by Cara Witter
“Do you miss your father?” he asked.
Daniella looked at him in surprise. “Gods, no. I was glad to get away.”
Jaeme nodded. He could understand that. “But you didn’t always know he was a blood mage, did you? Did you ever love him?”
Daniella hesitated, probably because the memories were too painful.
But then she shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t love my father.” Her grip loosened on his, then her hand drew away entirely. His heart sank along with it. “I should let you rest,” she said, standing. “Sayvil would scold me if she knew I stayed so long and—”
“Dani,” Jaeme said. “Don’t go.”
Daniella winced, her hands fussing with her skirts as if they suddenly didn’t know where to land.
Jaeme pulled himself to his feet and reached for her, and he could see tears forming in her eyes as she shook her head.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t get up. You need to heal, and I—”
Jaeme laid a hand on her shoulder, and she didn’t move to pull away. “I’ve upset you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
Daniella shut her eyes, the tears clinging to her lashes, glistening in the candlelight. “No. It’s just that—I can’t be close to you.”
Jaeme faltered, his hand still resting on her. His mind flickered over the possibilities he might have missed—a lover, a betrothal, a vow of chastity, a preference for women—but quickly dismissed them all. They’d talked about her past relationships, and she’d never mentioned—
“I can’t,” she said again, though instead of pulling away, she was leaning closer, so near that he could feel the warmth of her body. “Because of what happened with Erich.”
Jaeme lifted his arms and wrapped them around her, and Daniella nestled into him. She said she couldn’t be close to him, but he was more sure than ever that she wanted to be. “He hurt you,” he said. “But I’m not him. I won’t—”
“I know,” she said, her breath ragged against his chest. “I know you’re not Erich. You’re kind and good and—”
“—a total ass.” He squeezed his arms tight around her as she made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
“An adorable ass,” she said. “And better by far than the knights in the stories, whatever you say about them. But Erich had honor once, too. He was good to me, and then, after a while . . .”
Jaeme pressed his face into her hair. “I won’t hurt you, Dani. I swear it.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m going to hurt you.”
Jaeme shook his head, his nose rubbing against her temple. “No, you could never—”
She pulled back suddenly, holding him forcefully at arm’s length and looking into his eyes. “I’m a weapon. Not a girl but a thing. You ask if I love my father, and I don’t. And yes, he’s a blood mage, and a lot of other things, but lots of people love their parents even though they’re horrible. That’s what a person is supposed to feel, but I don’t. I loved Erich and look what I did to him. I turned him into—”
“No.” Jaeme closed the distance between them again, drawing her back into his arms, forcing himself not to wince at the flare of pain in his shoulder. “No. Whatever he did to you, that was on him.”
Daniella’s face crumpled. “You saw what I did in Tir Neren. I’m—”
“What I saw,” Jaeme said, “was a scared girl with no control over what was happening to her. I’m sorry about what they’ve done to you, but Dani. It wasn’t your fault.”
Her curls bounced as she shook her head. “But if it was, if being around me corrupted Erich, if I changed you—”
“You’ve already changed me for the better.” He put his hand on her cheek, the back of his fingers running along her jawline. It was true. Before he’d met her, there were so many things he hadn’t considered about his life. He could see now that he’d neglected his own oaths, and no matter what the Dukes Council had done, there was no excuse for that. He still didn’t believe that Kotali—if he still had any power at all—would have chosen him, but Daniella made him want to believe. For her.
He ran his hands up her arms, and she folded into him, still looking up into his eyes.
“You should be afraid of me,” Daniella said.
“Ah,” he said. “Are you both the maiden and the Great Northbeast in this story? Do I need to slay you in order to win you?”
One errant tear escaped down her face. “Do you want to? Win me, I mean?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
Jaeme smiled. Her feelings in return felt more like something he needed to earn rather than win. “Am I going to need to pay a visit to the River King and borrow some of those colorful fish to spell it out for you? Because I think he . . .” He never finished that sentence, forgot entirely he was about to say, because suddenly Daniella was kissing him, her hands at the back of his neck and sending a rush of breathless heat through him as he pulled her closer, his heart pounding in a way it hadn’t since his first time many years ago. But this time, it was not due to an awkward fear of doing something wrong, but instead the greater fear and anticipation of doing the first truly right thing in his life.
“I have to tell you something,” she said, pulling back to study him, her forest-green eyes soft, serious. “I lo—” she started, but he placed his fingers against her lips.
“Wait,” he said. “I need to say it first, because I never want you to think it some glib response. I’ve never said this to any woman before, I’ve never even felt it before, but I need you to know it. Te chanta riath,” he said in his native tongue. I love you. “Ria kres ti vichten pret.” You are my very heart.
She kissed him slowly, her lips lingering against his. “Te chanta riath, Jaeme,” she breathed. “Mar chant yethva telev.” With love unbreakable. It was a phrase from her favorite Mortichean ballad, one that she had recited for the group from memory as they shared stories around the campfire. Jaeme smiled and closed his eyes as he held her tightly to him, letting himself bask in the perfection of those words from her lips, of her feeling that way about him.
Daniella reached her arms around his neck again, her fingers tangling in his hair—though, he noticed, keeping away from his bruises—and kissed him deeply. Their bodies responded to each other, heat building between them, until they broke apart, out of breath. “I think Sayvil may be upset with me for exerting you so.” She gingerly touched the bandages at his shoulder.
Jaeme ran both his hands around her waist and up her back, playing at the laces of her dress. “I wouldn’t mind a bit more exertion.”
Daniella looked up at him with a coy smile. “If it’s a jog around the garden you want, you might need to take it up with—”
He kissed her again, and Daniella’s hands moved up the back of his shirt. He gasped at the warmth of her skin against his, and as they sank onto the bed, Jaeme paid no mind to the sharp pang in his shoulder. His hands ran over the soft skin of her arms, over the comparatively rough linen of the dress at her thighs. He barely comprehended the ache in his head as she removed his shirt, the pain of far lesser importance than any other sensation he was experiencing while tugging apart the linen cords tied against the small of her back. Daniella pressed against him, her knees on either side of his thighs. Time faded into nothing around them as he drank in the feel of her skin, the gentle tickle of her hair against his face and chest, the sounds of her breath as it merged with his own. Her lips were the antidote to every poison life had given him, the touch of her hands the balm to every wound. The rhythm in which they moved was at first tentative, disjointed, coalescing into something smooth and certain and utterly inescapable.
In the ballads, the knights were always declaring their willingness to die for love, often attempting to prove it in the most idiotic of ways. That always seemed silly to Jaeme, who wasn’t the type to welcome death, but who had little real fear of it
. After all, he was a warrior. He had been in battle and put his life at risk numerous times for causes and people he didn’t even believe in, let alone love. But now, he realized what it was about love that the ballads always missed.
He would die for Dani in a heartbeat, no question, but it wasn’t enough. He had to do more.
She was the woman he would live for.
Twenty-one
With a golden strip of the midday sunlight shining through the partially-drawn curtains, Daniella woke feeling more rested than she had in months. No hideous nightmares or restless voices haunted her, as if Jaeme’s presence alone kept such things at bay.
Jaeme loved her, and she loved him. He accepted all she was, despite her past with Erich, despite her unknown powers, despite everything. As she shifted closer to him, breathing in the indefinable scent of his skin, she felt she was in a place where darkness could never reach her, not even the darkness that was her own.
He said what happened wasn’t her fault, and she desperately wanted to believe him.
His arm tightened around her as she moved, his eyes blinking blearily open. “Don’t even think about escape. You’d never make it to the door with that limp.”
She smiled. “Before you what? Try to drag me back with that chewed-up shoulder of yours? You’d probably just dislocate it again.”
“We do make an accident-prone pair, don’t we? Let’s make it through this with our heads firmly attached to our necks, and I’ll consider us fortunate.”
She stroked her hand lazily along his chest, being especially gentle over the angry red claw marks. She could hear the steady beat of his heart as it matched her own. “I consider us fortunate already.”
Jaeme tipped her chin back, his warm brown eyes gleaming with the same deep happiness she felt. “So do I.” His lips brushed against her forehead softly. “Of course,” he continued, the mischievous quality back in his voice, “I’d prefer it if we kept a few of our limbs, as well. It would make a repeat of last night far easier.”
She laughed and rolled onto her side, just as they heard a rapping at the door. “I’ve let you two lie abed long enough,” Sayvil said through the door. “It’s time to change your bandages.”
Jaeme grinned at Daniella, who blushed at the thought of last night’s humiliating moment when Sayvil had burst into the room with barely so much as a cursory knock, worriedly asking whether Jaeme had seen Daniella, only to have the question die half-asked when she spotted them. Jaeme, for his part, responded with utter innocence that yes, he had in fact seen Daniella. Quite of bit of her, actually. To which Sayvil groaned and left the room with a dramatic roll of her eyes, and Daniella had buried her burning face deeper into the blankets and giggled in equal parts embarrassment and amusement.
“All right,” Daniella called, extricating herself reluctantly from Jaeme’s warm embrace, and reaching for her dress, which lay bunched haphazardly on the thick rug beside the bed. Jaeme pulled on his trousers, wincing as he stretched out his shoulder. Once they were decently attired, Jaeme opened the door for Sayvil, as Daniella tied the curtains back to let the sunlight fully in.
“Glad to see you both more clothed,” Sayvil said. “Hopefully you haven’t put any strain on that shoulder, Jaeme.”
Jaeme smiled. “It’s fairly stiff, but not bad.”
“And your leg, Daniella?”
Apparently, it was business as usual. Daniella, still fighting a deep blush, was grateful for that much. “It burns a bit,” she admitted. “More than the cut on my arm. But I’ll be able to travel on it, if slowly . . .” her voice faltered, her sense of glowing contentedness darkening abruptly as she remembered. They would have to return to Ithale—and not Jaeme alone, in any case. She had been able to push aside the dreaded notion in the glow of candlelight. Today, however, the unavoidable would not be chased away.
She was afraid of what they would find there.
She turned her face away from Jaeme’s perceptive gaze. Sayvil added some more poultice to his wound and wrapped his shoulder with the fresh cloth strips that Greta had laundered.
“This shoulder will open right up again if you aren’t careful,” Sayvil said.
Jaeme grunted. “I’ll make sure to warn Diamis’ soldiers about that.”
“It wasn’t Diamis’ soldiers I was worried about,” Sayvil said. “Unless you’re bedding them as well.”
“If he is,” Daniella said, “I should hope I’d have heard about it.”
Sayvil tied the bandage off with one hard pull, and Jaeme winced, before flashing Daniella a grin. Daniella found herself returning it easier than she would have expected. It was a talent of Jaeme’s, making her feel better with one mischievous smile or wink, no matter the circumstances.
Sayvil turned her attention to the bandages on Daniella’s leg and arm next, and though Daniella would rather leave them be for the time being, she knew from experience that it was no use fighting Sayvil.
Once finished, despite his previous insistence he was never leaving the bed, Jaeme convinced Sayvil to let him venture downstairs. Daniella hoped this wasn’t a preamble to trying to board a ship to go after Kenton and the others—as much as Daniella wanted to be sure they were safe, it was true what she’d said. Jaeme was barely recovered.
Still, she knew that any number of terrible fates might have befallen them, and the thought made her feel ill.
In the common room they were greeted by townsfolk who were excited to see their duke’s nephew—whose heroism had been raised to staggering proportions in the last couple of days. Jaeme returned the greetings cheerfully, although Daniella could see how forced it was, how worried he was about the welfare of their companions. For her part, Daniella hung back a few steps in the interest of keeping rumors about Jaeme’s personal life to a minimum, but Jaeme would have none of it, instead pulling her close to him.
“Let them stare,” he said simply, when she pointed out the half-hidden whispers of those at nearby tables. “After a daring rescue of two beautiful maidens from the clutches of the terrible Nichtee king, I’m bound to have a great love affair with at least one of them.”
She shook her head in mock-disbelief. “Bards will already be singing about this by the time we get to Grisham, won’t they?”
“I’d prefer to stay out of it, just the same,” Sayvil said, twisting a long strand of her black hair around her finger. “The last thing I want is for my husband to hear about my adventures from some second-rate musician with Jaeme’s penchant for exaggeration.”
Greta served them up a hearty lunch, and Jaeme fielded more questions from the eager townsfolk—though he kept the details vague.
They’d just finished their lunch when the door to the inn opened, and in strode their three missing companions—alive and relatively unharmed, aside from Kenton, whose left eye and cheek were mottled with an angry purple bruise along with some yellow-gray marks on his neck.
Daniella let out a shriek of joy, running toward them as fast as her limp would allow and practically knocked a stunned Nikaenor off his feet by throwing her arms around him in an exuberant hug. Then she was hugging Perchaya, joined quickly thereafter by the normally-unflappable Sayvil.
When they finally pulled away, Daniella saw that even Kenton was smiling.
And for whatever reason, he didn’t seem the least bit annoyed to discover that Daniella hadn’t perished in the swamp. In fact, there was a strange expression on his face when he looked her over.
Could it be relief?
He was interrupted by Sayvil, who hovered close to Kenton, surveying his wounds.
Nikaenor’s jaw was slack, his expression frozen in incredulity. “How can you be alive? The swamp—”
Jaeme slapped him on the back. “The swamp was nothing. Waiting around for you all to join us was much more trying.” He eyed Nikaenor and then looked around at the townspeople, who were staring. “D
id you get . . .”
Nikaenor nodded and patted his pack. “It was incredible,” he murmured, looking from Jaeme to Sayvil. “You’ll see, both of you.”
They both looked somewhat unsure about that.
Perchaya pulled a leather pack from her back and held it out to Jaeme. “I think you left this behind.”
“How careless of me.” Jaeme pulled her into a fond hug. “Thank you.”
“We found yours, too,” Kenton said, practically shoving Daniella’s satchel at her. Daniella couldn’t help beaming and holding it tightly to her. There were supplies in there, sure, but sentimental things, too—the book Jaeme had given her in Berlaith, especially.
“What happened in Ithale?” Sayvil asked, before Daniella could open her mouth to say thanks. “Kenton, your face looks terrible.”
Kenton smiled grimly. “Yes, well. General Dektrian sends his regards.” He, too, eyed those who were staring. “Do you have rooms where we might talk more privately?”
“No,” Sayvil said dryly. “We’ve been sleeping in the broom closet under the stairs.” She herded them all up said stairs, then, and they all went without argument, though Daniella did notice Nikaenor looking furtively back at Greta, who was bent double over an enormous pot of stew.
“We’ll have her bring some up to us,” Daniella said to him.
Nikaenor smiled gratefully, though not as widely or exuberantly as usual.
When they reached Sayvil’s room, all crowding in, Nikaenor finally managed to speak coherently again, bubbling with his non-stop questions. “Did you encounter the Nichtees? Were there hundreds of them? How in the Five Lands did you escape?”
Jaeme shared an amused glance with Daniella before replying, “Now that’s a great story. Don’t listen to the women, Nikaenor. They’ll have you believe that I didn’t have much to do with it.”
Sayvil cut in immediately with the story in detail, and Nikaenor launched into a tale of an epic battle with giant eels, and then Perchaya, more slowly and carefully, explained what had held them up in Ithale. She glossed quickly over the death of Nikaenor’s father, but Nikaenor—his enthusiasm now gone—stared at the floor.