Chapter 14 #2
Fel didn’t spring at Vorik, but he growled and flexed his hand on the grip of his mace.
“I’ve missed you as well, Sergeant,” Vorik said. “Though my pining is for the princess alone, my back is ever bored and bereft without the need to stay alert to the possibility of you swinging a weapon at it.”
“Bored and bereft?” Fel curled his lip again.
“Do you not care for alliteration? We enjoy it immensely in our ballads and chants. It helps with the memorization too.”
“Are the ladies all right, Sergeant?” Radmarik looked through the doorway.
Fel turned partially toward him but didn’t seem to want to take his gaze fully from Vorik.
Vorik was unconcerned about him, only keeping his arm around Syla and nudging the dead man with the toe of his boot. “Did you handle this one, Your Highness? You may not have been as in need of saving as I believed.”
“I need…” Syla didn’t know how to explain her distress.
She should have been ebullient to have survived, but the dead man would haunt her, especially since these were her own people.
That was almost as distressing as everything else, that soldiers who’d faithfully served the royal family her entire life had abandoned their loyalty in a heartbeat with her mother’s passing.
“I don’t know what I need,” she whispered, then let herself fall fully against Vorik and removed her spectacles so she could bury her face in his shoulder.
Maybe she shouldn’t have displayed her feelings for him openly in front of others, but, as strange as it was, she could trust him more than any of the soldiers in the Kingdom military.
And even the crewmen of the whaling ship were in question.
Might they not have taken coin from General Dolok or whomever was behind the assassination attempt?
Fel and Teyla were the only people here she could fully trust. Captain Radmarik might help her, but he’d already admitted his wife was waiting to see what happened, not throwing her weight behind Syla.
Tears leaked from her eyes, but she hid them in Vorik’s shoulder. In a minute, she would gather herself and be strong.
“Is that dragon getting a ride too?” a crewman outside asked.
Syla remembered that she’d seen different-colored scales.
“If a dragon wants a ride, it’s best to give him a ride,” Radmarik said.
“A wise policy,” Vorik said while sheathing his sword and wrapping his other arm around Syla. “You’re not injured, are you?” he asked softly, the words for her alone. “Just… distressed?”
“Yes.” She turned her head enough to wipe her eyes.
Vorik rested the side of his face against her forehead and stroked her hair. A tingle of warmth swept into her. Ah, that was nice. She hadn’t realized how much she longed to be comforted.
“Sir?” A stormer in black rider leathers stepped over one of the bodies and into the doorway, blurry in Syla’s peripheral vision. Was that a sword in his hand? He kept it at his side. “Do you need help questioning the princess?”
Fel, standing inside the door now, growled at the man and raised his mace.
The newcomer eyed him and halted but soon looked to Vorik and Syla. “Er, is she crying, sir?”
“Yes, it’s how I question women,” Vorik said. “They’re more likely to burble secret Kingdom intelligence when they’re weeping and distraught.”
“Oh. I see, sir.” Did the bastard sound approving? Maybe he just appreciated his captain’s wit.
Syla wiped her face again, put her spectacles on, and looked Vorik in the eyes. “Questioning the princess?”
“That’s not in my orders,” he said quietly, holding a finger up toward the stormer. To keep him back so that he wouldn’t overhear?
Fel hadn’t lowered his mace and was making it clear that he would keep another stormer from entering. Likely by braining him. Judging by the occasional growls that wafted from him, like a dog protecting the bone it was working on, Fel still wanted to brain Vorik too.
Maybe that was the correct way to feel toward him, and Syla was being foolish for granting him any degree of trust.
“What are your orders?” She wondered if he would answer.
Vorik looked from her to those in the wheelhouse watching. “May I have a private moment alone with you?”
“No,” Fel stated.
Sensing Vorik would admit more if they were alone, Syla opened her mouth to ask the others to leave but noticed the green belly through the hole again. “Won’t privacy be hard to achieve with a dragon on the roof above a giant hole?”
“Agrevlari can read my thoughts, so our interlude wouldn’t have been entirely private regardless.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Especially if…” Syla thought of the night they’d spent in the cave and hoped the dragon, kept a mile away by the barrier at the time, hadn’t been reading Vorik’s thoughts then.
“I succeed in expressing my relief at finding you alive and unharmed?” he finished for her.
“Yes.”
Nobody had moved, so Syla waved for Teyla, Fel, and the stormer whose name she didn’t know to leave the wheelhouse.
Teyla hesitated but did so, giving curious backward looks to Vorik as she did.
When Vorik nodded at his man, the stormer walked out, but he also sent a few curious looks over his shoulder on the way.
Further, his gaze lingered on the body near Syla before he departed.
She told herself that they couldn’t possibly know how the man had died. Just because he wasn’t bloody didn’t meant mean anything. Sergeant Fel might have broken his neck.
Thoughts of neck-breaking likely on his mind now, Fel hung his mace on his belt but folded his muscled arms over his chest as if to say he wouldn’t go anywhere.
Syla made a shooing motion toward the doorway. “You can stand right outside, if you wish, Sergeant.”
Vorik’s eyebrow twitched, but he didn’t object.
“I’m going to ask our rider guest a few questions,” she added, hoping that might sway Fel. “I think he’ll be more likely to open up without you glowering at him.”
“Interrogations aren’t done by pressing your chest up against a man,” Fel stated, but he grabbed one of the bodies to haul outside.
“I rather think she could get a lot of information out of me by maneuvering so,” Vorik said.
Fel growled at him. And glowered.
“Is there something that’s irritating your throat, Sergeant?” Vorik asked. “Your vocalizations sound strained. Perhaps you should see a healer and acquire an herbal tea.”
“I want to club him with my mace,” Fel told Syla.
“A lot of people do, but go outside anyway, please. And close the door.”
Fel scowled but pulled the second and last of the bodies out with him as he left the wheelhouse.
Maybe he didn’t think Syla should be surrounded by death.
After all she’d endured, she ought to be used to it, but she would be glad not to have the frozen eyes of the deceased staring accusingly at her while she spoke with Vorik.
Fel made a point of standing immediately beside the doorway, his shoulder visible.
Without releasing Syla, Vorik unsheathed his sword and used the tip to push the door shut.
Save for a porthole in it, the walls to either side were solid, giving them a modicum of privacy, at least from the direction of the deck.
“That’s better,” Vorik said cheerfully.
“I agree.”
He returned his sword to its scabbard, then dropped it and his pack to the deck before sliding both arms around Syla and kissing her. Though she hadn’t expected it, her arms lifted to wrap around his shoulders of their own accord, and she melted into his touch.
Passion filled his kiss, but there was more than that. Relief? Vorik must have been able to see the battle unfolding as his dragon flew in, the boarding party arriving and men breaching the wheelhouse. Maybe he’d worried he would be too late.
The implication that he cared touched Syla, and she struggled to remember that she wanted to ask him a few questions—to learn what his orders were. What had brought him here? She highly doubted he’d simply been in the area.
But as his lips stroked hers, and his hands started roaming, they woke up her numb body. His strong fingers slid over her shoulders, stirring sensations as they trailed down her arms, shifted to her waist, and finally cupped her backside. Pleasure replaced her distress, pleasure and desire.
Her thoughts grew fuzzy as she caught herself returning his kiss while pushing one hand up to brush through his hair to rub his scalp.
He groaned with pleasure of his own, tightening his grip on her, and she felt his own longing through his trousers.
Knowing she could inspire such desire in a man like him—a man who could have had any woman—excited her, just as it had the night they’d joined.
She wanted to let a hand drift lower, to touch him and feel—
No. Sergeant Fel was outside, and Agrevlari perched above. Syla made herself stop her explorations, grip Vorik’s shoulders, and lean back from his kiss.
The heated expression in his emerald eyes promised Vorik didn’t want to stop their reunion, but she had to know why he was here.
What if he’d been sent to interfere with her mission again?
And was using the appeal of his body and his charm—and those expertly talented lips—to distract her from thinking about that?
“What are your orders, Vorik?” Syla forced herself to look away from his lips and into his eyes, though they were just as dangerous.
Surely, the desire and heat in them couldn’t be faked? He’d been moved to kiss her because he wanted to, not because his general had told him to.
Could she believe that? She wished she could be certain.
“They weren’t to question you.” Vorik’s gaze lowered to her lips.
He licked his, as if he longed to return to their kiss, and a tingle went through her, tightening her core. She longed for that too. But voices drifted in from the deck, the captain ordering his men to restore order to the ship and get them to Hazel Harbor on Harvest Island as soon as possible.
“What are they?” Syla had a feeling he wouldn’t answer. “Why are you here?”