Page 99 of Blood of the Thistle

She grinned anew. “How rude of me. My apologies.”

“Ye can ride a horse now.”

“I really can’t, not yet. And I promise you I really don’t want to, not after those grueling twelve-hour days in the saddle.”

Bram grinned. “Ye ate naught but berries, would nae even touch the mushrooms—”

“Okay, back up,” she interrupted. “Those mushrooms were awful. You cannot honestly have me believe you enjoyed them.”

“They were sustenance,” he pointed out.

She wrinkled her nose. “I’d rather starve.”

“Ye were forever asking how far we had to go, when we might stop, where we were going, why we were going that way instead of another—”

“Because you never told me anything.”

“I told ye exactly what ye needed to ken.”

“Hah! Which was nothing.” She defended primly, “I don’t like not knowing things, not having a clue what’s next.”

“And ye talked constantly,” he added.

Her mouth dropped open but a smile lingered there as well. “I did not.”

“Lass, after a week on the road with ye, I ken more about your sister, your parents, and the workings of your phone than I ken about men I’d fought beside for years.”

A laugh escaped her. “Fine. Maybe I did talk a lot.”

“A great deal.”

“I was scared,” she admitted quietly after a moment.

“I ken.”

The words came more gently than the rest, and for an instant her expression softened again.

Bram let the moment sit before asking, “Are ye frightened still, Anastasia?”

She gave the question some thought. “No, I don’t think so. Not frightened, but...” She paused, and then grinned. “as you might guess, I am many other things still. Uncertain, nervous, anxious, overwhelmed, homesick. Occasionally completely bewildered.”

“That is a great many things,” he teased.

“You asked.”

“I did.”

Her smile faded into something more thoughtful. “But no, I’m not scared anymore. Not here.”

Bram was glad of that, though the qualification did not escape him. Not here. Craig na Coille had given her that much, at least.

“And you?” she asked.

His brows rose. “Am I frightened?”

Another smile came. “No. Are you still all the things you were three weeks ago?”

Bram smiled faintly. “I suspect ye are about to tell me.”