Chapter 4
Chapter four
Alyx
Itensed as I tried and failed to suppress another shiver. As hot as the desert was during the day, it grew brutally cold when the sun went down during the rainy season. The fire Kelvar had built chased away the worst of the chill, but it still seeped through the thin shift I wore and into my bones.
Kelvar had pointedly ignored me since we stopped for the day, but now his gaze darted to where I sat.
His hands paused in their motions, brushing through Dileas’s mane.
He had been tending to her for long minutes, and while I was sure not a single tangle or speck of dust remained in her luxurious mane and tail by now, I could not blame him for indulging.
She was a magnificent horse and seemed to enjoy the attention.
It made me miss my own stallion.
I shivered again, and Kelvar put down the brush.
As he rounded the fire and approached me, I eyed him warily. I squeaked in surprise as he scooped me up in his arms.
“What are you doing?” I gasped as he carried me around to the fire, toward Dileas and his own laid-out sleeping mat.
“You’re cold,” he stated, as if that should make his actions discernable.
I continued to stare at him.
“Dileas and I are warm,” he explained.
My heart leaped into my throat as I grasped what he was implying. “You could just give me a robe or something,” I pointed out.
“I don’t have an extra,” he explained as he set me down on his own sleeping mat. “So, we will have to share.”
I balked, but I couldn’t help but snipe at him, “You captured me in the middle of the night and didn’t think about bringing any extra clothes for me?”
“I didn’t think about a lot of things when I agreed to this,” he murmured, half under his breath, giving me the impression that it was more to himself than it was to me.
Then, he clicked his tongue and Dileas obediently picked her way over, before laying down on the far side of the mat from the fire.
The pleasant warm smell of happy horses filled my nose, and already my shivers calmed in their intensity.
Kelvar sat down on the opposite side of me, so close his shoulder brushed mine.
It shouldn’t have been shocking after a day pressed against him on a horse, but I still jumped, a jolt running up my spine.
“Lay down,” he instructed.
“Why?”
“Do you normally sleep sitting up?”
I wrinkled my nose but did as he asked, holding my bound wrists close to my chest. Even though I had suspected it was coming, my breath still stuttered as he lay down beside me. He reached out, opening the robe he wore and bundling me into his chest, wrapping the loose fabric around me.
Like this, I thought I might drown in the smoky, spicy scent of him that had danced at the edge of my awareness as we rode. On Dileas’s back, with the desert breeze in my face, it hadn’t been nearly so potent, but now I realized…
It smelled the same way his magic had felt when I touched it. Like fire and earth and heady laka.
My magic grew like a flower, a new leaf unfurling as if to reach out and touch that storm again, but I snapped it back into my head with all the force I could muster.
“Hopefully you can get some sleep. We might have another long day of riding ahead,” Kelvar said, his chest rumbling so close to my face that I could feel the vibrations.
“It’s not the most comfortable of situations,” I snapped, “but I’ll manage.”
“I’m sorry it’s not the pile of fine silks you’re used to in Lord Avis’s tent, Flower,” he retorted, the endearment sounding a bit more derisive than it had the first time he used it. “Not all of us need such luxury. The open sky and stars are enough company for me.”
I craned my neck to look up at him, finding him looking pointedly away from me and staring up at the velvet sky. It was indeed beautiful, stars shimmering like gemstones set in a backdrop so dark and rich, I thought I might be able to reach out and touch it.
“I’ve never slept outside,” I admitted.
Kelvar jumped, as if honestly surprised by the simple words. “I thought everybody in the Ballan Desert would have plenty of experience camping under the open sky.”
Neither of us looked at each other, both staring up at the darkness of the night. The strange intimacy of his physical proximity, combined with the anonymity of the lack of eye contact, pulled words out of me that I hadn’t planned on speaking.
“My parents—my father really—never wanted me to stray too far from his side. He always insisted that my magic would make me a target, even though my power never seemed to grant me the ability to protect myself. I was too soft to be on my own. He was sure something bad would happen to me.”
“Sounds rather stupid,” Kelvar said, tone flat.
I snorted. “Bold judgement, considering you are the reason I did end up getting kidnapped.”
A rumble ran through Kelvar’s form, and warmth that had nothing to do with his body heat skittered across my skin at the husky sound of his laugh.
“It’s not like keeping you near protected you when it came down to it,” he pointed out.
I hummed noncommittally. In truth, as I grew older, now a woman and no longer just a girl, my father’s protectiveness had begun to chafe—to feel more like captivity than love. It rankled to know that he had been right to fear for me.
Even when I was the one holding a weapon, I posed no threat to true warriors of the Ballan Desert.
But I hadn’t been hurt, a small voice in the back of my head chimed in. As of yet, nothing more severe than a light chill and an uncomfortable ride had befallen me. Perhaps the world was not so evil as my father feared. Or at least, it didn’t have to be.
“I didn’t sleep in a tent at all until I was fourteen,” Kelvar admitted, drawing me from my reverie with a start.
“Your family didn’t prefer having shelter?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
He huffed. “I have no idea what my family might have preferred. My parents were killed by red wolves when I was small.”
My heart sank.
“I didn’t get a dwelling of my own until Lord Deryn saw potential in the power that had kept me alive on my own for so long and recruited me to start training with the clan riders.”
“And now you are a Warlord,” I observed. “You went from no tent to the second grandest in the entire clan.”
Kelvar shook his head. Some of his hair had come loose of the knot he wore, brushing across my face where I lay with my cheek all but pressed to his solid chest. It was surprisingly soft and ticklish.
“I still live in the small tent I was first given when I became a rider.”
“Why?” I asked.
Kelvar’s arms flexed around me as he shrugged.
“I worked my way up from orphan to Warlord. I have the finest horse and the sharpest sword in the desert. It seems like testing fate to ask for any more of the desert’s gifts.
Perhaps she has always been pleased with me, because I have not asked her for much. ”
Something about the statement caused sadness to bloom in my chest. I opened my mouth to point out that he would likely have to find a bigger dwelling when he took a wife and had a family of his own. I snapped my mouth closed with an audible click before I could speak.
We lapsed into silence.
I should have been tense and restless, wrapped in the arms of an enemy Warlord who had stolen me from my bed.
But the day had been long, and my vigilance could not last forever.
Instead, the warmth of Kelvar at my front and Dileas at my back soaked into my muscles, turning soft and pliant after sitting stiffly on a horse all day.
My mind turned hazy. I thought I heard Kelvar murmur, “Sleep well, Flower,” as I drifted off, but it might have been part of my dreams.