Chapter 106
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SIX
W hen Rowan suggested we begin the next day by training with the men, I cut her off with a quick, decisive no.
I wasn’t ready to leave these rooms yet, and after months of warfare and endless politicking, I decided I more than deserved a day off. After raising an Unclanned army and winning us the final battle, so did my wife.
So we did just that, testing the lengths of our stamina in much more pleasant ways than in a sparring ring with others.
Our time reacquainting ourselves with one another was interspersed with meals delivered to our room, well-needed rest, and Rowan’s occasional insistence on doting on Boris.
I watched her coo over him yet again, feeding the overweight ball of ginger fluff another piece of bacon, wondering how it was that she so easily went from this to seductress to warrior princess.
It took most of the day for me to feel like I could breathe again, to ease back into the comfort of who we had been. And for me to broach the subject that risked rubbing salt in the wounds we hadn’t quite healed.
I couldn’t quell the burning need I had to fill in the missing pieces of her, though, to understand what had happened while she was away.
“At the risk of bringing this up…” I began, and her jade eyes lazily slid over to meet mine. “How did you get away from Korhonan?”
I didn’t want to make a habit of discussing other men with my lemmikki while she was naked in our bed, but I sure as storms wasn’t going to ask her to put clothes on.
She lifted one casual shoulder, her mass of curls moving with the gesture.
“I...drugged him. And his guard. After tricking them into playing a card game with me and lacing my flask.”
I blinked, processing that information for all of two seconds before throwing my head back to genuinely laugh. The corners of her lips tilted upward at the sound, and I shook my head.
The poor bastard. If I had been harboring any real hostility for him, I was certain that might just be sufficient revenge. Korhonan might not have understood how ruthless she was before, but he certainly did now.
“Storms, Lemmikki. You are savage when you want to be.”
She shrugged again. “A fact you would do well to keep in mind.”
And I would. But then, I had always known about the cut-throat, bawdy tavern-song-loving side of her. What I wanted to know about now was the side I had missed while she was rallying an army to her side.
So I asked her about that, too.
A bittersweet grin tilted her mouth as she recounted her first meeting with Andrei. How she had sought them out intentionally, traveling from one camp to another to gather more soldiers. How she had gone into villages asking the blacksmith’s secret apprentices to help her forge weapons for the battle.
And about how the Besklanovvy had fallen to their knees when she offered them a future—a second chance at a life they had barely gotten a chance to live.
I shook my head, my brow furrowing as I considered it all. Storms help the next lord who questioned her right to be in the council room. Not one of them could have done what she did or would have thought to try.
“You are truly remarkable, Lemmikki,” I told her. “What you did that day, for Bear?—”
She silenced me by placing a finger to my lips. Her expression hardened as she met my eyes.
“Let me be clear about something,” she said in a serious tone. “I love Bear. I love our people.”
It was the first time she had referred to them that way, as ours , and I wondered if it was a reaction to my absolving her of the obligation of caring for them, or a result of the time she had spent in their midst.
I waited, sensing a caveat.
Sure enough, she went on. “But I don’t know that I could have done what I did for them.”
I furrowed my brow, but she shook her head, signaling me not to interrupt.
She searched the room for several heartbeats before fixing her gaze solidly on mine once more. “I did that for you , Evander.”
I stilled, my focus frozen on her, the delicate curl that she was twisting around her finger so at odds with the fearsome warrior before me. The woman who just told me that she had raised an army, not for the greater good or to thwart Iiro, but only for me.
How had I ever found her?
How had I almost let her go?
“All this time, I was worried about having the kind of love you go to war for,” she admitted. It made sense, considering the history between our kingdoms. “I thought it made you weak and selfish and reckless. And I don’t know, maybe those last two things are true.”
They definitely are, Lemmikki.
“But I do know that the way that I love you... It makes me stronger, not weaker.”
My chest tightened, my lips parting to make way for words I couldn’t form. When they still wouldn’t come, I leaned forward to press my lips against her forehead.
I love you with every last broken piece of my soul, too, Lemmikki.
“And I heard what you did in the battle here.” She cut into the silence. “I wasn’t the only one doing remarkable things.”
It was hard to look back on the sheer volume of losses and think about the word remarkable , but I did know that—as twisted as the thought was—my father’s lessons on strategy were the only reason we had survived long enough for Rowan to even reach us.
So I told her about those long, dark days.
Told her about the first wave of casualties when Elk brought in the trebuchets. How Pavel had snuck behind enemy lines to sabotage them to buy us more time, and how they had sent him back to us.
How we had to resort to tactics my father had used against her grandparents to stay alive as long as we had. How I had even used some of her uncle’s methods for chaotic battle to change tactics when we could.
She offered a small smile at that, running her nails up and down my arm as I recounted every gory detail of my time without her.
“And then you came,” I said at last, remembering the explosion of light and the cloud cover on the ground when there hadn’t been any sign of a storm before she arrived. I scrutinized her for a moment before asking, “Are you going to tell me about the storm?”
Something flashed in her eyes, whether it was excitement or disbelief that she had been capable of such a feat at all, I couldn’t quite tell.
“The armor Rayan gave me,” she began, and I knew immediately she was referring to that ominous black box he’d gifted her for our wedding. Had he done something to them to make it easier for her to interact with the weather around her? Was there more to it than that, and she had only just begun to tap into the potential of what she could do?
“Along with the swords—” she continued, but I held up a hand to stop her.
The image of my feral little wife striding across the battlefield, clad in onyx armor with vengeance in her eyes was one I would never forget. And it was quite literally the sexiest thing I had ever seen.
I told her so, with one small caveat, of course.
“I mean, until you slapped me in the face,” I said, giving her a small grin. “Which, by the way, no one has ever actually done before.”
No one else would have been able to get close enough, let alone survived the experience. As it was, I only found amusement in the act since she clearly wasn’t forming a habit of it. But the tensions had been high, and she had just marched in to save our arses, so even the lords hadn’t given me any hell about this one.
“Then you were clearly overdue,” she said flatly, infusing her shrug with the same casual air she treated everything.
Another laugh rumbled out of me. I pulled her into my lap, pressing my lips to hers once again. Our humor faded as I deepened the kiss, my body craving hers with a renewed urgency.
We wouldn’t have days like this forever, at least not until this war was over. I was determined to make the most of it.