Page 2 of The Healer and the Warlord

Before her parents could wake and discover me, I slid my arms beneath her, lifting her easily from the nest of blankets. She murmured in her sleep, and her head turned, falling sideways until her face pressed into the side of my neck. Her body was remarkably soft and warm in my arms, and I swallowed thickly again.

I had broken bones and torn flesh for Lord Deryn. Pulled lightning from a cloudless sky and water from dry earth. But this task—keeping my wits with this beautiful woman so close—would pose a challenge unlike any I had faced for my clan.

Chapter two

Alyx

Iwoke to the unmistakable movement of a horse beneath me, but the feeling of incomparable freedom that normally accompanied riding was notably absent. Instead, I was trapped. Arms wrapped around me, one across my chest and one around my waist, keeping me pressed against a firm object at my back: A strong torso.

The second sensation that overwhelmed me was a decidedly masculine scent—the smokiness of campfires and the spice of strong laka.

My eyes snapped open to the cloudless sky. It was the stained purple of dawn. My neck ached—my head had lolled back and was supported by a leather-clad shoulder, instead of the softness of the silken pillow in my normal sleeping nest.

I tensed and the arms around me tightened.

“You’re safe,” a voice murmured near my ear.

Paradoxically, the assurance only stoked the vague sense of unease in my belly into panic. I wrenched my head forward, beginning to squirm. I tried to pull my arms free of the stranger’s grasp, but he held me so tightly, I might have been wrestling against steel.

The mount beneath me whickered and a bolt of foreign unease cut through my own panic—the horse’s discomfort a clear pang in my power. Against my better judgment, I lessened my struggles. I could never bear the distress of horses, as I felt the bright flame of the desert’s magic so clearly in them.

“Where am I?” I demanded instead.

“It’s hard to say,” the man’s voice came again, tone remarkably light despite the depth of his voice that I could feel rumbling in his chest, pressed flush against my back. “Somewhere between Clan Padra and Clan Katal’s encampment.”

“My parents—”

“Are several hours ride behind us,” he cut in. “And the desert is unlikely to help them find their way to us.”

His confidence in the desert’s favor almost made me scoff, but the way he said it didn’t sound like a boast. Just a fact. The panic that I had calmed on the horse’s behalf began to rise again, bubbling into my throat where it made my voice rise in pitch.

“Yet you have the gall to insist I’m safe?”

I tried to turn my head to see my captor, but held this close to him, I only managed to give myself a cramp in my already stiff neck. The man’s dark hair fluttered at the edge of my vision, as I looked out toward the horizon. Rippling sand dunes glowed golden in the early morning light, spreading out endlessly toward the horizon. The encampment in which I had fallen asleep and the palms of the oasis were nowhere in sight.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” my captor insisted. His casual tone had disappeared, his voice now low and serious. It was such a strange promise from a kidnapper that I was almost tempted to believe him.

My father’s voice scolded me in my head, telling me that I was too trusting—too soft for the harsh ways of the desert clans.

“You seriously think you can get away with kidnapping me?” I demanded.

“I believe I already have.” My captor’s light tone returned.

“Did you…” I swallowed thickly. “Did you hurt my family?”

I had no idea how I could have slept through the fight that must have ensued to get me away. Perhaps I had been drugged? How, I did not know.

“No,” he assured. “I had no need to harm anyone.”

“Then how…” I frowned.

“The desert willed it so.”

My brow only furrowed further. Once again, he seemed assured in the desert’s favor—that she would aid him in my kidnapping. Unease crawled up my spine, making me stiffen as if to pull away from him, but his hold made it impossible. The desert’s touch had always been strong in me as well, giving me a way with horses and with healing. But it had not been enough to protect me from this strange man.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am Kelvar. Warlord of Clan Katal,” he proclaimed.