They made camp late, and kept it cold.Muchlike their conversation, cold, impassive, and impersonal, althoughat least Sahar was talking to Aleksi again.She was also as jumpyas a cat on hot coals.Not that he blamed her.He was feeling shakyhimself.
Get over it, you ass.She’s not for you.GetLasair back.Get the princess home.Get yourself home with a pursefull of coin and a string of broodmares for Zolotoy to cover.Ifyou’re lucky, someday you may look at another woman and not see apair of blazing green eyes staring back at you.
He rubbed his stubbled chin and took a slowsurvey of the mountain sloping above them, as much to glean anyinformation about where Yago and Taweel might be as to concentrateon anything but the tigress pacing around the camp.
“Look.”He pointed up the mountain’s side towhere a small fire flickered.“Either Yago and Taweel are thinkingwe’re long gone, or they are trying to trick us into showingourselves.”
“Hard to say with those two.”
“True enough.”He untied the saddlebag fullof chestnuts and tossed it to her, grinning as she caught itwithout even blinking.“Shell those for our supper while I set upsome traps around camp.”
“The woman prepares the food while the manlays protection, huh?”
Aleksi understood her aversion to being seenas merely a woman, to be thought of as nothing more than a prettyface incapable of any but the most menial of tasks.Surely, sheknew him better than that by now.
“Do you know how to set up traps?”heasked.
“I never have,” she admitted.“But I canlearn.”
“I’ll make you a bargain.”He rubbed hisgrumbling stomach.“I’ll teach you tomorrow, if you shell thechestnuts tonight.I’m starving.”
“We’re not going after Lasair?”
Aleksi shook his head.“I want them good andcomplacent with their guard down.Another night should do it.”
Sahar eyed him for a long moment, and thenheld her hand out.“I need a blade,” she said, “to shell thenuts.”
After they’d eaten their meager supper ofchestnuts and dried meat, she sat down on the bedroll and reachedfor the leather tie at the end of her braid.
“Here,” Aleksi said, kneeling behind her.“Let me.”
“I can do it myself.”
“I know you can,” he said, untying theleather strip, “but I like doing it for you.It gives mepeace.”
For some inexplicable reason—reason seemed tobe in short supply when it came to them being together—when Aleksihad his fingers in her hair gently combing out the tangles into aveil of sooty black, he felt peaceful.He supposed it was like thesense of concentrated calm he always felt brushing down a horse,except his tigress was the one woman he wanted above all others.Aprincess he’d sworn to protect and keep from harm.
“How did you learn so much about surviving inthe wild?”she asked as he unraveled the glossy ropes of herbraid.
“Hunting trips with my father when I wasyounger and still a prince.Though even after I became a stableboy, he would still take me hunting with him as his horse master.”Aleksi smiled.His best memories of his father were of theirhunting trips, away from the palace and the queen where they couldbe Maksimillian and Aleksandr, father and son, not king and bastardstable boy.“He claimed that I was his best tracker.”
“What did the bitch queen have to say aboutyour hunting trips?”
He laughed at her description of Theodesia ashe wove his fingers through her hair and gently shook it out,fanning the heavy veil across her shoulders and down her back.“They say the rafters of the palace were raised more than once bythe shrillness of her response when told.”
He started to comb his fingers through herhair, gently untangling a snarl.
“But she wasn’t able to stop your father fromcontinuing your hunting trips.”
“She wasn’t, though I know for a fact shetried.”
“Because your father’s love for you wasstronger than his care for her.”
Aleksi’s fingers stilled as twenty and fiveyears of grief, anger, and longing gripped him by the throat.“Thenwhy,” he choked out, “did he deprive me of my mother’s love andthen his own?”
She turned and met his gaze and held it, andthanks be to the gods, there was no pity in her expression.Hecouldn’t have stood to see that.Not from her.
“Did you ever ask him?”
