Page 42 of The Queen and the Half-blood
“Sorry for keeping you waiting,” she greeted Lara breathlessly. “As soon as the ritual was done, I—”
“Don’t worry about that.” Lara waved her apology away. “You went in the end then?”
“Aye.” The blush upon Mirren’s cheeks deepened. “You were right … it’s quite an experience.”
“And Torran … he was respectful?”
Mirren nodded, hurrying past her to start preparations so her queen could retire to the furs. Swiveling on her chair, Lara noted how flighty she was, how she deliberately avoided her eye as she poured water into an earthen bowl and fetched a drying sheet.
“So, you’re more comfortable around him now?” Lara pressed.
Mirren cast her a sidelong glance. “I suppose so,” she answered, wary now. There was a skittishness in her gaze that warned Lara she should leave this be, but she couldn’t. Part of her wanted to know if it was possible to heal a deep distrust of men.
“And if he shows interest in other ways … will you encourage him?”
Her handmaid’s face stiffened. She turned away then, busying herself in folding some washing that Florie had brought up from the laundry earlier. “Probably not,” she said huskily, the excitement she’d entered the alcove with fading like a doused candle. “He’s an enforcer, after all … and I won’t let one of them near me … ever again.”
Lara watched the rigid line of her handmaid’s back as she worked, her movements jerky. She was upset now. “Apologies, Mirren,” she said softly. “I shouldn’t have asked you that.”
“It’s fine.” Mirren still didn’t look her way.
No, clearly, it wasn’t.
“I guess I hoped that if you could let the past go, so could I,” Lara whispered.
Mirren stilled then before glancing over her shoulder. Their gazes met and held, and as the moments slid by, her handmaid’s blue eyes widened, understanding dawning.
“Aye,” Lara added. “I know what it’s like to dread a man’s touch.”
16: UNWORTHY
HALTING AT THE top of the last hill before Duncrag, Alar swept his gaze over the vast fort that he’d soon co-rule.
A slow smile curved his lips.
“Gloating?”
He glanced over his shoulder at where Dolph had stepped close. The Sweeper buffeted them, ruffling the plush fawn-colored fur that covered Dolph’s head and neck, and making Alar’s thick cloak billow and snap around him. The wind had followed them all the way south for days now, and today, it pushed fat clouds across a leached-out blue sky above.
“Aye,” he admitted. “Aren’t you?”
“Of course. This is the next step … and we’re ready for it. Ready to take our rightful place.”
“So, you have taken the High Queen at her word?” Lyall moved up next to Dolph. The huge wulver loomed over them both. “We’d better not be walking into a trap.”
“I can make no such promises.”
Neither wulver replied to this, although both their amber gazes glinted.
“Lara mac Talorc isn’t her father,” he went on. “But she hasn’t proved herself to us … or me.”
Turning, he surveyed the long column of wulvers, all of them on foot, that stretched up the highway. Wulvers didn’t travel onhorseback, and so the journey had taken several days. Of course, Duncrag scouts had already marked their passage south.
Lara would be waiting for him.
And as he’d promised, his arrival was one turn of the moon after Doure. Gateway was half a turn away, and autumn was sliding toward winter.
“Come.” He swiveled on his heel once more and started off down the final slope. Ahead, lay the sparkling waters of the River Lethe, spanned by a wooden bridge.“Let’s prepare ourselves for a warm Duncrag welcome.”
