Page 39 of WarBride

“Prepare your soul for hell, Lurodos,” I snarl.

13

ILSEVEL

I stand with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, listening to the rise and fall of voices outside. I cannot understand the words, but I recognize Taar’s voice: strong, clear, and ferocious. He sounds angry. Very angry. This can’t be good.

Worse still, the other voice—the one belonging to Lurodos, I’m quite certain—doesn’t sound angry at all. There’s nothing but triumph and mockery in his tone, like a victory song played over a death-strewn battlefield. My legs shake. I fear I’ll disgrace myself and faint, but somehow manage to lock my knees and stay upright. Was everything that happened last night—every beautiful, terrible, unforgettable, breathless moment—not enough? Am I about to be fed to the beast after all?

Suddenly the tent flap flies back, and Taar storms in. He almost runs into me but stops just in time. His bare torso is mere inches from me, heaving chest directly in my line of view. His breath, panting and hot, warms my brow. Slowly I tip back my head, looking up into his shadowed face. My gaze comes into focus on his mouth, his full, parted lips. I remember the shape of them against mine. I remember the burn of them on my skin.

My throat goes dry. For a few throbbing heartbeats, all thought of fear abandons me in an unexpected, desperate surge of hunger. Hunger forhim.For this stranger. This warlord.My husband.

But though we are separated by no more than a sliver of air, it feels as though some great chasm has opened between us. And he does not reach across it, does not take me in his arms andcrush me to him. Instead he draws back a half-step, leaving me in a little slice of empty space. I shiver—more from need than anything else. But he sees it.

“You’re cold,” he says.

I shake my head. He ignores this, however, and takes me by the arm, his fingers firm through the folds of blanket wrapped around me. He draws me unresisting back to the fire, which has burned low since the night. “Sit,” he says, and I obey. While he sets to work applying kindling and stoking the flames, I watch him in silence. So many little details stand out to me—the gleam of firelight on his black hair, the fine, sharp plains of his cheek, the chiseled cut of his jaw. His hands. Oh, his hands . . . scarred and strong and nimble, and if I look at them one second longer, the heat in my belly is going to bloom into an inferno. Then what will I do? Sink to my knees and beg him to do to me again what he did last night?

But I remember too well what followed those blissful revelations. The shocks and shivers had scarcely abated before he extricated himself from between my legs and turned his back on me. His voice was rough, almost vicious when he stated:“I will not touch you again.”

Gods, I could hate him for that. If I didn’t already, that is.

Pulling the fur blanket a little more tightly around my shoulders, I bite the inside of my cheek then force my chin upright. “Are you going to tell me or aren’t you?”

“Tell you what?” He glances up from his intense focus on the fire.

“What the uproar outside is about.” I clear my throat, determined to make my voice strong and defiant, no trace of a quaver. “Am I to be handed over to Lord Lurodos?”

Taar drops his gaze back to the fire. He doesn’t look at me again for a long time but stirs the low embers and sets the flames dancing. He watches that dance for some moments, breathing inand out through his nostrils. Finally he lifts his head, fixing me with a pair of eyes brimming with secret darkness. “It will not come to that.”

“Oh?” I lean forward, eagerness suddenly jumping in my veins. “So we are safe to leave?”

The way his gaze darts away from mine speaks volumes. To my unspeakable frustration, he does not answer, but gets up and crosses the room to that upright chest in the back. He pours something into a cup, brings it back to the fire, and sets the cup in the coals he’s raked to the edge of the circle. Within a minute, the brew inside begins to bubble. Though I fear he’ll burn his hand, he plucks the cup up again, turns it around, and offers it to me by the handle.

“It is safe,” he says. “The cup is enchanted. The brew is not.”

I sit there, mouth open. Slowly I accept his offering and lift it to my lips. The steam rising to my nostrils is spicy and sweet. I sip, and a bouquet of delightful flavors burst across my tongue, warming my throat, and settling my nervously jumping stomach.

I take another sip and another, all the while watching Taar, who purposefully does not look at me. What am I supposed to make of him? Is this the terrifying warlord who smacked me across the head and hauled me away into captivity? Why should he—this leader of monsters, this barbarian brute—serve me? Maybe it’s part of his people’s custom, the way bridegrooms serve their brides on their wedding nights. But I’m not really his bride. Am I?

My heart skips a beat. For a moment I allow myself to wonder—to hope, to dread?—if he’s about to tell me that he’s decided to keep me. Could that be the secret he’s unwilling to speak? Well, if so, he’d better think again, because I’m not about to be bought, sold, or owned by any man.

That being said . . . could any other man touch me the way he did last night? I don’t think so, can’t even imagine it. Fyndra certainly never described any such wonder, and she was horrifyingly forthright when Father sent her to prepare me for my night with the Shadow King. As for Artoris, my only other so-called lover? Nothing about his touch indicated that he knew or wanted to know anything about my body. About what I liked, about what made me sing. He was only concerned for himself.

But last night, even when he was obviously in some discomfort, Taar had remained solely focused on me. A man like that, a man who proved himself to be unselfish and sensitive, observant and exciting, willing to push me but never to pressure me—such a man might indeed make a fine husband. The kind of husband who inspires a lifetime of devotion.

But what’s this nonsense? Perhaps that blow he struck to my head knocked my brain loose. I’m not seriously going to sit here daydreaming about becoming the wife of my captor! The man who threw me in a cage, who’s responsible for my being in this situation in the first place. And Aurae . . . my sweet sister is still out there. Did she also endure a warbride’s wedding night?

Something tells me hers did not play out as mine did.

A serpent of dread coils in my gut. I set the cup of spiced brew aside and stand. I hardly cut an imposing figure, wrapped up in this fur blanket as I am, but I draw myself up straight and demand in the most imperious voice I can summon: “All right, warlord. No more deflection. Tell me what is going on. I have a right to know what my future is to be.”

Instead of answering, Taar leaves me by the fire and crosses again to the opposite side of the pavilion. I see a pile of armor and weaponry which had escaped my notice before. His, apparently, for he begins to strap on his pauldrons, his belt, his sword. Only then does he turn to me at last and meet my gaze. His face is hard and stern.

“I am to face Lord Lurodos within the hour,” he says. “To claim your life, I must fight and kill him. That, or I will die by his hand.”

All heat seems to drain from my body. The fire might as well be radiating frost. I clutch my blanket tighter. “A deathmatch?”

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