Chapter 3
Kiska
“Well now.” Aleksi picked up the scraggly
ball of gray-striped fur that had wandered into Zolotoy’s stall and
held it up for inspection.
“Who are you, little one?” The kitten fit
into the palm of his hand and was no more than two moons of age,
its gray-green eyes and white-tipped ears too big for its face.
Flipping the kitten onto its back, he saw that it was girl. He ran
a finger over its protruding rib cage and sunken belly and rubbed
its fur back, exposing fleas that weighed more than the kitten.
“Have you lost your mama, little kiska?”
The kitten let out a pathetic mew and
snuggled deeper into Aleksi’s warmth. Having spent the past ten and
three years living and working in his father’s stables, he was as
familiar with stable cats as with horses, and next to horses, cats
were his favorite animals.
Glancing around the cramped antechamber, he
thought out loud. “First thing we need to do is feed you, and I
have some jerky in my pack.” He tucked the kitten into the crook of
his arm and pulled the jerky out with the other and bit a small
piece off. Chewing it until it softened, he offered it to the
kitten, who practically took the tip of his finger off along with
the proffered jerky. “Easy my little kiska, your teeth are
like needles.”
Once he was satisfied that that the kitten
had eaten enough, but not too much, he pulled a bar of soap from
his pack and tested the water in his wash basin.
“It is not so warm,” he told the kitten, “but
neither is it too cold, and I need to drown those fleas off of you
before they take what little blood you have left.” He took a drying
cloth off a peg on the wall. “I promise you will like being rubbed
dry.” He imagined washing and rubbing another black haired,
green-eyed kitten. “She would bleed me dry if I so much as
suggested it,” he chuckled. “And burn me to ash for good
measure.”
The moment Aleksi set the kitten in the basin
it let out a yowl that echoed through the entire stables, and kept
up a pitiful mewling as he soaped and lathered its flea-ridden fur,
turning the water in his wash basin a filthy brown. He carried the
kitten into Zolotoy’s stall and dunked it neck-deep into the
stallion’s water bucket for another rinse. The kitten let out a
deafening howl that sent the horse pressing against the wall.
“Such a big brave stallion you are,” Aleksi
chided as he fingered water over the wailing kitten’s head. “Afraid
of a tiny little kitten.”
“What do you think you are doing?” a low,
smoky familiar voice accused from over the stall gate. “Are you
trying to drown that poor kitten?”
Aleksi straightened and stood eye to blazing
green eyes with Sahar as the kitten dripped and squirmed and wailed
even louder in his hands. She had changed from her riding leathers
to the marigold tunic and ocher skirt she had worn the first time
he had seen her, and strands of her thick black hair had escaped
her colorful headscarf and curled around her long, tawny neck.
“I am trying to drown its fleas and save its
life,” he told her. He pulled the drying cloth from around his neck
and bundled the kitten up in it. “If that is all right with
you.”
“Oh. Of course it is. I thought…”
“It is common for kittens to be drowned in
your royal stables?”
“No, of course not.”
Aleksi grinned as gold sparks flashed in her
eyes. “Then it’s me that you would suspect of such cruelty.”
“No. I…”
He had her flustered, and found that he
enjoyed seeing her so. He held the kitten up and nuzzled its nose,
which was all that was visible from under the cloth. “Princess
Sahar thinks I would drown you, my little kiska. What do you
say to that?”
He turned the kitten’s face to Sahar, its big
eyes and pink nose peeking out at her. The kitten meowed, subdued
now that it was safe and warm, and Sahar smiled and reached out to
touch its nose. The kitten bit down.
“Ow.” Sahar jerked her hand back, blood
welling on her finger’s tip. She stuck the tip into her mouth and
sucked it, and Aleksi’s blood heated instantly.
He coughed and shifted the kitten to his
chest, holding his injured finger up to Sahar. “I should have
warned you, Kiska is a bloodthirsty little girl.” He grinned wide
purposely. “But as you know, I like kittens that are not afraid to
use their sharp points.”
Sahar opened her mouth and then snapped it
shut, spun on her heels, and stomped the three paces to her horse’s
stall, throwing open the gate and slamming it shut. Aleksi chuckled
as he tucked Kiska into the crook of his arm and left Z’s stall to
stand at the gate to Lasair’s, watching Sahar brush the mare’s long
flowing mane and waiting for her to acknowledge his presence, which
she stubbornly refused to do until at last Lasair whinnied and
stepped up to sniff at the bundle of cloth and kitten in Aleksi’s
hold.
“So,” Aleksi said. “It seems we are
neighbors.”
Sahar glared at Aleksi. “You knew we were,”
she said. “I would not put it past you to have bribed Ratter into
situating it so.”
“Actually, it was the Wolf who tried to bribe
Ratter into situating him next to you, but I get the impression
that Ratter cannot be bribed if he does not wish to be so.”
She shrugged and said nothing.
“Do you know why Ratter would not agree to
the Wolf’s demands?”
Again, she shrugged and said nothing.
“Because he does not trust him. Nor should
you.”
“That. Is. It.” Sahar threw the brush at
Aleksi, who managed to dodge it as it flew past his head. “First my
father, then my brother, then Ratter, and now you.” She stood nose
to chin with him, breathing fire. “I have had it with you men
thinking you must warn me off of Yago, thinking you must protect
me, as if I, a mere woman, am incapable of taking care of
myself.”
Aleksi’s first instinct was to pull her
headscarf off, bury his fingers into her thick mass of dark curls
and pull her to him, to kiss those full lips and breathe in her
fire. She might scorch him to bare earth, but it would be worth it.
Still, reason and those men she railed against were enough to rein
him in.
“Perhaps you should heed them,” he said.
“Perhaps you should mind your own
business.”
“Perhaps I will.”
“Good.”
“Good.” Aleksi took half a step back, and
then stepped right back up. “Listen,” he said. “I am no inbred
idiot. I know a princess used to life in a grand palace would never
lower herself to marry a poor bastard like me. I have no illusions
there, now that I know who you are. But this Yago the Wolf, he may
be a prince by title, with a pretty face and even prettier manners,
but he is a snake in the grass. Do not fall for his flattery.”
“Flattery? You think me so spoiled and
shallow that I would fall for false flattery?”
It was Aleksi’s turn to shrug and say
nothing.
“Why do you even care?” she said. “You are
not in competition with him for me since you have apparently taken
your proposal back.” She glowered at him. “I will say you gave up
easily. It must be all those other broodmares out there waiting for
a stallion such as yourself to pick and choose from.”
Aleksi glowered right back. Did she think it
was nothing to him to be refused? Did she expect him to prostrate
himself at her feet and beg her to marry him so that she could
refuse him again? She was angry, he could see that. But was she
angry because he had proposed, or because she thought he had taken
his proposal back? Had he taken it back? He raked a hand through
his hair and saw the quick uptick of her gaze as his stubborn shock
of hair fell back down onto his forehead. He was not conceited, but
neither was he blind. He had seen that look of feminine approval
enough times to recognize it, even in a fire-spitting tigress. By
the gods, she was the most maddening woman he had ever met. “Do as
you wish,” he said.
“I will,” she snarled, fangs showing and eyes
blazing.
Aleksi laughed, quick and short. “Remember
though,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away, “even a
tigress has need of protection when there is a trap being set for
her.”
At supper that night, Sahar made a point of
sitting at one of the tables set aside for the riders. Yago was the
first man to offer her a seat beside him, though this time at least
three others shifted and made a place for her as well. Aleksandr
had not yet arrived, and she told herself it was merely curiosity
that made her look for him—that and the ridiculously appealing
image of him nuzzling and sweet-talking the kitten in the
stables.
Where he had called her a tigress.
Of course, it was after warning her off of
Yago the Wolf, like the other men in her life thought necessary to
do. As if she could not take care of herself. She huffed as she
took the seat beside Yago. She would show all of them when she and
Lasair won the races, and though she had no real need for the
winning purses, it would be the first coin she had earned from her
own toil and talents. Coin she would use to build her own
stables.
“Princess Sahar?”
She turned her attention to Yago and caught a
glimpse of her father’s glare over his shoulder.
“May I call you Sahar?”
“Just do not call her kitten,” a low,
resonant voice said from behind her.
“Ah, Maksimillian’s bastard,” Yago said as
Aleksandr stepped up and stood between them, towering over them on
their stools, an affable grin on his face.
“Ah, Yago the Worm, er, I mean, Wolf. You
know, my desert words, they do not always come out right.” He
leaned down to Sahar, blocking Yago. “How’s your finger?”
“I’ll live, thank you. Yours?”
He waggled it in front of her face. “In
working order, as you see.”
The corners of her mouth twitched up despite
herself, and his grin grew cocky. He dipped his head to her and
that cursed shock of hair fell onto his forehead. When she pulled
her gaze from his forehead, he grinned and then straightened to
walk around the table, taking a seat directly across from her, his
grin even cockier. She took a long, slow drink of her wine.
“Peasant boor,” Yago muttered, his lips
thinning into a derisive sneer.
Aleksandr raised his cup to Yago. “Royal
prig.”
Sahar choked, coughed, and sputtered into her