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She peered into the antechamber. This was not an insurmountable distance. One simply took the next, natural step.
“My lady?”
She looked down at her feet. They were not moving.
Unable to determine a way free from this paralysis except to be dragged, she put her fingertips on Bran’s forearm and said quietly, “Please, escort me in.”
He stared.
“Physically,” she explained.
Understanding flooded his face in the form of a blush. He laid his hand over hers and took a swift, decisive step forward, pulling them into the room.
The boot steps in the inner chamber stopped.
Bran, who now seemed a great friend, gave her hand a faint squeeze.
“Just go easy, my lady,” he murmured, a quiet warning tossed to the passenger of a sinking ship: Do not fight it; in the end, you will sink. He lowered his arm and stepped back into the throng of men.
She felt their gazes like the points of a dozen invisible swords, poking at her back.
She glanced over her shoulder. They were watching her, grinning. No one said a word, but the energy was voice enough: menagerie girl. She met their gazes, fierce and silent, hands fisted at her sides.
“That’s enough, lads,” said a low, familiar voice behind her.
Like a rumble of thunder, chills skipped across her skin, hot and cold and absolutely everywhere.
A muscular arm appeared at her side and reached
past her to push the door shut. She stared down and her heart skipped a beat.
Why, his wrist and hand were painted. Almost engraved. Covered in thick, dark lines, curving and swirling as they roped up his skin, some resembling the shapes of mystical animals, some simply bursting into curves and flourishes.
God save her, he’d adorned his body with paint, like a barbarian. Like an illumination.
“Come in, Katarina.”
She swallowed and lifted her head.
He certainly looked the barbarian. Gloriously so. His dark hair was untethered now, hanging freely, so she could no longer see the shaved sides. Divested of most of his armor, he still wore his arming doublet, the fustian fabric of the vest dyed a smoky black, so the mail encasing his arms seemed to grow out of the darker bulk of him like tree limbs. The metal rings winked dully in the firelight.
Hose encased his powerful legs, what she could see of them. A black-and-red tunic hung to mid-thigh, and his calves were clad in high, muddy leather boots. But his body was rock-hard and pulsed with masculine vitality in the cold, almost bare antechamber. A painted body that seemed sculpted of stone, and eyes wrought of icy steel.
He was magnificent.
What a terrible, terrible thing.
Any moment now, he was going to do something wild and barbaric.
His eyes held hers, then slowly narrowed, his gaze piercing, pinned on her face.
“Why is your nose red?”
Chapter Eight
STARTLED, KATARINA’S HAND flew to her nose. She touched it, shielded it. It seemed suddenly important to protect her nose from observation. Aodh Mac Con stood motionless, awaiting her reply.
Because I refused your wood. And your man’s cloak.
