Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
As the moon rose, Alaric led his group across a bare, muddy field at a flat-out gallop, crossing trackless wastes with the night sky wheeling overhead. Lonely grain silos and tumbledown farmhouses cut haunted outlines against the stars.
I could help your people and mine, if we could only trust each other.
It had been five days since then and Julia was feigning sleep again, pliant in his arms as they sped across the wasted countryside. Alaric could not stop a single thing he felt. Not his body’s ferocious reaction to her, nor the protectiveness that came roaring up just as fierce as his lust.
He’d been careful to avoid conversation with her since that night on the tower. He didn’t need to know that she hated her brother as much as he did. Didn’t need to understand that she’d tried and failed to live under Roman law, as much an outlaw as he was.
It almost didn’t matter, though. She seemed to lose interest in him after that night—turning her attention to his men. The past few days, Julia had set herself to winning them over like a general on campaign. With the twins, she was playful and free with her laughter; to Riga, she offered rapt attention and smiles that could melt stone. All while setting her back to him, turning her face from him, speaking with reserved formality when she spoke to him at all.
Whatever she was doing, it appeared to be working. Alaric couldn’t take his eyes off her now. The little glimpses of skin, the hot little glances when she thought he wasn’t looking. In the end, it wasn’t his men that worried him. No; what worried him were his own feelings. The wild, possessive, violent feelings that ripped through him whenever she laughed like that, free and unguarded and never for him.
Only Thorismund remained unwon. Thorismund whose people, the Batavi, had found their end under Roman rule, after long decades of service. He trusted the Romans less than Alaric did.
“She’s trying to get under your skin,” Thorismund growled one night, following Alaric’s gaze across another clearing as he sharpened his axe in the fading light. He’d noticed Alaric’s staring problem. They all had. “Watch yourself.”
Alaric gritted his teeth. Once he reached the mountains, he’d take up with Brisca again. Or whatever willing woman would have him, if she wouldn’t.
* * *
At some point between dark and dawn, it rained, soaking them all to the bone. Alaric was wet and exhausted and angry at his body’s unrelenting response to Julia, while she slept blissfully on, unknowing.
And then Hengist’s horse turned up lame.
Terrible luck. Alaric pulled them to an abrupt stop at a wide place in the trail. This was one of the most dangerous stretches of their journey. Aquileia thirty miles north. A military road not a hundred paces east. The city ahead was overrun with bandits, and that meant these woods would be too. But that wasn’t the only reason Alaric didn’t like this place. Three years ago, it had been a killing field. The past was thick on the ground here, like fog.
Julia stirred in his arms. “Must we stop? I was having a pleasant dream.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt your nap.” He helped her down off the horse. “Some of us have more important things to concern ourselves with. Such as keeping us all alive.”
Hurt flickered across her face just before the mask of self-possession snapped into place. “Perhaps it escaped your notice that it rained last night and I didn’t get a minute of sleep.”
“Perhaps it escaped your notice that it rained on all of us.” She still wore his one goddamn cloak and he was soaked to the skin. “You got more sleep than anyone else. Sleep appears to be the only thing you’re good at.”
There was no mistaking the hurt in her eyes. Immediately he felt like a villain. He was cold and exhausted and on edge from the constant vigilance and the unrelenting, ferocious lust that held him in its grip; none of that excused what he had said.
“Impeccable manners as usual, King of the Goths.” She was looking at him with the cool impassiveness of a marble wall. An apology was ready on his tongue, but he couldn’t quite make himself say it.
“Stay here,” he muttered, securing his horse. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
* * *
Across the clearing, Hengist stood next to his tough little Hunnic mare, Bura. “How long have you known she was lame?” Alaric asked.
“Maybe a mile back.”
“Then, you should have told me a mile ago.” Alaric cast a worried eye over the sturdy brown mare as Riga examined her left front foreleg.
“It’s a stone bruise,” Riga said, straightening. “She needs rest and a poultice.”
And I need a saddle-broke harpy to fly us to Noricum. “Can she make it to the mountains?”
“She’s a Hunnic pony. Tougher than old hide. She’ll go far, if we don’t run her into the ground.”
Alaric let out a low curse. “We don’t have time to coddle her.”
“Better make it quick, then.” Riga took out his curved knife.
Hengist went rigid. “Wait, Riga,” Alaric said, pulling the boy aside. “You knew what might happen,” he said quietly.
“We don’t have to kill her. Leave her here. Give her a chance.”
“A chance to be eaten by wolves or captured by the Romans? Death would be kinder.”
Hengist kept his eyes stonily on the ground. “Better I do it, then.”
Alaric’s jaw tightened. He could almost hear Gaufrid at his back, cursing him for letting it come to this. Hengist had his knife in his hand now and was looking over his shoulder at the mare he’d taught to come running when he whistled, a resigned steel in his face.
“Put your knife away, Hengist.” Riga could have done it cleaner anyway. “You’ll ride with your brother, and we’ll take her riderless as far as the mountains. Then we’ll see.”
The sound of Julia’s laughter ripped through him. He glanced across the clearing to see her talking to Horsa over Hannibal’s back as his horse nuzzled at her pockets.
Alaric gritted his teeth. Hannibal was a vicious warhorse, an animal who crushed the heads of the enemy beneath iron-shod hooves. Hannibal did not nuzzle .
Julia reached into her pocket and fed his horse a wrinkled apple, she and Horsa speaking low and easy as old friends. It was irritating past bearing; Hannibal seemed to be attempting to climb into her pocket at the moment. Her eyes skated over to him from beneath lowered lashes, and there was a calculating gleam amidst all that blue and green.
She knew exactly what she was doing.
* * *
From the corner of her eye, Julia watched Alaric place a hand on the mare’s haunch and run it down her leg to check for lameness, speaking to her all the while; low and tender and hypnotic.
She was suddenly, blindingly jealous of a horse.
“I’ll only be a few moments,” she said in an urgent whisper to Horsa over Hannibal’s broad back. “Please.”
Horsa looked skeptical. “What for?”
Julia sighed. Was it too much to say she wanted to be somewhere, just for a moment, where Alaric was not in her sight? Last night when exhaustion had gotten the better of her, she’d leaned against him; his arms had closed around her, drawing her in. She had never felt so safe. She’d laid her cheek against his beating heart and fallen asleep to a fantasy where Alaric of the Goths cared whether she fell off a horse and dashed her head open on a rock.
She blamed herself. It was entirely stupid to entertain such fantasies. He’d made that clear this morning.
Hannibal crunched his apple happily, torquing his neck around to nuzzle at her pockets as he did—smearing a thick froth of green foam on her hip.
Of course, there were plenty of other reasons to want privacy. To wash. She could smell her own filth. There was a stream not far back in those trees; they’d ridden through it. “ Woman things, Horsa. Do I have to be specific?”
“You realize Alaric will put my head on a pike if you go wandering off. He’s still angry at me for letting you poison me.”
Julia rolled her eyes. “He’s a tyrant.”
“I know .” For a moment they looked at each other in shared exasperation. Horsa glanced uneasily across the clearing. “Just as far as that tree over there. Hurry.”
* * *
The tree wasn’t far enough, and the stream was farther back than she remembered, across an overgrown road. Julia washed her hands and face and neck, and did her best to clean her hair.
She was just about to go back when she spotted the blueberry bush. Her stomach gave an emphatic growl.
Alaric was in a terrible mood already. If she lingered too long, he’d make her regret it. Maybe not if I bring him some. He’d give his share to everyone else out of sheer perversity. But maybe the freeze in his eyes would warm, just a little.
It was her last coherent thought before she fell upon the bush like a starving wretch.
When she’d stripped it bare, she sat back on her heels. She hadn’t been planning to eat all of them. But she’d had nowhere to put them so she’d just put them in her mouth, and then her hands and shirt were stained purple and her arms were scratched to the elbows. She wiped at her face and only managed to make herself stickier. She could not go back like this. Everyone would know what she’d found, and that she hadn’t shared.
Julia went back to the stream; plunged her hands in and scrubbed. She was almost done when she noticed the berry stain on her shirt. Hurriedly, she stripped it off. Soon she wore nothing but the barbarian breeches and the strip of silk she’d ripped from her gown; a makeshift strophium to hold her breasts. She put the shirt in the water and began to scrub furiously.
The stain wasn’t coming out. She needed a stone to beat it against. The closest thing was a pale, round one by the bank, about the size of a melon. Maybe if she washed the moss off it—
She picked it up, then dropped it with a stifled scream. It fell and rolled, landing face-up; a plump worm crawled through one gaping eye socket. Julia gave a yelp and staggered back, tripping on the rough ground. She landed in a cluster of curved sticks that were not sticks.
Then she began to scream in earnest.
* * *
The scream made Alaric’s heart seize in his chest. His war spear was with the horses, but his blade was in his hand. He ran down the wooded slope as he had three years ago, the forest thick with enemies, his weapon drenched in blood.
The sight of Julia, lying on the ground and wearing almost nothing, jerked him back to the present. She scrambled to her feet as Alaric slid to an abrupt stop. Her little pink nipples pushed up against a transparent shred of binding silk; above it, the swell of her breasts begged to fill his hands.
Slowly he closed the distance between them. Gods , he wanted her. Wanted to push her up against the nearest tree and trail hot, open-mouthed kisses across the tops of her breasts, then unwind that silken band and take each of her nipples in his mouth. One and then the other.
When he got close enough, he leaned down—careful and deliberate; holding himself in absolute check—and picked up her shirt. Their eyes met when he handed it to her. An intense, kinetic hush fell between them and he knew. She felt it too.
She took the shirt and turned away, striking him utterly silent with the sleek, pale sight of her naked back. “Spying, King of the Goths?”
It was the last insult. Once she had invited his presence. “What do you fucking think , Julia. You screamed loud enough to bring a forest’s worth of bandits down on our heads. Do our lives mean nothing to you?” He sucked in a ragged breath. “What the hell were you screaming at?”
“That.” She pointed to a scraggly pile of bones. “It’s a skeleton,” she informed him, as if he couldn’t see well enough for himself. “And there’s a skull. I’m afraid I touched it.”
“That’s to be expected, since you went frolicking off in the middle of a battlefield.” He was in no mood to coddle her. “Look around you. This place is full of the dead.”
She did, with dawning horror. Gape-mouthed skulls, neat lines of vertebrae; tangles of ribs and jawbones covered by a mossy scrim. “You could have warned me.”
“And when would I have done that? Before or after you went blundering off like a damn useless fool?”
“Useless!” Fury colored her cheeks. “I got you out of Ravenna alive, with a king’s ransom. I’m hardly useless.”
“You need a legion’s worth of slaves just to wipe your arse, woman!”
“And you worry about me bringing bandits down on our heads. You’ll bring a whole legion with your shouting.” A hard, hurt little smile curved her lips. “You truly hate me, don’t you? Just say it.”
“I don’t—” He drew a ragged breath. “I don’t hate you, Julia.”
“Liar,” she spat. “Everything I do makes you angry. When I’m quiet and when I speak. When I keep to myself and when I don’t. I even irritate you when I sleep.”
Tears glinted in her eyes. Alaric’s instincts demanded that he make it right in any way he could. It took every shred of control to keep his hands to himself. “And so?” The words were bitter on his tongue. “You hate me just as much.”
“No,” she said quietly. “I don’t.”
That was a fucking shock.
A noise at his back. Sound beneath the sound. Disturbance in the air.
He pulled her into his arms, clamping a hand on her mouth and dragging her behind the nearest tree just as a long line of men came marching around the bend in the road. Julia went utterly still. Her scent was roses and blueberries, sweat, and under it, a heady mix of desire and fear. It filled the whole damn world. Meanwhile death marched past, close enough to hit with a lazy spear-throw.
He could have lost her. Would have, if she’d screamed a moment later. If he’d been just a breath too slow.
The wave of intense, possessive lust that came roaring up in him this time almost put him on his knees. Stronger than when he’d first seen her in that alley and wanted her now , up against the nearest building, any way he could have her. Stronger than that night when she’d offered herself to him on the riverbank, while he fought off his instincts with everything he had. He couldn’t resist it anymore. There was no point in resisting anyway.
Alaric gave in and laid his lips against the smooth column of her throat.
* * *
His touch was whisper soft, like his fingertips on her wrists but far more potent. His mouth against her neck turned her blood to smoke.
Julia shut her eyes. At her back, an avalanche held in harrowing check. A predator, caressing her jugular with its fangs.
“Suppose they found you before I did.” His body so close and his voice so low that she felt the words rather than heard. “What do you think would have happened to you, had I not reached you first?” His hand clamped down hard on her mouth, silencing her answer. “There are no princesses in these woods, only predators and prey.”
With agonizing slowness, he traced a fevered line up from her shoulder with his lips. Every so often he breathed in as if devouring the scent of her.
“I’d kill every one of them who saw you naked by that stream.”
Then he laid his mouth against the place where her jawline met her neck.
Her body gave a hard, insistent pulse and Julia tilted her head to give him better access. A clear sign of acquiescence. Alaric made a sound like a satisfied thrum , deep in his chest, that drew an answering heat from between her legs.
Then his arms dropped away and her back hit rough bark.
Alaric stood above her, watching the last of the soldiers disappear around the bend, as if he hadn’t just reduced her to tears one minute and helpless, insensible desire the next; murmured death threats in her ear in between. He flicked a glance over her and his eyes turned a shade cooler. The look she gave him back was perfectly calibrated: irritation mixed with boredom. “If you’re done slavering on my neck, King of the Goths—”
“Where did you find the blueberries, Julia?” He slid his hand along the line of her jaw and closed his fist in her hair; tilted her head to the side. “You missed a spot.”
He put his mouth on her neck again, and suddenly there was nothing in the world but the scorching drag of his tongue on her throat and the sweet, aching pain of his hand in her hair. Julia lost herself. Arched up to him and tilted her head back and made a desperate, mewling noise that made him laugh against her neck.
She was beside herself by the time he was done with her. Practically crawling out of her skin with desire.
He drew back, his thumb tracing the place where lips and tongue had been; his lightest touch sending little shocks of pleasure through her. “The next time you find those, you’ll share.”