Chapter 3 #2
When he didn’t say anything more, I made to move around him, needing to retrieve my dagger so I could complete the task. The fingers that’d held my hair snapped around my forearm, just above my wrist, which was still bruised from the Koerlyn’s restraints.
What could he possibly want?
Staring at the ground to hide my discomfort, I said, “We both agree the knots need to go. If you’ll release me, I’ll get my dagger and take care of it.”
His hold remained, and it occurred to me he might have stopped me to punish me. I’d thrown my dagger at the Princeps of Fourth Territory, and he had yet to do anything other than touch my hair.
“The knots do need to go, but not with your dagger.”
He couldn’t possibly mean he would do it. “Like I said, I’ll take care of it,” I affirmed, not wanting his help and doubting he intended to give any. Perhaps he wished to teach me a lesson.
He confirmed my fears when he gruffly ordered, “No. Come with me.”
With his grip on my forearm, I had no choice but to follow. He didn’t release me as we came to the outskirts of the camp, nor as we wove through it. Harthon received respectful nods from every person we passed, while I kept my chin high, unwilling to let anyone think Harthon was carting me around.
No. I was the magvis, and I was following him by choice.
As if that were remotely true.
We passed North, who was seated with a group of men sharing stories by a fire.
The bearded goliath glowered at me, hatred stark in his gray eyes, dancing with flames.
Fortunately, we continued on, Harthon only slowing once his horse came into view.
Tied to a tree, the massive animal stood beside a sleeping mat, a wide, empty berth around the bedding.
Had Harthon not set up his tent?
His hand finally left my arm, and he gestured to the mat. “Sit.”
It was his bed, then. He was Princeps, yet he hadn’t had his tent erected, nor was he using the cushioned mattress and luxurious furs that came with it. Instead, he slept like the rest of his men: on a thin mat on the hard ground, exposed to the elements.
I cautiously sat on the padding and watched as he rummaged through his saddlebag, knowing my immediate fate was tied to whatever he found there.
He removed a vial of shadowed liquid, not a dagger to cut my hair.
Then he grabbed his horse’s reins and led him around me.
The result was some semblance of privacy, the stallion and tree trunk shielding us from the rest of the camp.
Confusion ratcheted my unease as he came behind me and kneeled in the dirt. If you were an enemy, Harthon was not a man you wanted at your back. We weren’t necessarily enemies, but we also weren’t…what we were before.
Whatever that was.
When I heard the cork pop from the vial, I could no longer stifle my anxiety. Quietly, I asked, “What are you doing?”
He poured some of the vial’s contents into his hands and rubbed it between them. “Face forward,” was his curt reply.
“If you’re planning to smother me, I’d like to see it coming.”
“It would make no difference whether you saw it coming or not. Now face forward.”
Ass.
Considering I’d just thrown a blade at him, name-calling wasn’t wise, so I faced the tree with stiff muscles as I waited for him to act. When he did, it wasn’t at all what I was expecting.
My scalp prickled as his hands landed on my hair and messily parted it into two clumps.
I closed my eyes, remembering his rough touch with the mud.
But rather than yanking, his fingers slowly wrapped around the end of each bundle and carefully tugged downward, smearing them with whatever coated his palms. He repeated the motion, sending a tingling sensation over my scalp.
Then he brought his hands higher, flattening them over the roots of my hair before sliding all the way down.
A scent reached me, a grassy, bitter aroma that was unfamiliar.
Palms were replaced by fingers that separated small bunches of hair from the mass. His fingers began to comb, starting at the bottom and working their way up, gently separating the intertwined strands as if my hair would break at the slightest pull.
The shivers in my scalp spread, washing down my entire body in an unsettling rush that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. It wasn’t unpleasant at all, actually.
“What are you doing?” I asked again. My whisper was shaky, though I thought I knew the answer.
He was combing my hair with the attentiveness of a new mother, kneeling on the hard, cold dirt while I sat on his cushioned bed at his request.
It…it didn’t make any sense.
His fingertips reached a knot, where they patiently worked.
“Oil makes it easier to remove the knots,” he answered, as if that was sufficient to explain why he was bothering to do this for me.
The knot came apart, and he combed his fingers through the section.
When they didn’t snare, he gathered more strands and repeated the process.
It should have been painful, him untangling my nest of hair. Instead, I found myself fighting a moan, frazzled by a blend of pleasure and bewilderment. But I shouldn’t be accepting pleasure at his hands, not after they’d caused this problem in the first place.
“There wouldn’t be knots if you’d allowed me to put the mud on myself.”
His methodical work continued around his blunt reply. “If I’d allowed you to put the mud on yourself, we may have missed our window.”
“It would have only taken seconds.”
“In situations of life and death, seconds matter.”
Perhaps they did, but his actions had still been brutish.
Knowing he wouldn’t care, I didn’t respond, trying to remember my anger toward him instead.
It was hard to do when he was being so unnecessarily gentle as he fixed my hair—something I never imagined possible, given he was a warrior, not a chambermaid.
“Do you do this to your own hair after battle?” I asked.
“If it’s necessary.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just cut it short?”
“It would,” he confirmed. He ran his fingers through the final section on the right side and began to work on the left.
“Why wear it long, then?” Harthon’s actions were led by strategy. There had to be some advantage to the long hair.
“Ease is not the only reason to do something.”
The cryptic reply was a reminder of how he’d hidden his and his father’s roles in the death of my parents. I’d figured that after discovering that truth, there were no more terrible secrets for him to hold. Yet he continued to be tight-lipped, here and now.
“Whatever you’re hiding can’t be worse than what you hid from me before.”
His fingers stilled. When he spoke, it was in a tone thick with caution. “Are you so certain?”
“For someone who wants me to support his cause, you’re making an awfully unconvincing case.”
“You’re speaking as if you have a choice about whether or not you’ll help me.”
So we were back to where we started all those weeks ago, when he first took me from Koerlyn. Well, if he wanted to be an ass, I could be one too. “And you’re speaking as if you know where the path is yourself. I could easily lead you astray.”
I jolted as a hot, oil-slick hand snaked around my throat, fingertips reaching up to my jaw. He didn’t constrict my air, but he could in a heartbeat. As it was, his hold was tight enough that he could undoubtedly feel every panicked flutter of my pulse.
Applying a touch of pressure to my jaw, he forced my head back. His eyes were turbulent, the chaos of the battlefield contained within them. It was that sight, not his grip, that made me lose my breath. The apple in my throat bobbed against his palm as he slowly enunciated, “You forget who I am.”
The Princeps of Fourth Territory.
The former mercenary who killed his way into power.
The warrior who ripped souls from bodies in the span of a mere blink.
That’s what he wanted to remind me of.
So I said, “You are the man I have chosen to lead into the Domus. A leader who actually cares for his people, who wishes to end their suffering, and who may very well be the savior of this world. A ruler who I have decided to help.”
At that, the emotions contained in those gold-flecked irises only seemed to grow wilder. Perhaps the sight, or my very precarious position, should have stopped me from saying what I said next.
It didn’t.
“But you are also being a bullheaded ass. I am no traitor. I accessed that knowledge in my mind, escaped Koerlyn, and fought that terrible river to come back to you, despite your secrets. Despite how you hid the fact that your father’s men killed my parents while you were there.
” And then kissed me and held me like I mattered.
“Despite the fact that you have been nothing but terrible to me since I’ve returned.
Say what you will, act like I am some evil, traitorous prisoner, but I am helping you by choice. ”
The kernel of warmth beneath my ribs jumped, as if sharing its enthusiasm for my statement.
With a tired voice, I added, “Though you are making that choice harder and harder with every passing hour.”
Harthon’s nostrils flared, his fingertips flexing ever so slightly on my jaw.
He was completely unreadable, his thoughts carefully contained behind a rugged face that regarded me with intensity for more than a few breaths.
Then that focus slid to my lips, which parted in invitation before I could even think about why they shouldn’t.
One shallow breath passed. Then two. Logic charged to the surface.
My mouth snapped shut, and he abruptly released me from the hold of both his eyes and hand.
The sounds of camp rushed back in as I stared at the tree trunk, Harthon at my back, my thoughts scattered.
I was about to rise when his fingers threaded through my hair once more.
As if I hadn’t just called him a bullheaded ass, he picked up where he left off, delicately separating the knots with a deceptive amount of care until there wasn’t a single tangle left.