Page 22 of The Last War We Ever Fought

“Did anyone see you?”

“I’m hard to miss.”

She groaned, turning to him. “You want to get me killed?”

He looked down at her. “No, but it looks like you want to get yourself killed.”

“No one saw me.”

“I saw you.”

“Will you tell?”

“Tell what?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re annoying me.”

“Already catching feelings for me?”

“Annoyance is hardly something you want me to catch.”

He leaned against Adam’s table and threw one of his lemon sherbets in his mouth. “I can go slow.”

“Same,” she mindlessly said, searching through the many letters. “When I drive a knife through your gut and hear you painfully moan every note on the musical alphabet.”

“Now that was poetic and rather romantic.”

Slowly, she rolled her eyes up at him to glare. “You know what my favourite thing is? Some like to sneak up on prey. I like to befriend it and make it believe I am harmless.”

“You’ve not befriended me or showed me in any way that you’re harmless.”

“You seek my company, and you feel comfortable enough to be unarmed around me.”

He blinked at himself, crushing the lemon sherbet between his teeth. “You make a good point.”

“Don’t crush the candy. It’s obscene.”

“I’m impatient.” He lifted a piece of paper up from Adam’s desk. “Are you looking for this?”

Rowan almost ran to him and reached to grab the letter, only for him to quickly pull it out of her reach and over his head. He had to be at least six feet and seven or eight inches because his stretched arm touched and bent at the top of the eight-foot tent.

“Give it.”

“If only there were a nice word used to persuade people to do kind gestures for others.”

Groaning, she rested a knee on the table and climbed it. She did it so fast and unexpectedly, that he just stood there, gaping, when she plucked the letter from his fingers.

Still reeling from the shock, he remained as still as a statue as Rowan quickly unfolded the letter holding the latest orders from the queen.

Her quick panting halted, seized altogether at the words written on it—the orders their queen had given.

“She wants to send a battalion to raid the nearby Gobresh villages before their infantry reaches us for the last battle. She wants us to take the babies and the small Gobresh children.” Folding the paper, she put it back on the table and braced her hands on it, willing her mind to stop spinning so fast.

Even the God of War didn’t seem amused anymore.

Heavy footsteps marched towards the tent, angry voices accompanying them.

Rowan’s heart started racing and so did her movement. She pushed hard at Elijah’s chest until his back met the tall cupboard Adam and Henry used to store their armours. “Get in.”