Page 9 of Blood and Fate

She dropped her head, the fight gone. She was exhausted from the evening. Too many people, too many emotions, too many mysterious men who could read her mind.

“I’m tired, Henrik. Please, please go?” She absolutely hated the quiver, the fear, the pleading in her voice.

He lifted her chin. “I could make you forget your exhaustion.”

A tear slipped from her eye. “Please.”

He swiped slowly at it with his thumb, considering her. “Very well.”

She let out a breath of relief before she could catch herself. It was no use, anyway. Henrik knew exactly the effect he had on her. It was part of why he delighted in keeping company with her.

“But first...”

He tilted her chin up further, his other hand slipping behind her back, low. Her thin dressing gown provided barely any barrier to his touch. He pulled her close until she was pressed against him and dipped his head, placing a kiss on her mouth.

No fight—she had none left. She allowed him to kiss her. He ran his tongue over the seam of her lips, parting them, deepening the kiss. She squeezed her eyes shut until it was over.

He released her, stepping away. “Goodnight, Satori.”

She sensed his retreat but didn’t open her eyes for a long time, waiting until she knew he was gone. When she did open them and found herself alone, her stomach rolled. She raced inside, barely making it to the chamber pot before being sick.

CHAPTER FOUR

KAIS

He sat, elbow resting on the desk, index finger sliding back and forth across his bottom lip with his eyes fixed on a spot on the floor across his tent. Pages of documents lay spread across his desk, forms on rationing provisions, others on the predicted weather patterns for the coming winter. When you were in charge of an army of men, their lives were in your hands. Somehow Kais had to get all his men through to the other side, alive, warm, and with full stomachs.

That was what he should have been doing. Instead he sat, his mind far away in a castle with a brown eyed, golden haired Princess. If there was a worse person for his mind to fixate on, he didn’t know. What he did know was that there was something clearly different about her.

Kais was no stranger to women. He was a thirty year old soldier—he’d been around. But never, in all his years, had he experienced what he did when he walked into that Hall. An immediate sense of being dipped into light. He huffed and rolled his eyes at the comparison, but there was no other way that he could put it. He had felt her eyes on him. Felt them. Like a brush of fingers against skin.

And then, when he had discovered the source, and followed her outside . . . His mind boggled. He knew what that woman was feeling, just as real as he knew his own emotions. Anger, unease, mistrust, fear, all of it, as though it was written across her forehead. And as she had walked away, it was as though some invisible cord had snapped out and caught her, tethering her to him. He had known as soon as she had come back inside because the cord had gone taut.

“Sir?”

Kais’ eyes snapped to Teague. From the way the other man had spoken, it was clear that it hadn’t been the first time.

“What?”

“The men are restless. They want to leave at dawn. They don’t trust the king.”

Kais stood. “No, neither do I. Tell them to start packing what they can tonight. We’ll finish in the morning and clear out by first light.”

Teague nodded. Then his body relaxed, switching effortlessly from soldier to friend and counselor. “How do you think it went?”

Kais began unbuckling the leather gauntlet from his wrist and forearm. “I think it was a waste of time. I think all they wanted was to see us, to gauge our men and numbers.” He dropped a brace on the desk in front of him and moved to the other arm. “Did anyone show up while we were gone?”

Teague made himself at home, moving to the small liquor table Kais had just inside the door.

“Yeah,” he spoke as he held up a bottle, a question in his eyes.

Kais nodded as he dropped the other brace on the desk and moved around in front of it.

Teague continued, “Levin said some soldiers were sneaking around the perimeter. No one said or did anything threatening. He was pretty sure they were just counting.”

Kais took the glass that Teague offered him and sipped, savoring the burn of the liquid down his throat.

“Good thing we left so many behind.” Teague sipped his own glass.

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