Evermine: Daughters of Askara, Book 2 Page 16

  He turned his back on the door and the female behind it.

  The tub mocked him from its silent corner. Grooves in the shapes of Emma’s fingers crushed his heart. Last night, he’d said he loved her. Since males had no right to claim a mate, his admission was as close to claiming her as he would ever get. Sure, he could tell her she was his, but until she said he was hers, they had no bond and weren’t considered mates. From the darkest corner of his mind, where he stored his worst fears, doubt slinked from his mental box.

  Fool. You had to let your guard down. Had to give her everything she asked. You bared your soul and your skin. Now she knows you’re ruined.

  “She loves me,” Harper whispered loud enough to drown the voice. “It’s enough.”

  See how well “enough” warms your bed once she’s gone. Maybe if you’re a good boy, she’ll reward you. Harper squeezed his eyes shut. Females do that. Take what they want and make you feel fortunate for having been the one to give it to them. At least you enjoyed it. Eliya…

  “No.” He stuffed the voice back in the box and sealed the lid tight. “Their names don’t belong in the same sentence.” Emma deserved time to decide. He wouldn’t push. Not now.

  Once, she had jumped realms to escape him. Would she jump back? Would he follow if she did? Go home and face his brother, her sister, as the same broken male who leapt at the chance to found a colony on a world he loathed in the hopes of glimpsing the female he loved? Wasted hope scraped his wounds raw. When would he accept theirs was not a happy ending?

  Was there such a thing as horse-sickness? As our mare raced across the dunes, her pounding strides jarring my empty stomach, I decided there must be and that I had it. I clung to Harper closer than his glamour-encased wings. My knees notched behind his, and my fingers were numb from linking around his waist. I buried my face in his shirt and tried not to get sick.

  By the time she ran out of steam, I was the one left panting. Then I realized Harper, and not the mare, had decided our mad dash was done. I didn’t wait for him to dismount or offer me help. I slid from the horse, staggering as sand nursed my shoes, trying to suck them from my feet.

  I patted the mare’s flank. Now that I’d survived my second attempt at riding on the back of a horse, I concluded Roland had used his influence to keep me calm and free of motion sickness.

  Turning with great care, I located Aldrich and the sled. His horse kept its head down. Maybe it was asleep? If so, that was the one I wanted from now on. Come to Emma, nice horsey.

  Aldrich occupied the sled’s bench seat. His horse and ours were the only spots of color amid a sea of sameness. He fixed me with his cold stare. “You took your time in getting here.”

  I scowled at him.

  “We’re here now,” Harper said from two steps behind me.

  Roland’s letter burned a hole in my pocket. I had a missing queen—sister—to find, and Harper…the look he gave me when I failed to answer him carved my heart out with a spoon. He hadn’t spoken to me since we left. Plus, I hadn’t eaten. And I was jonesing for a morning pick-me-up. If this were Earth, the old Emma would have a counter lined with coffeepots and a mug at the ready. Some days were meant to be trials. This was not the day for him to test my patience.

  “I’d like to preserve the sanctity of the safe house if at all possible.” I kept my tone cool, civil. I’d made my peace with losing it if I had to. “It takes time to leave the city undetected.”

  Aldrich glanced between us with a smirk. “I’m sure it does.”

  If I’d doubted Aldrich held carnal knowledge, he’d settled that score. His eyes gleamed with a hungry spark. I wondered if he thought Harper would share. My gut turned at the thought.

  “Did you have any trouble?” The fact Harper spoke to the priest and not me, chafed.

  “No.”

  They carried on as if I wasn’t there.

  “Once the little healer saw your friend, she asked no questions. He was carried upstairs and given a room we shared until this morning.”

  “And the supplies?” Harper asked.

  “I have more than enough.” Aldrich finally turned toward me. “Your healer knows her way. She was very generous with her medicines and saved me much time in preparing my own.”

  Pride swelled my chest. “She’s a treasure. I’m lucky I found her. Luckier she stays.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. You are. She could do much better.”

  “Thanks for that.” Muttering, I bypassed him and checked the sled.

  Food, water and clothing were stacked to one side. Jars from Isabeau’s room lined the other. With these supplies, we could last days instead of the hours we required to reach the colony. She’d also packed a blanket I cursed to recognize. I’d knitted it months earlier and kept it at the foot of my bed. It was a study in reds. Carmine worked upward through the spectrum and into crimson. Rubbing my palms down my face, I knew both males would guess my inspiration.

  Hoping to keep Harper from a similar inspection, I squinted at the sun. “We’re burning light.”

  “It’s not far.” He directed the comment to the sand at my feet.

  “If daylight doesn’t matter, then why couldn’t I get that extra hour this morning?” If we’d stayed in bed and put his fingers to good use, I doubted we’d be avoiding one another now.

  “It won’t take long to get there. Getting there isn’t the problem. It’s getting in that will be difficult.” His gaze rose to navel height. “Roland won’t take kindly to losing his mentor, my endorsement and his newest toy all at once. He will have sent word to guard the borders.”

  When his focus hit chest level, it snagged. I could have smiled if I weren’t ready to pull my hair out by the roots. Dillon had been right. I didn’t need his help. I didn’t need anyone’s help to hurt Harper. I did a bang-up job of it all by myself.

  “We’ll need light for our own surveillance.”

  “So that’s the plan?” I hadn’t put much thought into one. “We scout as we go?”

  Now his gaze met mine. “Do you have a better one?”

  “What about Aldrich?” What would he contribute? “Can’t he shield us like before?”

  “Magic requires a price.” Aldrich’s voice crackled as he twisted to face me. “You might ask me if I’m willing to pay it.” His interest in me cooled. “And I might say I won’t have to.”

  “How do you figure that?” His knowing something we didn’t worried me.

  “Never you mind.” Smug satisfaction dripped from his words. “I have my ways. Yes?”

  I’m sure he did.

  “Load up, Emma.” While I’d been speaking with Aldrich, Harper had mounted his horse. I stepped in his direction, but the mare danced out of reach, and I understood I was unwelcome.

  “Move over, Aldrich.” I’d done well enough driving the sled the day before. I chalked it up to what I’d heard humans say about carsickness—that being behind the wheel helped. I’d always told myself that meant it was a control issue. Hauling myself into the driver’s seat, I decided I didn’t care for the comparison. Not when it could be directly applied to me.

  The reins no longer bothered me. Leather across my palm began to feel…comforting.

  Without encouragement from me, my horse ambled on. I knew I’d liked him for a reason.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Aldrich hummed for hours, varying his pitch until my eardrums vibrated with constant, pulsating sound. My mouth ached from clenching my jaw so my teeth would stop rattling. When I began imagining words interspersed in the droning noise, I diagnosed myself with sun sickness.

  It sounded better than driven to insanity in a single morning by Aldrich the Annoying.

  “We’re near.”

  Several seconds passed until the ringing in my ears abated. “What did you say?”

  “We’re near.” No further elaboration. He worked at folding back his robe’s sleeve.

  “How do you do that?” I asked. “Know when we’re nearing a city?”
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  “Magic is in the blood. It calls to me.” Metal glinted in his hand, a dagger of some kind.

  Before my muscles tensed or the threat fully registered, he had turned the blade on himself, slicing open his arm. Skin flayed, and my stomach juddered. Thank God it was empty.

  “Stop here.”

  I did as he asked, and he spider-crawled onto the sand. He squeezed his cut as easily as I might juice an orange. Blood ran, and he used it to scrawl a clumping pattern in a circle around him. Had he just made an offering of some kind? Was that what he’d meant about there being a price? Whatever happened to him not having to pay it?

  “Well?” Leaning over, I gained a better view, if not understanding, of his bizarre ritual.

  Tense moments passed while he pressed his ear to the ground and waited. Minutes later, he cackled and turned his mouth into the sand. Then he belly laughed until dust clotted his eyes where tears formed. He patted the spot where he knelt fondly, then scattered his circle and rose.

  I stared, unsure of much other than Aldrich was a few straws short of a hay load.

  When he climbed beside me and sank into another of his chanting meditations, I groaned.

  Out of boredom, I began toe-tapping. Aldrich glared at my foot, and I smiled. It served him right for humming me into insanity earlier. Besides, Harper hadn’t returned, and I was antsy.

  I tightened my grip on the reins, tempted to crack them. He was fine. Just because I couldn’t see him didn’t mean there was a problem. It meant he’d scouted ahead, that’s all.

  “He’s ahead, just there.” Aldrich pointed. I cast him a questioning glance. “She told me so.”

  “She did?” I frowned. “Who is she?”

  “I am one of Zaniah’s most faithful servants.” He bowed his head. “I ask, she answers.”

  “Ah.” I began to wonder if his deck had ever been fully stacked. He spoke to his goddess through blood and dirt? I stared at the sand, unnerved by its shifting. And she answered?

  “Nonbeliever,” he accused. “I’ve heard you call on another, a God, for help. Has he answered you? My goddess is benevolent. Is your god as kind? Where did you learn of him?”

  “I’m not going to be dragged into a philosophical debate about whose deity reigns supreme.” I’d grown up one of Zaniah’s faithful. When she turned her back on me, I returned the favor tenfold. Besides, I couldn’t explain to Aldrich that calling on God, for me, was more of a habit picked up from my time on Earth than a serious dedication of faith. He would be appalled.

  “Your faith is easily swayed.” He folded his arms and tucked his hands into his robe.

  “You have to have faith in order for it to be shaken,” I shot back.

  He grunted. “You believe in him.”

  The him in question needed no explanation. “I do.”

  “You don’t find such faith misplaced? In Rihos, Roland offered Harper his freedom and yours in exchange for exclusive mining rights. He refused. He placed his people’s needs above his own. I respected his decision. Two lives in exchange for dozens. I see logic in that.”

  Harper had told me what Roland wanted from him. As to the rest, I’d surmised as much. I had limited use as Nesvia’s half-sister, but no real leverage because she was the queen, sovereign, while I was the ex-slave sibling she’d recently embraced. Even my station as consul gave me no real value. It humbled me to admit I was replaceable…to everyone but Harper. “If it meant safeguarding his colony, and their sole means of support, then I was a fair sacrifice.”

  “I thought so too.” He sat back and appraised me. “Yet the second I freed him, his resolve shattered. In spite of his earlier decision, he saved you. He would have damned us all for you.”

  My heart crackled at the sentiment. He had come for me even after I had failed him.

  And I’d vowed I wouldn’t fail him again. I sighed with disgust. I already had, hadn’t I?

  Once we were safe, I would atone for my earlier blunder and make our bond permanent.

  “His devotion to you is far more dangerous than what my goddess requires of me.”

  I shot him an incredulous look. “I’ve never asked him to open a vein for me.”

  “Bloodshed is bloodshed.” His eyes narrowed. “He started a revolution…for you.”

  I sat in stunned silence for a moment. “I’ve never thought of it that way.”

  He had killed the reigning queen’s consort, wiping out Eliya’s military backing and clearing the way for Rideal to hand Nesvia the throne on a silver platter. “It wasn’t just for me.” He’d spun the argument in his hands. Now, instead of my belief being suspect, Harper was the one with devotional issues? “Maddie was a consideration. And the whole tradition—was wrong.”

  “You believe it’s wrong because he told you so. Yes? Would you have thought so otherwise? Who is to say he wasn’t wrong for placing your value above centuries of tradition?”

  “You can’t sit there and defend your position to me. You scar innocent females—”

  “Some would say I beautify them—”

  “You rape them. Take their virginity in front of an entire court full of witnesses—”

  “Some would say I maintain purity in the noble lines. It’s not as if I use my—”

  “Oh—God.” I covered my ears with my hands. “I don’t want to hear that.” I would have nightmares about this conversation, I was sure of it. “Are you finished talking about your…?”

  His expression pinched, which I took as an affirmation. I lowered my hands.

  “Forget the ascendancy. Forget religion. Until you’ve been dragged nude before a crowd of First Court nobles and had your private parts angled for better presentation, you’ll never understand why revolution was well past due. I might have been the catalyst, but he was—”

  “I’m getting tired of overhearing conversations about me,” Harper said from behind me.

  I almost jumped clear of my skin. I spun on him. “Where did you come from?”

  “Scouting.” His lips kicked up at the corner. Our conversation must have amused him. “The main road is blockaded. We’ll have to travel the open desert, which poses its own risks.”

  “Sand traps,” Aldrich said on a thoughtful nod.

  I scowled at Aldrich. “What are those?”

  Harper answered for him. “They’re magical remnants, usually left over from road refortifications or other spell craftings. Left on their own, they scavenge the desert for energy.”

  I shivered and recalled the eerie feeling I’d had our first night in the desert. I’d wondered then if more than oblivion rested beneath the shifting sands. I supposed I had my answer now.

  “You didn’t think to mention those before now?” I sat up higher in my seat.

  He stared down his nose at me, an easy feat from the back of his horse. “I never expected you to come here, or I would have warned you in advance.”

  And there it was. He’d given up hope I’d come to him. Would I have if Nesvia’s request meant I had no choice but to go? Yes, I would have. If I wanted to be honest, I’d been desperate for the smallest reason to seek him out, and Nesvia handed me the perfect one. Who would have guessed her consort, or his brother at least, had already set a similar chain of events into motion?

  I had choices to make. Aldrich brought up good points. I supposed if Harper insisted on endangering himself to keep me safe, then the least I could do was make his job easier…by moving in with him at the colony. Assuming he wanted me there. I had to claim him first. And I’d wasted my morning alone with the one male other than Harper who could tell me how it was done. Today was definitely not my day, and it had fewer and fewer prospects of getting better.

  “Her fears are inconsequential,” Aldrich announced, appearing every ounce the enlightened priest instead of the cantankerous elder I’d been saddled with all morning. Regardless of what Aldrich viewed as a lapse in judgment where I was concerned, Harper had earned his respect. The way the priest put on airs for him, perhaps h
e wanted a smidgen of his regard in return. “I have asked Zaniah for her grace, and she has provided us with her blessing.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers. This had better be good.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Zaniah be praised. Harper shrugged off the old benediction rolling through his mind. As he stared down the dune’s curved slope where mounded gray stones rested on golden sand, he admitted, for once, the goddess had delivered. He’d been inside the Feriana mines too often not to recognize an entrance when he saw one. And the raiders, as Aldrich foretold, hid nearby.

  Hot air swirled past, carrying the clean scent of Emma and betraying her silent approach.

  He scooted down the steep incline, so the mine and its occupants dipped from sight.

  She dropped onto the sand beside him, stretching out on her stomach, and bumped her shoulder against his. He nudged back, the gesture automatic. “I asked you to stay with the sled.”

  “You owe me.” She rested her chin on his shoulder. “You left me alone all morning.”

  “You weren’t alone.” He glanced at her. “You had Aldrich for company.”

  She snorted. “If you call that company, then you’ve been alone in the desert too long.”

  “Some might agree.” His shrug bounced her chin. “I enjoy it out here.”

  “I was joking.” She shifted away, and already he missed her warmth. “Speaking of Aldrich, you’re not the least bit concerned about us trusting someone from Eliya’s inner circle?”

  “Make no mistake—I don’t trust him,” he said as she rubbed her jaw. “We’re using him the same as he’s using us. A priest with his talents could find work, riches, regardless of his stigma, anywhere he wanted.” He twisted to face her. “While you two were chatting, did he tell you he needed my blood and an invitation to be released from the room where I found him?”