“That’s good to know,” he murmured, leaning forward to meet her halfway, to meet her lips halfway.
It was a sweet kiss, full of wonder and hope, nothing like the demanding, possessive one Mara had surprised him with. She ran her fingers along his jaw, her touch light, hinting of awe. That sense of hero-worship made him a little uncomfortable, but not enough to break the kiss. Tonight, at least, he need not feel lonely.
“Ridge,” Mara said, her voice icy and far closer than he would have expected.
Ridge jerked back from Chora, unable to resist rolling his eyes. Must he have a damned jealous keeper?
Mara smiled as she stopped beside his chair, though the gesture lacked any warmth. Chora had much friendlier eyes.
“What is it?” Ridge asked, while he groped for a way to shoo her away.
“Miss Mara,” Chora said, “I thought you were enjoying spending time with the Bracken brothers.”
Mara rested a hand on Ridge’s shoulder. “They were enjoying spending time with me, I’m sure.”
Chora frowned. “How nice of you to delight them with your presence.”
“Yes.” Mara dragged her fingernails up the side of Ridge’s neck and pushed them through his hair.
He leaned forward, intending to stand up and put some distance between them. Unfortunately, it appeared his life would be simpler if he slept by himself tonight.
Something bit him in the back of the neck. Startled, he jerked his hand back to slap away the mosquito or whatever it was. His fingers bumped Mara’s. For a second, he wondered if she had jabbed something into his neck. But that was ridiculous—if she wanted him to fly them to the capital in the morning, she wouldn’t be drugging him. Besides, where would she have gotten drugs out in the mountains?
He eased away from her as he stood up. He needed to talk to her about her possessiveness, but it would probably be better done when his mind wasn’t fuzzed with alcohol.
“Ladies,” he said, “I’m going to—”
“Escort me to the barn, will you?” Mara asked. “I want to see if there’s truly room in that flier for the both of us.”
“I was thinking more of the nice bed Colonel Mayford offered me in the field hands’ bunkhouse. I believe you were offered a room in someone’s cottage, weren’t you?”
“It’s early for that. Show me the barn.” She leaned into him, resting her hand on his chest.
He found himself aware of her touch, aware of her body pressed against his. Even if he couldn’t say that he liked her, she was attractive. Beautiful even.
“It’s dark in there. There’s nothing to see.” Ridge’s voice sounded odd as it came out, almost slurred. He looked down at the beer mug sitting on the arm of the chair. He hadn’t had that much to drink.
“Show me anyway.”
Ridge shook his head slowly, but for some reason, his feet didn’t move in the direction he wanted them to, toward that bunkhouse. Instead, Mara steered him toward the barn. Sadly, Chora vacated her seat and walked away.
You’re truly resorting to drugging him? It was the voice in the back of his head, and it was full of indignation. Ridge frowned in confusion. Usually it spoke to him, but the question didn’t make any sense. There is no honor in this, and it’s not necessary. He plans to take you with him.
After he sleeps with every farmer’s daughter here? That sounded like a woman’s voice. What was a woman’s voice doing in his head? The worry that he was going insane returned, though his body felt too numb to grow too concerned about it. Numb and relaxed. There was nothing to worry about here, not tonight.
What does that matter? The voice that Ridge had been thinking was a part of his own subconscious sounded exasperated. He’ll get you into the castle, as we planned. I thought that was all you wanted.
Not... all.
Mara’s fingernails dug through the material of his shirt as they walked toward the dark entrance of the barn, scraping Ridge’s chest. He’d left his jacket draped over the back of that chair. He ought to go back for it. Despite the thought, all his legs wanted to do was to head in the direction Mara was leading him.
You weren’t this libidinous over any of the emperor’s soldiers, the male voice remarked. They would have been willing playthings.
They were bald and thugly. I don’t know when the trend toward shaved heads came into existence, but I don’t approve of it. Mara pushed the hand that wasn’t busy rubbing Ridge’s chest up to the back of his head and through his hair. Some very distant part of his mind had started jumping up and down and telling him to do something when the voice mentioned the emperor’s soldiers. But it was so far away that he could barely hear it. Instead, he found himself enjoying Mara’s touch. They’d entered the barn, the darkness wrapping around them, the voices of the villagers growing distant. She guided him toward the side where bales of hay were stacked along the wall. He’s far more handsome, the female voice added. And not as easy as I’d expected he would be.
So you had to drug him? Tarshalyn, I forbid this. There is no honor in treating a man so.
You forbid it? You are not my commander. You are my sword.
Her sword? What was going on? And who was Tarshalyn? This couldn’t be Mara’s voice, could it?
I do not belong to you. I am a sorcerer, the same as you are. You would not have him here, if I hadn’t shielded him as his flying contraption smashed into that mountainside.
Sorcerer? Ridge stumbled, but Mara’s arms around him kept him from falling.
Yes, you never did explain what motivated you to do that. I’m perfectly willing to use him to get into the castle more easily, but we didn’t need him. And it’s been irritating playing the role of docile mountain woman. The woman’s voice turned dry. You didn’t want him for yourself, did you? I assumed your tastes ran toward women, but we’ve never had that discussion, I suppose.
Don’t be ridiculous.
You’ve shape-shifted before.
Not to have sex! You saw that battle. He deserved to live after risking his people and himself and helping to defeat a dragon, especially when he has no magic. What he doesn’t deserve is to be mauled by you. Let him go. I insist.
You insist. Please. Is there a reason you’re sharing our conversation with him?
The male voice hesitated, as if he hadn’t expected that question—or to be discovered? He won’t remember it.
See to it that he doesn’t. And see to it that you mind your own business tonight. Mara stopped, drew her knife, and walked to the doorway. She thrust the blade into the ground outside of the barn. It flashed an angry crimson at her.
Ridge stared at it. What in all the hells was going on?
She turned her back on the weapon, shut the barn door, and strode back to him. Before she reached him, she paused again, and the air crackled, as if they were about to be struck by electricity. Her face twisted into a rictus of concentration. An audible snap sounded in Ridge’s mind, and then silence filled his head. The voices were gone, both of them, and his skull felt strangely empty. Was it permanent?
He had the sense that he might escape now, while Mara was distracted. He headed for the door, but she reached out to catch his arm. Normally, he could have jumped back and evaded her, but his feet were leaden, and he barely twitched away. She caught him easily, reached up and stroked his cheek. The conversation he had just heard drifted from his memory like tendrils of smoke on the breeze, and he couldn’t remember why he was objecting to her touch. Wouldn’t it be silly to avoid the embrace of such an attractive woman?
Mara planted a hand on his chest and pushed him toward the wall stacked with hay bales. The back of his thigh bumped against the edge of one, and she slid her hands under his shirt.
“Sit down, my handsome Iskandian hero,” she purred, her lips brushing his. “There’ll be no more interruptions for us tonight.”
He hesitated as some memory tried to surface, to warn him to run, to put as much distance between him and this woman as possible. Whatever she was, she was m
ore than some mountain girl. She was dangerous. But his body wasn’t paying attention to his memories, and he found himself obeying her, sitting down on the hay and pulling her down with him.
“Good boy,” she said with a chuckle, like someone crooning over a hound.
Ridge wanted to protest this—he wanted to protest everything, but his body did not belong to him. When she sat in his lap and kissed him, he kissed her back.
Chapter 11
Tolemek crouched behind the high, gnarled roots of a mangrove, one of the last trees before the marsh opened up into the seawater inlet that held seven imperial navy ships. Five airships floated in the air above, anchored to trees on the other side of the bay. Tolemek never would have felt safe coming this close during daylight hours. He didn’t feel safe being this close at night, either, especially when he estimated they only had an hour until the sky started lightening.
He’d heard the footsteps and voices of soldiers on patrol as he, Kaika, and Quataldo had crept through the trees to this viewpoint, and he guessed that an entire company was out in the woods, watching for intruders. The two elite forces officers hadn’t seemed daunted by the idea of sneaking in here for a look, but then, Tolemek hadn’t noticed that anything daunted Kaika. Quataldo seemed built from the same mold, if a less chatty, barb-slinging version of it.
Tolemek rubbed his thumb over the textured surface of one of his knockout grenades. He’d been carrying it since they left the city, anticipating he would need it. So far, Quataldo had warned them when to duck, hide, or drop to their bellies, with some intuition that seemed as powerful as Sardelle’s magical senses, but as they crouched behind the trees, Tolemek’s own senses alerted him that they had more to worry about than being stumbled upon by soldiers. He closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, trying to pinpoint the source of the uneasy feeling, the uncomfortable prickle at the back of his neck that he had learned to associate with the presence of something very powerful.
He touched Kaika’s back. She was sharing this mangrove while Quataldo, as usual, was off scouting or maybe hiding halfway up a tree so he wouldn’t be noticed if Tolemek and Kaika were captured again.
“It’s lower,” Kaika whispered.
“What?”
“My butt. I thought you wanted to resume our discussion of butt fondling.”
“Not at this time. There’s a dragon out here somewhere. I think it’s in the trees over on that side, under that airship.” He leaned around the mangrove to point to the spot. Clouds and mist hugged the shoreline, making it hard to pick out objects in the sky, but he could see the hint of its oblong hull. The airship seemed larger than the others, and he wondered if it was the emperor’s craft. He also wondered how Kaika and Quataldo planned to get up to it, if it was his.
“Let’s hope that we’re insignificant to him,” Kaika whispered. “Just some more humans wandering around in the trees out here.”
“Her.” Tolemek remembered the voice that had spoken into his mind as they had approached the city earlier in the night. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem insignificant to the dragon. She had picked him out to question, presumably because of his blood. Maybe something else, too, since dragon blood alone wasn’t all that rare. He couldn’t imagine what, though, unless she had recognized him from the outpost. That seemed unlikely, since Tolemek and the Iskandian dirigible had been crashing when those other dragons had flown through the area. Maybe the emperor had mentioned him to her. “She spoke to me earlier.”
It was too dark for him to see Kaika, but he could tell from her voice that she’d turned to look at him. “You didn’t think that was worth mentioning at the time?” she asked.
“All she did was ask who I was. I didn’t answer.”
“Can you tell if it—she—is allied with the emperor’s troops?” Kaika asked.
“Her presence here suggests it. It’s unlikely that the soldiers are unaware of a dragon sleeping on the bank over there, and nobody seems worried.” A few lanterns burned on the ships, and soldiers patrolled the decks, but not nearly as many as would have been out if they believed an attack was impending.
“That complicates matters.”
“More than they already are?” Tolemek didn’t see how they were going to get close enough to reach the emperor’s airship.
“I don’t know. We had a plan before, but since we’ve lost the communication crystal and can’t tell Ahn and the others to come get us, the escape part of it was already going to be problematic.”
“Are you thinking of aborting?” Tolemek asked.
“No chance of that,” Quataldo said from behind him, resting a hand on Tolemek’s shoulder. “Please put away your grenade. I’m going to tie your hands behind your back.”
Tolemek tensed. “What? Why?”
“For verisimilitude. Captain Kaika, are you ready? I’ve located the soldiers guarding a hot air balloon that the Cofah are using to ferry soldiers up and down from the airships, when necessary. There are only four there currently. We may be able to simply overpower them and take Tolemek up without subterfuge.”
“Subterfuge?” Tolemek asked, forcing calmness into his voice, though his gut twisted as it dawned on him what Quataldo’s plan might be. He did not put away the grenade, as requested. “Such as pretending I’m a prisoner you want to turn over to the emperor?”
“You do have that big bounty on your head.” Kaika thumped him on the shoulder. “It’s just to get us on the ship.”
“Nice of you to mention that plan to me.”
“We were afraid you wouldn’t agree to come skulking through the swamps with us if we told you ahead of time,” Kaika said.
“Was this Angulus’s idea?” Tolemek had assumed the king wanted him along because he might be useful, but now he wondered.
“No, the colonel’s.”
“Will you cooperate and come along with us for the ruse?” Quataldo asked, his hand still on Tolemek’s shoulder, the gesture not nearly as friendly as it had first seemed. “We won’t disarm you, and we have no intention of leaving you behind, once we have the emperor.”
No intention. Tolemek judged that to mean the plan was to take him along, but if the plan splattered like an egg hurled to the rocks, then getting the emperor would be their priority. He rubbed his thumb along the surface of the grenade. Kaika and Quataldo would expect it if he dropped it; they would probably get away from the gas before it affected them. He did not think his odds would be good against Quataldo in a physical fight, not from what he had seen of the man.
“What about the dragon?” Tolemek asked.
“We’ll hope she’s not paying attention to us,” Kaika said.
“She may be able to read our thoughts, relay them to the emperor.”
“We’ll do our best to avoid any dragons.” Quataldo’s grip tightened on Tolemek’s shoulder. “Come. This way.”
Tolemek walked with him because he didn’t have much of a choice, but he had no intention of letting himself be trussed up and handed to the emperor. His fear of being offered a deal that would force him to betray someone he cared about returned to mind. Of course, the emperor might simply have him shot. That was also unappealing.
Tolemek? came a soft whisper in his mind.
Tylie? Where are you? He tripped over a root, and a pained grunt escaped.
“Ssh.” Quataldo lowered his hand to grip Tolemek’s arm, probably as much for support as to keep him in place as a prisoner.
Tolemek resented the idea that he needed support, but it was hard to concentrate on navigating through the trees in the dark while talking to his sister.
In the woods near you, Tylie said. I’m trying to catch up.
What? Tolemek halted. You’re not with Phelistoth?
His willingness to bring Tylie along had been predicated on the idea that she would stick with the dragon and be safe. What was she doing wandering around by herself?
We had a fight, she admitted, sadness clinging to her words.
What? Why? He left yo
u?
I insisted on being left. He’s going to try to barter with the emperor.
“Tolemek,” Quataldo said, pushing him. “We don’t have much time before daybreak. The odds of all of us getting off that airship alive are much better in the dark.”
Tolemek wanted to snap at him to shut up, to say talking to Tylie was more important, but he couldn’t truly make that argument when all of their lives were at stake. He continued walking, but reached out to his sister again.
Can you explain that?
He didn’t tell me before, not until I questioned him about the princess, but he’s wanted to try to make a deal with the emperor all along. That’s why he agreed to come on this mission. And Tolie? It’s my fault. He wants to offer his services to the emperor as a trade. For me. He knows I’ve missed Mother and my friends from back home, and even though I told him it wouldn’t be the same if I went back, he thinks he can make it work. He’d rather serve Cofahre than live in Iskandia, too, but I know a big part of this is because of me. Tylie’s words tumbled into his mind rapidly, like a waterfall filling a bucket. It sounded like a confession, and Tolemek wondered how long she’d had a sense that Phelistoth felt this way. Maybe it was an old argument between them.
Tolemek focused on the part that didn’t make sense to him. What does the princess have to do with it?
He captured her. With Cas and Pimples’ help. They didn’t exactly know they were helping. He has them guarding her a couple of miles from the city.
Cas is here? Tolemek asked, a mix of emotions filling him, concern that she was so close when there were dragons around—including an ally who wanted to betray them—but also anticipation that she might be close enough to help. Quataldo’s plan might get them onto the airship, but getting off with the emperor—or even without the emperor—seemed an impossible task without fliers to come pick them up. Even then, he couldn’t guess how they could avoid being shot down without a sorceress to protect them from bullets. He pushed a hand through his hair. How had he allowed himself—and his sister—to get caught up in all of this? Are Cas’s and Pimples’ fliers here too?