt warm, though, as she squeezed it.

  Ormand ran his hands down his embroidered vest, tugging it straight. “Perhaps. Still, I can’t dismiss the matter. The fact that you’re begging for her safety only confirms that you know I’m right.” He snapped his fingers at the guards. “Bring them both.”

  Mitchell, the hired hand that had come to get Aaro earlier, still lingered at the doorway. He stepped forward at the same time the guards did. Out of the corner of his eye Aaro saw him slug the guard. Another guard drew a gun, and a third a sword. Aaro ignored them and stepped toward Ormand, moving fast enough to grab his cousin by the collar of his fancy vest before the other guards could step in. He punched him.

  Ormand rocked back on his heels, but Aaro’s grip on his shirt kept him upright. Two guards grabbed hold of him, and he heard Rowan’s cry of anger. He half turned, and a gun butt slammed into his head. Explosions went off behind his eyes, and he felt himself fall. Then nothing.

  * * * * *

  Aaro woke with a spasm of coughing, which turned into retching.

  “Take it easy. Almost there,” someone said.

  Something crashed nearby, and he became aware of intense heat and smoke, and the roar of flames. He coughed violently again, and tried to roll over, but someone had him by the arms, dragging him. His boot heels scraped over wood.

  Everything hurt. Bad.

  The man dragging him started coughing too, and swearing, and he realized it was Jake. He pried his eyes open to a wall of smoke, tinged orange with flame. Then they were out of it, onto the porch, and he started coughing again. Jake helped him get onto his knees, and together they stumbled down the stairs to the front path, and out onto the rutted road leading in from the prairie. The buildings around them were all burning. The grass was starting to burn. Jake hauled him around behind the main house to the stream. The same stream that he and Rowan had played in the night before.

  “Reckon we’ll be ok,” Jake said, splashing through to the other side, still hauling Aaro along with him. “It’s starting to rain now.”

  He let go, and Aaro landed on his knees. Jake sat down and waited while he coughed and retched, involuntary tears stinging his eyes. When the spasm passed, Aaro remained kneeling, his eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the pain and dizziness to pass. His chest ached and his head throbbed, as well as his ribs and several other places. His arm burned, the pain intense enough to drown out most of the others.

  “Rowan?” He asked. His voice sounded ruined, and the single word sent him into another coughing fit.

  His coughing quieted, and he looked up, but his
foreman still didn’t respond, staring off across the prairie. Aaro would have demanded he speak, if he’d been able to talk. Or he would’ve strangled answers out of the other man if he had the strength. But breathing and not collapsing were all he could handle at the moment. He was at Jake’s mercy for finding out what had happened to his wife.

  “Guess they beat you after they knocked you out,” Jake said finally. “Thought you were dead. Probably the only thing that saved you was that you were on the floor where the smoke wasn’t so bad.”

  Aaro felt the truth of those words. He felt mostly dead. He hurt like he’d never hurt before. Even getting shot once hadn’t been this bad. But all he wanted was to know that Rowan was still alive. That she was waiting for him somewhere. Even if he had to find her and rescue her. She had become his entire world in a single day. He silently begged Jake to speak.

  When he did finally open his mouth, his voice came out low, the same as he’d use for calming spooked horses. “I stayed in town last night. Had a few things I couldn’t take care of till the bank opened up this morning, then got delayed…” His voice drifted off. He coughed once and cleared his throat before continuing. “I met Ormand and half his army on their way back to the palace. He told me to get out. If I left West Talva, he said he’d let me go. Or, if I was a fool, I could come and bury you. Said you attacked him. So I rode like the wind back here. Guess Ormand thought he’d killed you. Or that the fire had.”

  “Rowan?” Aaro croaked again.

  Jake shook his head. “Ormand told me. She’s dead. She wasn’t in the house with you and Mitchel, but there’s a lot of bodies…” He let his voice trail off.

  At that moment a crash and roar came from the house. Both of them looked up in time to see the whole thing collapse, the lookout tower toppling over. Flames shot upward with the billowing smoke.

  The first sob took Aaro by surprise, and nearly broke him in half. He turned from the fire, still on his knees, and bowed almost to the ground as his body shuddered and rocked. His throat burned and he started coughing again, gasping and sobbing all at once till he thought he’d choke to death.