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She didn’t reply, just lifted her chin and started walking. He stayed close on her heels. So close that his cape, flowing out behind her, occasionally caught on his legs, which had the effect of almost tugging her back into his body.
Such things could not be noted. If the miscreant wished to walk barbarously close, so be it. She would be impenetrable, immovable, untouchable. Noble.
She looked neither right nor left, simply walked without slowing to the tent he indicated, the plainest, smallest, most dismal tent in the entire campground.
Of course.
She stopped at the flap and stood, waiting. When nothing happened, she looked pointedly over her shoulder at him.
The flap.
Grimly, he strode up, tugged on the ties, and held the flap aloft with the back of one broad hand.
She lifted her skirts and passed under without word or glance. Into the devil’s lair.
All she had to do was hold on. Just hold on, and her father would rescue her.
Chapter 8
Máel let the flap fall shut behind her noble arse and debated his options.
Follow her inside and spend the next several hours being subjected to her noble perfection?
Sit outside and watch the festival idiots get roaring drunk?
Join the idiots and get roaring drunk? Then lie down on the dewy grass until the sun rose on his face, as he’d done a thousand times before. Collect his father’s sword and return to…what?
A familiar, flat cord of coldness tightened in his chest.
Odin popped up at his side. “He rode off, out of sight. I couldn’t follow him anymore.” He tried to peer around Máel, into the tent. “She in there?”
He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and turned him. “Can you keep an eye out? Report back anything you see?”
The boy jerked straight. “Have I ever failed you?”
“We’ve known each other five hours.”
Odin straightened, all four feet, five inches of him. “And I’ve been loyal and true through all of them.”
“And expensive.”
They looked at each other. Odin held out a hand.
Máel reached for his pouch. “You’re a menace,” he said as the coins clinked in the boy’s palm.
“Like knows like,” Odin replied and darted off.
Máel heard a small, feminine exclamation break out inside the tent. “Oh, what is this?”
He ground his jaw and turned. The silhouette of Cassia was cast on the walls of the tent, revealing a curving female body and fine-cut chin that seemed to never go down. She’d been pacing, back and forth, back and forth, like a caged beast. But now she’d paused beside something.
He flipped up the flap and went in.
She stood beside his cot. Makeshift, aye, but more comfortable than the ground, and Máel had grown adept at making hard things tolerable.
This cot, though, was more than tolerable. The sturdy wooden legs were knotted together and hung with straps of leather, edge to edge. Easy to fold, they formed a low-slung frame for a feather mattress that lay atop, covered by furs. Easy for his horse to carry, better to sleep on.
He'd built his first cot when he was eleven, and he and his blood-brothers had washed ashore in England, exiled and alone. Hunted. Homeless. Shivering in a cave, Fáe had built them a fire and Máel had build them beds. It became a kind of mission, a purpose, a way to gain control.
