Page 54 of Blood of Wolves

“Ha!” Rune cheered, clasping both her shoulders and squeezing. “You did it!”

“More likeyoudid it.” She tried and failed not to sound bitter about it.

He laughed, and leaned down to press his lips to her cheek – he lingered a little, long enough that the butterflies in her belly fluttered. “Do you think I could draw and shoot properly when I first started?” he whispered, like a secret.

“It honestly wouldn’t surprise me.”

He laughed again – with her, she could tell, and not at her. A low, rich, sweet laugh that prompted her to turn in his arms, bow forgotten against her thigh as she threaded her fingers through the silver cord ties of his leather tunic.

His hands ducked beneath the fall of her cloak to grip her waist, his expression fond, dark eyes bright in the torchlight. “You’ll get it. It just takes practice.”

She didn’t share his confidence, but he smiled so warmly at her that she could only smile back – and stand up on her toes when he leaned down to press his cold lips to hers. A soft kiss, not as unrestrained and heated as the ones they’d shared in the royal apartments, away from the prying eyes of passing guardsmen, but it sent a thrill through her all the same. She wanted to announce their betrothal formally; wanted to confess the truth to Leif, so that she and Rune could be properly together. So they could be married beneath a snow-dusted arbor in the garden, and so that he could touch her more. All those generalized longings were taking firmer shape with every brush of hands or lips, and shewantedhim, more eager than afraid, now.

He lifted a hand to cup her face, bowstring calluses catching at her jaw as he angled her head, and traced her lip with the tip of his tongue.

A horn sounded. Three sharp blasts that echoed off the stone walls of the yard, and of the palace itself.

Rune’s hand tightened on her waist, and they pulled back from one another, breath catching, eyes widening. His look of shock confirmed her fear: the horn was an alarm.

Around them: shouts, and the clank and chime of mail and armor as guards spilled out of the rear door of the palace and made for the stairs that led up to the wall.

Tessa’s heart lurched and stumbled.

“It’s the Sels,” Rune said, breath pluming white between them. “They’re moving.”

~*~

Revna stepped into her boots, drew a heavy robe over her night rail, and dashed from the room.

“Wait,” Bjorn protested, in the act of tugging on yesterday’s trousers, but she didn’t; bolted through the common room and down the hall, loose hair streaming behind her as she made fast for the stairs, swinging up at the tail end of a jogging guard regiment.

Another sequence of horn blasts sounded; she recognized the order to lower the gate, and raise the drawbridge.

The Sels were coming, at last.

She burst through the door at the top of the stairs and out onto the parapet, cold air rushing into her lungs, her pulse throbbing in her ears.

“My lady!”

“My lady!” Startled exclamations from guards as she elbowed her way through them and rushed to the edge of the roof.

“The gate is closing?” she asked, gaze flicking down to check it herself.

“Yes, my lady.”

In the glow of twin iron braziers, she could see the heavy dark panel of the bridge lifting; could hear the rattle of chains as the gate lowered.

“The enemy?”

“Landing, my lady.” A guard stepped up beside her and pointed.

Someone passed her a spyglass, and she lifted it to her eye with shaking hands. It took a long moment, panning back and forth across the blurred darkness of the road, before she glimpsed the pinpricks of light down at the harbor. Through the glass, she could make out the silhouettes of boats full of rowers – and of soldiers, the torches in the bows glinting off plate armor.

She shifted the glass, and saw that ropes and pulleys were lowering a sequence of flat barges down over the sides of the high Selesee ships, stacked with strapped-down wood: siege engines. The broken-down parts that would compose rams, and towers, and trebuchets. She’d heard tales of the Selesee trebuchets…their reach, the precision of their manners’ aim.

The glass slipped, and she lowered it to find that her palms were slick with sweat. She passed it off to a guard and wiped her hands down the front of her robe.

Her heart fluttered in her throat, but her voice came out sure when she said, “Man the scorpions. I want fore and rear archers.”

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