Chapter 14
T he next day, we rode hard to get behind the borders of Bear.
I briefly debated giving the princess back her dagger for the road—if only to get the story behind why even a royal as inappropriate as she was would have a bare-breasted dagger. I had nearly spit my vodka out when I took it from my coat last night. Storms . Was it custom? Did Lochlannian women carry half-naked daggers as Socairan women wore bracelets with tiny charms?
In the end, it wasn’t worth the likely risk of her stabbing me when I had so many other things to concern myself with, so I tucked it into my saddlebag, safely out of her reach.
It was a relief when we finally got to my own clan’s territory, if for no other reason than the fact that I knew that Taras would be joining us soon. My cousin and his men were not only some of the most skilled soldiers in Bear, but they were trustworthy.
And their allegiance was to me. Not to my father.
Though I knew my cousin was going to be less than keen about our newest acquisition, something I had carefully left out of my letter.
We were in the process of stabling our horses when Kirill called out my cousin’s name, the relief in his tone just as palpable as mine.
Sure enough, Taras’s attention immediately fixed on the princess, his eyes hardening. Then he turned that attention toward me.
“I see we need to talk,” he said flatly.
The words need and want warred within me before the former won out. With a nod, I led him away from the others so I could at least give him the basics, lest his mind wander too far in the wrong direction and he gave himself an aneurism.
I quickly and quietly explained the situation at the Summit, not needing to go into detail about how bad it would be for our clan, our kingdom, if Iiro kept her, or if the dukes decided to send her corpse to her father as a message.
Still, the look on his face was beyond concern, it was full of a disapproval I didn’t have the time or energy for, and I shot him a look that said just that.
“Have you thought about how she will react?” Taras asked, his eyes darting behind us to let me know we had an eavesdropper.
It wasn’t surprising; the princess was too nosey for her own good, and my men knew better.
“I don’t care what she thinks. I do not answer to my father’s wife,” I hissed bitterly.
Mairi might have had power over me when I was a defenseless child, but that had been a long time ago. She was a conniving wretch, but she had nothing to do with this, and I would make sure she understood just that.
Taras shook his head in irritation. “Honestly, Van, what was your plan? To lock her up in your bedroom with an armed guard at her side for every second of the day while you’re away on missions for your father? Do you really think Mairi won’t find a way to reach her?”
I glanced over my shoulder to see if Rowan was still listening, but fortunately Kirill had stepped in to distract her.
“I will do what I have to in order to stop our clan from entering another war,” I responded to my cousin. “Believe me, I’m not eager to keep her around for any longer than absolutely necessary.”
Taras arched a disbelieving eyebrow that was hard to ignore.
“Think what you will, but as soon as we hear back about the tunnels, I’m sending her arse straight back to Lochlann. This arrangement is temporary.”
My cousin shook his head, but finally relented a bit. However, when his attention drifted behind me once again, I couldn’t help but follow his gaze.
“You may be a prisoner for now, but I see no reason for you to be the enemy,” Kirill said to her with a smile far too innocent when he knew damned good and well there was every reason for her to be the enemy.
I cut in before he could offer to massage her feet or carry her all the way to the inn.
“We’ll take the eastern route tomorrow to avoid the Unclanned. Apparently, there are more of these larger bands gathering farther north. Be on alert.”
“And here I thought Taras just missed us,” Kirill said with a look of mock-disappointment.
“Like I would cross all of Bear just to see your ugly face,” my cousin interjected, ignoring the princess with an impressive display of stubbornness.
“Are those large bands unusual?” she asked. “A group like that attacked us on the way to the Summit.”
Under other circumstances, I might have laughed at how hard Taras was fighting not to look at her, even when she spoke, like he could just pretend her presence away. Still, he couldn’t stop his gaze from flitting to her in surprise. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that questioning the heir was the very least of the improprieties he was likely to witness from her.
However, now was as good a time as any to let him know how we had acquired the feral princess before he inadvertently said something in her presence.
“Iiro said there were easily forty men,” I told him, stressing the name just a touch.
Taras’s expression did not disappoint. He went pale with disbelief, the blood draining from his very irritated features.
“Iiro? She was with Elk before you… Der’mo. ”
“ Der’mo , indeed,” the princess imitated in an accent that was truly terrible. So she knew what some words meant. Just not anything that might have actually helped her at the Summit.
I wasn’t sure who was worse, her for being so willfully ignorant or Korhonan for being na?ve enough to believe she could get by with that where the dukes were concerned. Unless that had been Iiro’s design, as well.
I massaged the bridge of my nose, fighting back a rare urge to kick something. “Ah, I see you have taken to learning Socairan for the truly important things, just not for when your life was on the line.”
“Well, I have to keep my cliché middle-royal-child priorities in line, after all.”
Taras looked between the princess and me with thinly veiled horror, an expression that only grew when I had to fight back a laugh. He shook his head, outside of her field of vision, mouthing what looked suspiciously like a repetition of his earlier curse.