“But Caelum said -”
“What in curses’ sakes can Caelum do once we are married?”
She was silent, thinking.
Zared held her as close as he could, rocking her gently back and forth. “Be my wife, Leagh. Be courageous enough to be my wife.”
Leagh’s head was swimming with conflicting ideas and emotions. Zared, so close, so warm, offering her what she so desperately wanted. But she was Leagh, Princess of the West, and she couldn’t just run off with a man her overlord had expressly forbidden her to marry. And what would Askam say? What would Askam do? Would she ever see Carlon again? Was Zared worth being totally ostracised from elite Tencendorian society – for Leagh had no doubt that was what would happen.
And then she was overcome with remorse for thinking that. Here was the man who loved her, and she him. He would only ever be her true chance for happiness, and she was worried about her social standing?
But how deeply would she hurt Askam? And what would Caelum do?
“Sweetheart.” Zared kissed her cheek, her ear, her neck. “What say you? Will you come back to Severin with me, will you be my wife?”
He didn’t give her a chance to answer, but kissed her again, moulding her body to his.
It was too much. Leagh just didn’t have the courage to say no.
“Yes?” Zared asked, and she simply nodded her head, her eyes swimming with tears, both for love of Zared, and fear of what her actions would do to Askam.
He smiled, and Leagh frowned slightly, thinking it an odd expression, almost one of triumph.
He shifted slightly, and Leagh realised he was pulling her back into the canvas-covered rock shelter.
“No,” she said, and she truly meant it.
“What does a week or two matter, my love?” he asked, his strength too much for her. “The public notary in Severin can marry us soon enough, and I can assure you there will be no physical inspection of the goods beforehand.”
Leagh blushed a deep red. “No.”
And yet now here they were, deep within the shelter, and Zared had pulled the flap to, shutting them into an almost total darkness.
“Don’t rush me -” she started, but he laughed softly.
“Rush? Why rush? We have a long autumn night ahead of us, my love, and I am in no mood to rush.”
His fingers were at her throat, and suddenly her cloak fell away, and then his hands, his insistent, strong hands, had pushed her jacket over her shoulders and halfway down her arms.
Then he stopped and Leagh, her arms trapped, could do nothing as he unbuttoned her linen shirt and ran his hands and then his lips over her bared breasts.
She considered screaming – but was deeply embarrassed at the thought of what the men who answered her scream would find.
“No,” she said yet again, but her voice was weakened with indecision, and he heard it.
He laughed again, low, and held her to him, running his mouth from her breast to her throat and then to her own mouth. His hands finally jerked off her jacket and shirt, and then she was somehow lying on her back amid the blankets and he was a dark shape and weight above her.
He murmured in her ear, sweet words that meant nothing but nevertheless relaxed her, and she lifted her hips of her own accord when he pulled at the waistband of her breeches, and let him slide them off.
“You are so beautiful, Leagh,” he whispered, “so precious.”
And she closed her eyes and wrapped her arms about him, and like the peasant woman she had always dreamed of being, she let the man she loved enter her body and love her. If there was a child from this, she thought, then so be it, and Askam and Caelum must accept it.
Then there was no more space for coherent thought, and she cried out, and clutched at his back, and hoped that the night would never end.
It was dawn when he finally let her drift off to sleep. But Zared stayed wakeful, holding her against him, still running an exploratory hand over her body, marvelling at his love for her.
Yet there was more to it than that, and Zared was honest enough to admit it. It was not just Leagh he had seduced that night, but the West. It was not just Leagh’s body he had invaded, but Askam’s lands of the West.
His hand stilled, and he smiled into the faint light filtering past the canvas flap. Whatever Askam and Caelum might do to him, there was nothing they could do to undo last night.
“Is it done?” Herme asked when Zared emerged.
Zared nodded, and Herme grunted, relieved. “What will she do when she finds out?”
Zared’s hands stilled in the act of buckling his weapons belt. “There is nothing she can do, Herme. Not now.”
There was a movement, and Leagh emerged. She blushed faintly and dropped her eyes when she saw Herme, and he turned away to give her privacy.
They rode south that morning, but some eight leagues above Jervois Landing they swung due west.
Leagh found it hard to believe what she had done -she knew that had she been given an hour alone to consider Zared’s request she would have refused. After all, she couldn’t submit to her dreams at the expense of her duty… but that was exactly what she had done.
Gods! What had she done? She loved Zared, she truly did, but Leagh was also very much afraid of the consequences of her seduction.
And what were Herme and Theod doing riding with Zared? That thought was too frightening to think through to its natural conclusion, so Leagh left it well enough alone.
I won’t lie with him again, she said to herself. I won’t. I will find a way to slip away… and if there is no child, then last night can be forgotten…
But there was no chance to slip away, and when that night Zared again drew her down to the ground, she submitted meekly enough.
And so again the next night, and by then, Leagh knew she was committed to Zared. She had no choice. By that stage there were some three dozen tongues of the escort willing to testify that Leagh was a maiden no longer, and that it was Zared, Prince of the North, who had so possessed her.
On their fourth day from Hsingard they splashed their horses across the wide and shallow upper reaches of the River Azle, riding towards a small valley to the northeast.
Leagh was daydreaming, wondering what Zared’s palace in Severin would be like, when she was suddenly snapped out of her reverie by a glint of steel in the distance.
And again.
“Zared -” she began.
But he silenced her with a raised hand. “It is safe, Leagh. Those are my men.”
“An escort to see us back to Severin? Do we part with Herme and Theod here?”
He spurred his horse forward and did not answer.
Angry, Leagh urged her own mount after him, but as they drew closer she drew rein, aghast.
True, the standard that many of the men wore was Zared’s… but there was a unit of Herme’s, and there one of Theod’s. And there, more of Herme’s men!
What was happening? Why were Herme’s and Theod’s men waiting so neatly arrayed in battle gear with Zared’s troops?
“Oh no,” she whispered, and then Zared rejoined her.
“Leagh… Leagh, we will not be riding for Severin after all. There is some… business that we must attend in the south.”
“Where?” she asked, her eyes bright, her hands clenched into fists about her reins.
Zared thought about not telling her, then decided it wouldn’t matter. She would have no chance to… no chance to escape.
“Kastaleon.”
Impatient love For a ‘t east t( areas or a week Drago and Zenith moved slowly southeast towards Minstrelsea. They kept to uninhabited and rarely trodden pathways, and Zenith cloaked them as best she could with enchantments from curious eyes.
Even so, she could not understand why farflight scouts had not spotted them. Whether it was Niah, or some sickness battling within her, Zenith found that the cloaking enchantments had abnormally taxed her strength – and even then, the enchantments were weak.
Zenith glanced at the sack in Drago’s arms.
Whatever their luck at evading capture so far, Zenith and Drago both believed they ran only on borrowed time. Scouts would spot them, a peasant on his way to market would stop and ask them their business, or WolfStar would finally arrive to claim his bride.
Both hoped they could still escape.
Drago managed to snare a rabbit the evening before they approached the ferry that crossed the Nordra above the site where once had stood the village of Smyrton. It had been days since they’d eaten, and even though Zenith produced a fire with her Enchanter powers, they gobbled down the meat half-raw, burning fingers and mouths.