Page 7 of The Healer and the Warlord

But I hadn’t been hurt, a small voice in the back of my head chimed in. As of yet, nothing more severe than a light chill and an uncomfortable ride had befallen me. Perhaps the world was not so evil as my father feared. Or at least, it didn’t have to be.

“I didn’t sleep in a tent at all until I was fourteen,” Kelvar admitted, drawing me from my reverie with a start.

“Your family didn’t prefer having shelter?” I asked, furrowing my brow.

He huffed. “I have no idea what my family might have preferred. My parents were killed by red wolves when I was small.”

My heart sank.

“I didn’t get a dwelling of my own until Lord Deryn saw potential in the power that had kept me alive on my own for so long and recruited me to start training with the clan riders.”

“And now you are a Warlord,” I observed. “You went from no tent to the second grandest in the entire clan.”

Kelvar shook his head. Some of his hair had come loose of the knot he wore, brushing across my face where I lay with my cheek all but pressed to his solid chest. It was surprisingly soft and ticklish.

“I still live in the small tent I was first given when I became a rider.”

“Why?” I asked.

Kelvar’s arms flexed around me as he shrugged. “I worked my way up from orphan to Warlord. I have the finest horse and the sharpest sword in the desert. It seems like testing fate to ask for any more of the desert’s gifts. Perhaps she has always been pleased with me, because I have not asked her for much.”

Something about the statement caused sadness to bloom in my chest. I opened my mouth to point out that he would likely have to find a bigger dwelling when he took a wife and had a family of his own. I snapped my mouth closed with an audible click before I could speak.

We lapsed into silence.

I should have been tense and restless, wrapped in the arms of an enemy Warlord who had stolen me from my bed. But the day had been long, and my vigilance could not last forever. Instead, the warmth of Kelvar at my front and Dileas at my back soaked into my muscles, turning soft and pliant after sitting stiffly on a horse all day.

My mind turned hazy. I thought I heard Kelvar murmur, “Sleep well, Flower,” as I drifted off, but it might have been part of my dreams.

Chapter five

Kelvar

Dileas stared at me accusingly over Alyx’s sleeping form. I glared back at her, and she flicked a judgmental ear.

I tried to silently argue with her—and myself—that this was simply more efficient than giving Alyx my robe and then trying to huddle against Dileas for warmth. Then we both would have to spend the night sleepless and cold.

As it was, it seemed that I would still be spending tonight awake and uncomfortable. Alyx’s soft form pressed against me as her light, sleepy breaths tickled my throat was torture.

Many women I had briefly shared a tent with had fallen asleep as I held them, and it had always been pleasant. But never had I had such a visceral urge to bury my face in their hair and inhale. Or to hold them so tightly that the magic that spilled off their skin in calming, effervescent waves might permeate the storm that constantly danced and sparked in my own flesh.

And never had it been a worse idea to do these things.

Dileas snorted, as if reminding me that I had also let my casual endearment slip again.

Flower.

I wrinkled my nose, trying to discern how this mission had gone so far off the path in just one day.

Still, it was not unsalvageable. It had only taken me a day to ride from Clan Katal to Clan Padra. If the desert was not angry, and I had no reason to believe she would be, it shouldn’t take me any longer to get back.

Half a day’s ride and I could have enough space from Alyx to think clearly—to realize how catastrophically stupid it was to be having these feelings. The desert had already blessed me an inordinate amount to allow me to rise from an orphan hunting for myself with nothing more than a pilfered sling and stones to the most feared Warlord in the desert. I would not throw it all away by risking the ire of not one, but two Clan Lords, all because I couldn’t ignore the way Alyx’s hair smelled like larrea flowers. Or the way the calming waves of her magic felt like the ocean caressing the sands—at least the way I always imagined it in the legends, for I had never crossed the desert to see it.

I groaned quietly and laid my head down on my mat, resisting the visceral urge to tuck Alyx’s head under my chin.

One more day, and I could be free of this torment.

As the sun dipped rapidly toward the horizon on our second day of riding, I bit back a sigh of annoyance. Alyx shifted before me, clearly uncomfortable after a full day of riding without rest as well. I had driven us hard, hoping the tents of Clan Katal’s encampment would appear on the horizon if we just covered enough ground, but to no avail.