Page 44 of Rogue Elves of Ardani

Vaara nudged her shoulder. “Crow?”

She didn’t move. Snowflakes gathered on her hair and melted on her skin.

Pain was shooting through his shoulder. Wincing, he searched her pockets until he found a tiny bottle. He uncorked it, sniffed it, and poured its remaining contents on the wound, then leaned back on his heels and waited for it to take effect. The blade hadn’t cut too deep. It would be sore for a time, but with the help of the wound sealer, he’d be in working order again soon.

Suddenly his entire body ached, from overexertion and from cold and from his various wounds.

He looked around the empty clearing and cursed under his breath. They were both going to freeze. They needed to get out of the snow.

He looked back at the row of tents and played back the fights in his head, counting. Nine tents. Seven bandits. The other two still hadn’t shown up. That meant they could still come back and find him. All the bodies would attract carnivorous beasts, as well. They needed to leave this place.

He trudged through the snow to the tents as fast as he was able. His legs suddenly felt leaden. The farther he went from Crow, the more the binding nagged at him to go back and get her.

I’m going to go back, damn it, he thought at the binding.Just wait, will you?

He retrieved Crow’s pack and hurried back to the clearing, where he found her exactly where he’d left her and in no worse condition, despite the binding’s concern.

For once, he was free to study her without her studying him back. Lying motionless in the snow, she looked small and vulnerable.

He crouched beside her, moving a lock of damp hair from her face. And, suddenly wanting to know what her skin felt like for reasons he refused to examine, he let his fingers linger against her cheek.

He frowned. Her skin was like ice. As was his own.

The knife she’d stabbed Garros with was still in her hand. He gently took it from her and wiped the blood clean in the snow, then tucked it back into the sheath on her belt.

He put both straps of the pack over his good shoulder. Then he picked up Crow and put her over the same shoulder. It still hurt his injured side, anyway. “Goddess, how can someone so small be so heavy?” he muttered. She didn’t answer.

He took an extra moment to kick Garros’s unmoving body on his way past.

“Some interesting friends you have,” he muttered to Crow. “Are all your associates this charming?” He wondered if he should count himself as one of her associates.

The snow on the ground was halfway to his knees by then and it was still coming down. He scanned the trees unhappily. It was an endless field of identical pillars of white.

He walked until his feet were numb and he was stumbling too often to go on—which didn’t take very long. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get back up if he fell.

So he stopped, standing in the still-falling snow in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, with no fire and no shelter, and an unconscious woman on his shoulder.

It was beginning to hit him that the situation had suddenly gotten very dire.

Maybe he should have taken his chances at the camp. He knew how to fight other people, but he couldn’t fight the weather.

“Crow?” he said hopefully. She didn’t respond. The temperature must have been even worse for her than it was for him. Non-Varai weren’t accustomed to the cold of night.

He spotted a patch of dry ground. A fallen tree had formed a sort of cave with a roof of snow and pine branches.

He lowered Crow to the ground and then dug through the pack, pulling out all the blankets and cloaks he could find—including the enchanted one that could heat itself. To his relief, it still had some magic left in it.

He made the best bed he could in the narrow space beneath the branches, pulled Crow onto it, then crawled in beside her and wrapped his arms around her, pulling the pile of fabric over the top of them. For a long minute, he still felt no warmer.

He shivered and pulled her closer. Slowly her warmth began to sink into him. The heat from the enchanted cloak gently enveloped them.

As the cold grew less intense and distracting, he began to think about other sensations he was feeling. Like the softness of her chest, which was just touching his wrists as he held her hands. Or the enticing curve of her ass as it pressed into his groin.

There was an annoying but predictable twinge of interest from his nether regions. He wondered how offended she would be if he was hard when she woke up.

What would she do if she did take offense to something he did? She’d done very little to punish him so far, even when he’d made her angry. Perhaps she’d do nothing.

It had been a very long time since he’d held someone like this. Much longer than just the past year. And since he’d come to Ardani, no one had touched him except to strike him or drag him somewhere. There had been no respite. No soft give of a trusting body or warmth of relaxed muscles against his. No gentleness of someone considering his comfort. No hint of kindness or mercy. Until she had arrived.

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