His deep sigh was exasperated. “I’m not going to fuck you, girl. Get your ass on my bedroll.”
“You can see how I’d say no, right?” I snarked back at him.
His giant hand wrapped around my upper arm, and he pulled me to my feet. Vorn led me to his bedroll and pushed me back. Hard. I lost my balance and crashed into the snow with a barely contained squeal.
The others laughed, and before I could scramble back to my feet, Vorn was already down, hooking me around the waist and pulling me into his body.
“Body heat beats the cold,” he reminded me, his voice at my ear. “None of your soldiers lay with you,bunny?” he mocked.
I elbowed the fucker in the ribs, and he only laughed. “He calls me bunny because he thinks I’m going to escape, not because of… anything else.”
The arm around my waist pulled me harder back into a hard body. “Not because you bounce from bedroll to bedroll?”
“Eeewno!”
“Because rabbits… well, they fuck like rabbits, and I thought?—”
“Could youpleasenever talk to me about your thoughts again?” I demanded through a clenched jaw. “You’re disgusting.”
I stiffened when his hand slipped under my cloak and crept up under my tunic. I lay still as he pulled the first one, then the second layer of undershirt up. Calloused fingers skimmed over bare skin, and I was too afraid to breathe. His fingers rested on the waistband of my pants, and I felt fear as a fingertip tucked under it.
My magic pooled in my chest, desperate for release.
“You look thick, but you’re hiding curves under here, sweetheart.”
“Leave me alone,” I whispered, hearing the tremor in my voice and not caring. “Remove your hand, or I swear to the fucking gods, Vorn, Iwillslice your dick off and feed it to you.”
He huffed out a laugh as he pulled his hand away. “Your secret’s safe with me, sweetheart.”
I didn’t ask what the secret was.
I didn’t move for a long time, despite my muscles screaming at me to relax, and his gentle snoring in my ear telling me the danger had passed. Sleep never found me that night, and I only relaxed when the others stirred in the morning, and I forced myself out of his hold and put enough distance between him and me at the other side of the camp.
They’d taken my short sword and two of my daggers, but my fingers itched to grasp the handle of the dagger I kept between my breasts. When Vorn yawned loudly and announced he’d had a great sleep, I had to turn away in case I threw the fucking thing at him. My staff was with Captain Marson and his men and I missed it desperately.
“Amarya, come eat. You need some meat on those bones.”
I closed my eyes briefly before I turned and walked over to the others. I took the cold meat without a word, I didn’t look too closely at it, terrified I might try to identify it, and not wanting to know the answer.
As Vorn walked past me, he leaned down and murmured in my ear, “It’s just pig, you can swallow without turning green.”
I almost forgave him for his wandering hands. Almost. But not quite.
We spent the morning walking through a snowstorm, heading to the mountains. A trail was there, faint but present, and a few times I lost sight of it, but I kept finding it.
The pass revealed itself gradually, as passes often do, not suddenly but through a buildup. First, the wind shifted, its direction changing as the terrain began to funnel and narrow. Next, the sound altered. The vast tundra moan diminished into a lower, more focused noise, like air forced through a tight space. Then, the ground rose sharply on either side, and there it was, not an obvious gap but a choice made by the mountains themselves about where they would allow crossing.
I stopped.
Vorn stopped beside me.
“This is it?” he asked.
I looked at the pass. Narrow. Steep on both sides. The kind of terrain that was navigable in reasonable conditions and lethal in bad ones. Conditions north of Iskaeld had not yet shown a reliable tendency toward reasonableness.
“Probably,” I said.
“Probably?”
