Chapter 7 #2
and she really and truly wanted to hate him. Contrary to what she
had told him in the stables, his betrayal had hurt her deeply. A
hurt that been assuaged only a little by his apology. “Ratter gave
her a drop of Dream Flower and she was sleeping like a kitten when
I left for supper.”
Sahar laughed despite herself. “You are
impossible.”
He grinned and gave her a roguish wink. “So I
have been told.”
“Ahh,” Yago said with a voice as smooth and
oily as his smile. “It is good to see you two lovers have put the
embarrassing incident with the harlot behind you.”
“You mean the harlot you hired to set up me
and the princess?” Aleksandr said, glaring at Yago. He sat back and
his glare softened as he spoke to Sahar. “I was sending her away
when you ‘happened’ by.”
“It did not look like you were sending her
anywhere,” Yago said with a sneer. “It looked like she was sending
you—”
“You lie,” Aleksandr grit out, keeping his
voice low.
Yago’s sneer turned into a snarl. “I would be
careful about calling me, Prince Yago, a liar, bastard. Wars have
been started for lesser insults.”
Sahar laid a hand on each of their forearms,
and could not help but compare the bunched muscles of Aleksandr’s
tanned, corded arm with the slimmer, smoother feel of Yago’s.
“There will be no war started here at my
father’s table,” she scolded both of them. She narrowed her glare
on Yago. “Especially for so trivial a reason.”
Yago slid his arm out from under her hand.
“You consider calling me a liar trivial?”
Aleksandr’s muscles tensed beneath her
fingers, and she gave his arm a warning squeeze.
“When you are in truth lying, yes,” she told
Yago. “I do.”
Yago’s eyes glinted as cold and treacherous
as thin ice over a pit of pitch, and Sahar held onto the solid
warmth of Aleksandr’s arm. She glanced from Aleksandr’s broad,
square-tipped fingers to Yago’s longer, more slender fingers. She
saw him curl the middle finger of his right hand in, but not before
she noticed the red, swollen tip, and the piercing wound that
looked suspiciously like a cat bite on the pad.
She opened her mouth to ask him about his
injured finger, and then clamped it shut. She did not wish to start
another fight between Aleksandr and Yago, not here in her family’s
palace, and not now at a feast celebrating the race tomorrow. There
would be time to confront Yago later.
The king stood and the salon went quiet. He
raised his goblet to his wife and then to the table of riders. “A
toast,” he said. “To the brave riders of the third and last race, a
course of one hundred leagues that has claimed the life of more
than one rider through the years.” He met Sahar’s gaze, and there
was true concern in his, and pride. “To my daughter, Princess
Sahar, the first woman to not only enter these races, but to win
the first and place second in the next. Let us see if she and her
mare, Lasair, can beat their sires’ record of five days in the
hundred-league race.”
“To Princess Sahar,” Aleksandr seconded,
holding his cup high and grinning at her. “A most worthy
competitor.”
Her cheeks flushed, and she nodded her thanks
to Aleksandr, whose cocky grin brought even more heat to her
skin.
“To all the riders and their steeds,” she
said, raising her cup. “May the gods watch over us, and may the
best man, or woman, win.”
It was a feast meant to sate the gathering
and fuel the riders for the grueling race ahead, and Sahar ate more
than she normally would, filling up on roast goat, soft cheese, and
late summer squash before the next several days of salted jerky,
flatbread, and dried fruit, which would be her racing diet. Her
belly full to bursting, she pushed back from the table with a groan
that was echoed by every other rider there. She eyed Yago’s swollen
fingertip as he drank the last of his wine. He had grown more
careless of hiding it with each cup he emptied, and Sahar was
grateful that Aleksandr had not noticed or had chosen to ignore the
telltale injury. As the meal was at an end, so was Yago’s
reprieve.
She waited until he stood to leave the
salon.
“Prince Yago,” she said, standing also. “Will
you be so kind as to accompany myself, Aleksandr, and Munir to the
stables? There is something I wish you all to see.”
Yago glanced at Aleksandr and then Munir, who
stood ready to do Sahar’s bidding without explanation. “Of course,”
Yago said with a quick, deferential bow of his head, though his
expression oozed suspicion.
He indicated that she should lead the way,
and Aleksandr quickly stepped up to walk beside her, leaving Yago
to trail behind with Munir.
“What are you up to, my tigress?” he
whispered.
“You will see soon enough,” she told him.
“And I am not your tigress.”
“Still angry with me then?”
She gave him a glare that would have withered
a lesser man, but he chuckled and ran a hand back through his hair,
grinning as she watched that cursed sun-kissed lock fall over his
forehead.
“Good,” he said. “I am glad.”
“Glad?”
“It tells me you care.”
“I care about many things,” she hissed. “But
you, you conceited, arrogant, ass, are not one of them.”
“Uh huh.”
He was still grinning, and Sahar could not
decide if she wanted to slap him or kiss him, neither of which
would be a smart thing to do, so she ignored him, picking up her
pace and giving him her back as she strode the rest of the way to
the stables.
She stopped at Zolotoy’s stall and called out
for Ratter, who came out of the little antechamber holding Kiska,
her splinted leg sticking out over his forearm.
“This is what was so important to show us?”
Yago asked. “a mangy stable cat with a splinted leg?”
“Not only the cat.” Sahar grabbed Yago’s
hand, but was only able to hold it up for a quick moment before he
yanked it out of her grasp and stuffed it into the pocket of his
tunic. “Show them your finger,” she demanded. “Show them where
Kiska bit you when you hurt her.”
He laughed and started to back up, but was
stopped when Munir blocked Yago’s escape.
“Show us,” Aleksandr ordered.
Reluctantly, Yago pulled his hand out and
held his finger up, the piercing hole of a bite wound in the middle
of the red, swollen pad glaringly obvious.
“Why?” Sahar said. “Why would you purposely
injure an innocent kitten?”
“For the same reason he set me up with the
harlot, and for you to find me in a compromising position with
her,” Aleksandr answered when Yago did not. “To throw me, and you,
off our race. He knows he cannot beat us otherwise.”
Yago shrugged. Kiska hissed at him, Aleksandr
fisted his hands at his sides, and Sahar threw all her weight and
strength into her punch, which landed squarely on Yago’s left
cheek, which still bore the faintest streaks of yellow from
Aleksi’s punch days ago.
“You bitch!”
Yago swung at Sahar, who side-stepped his
fist as Aleksandr’s connected with Yago’s belly, doubling him over
and leaving him gasping for breath.
“Get this piece of refuse away from me before
I kill him,” Aleksandr said, and Munir grabbed the still wheezing
Yago by the tunic and stood him up.
“You have not heard the last of this,” Yago
threatened between wheezes. “There will be consequences for your
actions tonight, you bastard. My father—”
“Will be so proud to hear that his prince of
a son likes to torture helpless kittens and take swings at girls,”
Aleksandr finished for him. He glanced at Sahar, who still had her
fur ruffled, ready to finish this fight, and he laughed, quick and
short. “Who not only got beat up by the same girl, but got beat by
her in the races, twice.”
“Which makes ‘im just like is father, it
does,” Ratter added. He squinted at Yago. “Don’t you fergit,” he
said, “I was there. I saw the queen, who was the Swan then, I saw
‘er face all beat up an ‘er eyes all red an’ swoll shut after yer
father tried to rape an’ kill ‘er. He would ‘ave too, ifn not fer
the Black Mane.” He shook his bald head at the memory, and then he
cackled. “It was me that drug yer father out o’ the pile o’ horse
dung the Black Mane dumped ‘im in.” He took another gander at
Yago’s swelling cheek and blackening eye, and then winked at Sahar.
“I always said you was yer father’s daughter.”
Aleksi lay on the cot with Kiska curled up on
his belly, staring up at the thatched roof of the stables. It was
late, close to midnight, but he was nowhere close to sleeping. His
mind kept racing, going over everything that had happened from the
moment he had first laid eyes on Sahar to Yago’s humiliation
tonight. Aleksi recalled every word spoken between him and Sahar,
and considered all the words left unspoken. He relived the heat and
passion of their kisses over and over again, and he dreamed of
kissing her senseless while lying on a blanket under a starry sky,
of her tautly muscled body beneath his, his hands roaming over
every soft mound and round, womanly curve, his mouth tasting hers,
covering hers as she cried out with pleasure.
He reminded his wayward body that she had
forbidden him from ever touching her again, that she was a proud,
royal princess who would never stoop to marrying a bastard, even if
he was the bastard son of a king. He forced himself to concentrate
on the race ahead and on the road home after, and yet as he
imagined himself arriving at his father’s palace with a string of
broodmares, a purse full of gold pieces and a bride at his side,
that bride was a tigress with a mane of thick, black curls that
shone auburn in the sun’s light and eyes of green fire with sparks
of gold.
“Perhaps I will not look for a bride here
after all,” he told Kiska, who let out a soft kitten snore.
“Perhaps I will wait until I return home, until after I have bought
my land and have sold my first yearling foals. I will be more
settled then, better prepared for marriage and family.”
Perhaps by then he will have forgotten his
tigress and learned to settle for a woman with the sturdy frame and
easy temper he claimed he wanted in a wife.
He shifted slightly, trying not to disturb
Kiska, and then went still as Zolotoy snorted and shuffled in his
stall. Lifting Kiska from his belly, he set her back down on the