Chapter 5 #2
He didn’t even stop to think, just dove forward as fast as he could. The cold bite of steel into his unprotected back was hideous, but it was worth it to see the shock in Deyvid’s eyes as he spun toward the snarl of pain and realized what had happened.
“Petur!”
He whirled around and flattened his hands around the massive blade of his sword, then jerked it out of the golem’s grip. Blood poured from the wound on his back, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now except holding these magical monsters off until—
There was a distant scream, and every golem wavered for a moment until, as one, they vanished.
Cheers went up from Petur’s people, but all he could focus on right now was Deyvid and the relief and worry that warred in his face as he immediately came over and put Petur’s dark-furred arm over his shoulder.
“It’ll heal fast,” Petur slurred around his sharp teeth. All of his energy was being redirected toward healing now. After a few more seconds, he melted back into his human form as his legs gave out beneath him. Deyvid cursed under his breath as he helped lay him down on his stomach by the fire.
The next few minutes were focused chaos. Once Lise was back, Deyvid turned Petur over to her with an admonition to “guard this idiot” before slinking off into the night.
“I think he likes you,” she murmured to Petur as she sluiced water from her canteen over his back to wash off some of the blood. She hummed as she took in the extent of the slash. “It’s knitting back together quickly. Do you need something for the pain?”
“No.” All the pain relievers that worked on shifters did so by incapacitating them, and he needed to keep his head right now. “Who ambushed us?”
“Odds are that it was the last group we were hunting,” she replied. “Especially given the way they knew to target Deyvid. Brannan is looking for evidence to back that up, of course.”
Even if he didn’t find it directly, Petur thought they were on the right track. “Mmm … you could …”
“Make you rest? Good idea,” Lise said dryly. “Let your body take what it needs to heal. We can handle everything else for now.”
He trusted that she could and drifted off into a light doze that made ignoring the pain of his injury easier.
He floated there, ignoring the activity around him, until a touch to his shoulder brought him out of it instantly.
Petur opened his eyes to see Deyvid crouched beside him, hand slightly raised like he’d thought he was being sneaky.
“Put it back,” Petur said sleepily. “I like when you touch me.”
Deyvid shook his head. “I should have known better than to try and slip anything by you.”
“Yes,” Petur agreed. “And I suggest you spare both of us when it comes to trying to say anything about what happened here tonight except, ‘Thank you, Petur,’ because I won’t accept any apologies.”
“Bold of you to think I was going to apologize.” They locked gazes for a moment before Deyvid admitted, “Fine, I was.”
Ha, now I have you where I want you. “Well, if you insist on making it up to me,” Petur said, “you can do so by coming back to Delomar with us.”
“Petur …”
“Not as some sort of charity case,” he emphasized, “and not just because I want you there. I want you to come back specifically for the purpose of training my people.”
Deyvid shook his head, but there was a little smile playing about his lips. “They don’t need my training.”
“Ha!” Petur laughed or tried to. The wound in his back was still aggravating enough, despite his advanced healing, that he couldn’t be quite as forceful as he wanted to be. “You can’t tell me that you haven’t been holding back a wince every time you watch us on horseback.”
“Well …”
“Not to mention you’re far better at the ‘creeping and sneaking around in human form’ kind of stuff.”
“You mean not blundering through the woods like an idiot? I suppose I am,” Deyvid mused.
“And don’t even try to pretend that you wouldn’t have plenty to say when it comes to the security,” Petur went on. “You worked as an assassin for your people, but I sincerely doubt that the only ones you assassinated were your people.”
“So you’re basically asking for all of my secrets,” Deyvid said. “And what do I get in return?”
“My eternal love and devotion,” Petur replied immediately.
“Be honest with me.”
I am, he wanted to say, but it was too soon to say that to Deyvid.
Petur felt it, though. He felt sure about it in a way that he’d never experienced before.
This man—this strange, wonderful, dangerous man—was going to be a huge part of Petur’s future and, he hoped, a necessary part of his happiness.
He’d never been so certain of something in his life.
“I can give you a home base,” he said instead.
“A place you can always return to and where you won’t be turned away.
I can’t replace your family, and I would never try, but you deserve better than wandering around making ends meet by handling Riyale’s problems for us.
Let me take care of some problems for you. Please.”
Deyvid’s face was absolutely blank, terrifyingly so, in fact. Petur’s heart sank; he was losing him, he hadn’t made a good enough argument. How could he salvage this?
He opened his mouth to try again when Deyvid suddenly said, “Fine, but on a temporary basis only. I’m not going to stay where I’m not wanted.”
“Things will work out,” Petur assured him with a grin on his face as every muscle in his body seemed to relax.
“I’ll speak to my sister about it, but I’m sure she’ll be fine with you.
Besides, the training of the royal guards and our spy corps is under my purview and has been since before she was queen. I get the final say.”
“She rules the country,” Deyvid pointed out. “I expect that means she gets the final say in everything.”
“You underestimate just how annoying I can be when there’s something I want,” Petur told him, and Deyvid burst into laughter.
“I certainly won’t underestimate you again.”
“See that you don’t,” Petur said, pure joy tugging up the corners of his mouth. His heart seemed as light as air in his chest, and in that moment, he knew that he had found something he was going to treasure for the rest of his life.
***
The journey up-country was long and would have been dull if not for Deyvid’s presence.
Everyone in the group except for Brannan had softened to him.
He and Lise had similar taciturn personalities, and both were fiercely practical, which came in useful whenever something needed to be done—usually by directing someone else to the task, but Petur appreciated the ability to delegate.
Herow was quiet about it, but he certainly enjoyed Deyvid’s ability to cook up something more than just edible over the fire, and Ginnie and Rhys enthusiastically solicited stories of his travels in the evening.
By the time they finally got to Delomar, it was as though Deyvid had been with them for months, not weeks.
Petur had been prepared to take great pains to show him around the city, but Deyvid rode through the streets with ease. “You’ve been here before, I take it?” Petur asked in a low voice as they got close to the palace.
“A time or two,” Deyvid replied, his voice giving nothing away.
“Kill anyone I know?”
“I never kill and tell,” Deyvid replied, easily guiding Petur’s second mount away from the waste runnel along the side of the street. “What’s the protocol for me once we reach the palace?”
Petur wanted to say that he would bring Deyvid to his sister immediately and assure him that she was going to be as glad to meet him as Petur had been, but there were, in fact, some royal protocols that he was expected to follow.
“I’ll talk to the queen first,” he said.
“You go with Lise to the barracks. She’ll make sure you have a place to stay for now. ”
“I have no formal position in your military,” Deyvid pointed out. “I don’t think the barracks are the right place for me. I can find a room here in town.”
“I want you close,” Petur said firmly. “You’ll have an official position soon enough. I don’t want to have to hunt you down in town just to tell you, ‘Look, here’s the rooms you should have been in all along. Come on back.’”
Deyvid sighed. “Fine,” he said, “but if it doesn’t work out that way, I’m going to mock you, I want you to know that.”
“It’s going to work out,” Petur insisted. “Why do you keep doubting me? Haven’t you realized yet that I’m right about almost everything?” It was going to be fine. He was sure of it.
It was not, in fact, fine.
“A High Harrier?” Tania hissed the moment the door to her study was closed. The red heat in her face contrasted oddly with the bright teal of her gown, and every inch of her posture radiated umbrage.
“Oh, you already know,” Petur said, a little disappointed that he wasn’t the one to break the news to her.
“Of course, I know! But I should have known from you, rather than relying on your second-in-command to bring me the intelligence of a murderous assassin in our midst. One who you brought here, nonetheless!” Her mouth worked silently for a moment, disbelief and anger making her unexpectedly inarticulate.
Petur rolled his eyes. He should have known Brannan would try to paint Deyvid’s presence in the worst possible light. “I should have told you sooner,” he acknowledged. “That’s my mistake. But he’s not like you think he is. Deyvid Cleareyes saved my life more than once. He—”
“I don’t care if he’s saved every single one of you a hundred times,” Tania said, her hands on her hips.
Her heart-shaped face, usually so composed, seemed stuck in a snarl, and the cords of her neck stood out starkly beneath her skin.
“High Harriers are some of the most dangerous people in existence, and I will not have one as part of my court.”
Petur was genuinely baffled by this reception. “I’m vouching for him,” he insisted. “I promise you right now, Deyvid isn’t going to cause us any sort of harm. He was hunting mages along our southern border when we chanced across him.”
“Hunting mages.” Tania let out a mirthless laugh. “Of course, he was just out there hunting dangerous killers for his own amusement.”
“He wasn’t doing it for amusement’s sake, obviously.
” Why was his sister being so obtuse? “He was being paid by the local townships to handle a problem that we hadn’t gotten to yet.
And he was doing it well, I might add—far more effectively than me and my squad. There’s much we could learn from him.”
“And there’s a great deal of damaging intelligence he could learn about us in the process,” she snapped. “How we do things. Our tactics. Our advantages. I can’t believe you haven’t stopped to genuinely consider the fact that he could be a spy.”
“He doesn’t have anything to do with his people any longer,” Petur said.
“That’s what he’s told you, but you can’t believe a creature like that. Deceit is in his blood. Literally. I watched you all ride up to the palace, and he certainly doesn’t look like what he really is.”
“Well, you can hardly expect him to walk around advertising the fact,” Petur snapped back.
“It indicates a personality steeped in dishonesty,” his sister stated. “And I won’t have him here. I won’t. Get rid of him.”
Petur’s mouth opened and shut a few times as he tried to gather his thoughts. Tania had never once dictated to him like this before, not even when they were children fighting over toys. His first impulse was to give in to her. She was his queen, and obedience was his proper place, and yet …
“No,” he said and watched as her hands balled up into fists.
“No,” she repeated dangerously. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean,” Petur said, “that he’s not what you say he is. He’s not what you think he is. I wouldn’t bring someone I didn’t trust to you, and the fact that you think otherwise makes me very uncomfortable.”
“The fact that you think I could welcome a ruthless killer into my household—”
“I’m not asking you to make him a part of your court,” Petur insisted. “I’m saying he deserves a chance. His knowledge of combat is unparalleled. He could be of great use to us.”
Tania raised one elegant eyebrow. “And of great use in your bed, I suppose. Don’t think your second didn’t fill me in on the intimate relationship the pair of you have been having on the road,” she scoffed.
“He’s using you. Anyone could see it. I’m astonished that you don’t.
I thought you were smarter than that, Petur. ”
“And I thought you were smarter than this,” he retorted.
“He’s a better tracker than us, despite not having a shifter’s senses.
He is a better fighter than us, despite not having a shifter’s strength.
He’s better at assimilating information.
A better hunter, a better rider. The things we could learn from him …
sister, I don’t say it lightly when I tell you that he could literally be the difference for the Shifter Corps between life and death.
“And I’m willing to vouch for him,” Petur added. “Let me be his parole. I promise you, he’s going to surpass every expectation you might have.”
“That will hardly be difficult, seeing as I have expectations of only the lowest behavior,” Tania replied.
“Give him a chance,” Petur pleaded as he felt the reins of his future slip out of his grasp. “That’s all I’m asking. Give him a chance to prove himself. It will take no more than six months for you to see marked improvement in the guard’s capabilities.”
“It’s a waste of time,” Tania said.
“But my time to waste,” Petur pointed out.
“Well, then, perhaps I should just reassign your time.”
His heart chilled. Was she actually going to remove him from his post?
“That,” he said, fumbling his way through what he meant, “would show inexcusable weakness to our enemies. Not just abroad but here at home. You know the Gunia and Belesar families would be delighted to see us fracture. Do you really want to give them that kind of fuel?”
“You’re the one who’s insisting on providing it by bringing that Harrier here. But,” his sister said with a haughty sniff, “I suppose you have a point. Very well, then. Six months and I expect an apology from you at the end of it for wasting everyone’s time.”
“Six months,” Petur agreed, relief coursing through him. “Thank you, Tania.”
She didn’t reply, just brushed him away, and Petur left with the feeling as though he had a rock in his stomach.
I’ll prove to her she’s wrong about him. She’ll come around.
She had to.