Chapter 8 Isahn rides a horse.
eight
Isahn rides a horse.
Two mornings later, as the sun rose over the Kingdom of Domos, Isahn and his former captors left the gorgeous Villa Manolay for the capital.
Opting for the speed of horseback, George had gifted their cart and hackneys to Elio and Greta, then commanded Dunstan and Burke to purchase mounts for their group.
“You know, I think your kingdom might be more beautiful than mine,” he said to Hildy a few hours in. A craggy hillside full of twisting olive trees and cypresses gave way to a surreal, turquoise lake far below.
“Could be. I’ve never been to Selwas. What’s it like?” Hildy’s horse trotted along beside his.
Ahead, George rode between Dunstan and Burke, their trio deep in conversation.
“Forests, mainly. The West has a bunch of small lakes, my town is named after one. But nothing as gorgeous as that.” He pointed to the narrow lake on his right.
“Lake Dlongos,” she offered. “We’re going to cross it in an hour or so.”
“Does that mean ‘long’ or something?”
“Sure does.”
“Crossing on a ferry?”
“Bridge.”
Isahn nodded. It was a long, narrow lake, but still a wider distance than he’d ever seen spanned by construction, even by something earthshaper-made.
A few moments of silence passed, during which he unabashedly watched the princess riding up ahead.
He was pretty sure Hildy was keeping an eye on both of “her” men.
“Why are you riding with me? Wouldn’t you rather join the group?” Isahn asked.
“To guard you.”
He looked at her incredulously, expecting a laugh, but Hildy scowled at Dunstan’s arse—or maybe she was glaring at Burke’s.
Ah, I see. Isahn wasn’t so certain that she had been assigned to his side at all. Overnight, the other men seemed to have become best friends, teaming up against—rather than fawning over—the brunette.
He let his gaze float back to George in the middle. The set of her shoulders was regal, even while riding with friends. He trailed down over her ample curves, the pinch of her waist, and the swell of her shapely hips. Her riding coat was a pale blue that matched the skies.
“Did George permit you to do that?” Hildy asked, a bit too loud.
Isahn cleared his throat as he snapped his attention to Hildy and narrowed his eyes.
“Did I permit what?” George called over her shoulder as she slowed her mount, letting Dunstan and Burke carry on ahead.
“Nothing,” Isahn snapped, earning a pointed look from George and a chuckle from Hildy. “So, Hildy, what’s your role in all this?” he asked, unable to figure out if she was just a friend, a soldier, some sort of advisor, or even a guard.
“For George?”
“She’s my best friend.” George’s husky voice cut in, worn and saturated, like the aftermath of a storm.
“And future advisor,” Hildy added.
“That too, not sure which one’s more important.” George’s shoulders lifted.
“Are you a soldier?” Isahn figured he’d try to get the women to answer a few of his burning questions: Namely, who were the princess’s friends? And, what relation were they all to one another?
Hildy bobbed her head. “I trained as a legionary for five years before officially joining Georgie’s private guard.”
Private guard, soldier, future advisor, friend. He’d been right on all accounts. “And what of those two?” He tipped his chin toward the men up ahead.
“Dunstan’s a rich boy.” Hildy snorted. “His parents are the Lord and Lady Morelli. They’ve got money, he grew up in and around the capital, but his father’s not a viceroy.”
Viceroys in Domos were comparable to every title in Selwas, all rolled into one, but especially the dukedoms and earldoms. He supposed the closest thing to being a non-viceroyal Domossan lord or lady would be to be a baron back home.
But even that wasn’t a direct match since the Selwassan baronies still had a vote.
“Dunstan did his time as a legionary. Now he’s a member of my guard. And Burke, well, he was orphaned as a child, that’s no secret. I helped him get into the military when he turned fourteen, and he joined my guard when he was twenty,” George concluded.
“You do yourself an injustice,” Hildy interjected.
“I—”
“How so?” Isahn asked, sounding intrigued.
“Burke was down at the wharf and got caught stealing food. George stepped in and saved his life.”
“No, no,” George interrupted, and Isahn swung his gaze her way. Her cheeks blazed a deep burgundy. “I was selfish. I was having a perfectly lovely day by the lake. A hanging would’ve wrecked it. So I stepped in. Selfish.”
Hildy chortled as her horse clopped along. “Or with Ean—”
“My assistant,” George clarified, begrudgingly.
“He was trying to sneak out of the city and got caught. It nearly earned him death at the king’s hand.
During his trial, Georgie here stepped up.
She demanded Ean be given to her as a servant and said she’d ‘train some sense into him, show him the true nature of our world.’ She said that, almost verbatim, to Gasparo.
” Respect shone like a beacon in Hildy’s eyes.
“It wasn’t a lie,” George replied.
“No, but you meant something different from what your father believed.”
A smirk stole across the princess’s face. “You’ll like Ean,” she said. “He’s young but sharp, with a keen thirst for knowledge. If you—if you come into the palace with us, I’m sure you’ll meet him.”
Isahn nodded before teasing, “What about Dunstan? Did you collect him too?”
“I did, kind of like Hil.”
“Wait, how did you befriend Hildy?”
“She stood up for me, and now I stand up for her,” Hil replied.
“She was being bullied,” George piped up, tossing her head a bit as she reclaimed control of the conversation. “We were young. I was ten, she was eleven, I think?”
“Yes. To make a long story short, some of the young wards wouldn’t stop teasing me for being a bastard. Georgie stepped in, made me her best friend, and everyone else shut their mouths.”
Isahn grinned. It sounded like she’d been amassing friends through pure generosity. “And Dunstan?” he prodded the princess.
“I was fourteen. Dunstan had just joined up with the regiment to begin his training. He was being beaten up out on the yard. I was watching.” Tipping her head up, she blinked at the sky, and Isahn followed her gaze, watching a streak of hazy cloud expand against the blue.
“I’m never allowed to train with a weapon.
Magic only for me. Father says steel is unladylike. ”
Hildy snorted.
“How were you allowed then?” Isahn glanced at the soldier.
“Bastards can’t be ladylike, didn’t you know?” She waggled her thick brows.
“That’s not true,” George cut in. “If you wanted to wear anything aside from pants, you could.”
“Hey now!” Hildy laughed. “I hate skirts. Really though, George helped me enlist when I turned sixteen.”
Isahn nodded. “So, with Dunstan...?”
“I broke up the fight, then I kissed him in front of the crowd.”
“A brilliant move,” Hildy commended.
“Thank you, I thought so myself. It was the first and last time I’ve ever kissed Dunstan, though. The big lug.”
“Are you talking about me?” Dunstan called back, slowing his horse with Burke not far behind.
“You have a kind heart,” Isahn murmured, as Hildy rode ahead to catch up with “her boys.”
“I do not,” the princess grumbled as she retrieved a canteen from her bag and took a sip. “Want some?” She held it out.
He had his own but accepted for no other reason than to put his mouth where hers had been.
“Wait, can’t you just make your own water?” she asked while watching him drink his fill.
Satisfied, he handed the canteen back and swiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No. I could move water from its source to my mouth, but I didn’t trust anything dripping in any of the basements you put me in.”
She laughed, a husky sound that made him smile.
“If I make it from scratch, it’s temporary. It might help for a few minutes, but as soon as I stop consciously making it, I’d be thirsty again.”
George nodded. “It’s the same way I can only work my magic until my well’s run dry or I lose focus.”
“The only mages I know that are different are the chaosweavers.”
“Is that your word for the rare ones?”
“The ones who can ‘create from nothing’?” he checked.
“Yes.”
“Mhm,” he replied, enjoying the way the sun warmed him as it rose in the sky. The world was so much warmer this far north. “They don’t use their well when they’re weaving. They can just—create—kind of. It’s complicated.”
“How do you know so much about them?”
“My friend’s wife is one. And she’s my friend now, too.”
“Hm.”
He glanced at the princess, but she’d set her sights on the glistening lake down below.
Several hours passed, during which time they crossed Lake Dlongos on a stone bridge composed of six magnificent arches.
Isahn wished he had a single artistic bone in his body; he would’ve loved to sketch it for his friend Kas.
The Duke of Stormhill would probably dive into learning about bridge building and construct his own at home, connecting Selwas to Karova in no time.
Dunstan, Burke, and Hildy argued briefly about something before the men rode ahead and Hildy returned to their side.
“Hil.” George’s lovely voice rasped through the air.
“Hmm?”
“They can’t hear us.” She pointed to Dunstan and Burke.
“And we won’t have that luxury for much longer.
Sooo...” She drew out the word in a way that had Isahn’s chest rumbling with quiet laughter.
“Are you going to spill the details on what the fates is going on? Or do I have to command you to tell me?”
Hildy chuckled morosely. “Really, Georgie, in front of the prisoner?”
“Not a prisoner,” Isahn corrected, “anymore.”
“He’s literally heard everything for nearly a week now. I think you’re safe to speak.” George poked Isahn playfully in the side with a finger of invisible magic.
He side-eyed her with a smirk, but his attention was quickly drawn back to Hildy, who pierced him with a glare as her nostrils flared.
Isahn dropped his reins for a moment to toss his hands up in surrender. “Not everything! Not nearly everything, I’m almost certain of it.” He flicked his gaze up ahead to land on Dunstan and Burke.
The future queen’s future advisor swore under her breath. “Fine. That night out in Nevellium, I kissed Burke.”
“Woah, woah, woah!” George stopped her friend. “Start at the beginning, because there’s no way that’s the beginning.”
“You get what you get.”
She pouted.
“That night, Burke and I kissed. Dunstan saw, but I didn’t know he saw.”
“Oh, shit,” Isahn commented.
“Exactly. The next morning, Dunstan was pissed. We argued about it all day. We’re not together, you know,” Hildy offered to no one in particular.
“Is that all?”
Hildy dropped her chin as she raised her eyebrows as if to say “Do you really think that’s all I’ve got?”
“Come on, tell me.” George’s voice cracked with excitement as she egged her friend on.
Isahn pressed his lips between his teeth to keep from smiling.
“Well, the next day we uh—we all talked.”
“Are you blushing?” George shrieked before clapping a hand to her mouth, shushing herself.
Hildy did appear to be blushing, though it was hard to tell with her tanned, olive skin.
“Weadathreesome.”
“What?” George and Isahn asked at the same time.
“We had a threesome,” Hildy ground out, her teeth clenched tight.
Isahn looked to George, whose mouth had fallen open into a perfect O.
“Well yeah, sounds great. But it’s not. Because the boys ended up in a fistfight.”
“How did I miss this?!”
“Shh, shh,” Isahn shushed when Dunstan and Burke looked back at them.
“It was... the reasons were complicated. But let’s just say they were arguing over elements of their prowess. And things devolved.”
Isahn swallowed his laughter, shaking his head.
“It’s not funny, Lord Yaranbur,” Hildy scolded him. “Somehow, after nearly ripping each other’s heads off, they’re the best of friends, and neither of them wants anything to do with me.”
“Currently,” George supplied.
Hildy tilted her head side to side. “Currently,” she eventually agreed.
“Oh my gods.” Isahn laughed loudly, unable to keep his chortling under wraps any longer.
“Deiwa hathemi, Hildy,” George joined in on his laughter. “You’re going to scar Isahn. He’s losing it already. Look at him!” She gestured to him as he swiped a tear from the corner of his eye. “I don’t think they get up to that sort of thing in Selwas... Starched sort of people, you know?”
Isahn scoffed in mock annoyance. “Excuse me? We most certainly do get up to things like that in Selwas. Even outside of the bonds of marriage.” He pumped his brows at George.
“Oh, and are you experienced then?” she teased back.
“Probably no more than you,” he jested.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She narrowed her eyes.
“I saw that outfit you planned to seduce me in, Princess. I know you’ve got a one-track mind.”
Eyes shuttering, she turned her attention from Isahn to the road ahead. Kicking her horse into a gallop, she sped away, even overtaking the men in the front.
“I don’t—” Isahn looked over to Hildy, baffled.
Pressing her lips into a thin line, she shook her head in quiet judgment.
“What did I say?”
She tutted at him. “She’ll talk to you when she’s ready.”
They rode in silence. Isahn furrowed his brow, surprised by the uncomfortable pang in his middle.
He hadn’t intended to offend George. Honest to gods, he wasn’t even sure what he’d done wrong.
But why did he care at all? It was the oddest thing.
Somehow, at some point, he’d come to value Georgie’s good opinion of him.