"Look, I hate the man.Hatethe man. But I know what love looks like, and I see the way you look at him and the way he looks at you. I saw you two dancing by the lake in Rinnia in summer. What I'm saying is, only a fool would throw love away, but also that only a fool would give themselves to someone who isn't ready to receive them. Either stay away from him completely or work out all your problems and give him every part of you. Don't do some half-in-between option like you're doing now. It's one or the other."
I sigh, sitting down. "I don't know if he loves me back. I don't even think he's capable of love. He's been through so much that he’s just...a shell of a person."
"Maybe this just isn't your week?" He suggests. "Maybe trying to work out whether you're soulmates should be saved for a week when you aren't the two leaders marching two armies into war?"
I laugh. Yeah. "Probably a sensible suggestion." I breathe a long therapeutic sigh into the fresh air around us. "Remember the first time we went to a prison?"
He chuckles, stretching his arms over his head. "Life was simple then. You weren't Commander. Onyx and you were just children, pretty much. What did we even go to prison for?"
"Throwing grapes at Kelen's grandfather."
He grins. "Simpler times."
"I'm getting you out of here.Behave!" I shout, holding his mischievous face between my hands.
But as I take the quiet route out of the prisons and back to the palace, a hand clasps over my mouth as I walk through a lesser-used tunnel below Rexxan’s halls. I yank it off, twirling around to punch a man I don’t recognise in the face. He squeezes my neck and I knee him between the legs.
Fuck. This is why I don't wear dresses. I have no weapons on me.
He yanks my head back as my fist connects with his nose again. "Onyx! Rexxan!" I yell, hoping they'd hear me upstairs with their super-human senses. The dark-haired man pins me against the wall with his hands. "I know a fair few people who'd pay a pretty price for a sorceress," he snarls, his breath tickling my face.
“Well done, genius. So do I."
His fingers squeeze my neck harder as movement catches my eye over his shoulder. Rexxan holds his finger to his lips, carefully plucking a spear from a rack on the wall.
Oh fuck no. He is not throwing that in our direction.
"Trust me," he mouths, stepping a little closer. As the man moves to knock me out, I look down and watch the head of the spear go straight through this man and stop half an inch from my now blood-soaked abdomen.
“Bloody hell, Rexxan!" I yell, as the man slumps onto the floor, a spear in his stomach. "You could've got me too!"
"Are you alright?"
"Other than nearly being impaled on some crusty old spear, thrown by some crusty old man?"
"I'm fucking serious, Renna. Are you alright?" He repeats, turning me around to check for injuries. His eyes roam over my bleeding knuckles and he turns to the spluttering man on the floor. He slowly and lazily twizzles the spear, watching the man scream in agony with a bored expression.
"Nice job on the nose," he observes, over the screams.
"Thanks. I thought so too.” I squat down to poke his broken nose as Rexxan stares at me with an expression so smouldering that I feel my face flushing. Oh yes. The outfit. I forgot about the outfit.
He drinks me in like a dying man at an oasis, his eyes lingering on every little detail of me for a few seconds. That unreadable gaze flicks over to the man on the floor. "He didn't deserve to lay his eyes on you," he states, before yanking the spear out of his abdomen and plunging it into his mouth, out again, and into his eye.
That's gruesome, even by my standards. Rexxan doesn’t wince.
"So it begins," he states, and I know exactly what he means. This is the first of endless attempts from different people who are desperate for a sorceress on their side. This is the beginning of my new life.
"So it begins," I repeat, staring at the mess on the floor.
"Can we talk now?"
"No! Just because you shoved a spear in someone’s mouth doesn't mean I'll tremble at the knees and marry you. This isn't some shit book, Rexxan. This is real life, and we have a hell of a lot going on right now, including the fact that you need to release Stellan!"
"I'm not releasing Stellan. He's a headache."
"He's my best warrior! He's in prison becauseyouantagonised him about his dead wife!"
"I antagonised him? Afterhebroke into my study and held a knife to my chest?"
