He shook his head as the odd spell of dizziness swarmed up. Shoving it back, Aryn clenched his hands and focused. The boy. He had to focus on the boy. Damn it! If he had seen to it last night instead of having his cock ridden—ah, but it was too late now.
No. He’d seen what was done to too many of the slave children.
If he could help just one—
Aryn had no idea what he would do with a small child while he traveled, but he would come up with something.
With eyes as cold and hard as winter ice, he looked back at the barkeep. He drew the long-bladed knife he wore at his hip and started to stroke the edge of it absently as he asked in a soft, silky purr, “To whom?”
The barkeep’s eyes widened as the menace started to flow from one who had been fairly easy-going. He had stayed out of trouble, hadn’t touched any of the wenches, save for the indentured one, and she had been fair glowing this morn. Hadn’t complained about the food or the ale and now, over one boy, he was drawing a wicked looking knife. He licked his dry lips and replied, “The little elf las’ night that saved ‘is lazy arse up and paid for ‘im afore headin’ out this mornin’.”
A smile spread across his face and the relief he felt was unreal. “Any idea where she was heading?” Aryn asked, wondering why he wasn’t surprised.
The smile had the tension inside the barkeep’s chest loosening, turning to greed. “Mebbe.”
Aryn turned the knife, letting it catch the dull light as he cocked his head and studied the barkeep. He arched a brow, waiting. “Maybe?” he repeated. When no answer came, he slammed the knifepoint into the bar, reached out, snagged the barkeep’s filthy shirt and dragged him up until they were nose to nose. “I suggest you remember, and remember fast. Else you are going to have a difficult time running this sorry inn—because I am going to cut out your tongue and shove it down your throat. And if I’m still feeling¼edgy, I’ll chop off your dick as well.”
Rapidly, the barkeep said, “M’ boy saw ‘er loadin’ the boy up w’ the caravan that was outside t’ wall las’ night. Right happy, the boy looked.” His face was pale, save for two spots of color high on his cheeks. “The gypsies have him now. And I didna lay a hand on t’ boy. Gave ‘er a good price, I did.”
“There is no good price on a life,” Aryn said in disgust, dropping him abruptly and shoving him back. “Perhaps I should take your boy and let the gypsies have him as well. And you could buy him back, for a price. But then, he would know true happiness, and he would never want to leave them for you.”
He left, grabbing his pack and hitting the streets. His contract to the wagon train was up and he was free. If he didn’t get away from this blasted city, he would go mad.
Chapter Two
“Eh, thas jes’ a bloody girl.”
Hmm. He is a bright one, isn’t he? Tyriel thought with some amusement as the man in question stood several feet away from her, scratching his head and eyeing her dubiously.
“Ye takin’ to bringing whores along?” the dunce asked, too stupid to recognize the warning in his boss’s eyes and the fire in Tyriel’s.
But she kept her voice mild as she said, “I’m not here to whore for anybody.”
“I’ve not seen many her equal when it comes to a sword,” Gerome said with a glare. “If she can keep my wagons safe, that’s all that matters to me.”
Crossing his arms over his massive chest, the surly fellow eyed Tyriel with derisive eyes. “I ain’t workin’ alongside no bloody girl,” he said confidently, certain Tyriel would be sent packing. “Unless’n I kin be putting her under me.”
Gerome eyed the fellow with pursed lips, then shrugged his shoulders. “All right. Aldy, get Benjin’s wages together. He gave me three days of work.”
“Huh?”
Aldy, the tiny, spry little man who had hired Tyriel in towne the past night, scurried over to the hulking idiot who stood staring at Gerome as if he had grown a second head.
“Wages? I thought we didn’t get paid ‘til the trip was done.” The dunce reached up to scratch his straw-colored hair a second time.
“The trip is done for you. You won’t work beside a girl and I have no intention of passing by an excellent swordsman and mage in favor of you,” Gerome said, dismissing Benjin by introducing Tyriel to the cook and two other guards.
“There’s Aryn,” Gerome said, pointing off in the distance to a figure on horseback.
When Tyriel glanced back at Benjin one last time, the man still stood there, scratching his head and looking puzzled.
* * * * *
“You.”
Tyriel raised her head, one hand holding a suede cloth, stroking it up and down the length of her blade.
The man in front of her stood with his back to the sun, towering over her. Raising one hand to shield her eyes, Tyriel made out the features of the swordsman from the inn she had met the previous fall. “Yes, me,” she replied evenly.
“I wondered if the Tyriel Gerome told me about was the one I had met a few months back.”
“Looks like it,” she said cheerfully, sliding her blade into its sheath. “Aryn, is it?”
“I didn’t know the kin hired themselves out to wagon trains,” Aryn said, squatting down beside her. Damp tendrils of hair clung to the sides of his face and neck and his bared chest glistened with sweat. And it was every bit as fine as she had imagined it would be, wide, sculpted, muscled. His arms were roped with muscle, but not overly so, his shoulders wide and powerful, and she imagined, just perfect for resting your head on.
After.
Oh, yummy.
Hmmm. Maybe, just maybe, this trip could turn out to be rather pleasant. Very pleasant. If he would just…cooperate.
Since the day was rather cool, Tyriel guessed he had been practicing. Nodding at the shallow nick on his forearm, she asked, “That happen in practice?”
Glancing at it, dismissing it, Aryn said, “Yes. The short, stocky guy with a beard and no hair, Dule. He’s got a fast hand. How did you end up hiring your blade out? I’ve never known a lady of the elves to want to leave the wonder of their lands for ours.”
“I’m a breed, Aryn,” she said shortly, sliding into her harness and rising to her feet. “You know what that means? I don’t belong with the kin. And as much as I love my mother’s folk, I can only take so much of them at a time.”
“Who are your mother’s folk?”
One slim black brow rose into the air. “You’re not as closemouthed as I would have expected,” she mused, shaking her head. And then she reached up, grabbing a hand full of springy black curls. “With hair like this, who else? The gypsies, of course.”
A laugh tumbled from Aryn’s unbelievably beautiful mouth as he went from kneeling beside her to lying flat on his back, knees drawn up. Staring up at the blue sky, he continued to laugh, his chest shaking, his eyes crinkling up and sparkling with mirth. “Oh, bloody hell. That is rich. The gypsy lady and a lord of the kin—I’d think an angel and an incubus would have made a better match.”
“Quite possibly.” A sad, bittersweet smile tugged at her lips and her exotic eyes took on a faraway look. “But we’ll never know. My mother died in childbirth. If she hadn’t been with the kin when she went into labor, I wouldn’t be here.” Shrugging her slim shoulders, she said, “I can say, without hesitation, I had an interesting childhood.”
“Who raised you?” He slowly sat up, still grinning.
Dusting her hands off, she rose to her feet, eyeing the swordsman with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. Her topaz eyes flashed and glowed and Tyriel felt raw emotion swirling inside her and threatening to spill out. The air around them thickened as though a storm threatened.
Tyriel could see his eyes widen in acknowledgment and saw the darkening caused by nerves in the almost dreamy blue of his eyes. She heard the skipping of his heart caused by something akin to fear as her uncontrolled emotions caused power to pump from her in waves.
Then she swallowed it down, blinked and turned on her heel, w
alking away from him.
Who raised you?
Lowering her eyes to the stream that flowed around her bare feet, Tyriel wondered why the question had upset her so much. She had loved her father, still did, and knew that he loved her. Keeping her isolated from her mother’s family had been a misguided attempt to protect her. And Da was a good father, had always been kind, loving, generous—most unelflike. At least to a half-breed.
The High Prince of Eivisa had spoiled her bloody rotten, and many still felt he should have sent her to the gypsies, or to an elvish brothel. Not that they would dare say that to their Prince’s face, or his daughter’s.
With a sigh, she acknowledged that he had done what he had thought was best, what he had thought was right. Keeping her isolated from all—the kin and the gypsies—trying to protect the mongrel child from the slights of being of mixed race.
He couldn’t have known, or understood, how easily and deeply the gypsies gave their love. Not when the elves rarely gave anything easily, and loved nothing deeply, save themselves and their own. Oh, they loved a lost cause, the poor, the broken down and the pitiful. But Tyriel was anything but—she had an elf’s pride, a Princess’ arrogance, and the magick of two powerful races flowing through her veins.
Perhaps if she had been a foundling, or an abused child one of the kin had saved, they would have loved and cherished her. Rather odd that the Prince had fathered her, and for that they had rejected and despised her. They should have loved her more. If he hadn’t spent the last seventy years mourning her mama, if he had taken a bride from their people, an elvish bride, maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t have held such a grudge.
But a gypsy lover was unlike anything they could fathom, Tyriel thought with a small smile.
Just the love a gypsy gave was incomparable, but to have a gypsy lover—her heart kicked up a notch as she remembered her first gypsy lover, a wild gypsy youth, who was now a chieftain, and a grandfather.
When she had arrived among them some forty years earlier, she had been welcomed with open arms and happy hearts. And by the men with hot eyes and bold smiles…ah, the memories! Everything the gypsies did, they did with passion and life—it was no wonder her father had no desire to seek a new bride among the kin.
The elves—they were seduction and magick, lovely magick, yes. But sometimes that magick was so very painful. And that was why he had kept her alone, away from the kin.
But the gypsies were passion and fire, and everything wonderful.
Keeping her isolated from the kin had been to protect her. That intention had been well-thought out.
It wasn’t his fault she had gone against his wishes and gone out among the kin where she had learned just how very cruel her father’s people could be. How very arrogant.
How very…elvin.
Absently, she fingered the elongated curve of her ear, so much longer than that of her human kin, yet not pointed enough for many of the elves to accept her.
Rejection was something she had never experienced, until the summer of her eighteenth birthday. By the Blood, she had been so happy, so excited, at the thought of learning about her people. She had planned the escape from her protective papa for nearly two months, slipping out during her birthday celebration. Within her father’s lands, his keep alone, she was protected, coddled, adored…his people loved and worshipped her. The few that might have made slights against her…well, there may well have been some, but they never made it known to her.
She was well-protected, well-shielded against reality.
Perhaps too well. Had she been exposed to some true elvish ways, perhaps she wouldn’t have been so eager to go out into the realm alone, without her father or his men at her side.
But Tyriel had so badly wanted to learn more about what was beyond the walls of her father’s keep, exotic though it was. Wanted to know more about the kin than what her father had revealed.
A long wonderful night of revelry, dancing and laughing with a handsome lord who smiled and whispered so seductively to her, leading her to a room as he used elvish magick to blind her eyes to the men who followed, the ones who would block her magick and her attempts to escape. Eighteen was young for an elf, way too young for her to battle off an attack—and that was what came, as they jeeringly jerked the cover from her eyes, told her she was good for nothing but whoring for her betters, that she was a misfit who should have died at birth, would have died at birth if her father had been anybody less than who he was—while they pinned her to a wall and tore away the pretty gown she had been given for her birthday ball.
They didn’t realize though that the half-breed had more than elvish magick. As she screamed in fury, her body went red hot and pulsed. One fell back, shrieking in pain as she lashed out and struck him, leaving a burned mark on him—touch of fire, gypsy magick—her hand on his throat, unable to let go until it had burned completely through and he gasped out his last breath as Tyriel sent up a cry that tore down the barriers they had put up. Her father’s attempts to isolate her had worked quite well. Not only did she know little about the elvish world, the kin knew too little about her and how strong she was.
Prince Josah, the High Prince of Eivisa, had already been out searching for her, his body tight with rage and fury as he sensed her fear through their link, but was unable to track her. When the barrier shattered, he homed in on her like a beacon, his dark assassin, Jaren following silently in his wake.
It was Jaren who took off his cloak and covered the nearly nude Princess, leaving the four living elvish lords to his Prince, unable to deny him that satisfaction, though by rights he should have taken their lives before risking his Prince. But he judged by the blood in the Prince’s eyes, none would live more than a few heartbeats.
Tyriel closed her eyes, shaking her head as the memories swarmed up so strongly. Her father had struck like an avenging angel—striking the men down before they realized what had happened. She had killed the first one and then cowered in the corner as they milled around her, trying to figure out how to dispose of her without touching her, staring at the fallen body of their friend.
You should have died…
And some Royals would have let her. Some elves may have refused to deliver a half-breed’s child.
But when a Prince of the people said “Save my child,” the kin damn well knew that to fail was to mark their own doom.
Tyriel had found her place in Averne, the elvish realms, after spending a decade training in the Hall of Warriors. Tyriel wasn’t truly an elvish assassin, but she was a warrior, and none would dare look down their aristocratic noses at her behind her father’s royal back ever again. She could slit their throats while they drank their wine and they would never know it until they fell down dead.
And her father would stand by and applaud. Eivisa was the largest and most powerful of the elvish realms of Averne, and none dared to challenge him. And many, though none dared to voice it, felt shame for what had nearly happened to her.
It could be seen in their eyes when she walked by. She bore the mark of an elvish princess in her carriage, in her gaze, written all over her long graceful body.
And her father’s love and pride in her shone from him every time he looked at her or spoke of her.
Loving his wild gypsy wife had changed something inside him.
Losing her had changed it even more.
But Tyriel—she made the biggest difference.
“I miss you, Da,” she whispered, reaching up to stroke the amber-colored moonstone beneath her jerkin. It lay side by side with another chain, this one from the gypsies, a crucifix, a symbol of the Sacrificed God, lost so long ago, only the gypsies and the Kin still remembered His Name, and few but the gypsies still worshipped Him.
An odd heat answered her and she smiled. Somewhat less melancholy, she lay back on the bank to enjoy the fading sun.
She smirked a little.
How would the elves feel if they knew that the gypsies they so looked down upon were one of the only remaini
ng races that still believed in the One God they also believed in?
Chapter Three
When she came back to camp later that night—much later—Aryn shifted on his bedroll to watch her glide through the sleeping bodies on the ground. She was unbelievably quiet, gliding on feet so silent she didn’t even disturb the animals sleeping throughout the camp.
She paused a few feet away, and though Aryn could barely make out her form, much less her face, he knew she was watching him, that she could see him clear as day. He didn’t have to see her to recall that form, those wild black curls, her large slanted eyes, winged black brows, a red kissable mouth and that tiny mole right by her lips.
Tall, reed-slender, small-breasted and slim-hipped—she shouldn’t have been quite so enticing, he knew. But every damn time she bent over, he saw the tight, rounded ass and wanted to grasp her hips and drive into her, see how tight and snug her sheath was, how wet she was, what she tasted like.
He burned…to know if the fire he saw in her eyes, sensed beneath her skin was as real as he suspected it was. Ached, so badly his cock throbbed every time he caught a breath of her intoxicating scent.
Her eyes were starting to haunt him at night, and her low, husky laugh, the way her magick seemed to shimmer in the air around her. But it was more than that. She had something that drew words from him, something that made him open up. And Aryn was rarely open.
What was it about her? he wondered as she continued on past him without speaking. He was closemouthed, or had always thought himself to be, until just a few marks earlier. How had she frozen him in place with simply a look? Why was it his flesh prickled every time she was near?
Not his cock. That did not prickle—it stiffened, hardened and ached.
With a sigh, Aryn flipped onto his back, flung his arm over his eyes and ordered himself to sleep.
God above knew, sunrise came awful early to a mercenary.
Though she had slid into her bedroll far later than the others, Tyriel was the first to rise, stretching her arms high overhead before bending over to touch her toes, loosening muscles stiffened from a night on the cold ground. Rolling her head on her shoulders, she eyed the sleeping camp.
Touch of Gypsy Fire Page 3