Enemy of My Dreams

Chapter Forty-Eight

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Once more, Alaric rallied the Hunnic defenders and his own men. He ordered barriers built around the top of the hill, dragging broken wagons and freshly dead corpses to impede the coming charge. Anyone not engaged in building the barriers was to gather up arrows and stones for slings. Let the Romans fall before their arrows, pile up before the makeshift barriers and be ground down by Thorismund’s army behind them.

When it was over, he could not find Julia.

He hadn’t known what he’d find when he went off against everyone else’s better judgment, including his own, chasing her redheaded ghost on the battlefield. His words had died in his throat when he’d found her alive, rising to her feet cool and unruffled as she watched Hannibal trample her enemy beneath his hooves. She’d showered attention on his horse and ignored him, until the moment she met his eyes and he couldn’t get a damn word out.

If she’d fallen this time, his sword would find its home buried in his own heart.

He rushed to the medical tent and could not find her there. He stepped into the path of one of the healers as she passed—a slight woman who wielded a wicked hatchet.

“Where is my wife?” He asked it in Hunnic. “The red-haired one.”

“Don’t know. Maybe that way.” She pointed in a random direction and darted around him, clearly displeased at his interruption.

Alaric went stalking off the way she pointed, to the east where people were piling bodies up for the burning. What if Julia was among the dead? Or only half-dead, unconscious and about to be lit on fire? He broke into a ground-eating run.

“ Alaric. You fucking bastard . Don’t you dare run away from me, you thrice-cursed dog.”

Alaric slid to a stop. Thorismund had planted himself in his path like a wall.

“Get the fuck out of my way, Thorismund.”

“Oh no. Don’t try that quiet-threat-of-blood-and-beheading tone on me. I’m fucking immune .” Thorismund’s face had gone red. “You stupid man, do you comprehend what you’ve done?”

Maybe killed the woman he loved. Again. “I don’t have time for this.”

“You’ll damn well make time!” Thorismund roared, gripping his arm as he tried to brush by. “I cut a path through a Roman legion just to give you a piece of my mind and I fully intend to do it. I offered to take Julia to Brisca’s and I think she’d be mad not to take me up on it. If you ever hurt that woman again I’ll take that spear of yours and ram it up your—”

Alaric jerked his arm out of Thorismund’s grasp. That was it . He was tired and battered and worried to death over Julia and he had had enough . “Why don’t you try it,” he gritted. “Right now.”

Thorismund drew his axe and Alaric raised his war spear and shifted his stance. Good. Whatever was between him and Thorismund, he was ready to put it to bed forever.

“Are the two of you insane?” A voice behind him. Incredulity mixed with laughter . “Really. Are you insane? Have you not had enough of war?”

He turned to see Julia behind him just as Thorismund swung his axe.

Alaric didn’t have to look to block that blow. Thorismund announced every move with his stance and his feet and the tilt of his shoulders, and the blunted flat of the axe bounced off the hard cured wood of his spear. Even so, it sent a shock up his arm that numbed it to the shoulder. He didn’t give a damn. He could not take his eyes off Julia. She was staring at him, those blue-green eyes glinting in the sunlight, every inch the aristocrat despite her barbarian trousers and dusty boots and her red hair braided beneath a Phrygian cap, pulled low around her ears.

Alive. Alive and safe and his .

He acted on instinct. Seizing the reins of the nearest horse and swinging up onto its back, he pulled Julia up before him. She gave a startled gasp as he urged the horse to a gallop, then a flat-out run down the steep pitch of the hill, dodging corpses and hillocks and discarded steel. Behind him, he could still hear Thorismund roaring his outrage at his back.

Julia’s nails dug into his forearm as he urged the horse on faster. Her cap was gone; her hair came loose and whipped in his face. “You could have asked before kidnapping me.”

He tightened his arms around her. “I didn’t the first time, and I won’t now.”

Because her answer might be no . Because she might not have him. Because now—even now—she might disappear like smoke from his arms.

* * *

They galloped down the ridge and through the ruined citadel gates, attracting a laughing, cheering crowd that followed them all the way up to the place where his war tent still stood. Alaric pulled Julia down from the sweating horse and dragged her into his tent, with a look of death for any who’d dare interrupt them.

When they were finally alone, he let himself look at her—really look .

She was standing in the middle of his war tent, her hair coming loose from its braid and hanging down her back in a glory of sunset tangles. She wore a borrowed Hunnic tunic and leggings embroidered with rich geometric designs, and riding boots that rose nearly up to her knees. She looked like a barbarian warrior woman, with a Hunnic hatchet at her waist and the hilt of a knife sticking out of her boot. There was a hollowness to her cheeks and a haunted darkness around her eyes that said she had seen things she should never have had to see.

That was his fault. Suddenly it was hard to breathe around his own self-hatred. He had tried to protect her and failed. In the reflection of her ocean-green eyes, he saw a double image of himself, wild-eyed and half-mad with feelings far too huge to give voice to.

How could she just stand there? Cool as marble when he was wrecked by the very sight of her. He’d believed he had lost her.

“Are you alive?” It came out like he was choking on gravel. “Or is it your spirit I see before me?”

It was the worst thing he could possibly say. She thought him mad enough already.

“Yes, I’ve heard you’ve been having a little problem with—spirits.” Her tone was dry as Imperial wine; completely incongruous with the redheaded barbarian woman who stood before him. She raised a red-gold brow; entirely unimpressed. It was such a Julia expression. Grief and terror and longing washed over him and suddenly he was drowning. Unsteady on his feet. “Well? We lived through the battle, Alaric. Now what?”

“Thorismund said that he offered to take you to Brisca.” He could hardly bear to say it. “Will you go?”

She held quiet and every muscle in his body went tense. What would he do if she said yes? Tie her to the bed. Refuse to let her go. Spend the entirety of his life convincing her to stay.

Finally she spoke; her tone only mildly curious. “Would you want me to stay? After everything that has passed between us?”

Alaric caught his breath. She was necessary to him; could she not see that? He was suddenly acutely aware that Julia was perfectly fine without him; whereas he had unwound into madness without her. She was air to him. Water in the desert.

He managed a broken yes .

“Then, you must change,” she said quietly. “I will be a queen in truth , or not at all.”

All his terror rose up and threatened to overwhelm him. Julia on the battlefield, rushing recklessly everywhere. Calthrax raising his rhomphaia against her. The axes, flashing in the dark of Brisca’s great hall. This world was not safe for her, would never be safe for her. He would lose her again; she would hasten it. And then he would lose himself.

Suddenly she was the enemy of everything he held dear.

“Am I to let you wander unprotected on the battlefield?” Fuck. He heard his voice rise to an ungainly bellow, but there was nothing he could do to rein it in. His grief—his rage—seemed to explode out of his chest. “I was nearly assassinated twice after you left and once before. Am I to let you deal with chieftains who would just as soon murder you as exchange words?”

It took ferocious willpower not to haul her into his arms. His body screamed to hold tight to her with everything he had. He was still fighting a fierce war with himself when she crossed her arms over her chest as if to put a barrier between them.

“Are you going to tell me I must depend on you to keep me safe?” She regarded him skeptically. “Alaric, you’d be dead now if not for me. I brought two armies to save your hide. Not one— two . And what do I find when I arrive here? Ten more bodies on that wall. I counted.” Her lips pursed disapprovingly. “Perhaps I should be the one locking you away, for everyone else’s safety if not your own. Is this the kind of king you will be?”

His temper roared. Who was she to tell him how to handle threats? “If they challenge your place with me, yes.” His jaw tightened defensively. “I will kill or drive off any whose loyalty to you I cannot trust. I will not apologize for that. And I will not apologize for trying to keep you alive.”

Tears glinted in her eyes. “That’s my answer, then,” she said with quiet dignity. “You will not change. You won’t.”

And now she was walking away from him. She was almost out the door.

Anguish threatened to choke him. He crossed the distance between them in two strides, and he heard her give a surprised little squeak as he pulled her into a bone-crushing embrace. It was not enough to hold him up. He slid to his knees, his arms still around her, his face buried in her stomach, desperation filling his lungs. He was drowning in it.

“Don’t go.”

Julia held quiet, standing rigid in his arms. Alaric had been in more battles than he could count; and never, in all the times his life had been in mortal danger, had he felt terror like he did now, waiting for his wife to speak.

Her hand curled gently in his hair.

“If my choice is between freedom and prison, Alaric, I will not choose prison.” But it was not abject refusal. Hope flared in his chest. “If you lock me away, I will escape. I escaped you before. I escaped Thorismund. I escaped my own brother. I will leave you.”

His arms tightened until her ribs creaked. If he let go, she would vanish and his life would be worth less than nothing. He breathed in, his heart thudding hard in his chest, inhaling as if he could take her into his lungs whole.

“Then, I surrender.” He said it roughly. “I surrender, Julia, to whatever terms you set. I love you. ” He would rip his own heart out of his chest before he let her walk away again.

“Is that so?” Was it his imagination, or did she purr those words? He glanced up to see her smiling through glinting tears. “What will you give me if I stay, Alaric?”

What would he give her? His life. His heart. His fucking bones . “What is it you want?”

“What I’ve always wanted. An army at my back. An Empire laid at my feet.”

“Done.” He didn’t even have to think about it.

“And a wedding. A public one, with vows and a priest and gifts . It’s the man who gives the dowry, after all. That’s one of the first things you ever said to me.” Humor tugged at her voice. “I suppose you knew you were mine, even then.”

“Yes.” Even then. Without fucking question. He rose to his feet, his arms still tight around her, to see she was smiling up at him with all the warmth of a stolen afternoon shining in her eyes. Still, she was not making any promises. “So you’ll stay?” He needed to hear her say it. “I am not above begging, woman—”

“Oh, Alaric.” She laughed, warm and rich and unaffected. Pressing a hand against his cheek, she murmured, “I can think of much better things you can do with your mouth.”

Then she kissed him, and the walls around his heart crumbled forever.

* * *

Julia drifted between dreams and waking for what seemed like years. She felt warm and protected and utterly safe. She didn’t want it to end.

When she woke, it was past dawn. Alaric was sitting by her bed, watching her with ferocious intensity. He was dressed as a warlord, golden torques encircling the strong swell of his arms. He would have looked positively fearsome, if his blue eyes were not lit with concern.

“Don’t get up.” He pressed her gently back down on the furs. “Is it water you want? Food?”

The memory of their lovemaking the night before crowded in on her mind. The aching, almost pained tenderness of it. “Water.” It was brought to her immediately, cold and faintly metallic-tasting. “I must look frightful.”

“You are beautiful,” he said with a fierce honesty that made her face heat, and she realized he had never called her so before. She remembered his impassioned confessions last night. I love you. He had said it many times in her arms. Seemed not to be able to stop saying it. Suddenly she was wracked by sobs. His arms were around her. His lips at her forehead, at her throat. Anguished. “I cannot stand to see you cry.”

“I’m not crying.” She let out another sob. More of a snort really. And then she was laughing, and he was laughing too, his forehead against hers.

“I am sorry. For everything.”

“Please stop apologizing.” For a moment she just let him hold her. It felt so, so good. She’d thought she had lost him. And then, yesterday, there had been a moment when she was certain she would have to leave him. Julia pulled back, searching his face. The pain in his eyes had not abated. “Did you sleep?”

He smiled faintly. “Very little.”

“Is it Horsa?”

Horsa had not come through the gates with the others; Julia heard later that he had left after the battle, gone to reunite with his bandits.

Alaric did not have to speak. The answer was there in the pain in his eyes.

“We will find him again. We’ll bring him home.” Julia laid her palm against his face. “And Calthrax? Do you still see him?”

She felt him tense beneath her hand.

“I see him all the time.” Blond-tipped eyelashes screened his eyes. “I thought he would go once I found you again. But he kept me awake most of the night, once you slept.” A long, pained silence. “He says everyone who loves me dies. He is right.”

Julia drew a breath. She understood now why Alaric was so terrified of harm coming to her. He had been unable to safeguard so many. His fierce protectiveness led him to do terrible things, made him the villain. But it was terrifying to love anyone in a world like this.

Alaric refused the man a proper burial. Now his ghost walks the earth without rest.

“I have an idea.” Her clothes were piled at the end of the bed and it was still there, in the little pouch, smooth and cool against her palm. She held it up in the dim sunlight. Calthrax’s finger-bone flute. “We can give him a proper burial.”