Chapter 15
Aim secure, I lifted and swung. I did it again.
Then I stood the stump up, chopped it in two, and kicked it toward the men.
Again and again I swung, never missing my target, the familiar motions emptying my mind until there was only the ax and the wood and the burning calluses of my hands.
My breathing turned heavy, but I only paused to strip off my cloak, not stopping again until the entire trunk was dissected, branches separated for kindling and thick chunks made into symmetrical logs.
The ax slammed into the ground, lodging there as I made my final cleft.
I looked up to see more men watching me than not, a mixture of intrigue, surprise, and wariness marring their shadowed faces in the dim moonlight.
If Harthon was among them, I didn’t notice, though nothing ever occurred around him that he was unaware of.
Feeling far more at peace than I had before I’d started, I ignored the attention, retrieved my cloak, and went to Harthon’s horse, searching the saddlebags until I found my mat and blanket.
“Do you want dinner?”
Arms full, I pivoted to see Stefano, bread and dried meat in his hands. Harthon had described Stefano’s skill, but his precision with the knife today still surprised me. He easily flustered around me, but he was apparently rather deadly.
“No,” I answered. The events of the day had eliminated my appetite. When he looked like he was going to object, I quickly added, “It’s only because I’m not hungry. Tomorrow, I’ll eat.”
Based on what happened the last time I refused his food, I couldn’t blame him for worrying.
He nodded cautiously. “If you change your mind, let me know.”
I offered a small smile of thanks before stepping around him.
The fire already rose high, but the heat didn’t travel far, the frigid wind sucking away any warmth that left the flames.
Knowing I wouldn’t be warm unless I was in the fire itself, I drifted to the edge of the group, picking around a few of our men who already slept.
If I couldn’t benefit from heat, I may as well distance myself from their blaring snores.
Burrowing beneath the blanket, I closed my eyes, willing my body not to shiver.
As my limbs shuddered, I knew it was impossible.
Thanks to the wind, tonight was far colder than any I’d spent sleeping outdoors.
I tucked the scratchy blanket over my head and curled into a ball, focusing on the small heat that built between my thighs and belly as cold encased my back.
I stayed that way, sleep far away, until the sounds of movement dwindled.
My teeth chattered uncontrollably, and I wrapped my arms over my face, knowing it was a futile effort.
My clamoring teeth were the reason I didn’t hear him approach.
“You’re cold.” Harthon’s bass rumbled from outside of the blanket.
I didn’t move. “N-no I-I’m not.”
“Your chattering teeth are keeping me awake.”
“Th-then y-your hearing is t-too good. N-not my problem,” I managed through numb lips. I willed him to go away, to leave me alone in my misery.
Of course, he didn’t. He’d likely come to yell at me more. To blame me for the boy and remind me that I’d killed today. Skies, how I yearned for sleep to take me away.
I rolled my eyes as I heard the rustling of fabric. Something flimsy brushed against the blanket at my back. Then the blanket was pulled off my head.
I flipped over in an explosion of panic. “You j-just m-made me lose all of m-my heat!” I hissed, frustrated tears flooding my eyes. I was too cold to attempt to stem them, and I’d forever be too cold because I would never, ever be close to warm now.
“There was no heat to lose,” Harthon replied. From his sleeping mat. Where he lay propped up on an arm beside me.
I met his sardonic gaze and watched in horror as his eyes widened just so, no doubt noticing the water in my eyes. His features softened, and I spun back around, mortification battling the miserable cold for attention.
“Come here,” he said softly.
“N-n-no.”
Ignoring me, his arm snaked around my waist, pulling me to the edge of my mat and into his solid length.
His body heat was food to a starving man, the warmth my body had desperately sought, and now that I had it, I couldn’t pull away.
It was basic need that kept any further protests from my tongue.
That arm tightened, and his knees curled behind mine as my head nestled beneath his chin.
My muscles still quaked, but with his blanketing heat, it would be over soon.
“Better?” His chest vibrated along my back.
Euphoric. Incredible. “F-fine.”
His hand rubbed the length of my arm, friction building more of that delicious warmth. “I was an ass earlier.”
It took a moment for his words to register.
I should have shoved his implied apology back in his face. But maybe it was the cold or my general misery that eliminated my fight and made me ask, “How c-could I have known a-about the boy?”
“You couldn’t have,” he assured. “And it wasn’t just him I was angry about. You could have been harmed.”
“Y-you could have b-been harmed,” I pointed out.
A soft exhale stirred my hair. “I appreciate the thought, but don’t do something like that again.”
“I c-can’t promise that.” And, skies, I wish I knew why.
I should hate Harthon, despise him and wish him dead for dragging me out of my life and into his plans.
I did at first, and I’d thought it hadn’t changed.
But in the hours we’d spent on horseback, it’d dawned that, when I jumped from the horse to save him, it wasn’t because I needed him alive to protect me.
It was because I simply hadn’t wanted him dead.
And I didn’t want to understand why, because it made such little sense that the truth would probably scare me.
The quaking in my limbs began to fade, tiredness entering in its wake. “What are you g-going to d-do with the boy?”
Harthon’s sigh was burdened. “Try to give him a new life.”
I know what it’s like to think that a bad way of life is the only way of life because of your upbringing, he’d said back in that field, not a hint of dishonesty in his tone.
Before that, he’d told me that he cared for his people because they had been wronged, and that he was not a good man.
The only connection between the statements was the sentiment that lay beneath them all: pain.
I’d learned nothing of Harthon’s upbringing, but no man could become as fearsome and brutal as him only through adulthood.
“If the g-gossipers heard that you not only think, but you also spare young b-boys, they would be r-ruined.”
That earned a short laugh.
“Why d-did you do it?”
“There was no choice, was there?” he answered cryptically, giving away nothing.
“No.”
My eyelids began to close of their own accord, my jaw no longer shaking. Still, his hand swept across my arm as minutes passed in silence. Then something made me whisper, “That was the first time I’ve killed someone.”
That hand disappeared before two knuckles brushed across my cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said, apologizing for the second time tonight. “He needed to be killed. It does nothing to change the goodness within you.”
He gave words to the confused emotions that had flooded me ever since we left that field. I wasn’t a bad person. I wasn’t evil or cruel or like the looter himself. His reassurance was like a balm as those two fingers, tender in their touch, stroked away the memories and lulled me toward sleep.
It was like that, floating in a cocoon of heat with Princeps Harthon wrapped around me, that I plummeted into that quiet void.
* * *
I was warm but alone when I awoke to the smoky gray skies that came just before sunrise.
I sat up and scanned the camp for Harthon, only finding sleeping soldiers.
My fingers bunched around scratchy fabric that felt thicker than usual, and I looked down to find that I had two blankets instead of one tucked around me.
Harthon had left me his blanket.
But if he wasn’t in the camp, where was he?
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I slipped from the makeshift bed, rolled the mat and blankets, and brought it to his horse. Then, taking advantage of the quiet, I delved into the trees to find a place to take care of things.
I decided on a longer route back to the camp, my limbs craving the movement, and I relished in the early morning quiet as I silently navigated the tangled roots and dried brush. A dull thud spun me to my right. I’d spent enough time trapping to know it wasn’t an animal sound.
My lungs paused.
The same noise came again, and I crept forward, sliding from tree to tree as curiosity tugged me along.
I heard the third thud just as my eyes found his shadowed form, naked from the waist up, crouched before a tall boulder amidst scattered vegetation.
His hair was loose and wild, hanging over his downturned face in clumpy, sweat-slickened waves, and even in the darkness, I could see the same white blotches and slashes that marked his arms scattered across his tanned back.
A warrior’s back.
Ridged muscles shifted beneath his skin as he rose in one fluid motion and took two monstrous steps toward the boulder.
Face plastered to the rough bark of my hiding place, I watched in frozen fascination as he planted a foot on the rock, drove his other leg up, and flipped backward.
His feet hardly touched the ground before he was spinning and launching a knife through the air.
It landed in an impossibly thin sapling with that same dull thud, beneath five other hilts that formed a perfect line.
He walked over to his target, and I openly stared at the defined ridges of his abdomen and the mounds of his chest, which was dusted in dark hair, the moisture in my mouth drying. A deep vee disappeared into his leather pants, and that same dark hair trailed a line down from his lower belly.