Chapter 16
“Get moving?” Reggie said. “Are you daft?”
Prince Leif didn’t look daft; he looked resolute, and angry, and also wet, because pond water was still dripping out of his snarled, golden hair. Reggie wished he wasn’t so lovely to look at, so he could maintain the proper degree of outrage.
“We still have to meet my uncle in Aquitaine,” Leif said, in a tone that suggested Reggie was being unreasonable. “Losing Amelia is unfortunate—”
“Unfortunate!?” Reggie exploded, throwing his hands in the air. His shout echoed off the wall of the chateau. “She’s likely dead, and we have three dragons with no riders, and no one to control them, and no one to carry psychic messages to our allies from the North, and you think it’s unfortunate?”
“I do.” Leif tucked his chin and straightened his shoulders. Defiant. Aggressive. A posture that told Reggie he ought not to push him. “Just as it’s unfortunate that you’re reacting this way.”
“I’m—” Heat flooded his face. His already-frantic heartbeat skipped and stuttered. “I’m being perfectly reasonable, you sodding—hey! Let go of me!”
Connor did not let go. He used the arm he’d hooked around Reggie’s neck to drag him over toward the gates. When Reggie tried to dig in his heels, Connor pinched the top of his ear between thumb and forefinger, and Reggie was forced to go along with him, cursing him the whole way.
“You’re going to pay for this,” Reggie hissed, as Connor marched him forward, through the gates, and back down the road. “See if I ever touch your cock again.”
“You will. You like it too much to stay away,” Connor said, but without his usual lecherous glint. He sounded distracted. Troubled, even. And he looked it, too, when he finally deemed them far enough away, released Reggie’s smarting ear, and pivoted around to face him.
“Fuck you,” Reggie spat. “No, go fuck yourself—”
“Hush,” Connor said, still distracted, glancing back toward the gates over Reggie’s shoulder.
“You prick. I’ll—mmph!”
Connor slapped a hand over his mouth, muffling the rest of his tirade.
Reggie thought of biting him, until Connor met his gaze, and he saw the cold seriousness of his gaze.
Had he laughed, cracked a joke, and mocked Reggie’s anger, he could have maintained his righteous indignation.
But the hard steel of Connor’s look made him want to shrivel up and cover his head.
His voice was gentle, though, when he said, “Reg. You’re having a fit.”
Reggie bristled on principle. He wanted to argue. Wanted to scream.
But Connor had this way of being so rarely serious, and being infuriatingly right in a way that Reggie needed in moments like this.
He was a lifeline in a storm-tossed sea when Reggie was most adrift, and so more than preserving his pride, he wanted to grab hold with both hands. He was having a fit.
Connor watched him a moment, and then peeled his hand away. “Do you want to sit down?”
“Don’t you dare coddle me,” he said, but without any heat. He stayed on his feet, but leaned into the touch when Connor gripped his shoulder. “How are you keeping so calm about this?”
“Because one of us has to, and I knew it would need to be me.”
“I hate you,” Reggie said, weakly. And then, “Amelia’s gone.”
“She is,” Connor agreed, calm and grim. “And wherever she went, we can’t follow.”
“But we…” All his bluster, the painful, hectic energy that had been crowding his lungs since he first saw Amelia fall, rushed out of him in one huge exhale. “Gods. I know. You’re right. I hate it when you’re right…but you are.”
Connor stepped in closer, and his grip moved from Reggie’s shoulder to the back of his neck, and squeezed. “We all like Amelia.” He made a brief, telling face. “Mostly. But between you and me,” he lowered his voice, “you’re not upset that she’s gone, not really.”
Reggie blinked at him. “You’re the worst man alive, do you know that?”
In answer, Connor arched a single brow, daring him to make a real argument.
“All right, fine.” Reggie flapped his hands against his sides. “I’m not heartbroken, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Now that he was no longer actively hyperventilating, it was easier to parse the sources—plural—of his crippling panic…and, to a lesser extent, his outrage with Leif.
He sighed, and if he leaned into the weight of Connor’s hand at the back of his neck, he now knew that Connor wouldn’t tease him about needing comfort and support.
“The drakes were our one advantage,” he lamented. “I thought that, with them, this might not be a suicide mission.”
“Oh, it’s a suicide mission either way, definitely,” Connor said with a rueful half-smile. “But don’t say ‘were.’ We still have the drakes.”
Reggie snorted, and then saw that he was serious. “No. We don’t.”
“They’re still here, aren’t they?” Connor gestured overhead, where the females were broadening their circles, spiraling out farther on each pass, still scouring the ground for their mistress. “They didn’t go with Amelia.”
“Because they couldn’t. If Leif is to be believed, she got sucked through one of those bloody holes in the air, and they couldn’t follow. But she’s the Drake. She’s the one who can communicate with them. When she doesn’t return, they’ll likely fly off, never to be seen again.”
“Or…”
Reggie didn’t like the way his head tilted, leading him to some foregone conclusion.
“Or what?”
“You could ride them.”
Reggie blinked some more. “I’m surrounded by fools.”
“Not them, as in all of them,” Connor said, “but the one. The girl one. Your pet.”
“Valencia is not my pet. She’s no one’s pet.”
Connor rolled his eyes. “Battle steed, then, if you prefer. My point is, you’ve bonded with her. She likes you.”
“Her tolerating my presence is no replacement for the psychic bond that Amelia—”
“Argghh!” Connor snatched his hand away with a frustrated growl and paced away from him, raking his long hair off his neck. “For the love of the gods, Reggie! Be as frightened as you want, but stop saying ‘no’ to everything!”
“I’m not frightened!”
Connor scoffed, and gave a dramatic sweep of his arm to encompass Reggie’s whole person, nose to toes. “You’re bloody petrified, and it’s getting us nowhere.”
He was. That was what he hated about this whole scenario: Connor was right, and he was petrified, and he didn’t seem able to take control of his own emotions.
Reggie pressed both hands over his face a moment, listening to the angry scuff of Connor’s boots in the dirt, and decided he didn’t want to do this anymore. Whatever this was.
He turned to head farther down the hill, back toward camp.
Behind him, Connor said, “Do you want Leif in charge?”
Reggie halted mid-step. Slowly, he lowered his foot the rest of the way to the ground, and turned back around.
Connor stood with his hands on his hips, one leg jutted forward, his expression exasperated.
He looked like a man making a last-ditch effort.
“You know that’s what will happen if you don’t at least attempt to ride that drake, don’t you?
The drakes are power made manifest. You’re right: they’re our advantage, and without a guiding hand, they very well might fly off.
If that happens, then the prince in our midst, the prince who can turn into a wolf, no less, will become the de facto leader of this…
” He gestured toward camp. “Shitshow. He’ll make a case because he’s royalty, and it’s his uncle we’re meeting, and he’s big as a barn, etcetera, etcetera, and we’ll be following him.
Is that what you want? That great ox making all the decisions? ”
One thing war had taught Reggie was that, though he puffed out his chest and never shied away from giving his opinion on everything from the location of a campsite to the formation of a horse line in pitched combat, he didn’t want to be the ultimate voice of authority in any given situation.
He wanted to be an important lieutenant, but not a general.
He liked being a duke, and had no designs on a kingship.
But he didn’t want Leif in charge of their forces. He was big, and strong, and brave, and magical besides. But he wasn’t Southern; he didn’t love this land, didn’t know it the way they did. And he was far too closeknit with his cousin, a would-be murderer who’d seduced his own kin.
No, he didn’t need to be in charge of an army, least of all their Southern army, hamstrung and struggling as it was.
“Why don’t you lead? You’re the woodsman,” Reggie said.
Connor shook his head. “The only reason I’m given any voice is thanks to you and Amelia vouching for me. I’m damaged goods: the lord who abandoned his own manor. But you: you’re the shining knight on the white charger. If you climb aboard a dragon, all of them will follow you.”
Reggie chewed at the inside of his cheek and just breathed a moment. In and out. In and out.
Footsteps crunched on the road behind him, heavy ones. He didn’t turn, and a few moments later, Leif strode past, head up, jaw tensed. He didn’t glance toward them.
Reggie watched him go until he disappeared around a bend in the road, behind a stand of pines. “What are the odds he heard everything we said?”
“With his hearing? Likely. I don’t care,” Connor said with a shrug. “Will you do it?”
Reggie breathed a little more, heart skittering like a spooked horse, and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do it.”
~*~
Leif had no interest in Connor and Reginald’s leadership machinations. He had no interest in leading the Southern forces at all. Without Amelia and her drakes, he wasn’t sure the pack ought to stay with them.
He was nearing camp, its tumble of voices growing louder and more distinct as he rounded the last bend in the road, when three figures emerged ahead of him, walking his direction.
He caught Ragnar’s scent before he could catalogue any of them physically. Then he noted Lady Leda, and her young lover, her former stepson. Three very different faces wearing three very similar expressions.
“What is it?” Leif asked as he closed in on them, his attention on Ragnar. It was so rare to see his mouth pinched like it was, sullen for some reason other than the torq around his neck.
Ragnar opened his mouth to speak, and the Lady Leda beat him to it, voice spitting venom.
“The prisoner’s gone. That fucking Sel. He slipped away, and we can’t find him.”
Ragnar huffed a deep, exasperated sigh. “Sels came into the camp. They opened a portal and—”
“I know,” Leif said, cutting him off with a swipe of his hand through the air and earning a scowl for it. “A runner came up to the chateau to tell us.”
“Oh, so I might have been lying here, bleeding out, or already dead, and you weren’t even going to come down the hill and check on me?” Ragnar said, and Leif felt his brows go up.
“Amelia was taken.”
“I know.” Ragnar sneered. “A runner came and told us.”
Leif glared at him, willing him to act at least a little subservient in front of others—mortal, wholly human Southerners at that. But Ragnar kicked his chin back, torq gleaming defiantly in the low evening light, and stared him down. The bastard.
Leif turned to Leda. “All the Sels in camp are slain?”
“Those that didn’t escape. Another portal opened, and most went through it.
” Her lips pursed unhappily to show what she thought of that.
She bore a smudge of dirt along one cheek, and her hair had half-fallen from its intricate pile of curls atop her head.
Her gaze cut sideways toward Ragnar, and then back.
She inclined her head to a regal angle and said, “I want to commend your man, here. He fought bravely, before the animals fled.”
Leif allowed his gaze to slide back toward Ragnar, and he saw the dirt streaked on his arms; smelled the crust of dried sweat when he next inhaled. “With a weapon?”
Ragnar’s lashes flickered; his throat bobbed and shifted the torq. He was offended. “The lady offered me her sword,” he said in a brittle voice that suggested the moment they weren’t in front of others, he’d have some choice words for Leif.
Leda cleared her throat and recaptured his attention. She lifted a single brow in a pointed way. “He also helped to douse the fires. Your man Ragnar isn’t the prisoner you should be worried about.”
“Who…” Leif started, genuinely bemused.
And Ragnar said, “The Sel.” His voice had a low, angry grind to it, and his face was all harsh, sucked-in angles when Leif turned back to him. “Or were you listening when I told you before that he escaped?”
He hadn’t been, no. Not really. But he growled a warning and said, “Yes. But I don’t feel it’s our most pressing concern at the moment.”
Ragnar’s eyes flashed, pupils narrowing in a way that Leif knew it took no small effort not to shift, torq be damned.
Leda said, “Isn’t it, though? Your grace,” she said in a tone that suggested she viewed him now as a child rather than a prince, “how do you think the Sels knew where to strike? More importantly: who do you think carried Amelia through a portal?”
“No…” he started, but that was the only answer, wasn’t it? The only logical conclusion.
Ragnar bared his fangs in a semblance of a smile. “You have your pet hostage, and she had hers. You both might lose your heads thanks to them.”