“Still angry with me then?”
She gave him a glare that would have withereda lesser man, but he chuckled and ran a hand back through his hair,grinning as she watched that cursed sun-kissed lock fall over hisforehead.
“Good,” he said.“I am glad.”
“Glad?”
“It tells me you care.”
“I care about many things,” she hissed.“Butyou, you conceited, arrogant, ass, are not one of them.”
“Uh huh.”
He was still grinning, and Sahar could notdecide if she wanted to slap him or kiss him, neither of whichwould be a smart thing to do, so she ignored him, picking up herpace and giving him her back as she strode the rest of the way tothe stables.
She stopped at Zolotoy’s stall and called outfor Ratter, who came out of the little antechamber holding Kiska,her splinted leg sticking out over his forearm.
“This is what was so important to show us?”Yago asked.“a mangy stable cat with a splinted leg?”
“Not only the cat.”Sahar grabbed Yago’shand, but was only able to hold it up for a quick moment before heyanked it out of her grasp and stuffed it into the pocket of histunic.“Show them your finger,” she demanded.“Show them whereKiska bit you when you hurt her.”
He laughed and started to back up, but wasstopped when Munir blocked Yago’s escape.
“Show us,” Aleksandr ordered.
Reluctantly, Yago pulled his hand out andheld his finger up, the piercing hole of a bite wound in the middleof the red, swollen pad glaringly obvious.
“Why?”Sahar said.“Why would you purposelyinjure an innocent kitten?”
“For the same reason he set me up with theharlot, and for you to find me in a compromising position withher,” Aleksandr answered when Yago did not.“To throw me, and you,off our race.He knows he cannot beat us otherwise.”
Yago shrugged.Kiska hissed at him, Aleksandrfisted his hands at his sides, and Sahar threw all her weight andstrength into her punch, which landed squarely on Yago’s leftcheek, which still bore the faintest streaks of yellow fromAleksi’s punch days ago.
“You bitch!”
Yago swung at Sahar, who side-stepped hisfist as Aleksandr’s connected with Yago’s belly, doubling him overand leaving him gasping for breath.
“Get this piece of refuse away from me beforeI kill him,” Aleksandr said, and Munir grabbed the still wheezingYago by the tunic and stood him up.
“You have not heard the last of this,” Yagothreatened between wheezes.“There will be consequences for youractions tonight, you bastard.My father—”
“Will be so proud to hear that his prince ofa son likes to torture helpless kittens and take swings at girls,”Aleksandr finished for him.He glanced at Sahar, who still had herfur ruffled, ready to finish this fight, and he laughed, quick andshort.“Who not only got beat up by the same girl, but got beat byher in the races, twice.”
“Which makes ‘im just like is father, itdoes,” Ratter added.He squinted at Yago.“Don’t you fergit,” hesaid, “I was there.I saw the queen, who was the Swan then, I saw‘er face all beat up an ‘er eyes all red an’ swoll shut after yerfather tried to rape an’ kill ‘er.He would ‘ave too, ifn not ferthe Black Mane.”He shook his bald head at the memory, and then hecackled.“It was me that drug yer father out o’ the pile o’ horsedung the Black Mane dumped ‘im in.”He took another gander atYago’s swelling cheek and blackening eye, and then winked at Sahar.“I always said you was yer father’s daughter.”
Aleksi lay on the cot with Kiska curled up onhis belly, staring up at the thatched roof of the stables.It waslate, close to midnight, but he was nowhere close to sleeping.Hismind kept racing, going over everything that had happened from themoment he had first laid eyes on Sahar to Yago’s humiliationtonight.Aleksi recalled every word spoken between him and Sahar,and considered all the words left unspoken.He relived the heat andpassion of their kisses over and over again, and he dreamed ofkissing her senseless while lying on a blanket under a starry sky,of her tautly muscled body beneath his, his hands roaming overevery soft mound and round, womanly curve, his mouth tasting hers,covering hers as she cried out with pleasure.
He reminded his wayward body that she hadforbidden him from ever touching her again, that she was a proud,royal princess who would never stoop to marrying a bastard, even ifhe was the bastard son of a king.He forced himself to concentrateon the race ahead and on the road home after, and yet as heimagined himself arriving at his father’s palace with a string ofbroodmares, a purse full of gold pieces and a bride at his side,that bride was a tigress with a mane of thick, black curls thatshone auburn in the sun’s light and eyes of green fire with sparksof gold.
“Perhaps I will not look for a bride hereafter all,” he told Kiska, who let out a soft kitten snore.“Perhaps I will wait until I return home, until after I have boughtmy land and have sold my first yearling foals.I will be moresettled then, better prepared for marriage and family.”
Perhaps by then he will have forgotten histigress and learned to settle for a woman with the sturdy frame andeasy temper he claimed he wanted in a wife.
He shifted slightly, trying not to disturbKiska, and then went still as Zolotoy snorted and shuffled in hisstall.Lifting Kiska from his belly, he set her back down on thecot and pulled his blade from beneath his pillow.He stood andstepped to the side of the door’s open top half, his blade hand atthe ready as the stall gate clicked shut.The straw rustled beneathZ’s hooves and Aleksi flung the bottom half of the door open,knocking it into somebody’s legs with a thud and a loudoomph.
“Who are you?”Aleksi demanded as he held thepoint of his blade to the intruder’s throat.He had had his fill ofuninvited visitors to his private chambers, and was in no mood forany more surprises, although at least this visitor was a man by theheight and breadth of his hooded and robed figure.“What are youdoing here?”
A large hand reached up and pushed the hoodback, revealing a shoulder-length mane of thick, silvered hair anda pair of piercing amber eyes.
