Chapter 40 #2
Emrys’s expression was one of exhaustion, not hostility. “I’ve been idiotic enough to bring two women on what may turn into a battle campaign. This is what you get.”
“We’re hardly helpless,” she argued.
“Debatable,” he muttered. “When your guards aren’t around, you’ll stay by my side at all times for the rest of this journey,” he said, turning to me.
I nodded. His eyes lingered on mine for a beat longer than necessary, trying to convey with a look just how much it meant to him. Then he turned and disappeared into the whirl of activity.
He shouted to a group of nearby soldiers, “Set up their tent. Now.”
“Yes, Stormdan,” they chorused.
Catrin and I tried to help but were summarily denied. I overheard the lead guard practically on his knees, pleading with Catrin to persuade me to give up any attempts to help with anything but the cooking in the future, considering Emrys’s strange temper about it.
Ridiculous.
All of this was about him being overprotective, and he wasn’t only worried about protecting a foreign diplomat, or his childhood friend.
He was worried about me in ways that went beyond simple politics.
The butterflies I’d been squashing since first arriving in Darreth took wing, free to flutter about in my stomach once again.
While our tent was being built, Catrin and I decided to gather firewood, shadowed by our excessive contingent of guards.
It didn’t take long for Catrin to start barking at them too. “Just look at your fine lady bending over to gather wood for your dinners! If you menfolk can’t gather wood faster than us in dresses, you’re not fit to travel with Stormdan!”
That got them moving. Less than five minutes later, we’d gathered enough for several fires. Unfortunately, most of it was still damp from the last storm.
They struggled against it with flint and steel, sending showers of sparks into the cooling evening air. Without a fire, we’d be eating cold rations and having an even colder evening ahead of us. Even in early summer, the nights were chill.
While I was preparing the stew pot, they turned their expectant looks on me, Catrin with one exasperated eyebrow raised, as if I held the key to solving their problem. My cheeks blazed, even though I should’ve been used to this misunderstanding by now. “Wrong kind of mage for fire magic, sorry.”
“But I’ve seen you fling open doors with your mind!” Catrin argued.
I shrugged, palms upraised in apology. “Fire was never one of my gifts. You’re all too used to the princes. They’re the exceptions. It’s not normal to be able to use so many types of magic.”
With his characteristically impeccable timing, Emrys walked up just as I finished speaking. He kneeled beside the arranged wood in silence and reached out with one hand. The moment his palm hovered over the damp kindling, flames roared toward the heavens.
“Show-off!” Catrin huffed. Then, noticing the guards’ startled expressions, she added belatedly, “Thank you, Lord Prince.”
His mouth twitched. “I’ll return after I start the other fires.”
“Prince Emrys,” I shouted after him, “will you eat with us? I’m cooking, so I need to know how much to add to the pot.”
“You cook?” His brows lifted. Curiosity replaced his disbelief, like he was discovering a new part of me he hadn’t expected.
I sent him a flat look. He knew I wasn’t the noble lady weeks of good food and expensive clothing made me appear. That I was from peasant stock was possibly the worst-kept secret in the history of Darreth at this point.
He nodded and grunted.
“Is that a ‘yes,’ Lord?”
“Yes.” The sound was long-suffering, but the corners of his mouth twitched upward again, and my butterflies took wing at the sight.
So fast I didn’t see him move, Emrys suddenly had his sword out—pointed directly at our guards with a growl in his voice.
“Let me be perfectly clear,” the tip of his sword moved to point at six throats, “if a single one of you leaves his post for his own dinner before my return, he will lose his head after I’ve cut off less vital parts. ”
A chorus of “Yes, Stormdan” followed.
I turned my head away so I could roll my eyes and let out a silent sigh. I’d have to get used to this side of him.
The stewpot bubbled slowly, steam curling around the scent of thyme, wild garlic, and onions. Everything about this moment was familiar, reminding me of our tiny hearth at home in Caervorn. As I cooked, I practiced my mental barriers to keep the guards’ emotions out. It was almost peaceful.
Emrys eventually returned to join our fire. Buoyed by food and rest, Catrin became her normal talkative self, filling the air with stories about the young princes growing up in the castle.
As I passed him the wooden bowl, his fingers grazed mine. Given his nimble hands, he’d done it deliberately. The contact was enough to spark that same heat I’d felt beside the river, when he’d taken my hand and hadn’t let go.
Emrys took a bite, his expression thoughtful as he chewed slowly. “This is good,” he murmured, and for once, his words weren’t guarded—they were grateful.
“Well,” Catrin said with a mischievous grin, “that’s one way to put what’s goin’ on here.”
He leveled a withering look at her, which she promptly ignored.
His silence during the meal was nothing new, but I did catch him sneaking glances at me occasionally. It seemed I was still on his mind. I was perfectly fine with that because I couldn’t stop thinking about him either.
After the meal, Emrys stood and crossed to our tents.
His was on the far edge of the camp, presumably so that his nightmares would affect fewer people.
Ours was placed a respectful distance away, but still the closest to his of any.
Without explanation, he shifted the angle of our tent by levitating the entire, still intact, structure into the air.
Then he turned our tent until its entrance nearly kissed his.
He offered no explanation, but his intent was obvious. No one would reach us without going through him first. After seeing his casual display of power in the cave-in, gods help anyone who tried.
A single flap of fabric now stood between us and him. Between me…and sleep I suddenly wasn’t sure I’d get.
We settled in, and Catrin fell asleep almost instantly. She’d warned me that sleeping outdoors was more effective than any sleeping draught for her, but I’d thought it was an exaggeration.
I had a different experience altogether.
Emrys moving around on the other side of the thin walls kept me awake.
Every rustle and shuffle was amplified in the quiet as I lay in my bedroll.
When I looked over, I saw the unmistakable outline of a body at the tent’s opening, suggesting he’d shifted his bedroll to be at the entrance.
I couldn’t help but smile as I pictured him slumbering, his sword clutched loosely in his hand, the moonlight painting shadows across his scarred face because he refused to shut the flap between us—all because he was too worried.
But his walls were up again. He was shutting me out.
Looking over to ensure that Catrin was still fast asleep, I scooted my bedding closer to the entrance. “Prince Emrys,” I whispered. “Are you awake?”
A rustle then, quietly, “Yes.”
“Can we talk?”
His tone was carefully dismissive. “We are…”
“Please…stop pushing me away.”
“…I must.”
That was it. I was done playing this game with him. I sat up, grabbed my fur robe, and wrapped myself tightly in its warmth. Without a second thought, I untied the tent’s flap and stepped over Emrys’s prone form still at the entrance of his own tent.
The interior offered no comforts, unlike ours. He didn’t even have a pillow. Was this how all the warriors slept? With only two rolls of leather, a tiny washbasin, and weapons nearby? Or was this Emrys torturing himself in yet another way?
His eyes were wide as I kneeled beside him on the tent floor, hair unbound, my modesty only retained by the thick furs I’d been gifted. His almost innocent startled expression said that my boldness had truly shocked him.
I whispered, “You care. I see it. So why do you act like you don’t? Why do you shut the door just when I reach it?”
He exhaled and closed his eyes, laying his head back on the hard ground. When he spoke, his voice came out as little more than a whisper. “Because you look at me like I’m something more than a monster…when I’ve spent far too many years proving that’s all I am.”
His eyes remained tightly shut when I said, “Then I guess we disagree on who you are, Prince Emrys.”
“You saw what I did to Owain.”
I remembered the sound Owain had made when Emrys allowed him to breathe again—the gasped wheeze that sounded more like death than life returning. I knew Emrys wasn’t exaggerating how dangerous he was. He was even terrified of himself.
“Yes. I also saw you stop.”
He covered his eyes with both his forearms. “But you haven’t yet seen when I cannot stop, Isca.”
“Why are you afraid of me seeing that?”
He didn’t answer at first. Then, with a voice hoarse from too much restraint, he said, “Because you’re you.”
“Prince Emrys…” I wanted to shake him to make him look at me. I struggled to keep my voice low in my frustration. “What does that mean? I’m here to help. Please let me!”
Eyes still closed. “I’m not safe.”
“I know.”
Voice desperate, he said, “I’m cursed, Isca.”
“I know that too.”
“…I can’t be good for you.”
“You already are!” I took a chance and lifted one hand to touch the arm nearest to me.
His entire body shuddered under my touch.
Abruptly, he lifted himself to one elbow, and my hand fell away. The soft leather that made up his bedroll fell down with his movement to expose his shoulders.
He was shirtless. By the gods, I wanted the blanket to fall all the way to the earth so I could see more of him.
His jaw tightened, teeth grinding with tension he clearly couldn’t swallow. His fists clenched and unclenched, like he was holding back something feral, something he feared would destroy us both.
He looked at me like I was the very madness he feared and the mercy he didn’t believe he deserved. The words that escaped his lips were a hushed growl. “I want things I should not, Lady Isca.”
My eyebrows rose in question. He’d started calling me “Lady” instead of “Mage” just before this journey. Maybe he’d begun to see me in ways that I, myself, was only starting to.
“This… You…” he said. “I am at the edge of my control. I will stop pushing you away if you obey one request.”
Eager now, I perked up. “Anything.”
Another low growl. “Go back to your tent. Now.”
I crashed back to the ground.
My disappointment was only tempered by the wild light stalking across his gaze. Emrys didn’t yet know that I’d already warmed to the beast within him. He didn’t yet know that when it stared, I stared back, seeing the thing that had become as much a part of him as his own soul.
It was a dark thing, yes. But it reached out for all the good and bad in me, wanting them both so desperately that it became overprotective. And I was a girl who desperately wanted to be accepted, to no longer feel I was living in a space between worlds.
It, they, were a world where I could be anything I wanted.
Still, I had to know. “You want me gone to protect me?”
“…Yes.”
I sighed and returned to our tent. As I lay back down, my magic reached for him, and I decided it had the right of it. A whisper of energy, soft and cautious, curled around the outline of a body laying at the tent entrance. I pushed gently until I heard a long, weary exhale.
Then, a barely audible whisper, “Isca…” My name was nearly a prayer. At the very least a secret he’d hoped I hadn’t overheard.
A smile was stuck on my face as I fell asleep to the sounds of him breathing steadily only a few feet away. I slept easily knowing he was still out there, ready to stand between me and the world.