Page 88 of Winter Gods & Serpents

“She intends to keep it hidden from her father?”

He laughed shortly, unamused. “No, what she intends is to forgo details of how she rid of the Adriatians.”

She planned something. This was her personal hunt, but what was she exactly hunting?

“I will ride with him,” she said and I wiped my head in surprise in her direction.

With a tight-lipped smile, she strode towards me and her brows rose in question surely at my expression.

“Absolutely not,” Caiden said, grabbing her arm, pulling her in his direction.

In a swift movement she shook herself free and they stared at each other through a silent battle of conversation. At her persistence he retreated, disbelief covering his eyes and the rest of his features.

“If he as much as flinches around you, I will kill him,” he spat pointing to me, and she nodded gleefully before turning to me once again. Possibly the reason why she had chosen to ride with me, considering she shuddered in disgust at the sight of me every time. She was either really wanting to test my patience with her or trying to invoke and provoke a reaction that would have me hurt her again—for her to find a reason to kill me.

“What’s with the,” she said, waving her hand in front of her face before pointing to mine, “angry?”

I tightened the horse saddle straps before turning to her. “You can will gods out of their holy patience and I am only man, one that can only be angry at the moment and not act like it as well.”

She smiled, that inciting sly smile she always gave me. “What would you do to me, Kilian, if one could act on their anger?”

An invitation to provoke her. My name on her mouth reiterated around the air—such a strange sound. It was either Adriatian, dog, snake, scum or vermin, the only terms she had called me before. This was the first time she had called my name.

“What would you have wanted me to do to you?”

Her brow rose as she spoke, “To act smart and dug that dagger deeper in my flesh. Now you will live knowing you could have killed me when I turn Adriata to ash.”

I halted and examined her amused expression. “Surely I will get another chance, but that is if you do not poison yourself to death first.”

Her smile faltered and she blinked slow. “What?”

“Cherry red blood almost luminescent, you are an ybris not a eudemon. Your pupils are dilated all the time, more in the morning. In the afternoon you sway just slightly and often stare blankly in empty spaces. You hate warm drinks because few of them mask their scent. Your lips are usually a shade of violet too. So, frost thorn, grey thistle, winter cress, gutweed, barbed clove and what else? What other poison are you micro dosing on?”

“Silkwort,” she admitted blankly. “Nia says it’s the one that gives me my stomach pain, why I am hungry at night.”

Her honesty took me back, so I dared ask, “How long?”

“Twelve years this coming January.”

My nerves strung. Heavens, how was she even breathing? “Why are you ruining your body with poison since barely a child?”

“Because,” she enunciated sticking her bottom lip out all innocence. “I got poisoned twice after the attack, right inside my father’s bedroom without seeing anyone for days. Anything else to reveal, any other examination, my left eye bigger than the other, my right foot more angled than my left?”

My eyes fell to her feet. “Your left leg, you shift more weight into that one.”

She gradually smiled, a different one this time. “I am aware, it’s from my training to make my left dominant as my right. Keep staring Adriatian, might find something you like.”

I shook my head at her nonchalance and chance to turn the situation to her leverage, and in my annoyance.

She moved swiftly mounting my horse and I followed her. Surrounded by an echo of death, but she smelled softly of sweet flowers. She shifted herself away from me almost at the hilt of the mount as if walking on a tight rope. It made her lose balance, and me lose my patience.

“You were the one who wanted this, so I suggest you move back before we both topple to the ground,” I said, gripping the reins and she did as told.

Her injured shoulder met mine and she winced in pain. I stopped my hand from reaching her wound. She would be fine, maybe she even deserved some of it.

In her odd silence, she begun slightly shivering but I was certain it was not from the cold. Then I felt her stiffen before grabbing the reins pulling them back, almost throwing us to the ground.

Just before I was about to turn to her, I noticed a tripwire on the ground and then a black tipped arrow flying towards our side. The princess leaned forward groaning in pain, letting the arrow fly between us.