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Chapter Five
If there was one thing that Nimue learned on her way to the Highlands, it was that she didn’t like traveling. Not only did she have to ride a horse—one that she had to share with Chrisdean, no less—but she also had to sleep on the ground. After a certain point, every night without fail, she had the same dream.
In the dream, she tried to escape from the camp, but her plans were thwarted every time. It wouldn’t have upset her so much, she thought, if every attempt didn’t end in a horrible death for her, but she was so scared that Chrisdean would kill her—or have one of his men kill her—that she could hardly sleep.
That night, she once again woke up with a start, scrambling to get away from a danger that was not there. Once she realized it was only a dream, she regained her bearings and slowed her panicked breathing as she slowly and quietly walked to the edge of the camp.
I’m paranoid. He wouldna do that.
When she reached the edge of it, she sat on a large rock, looking up at the sky. It was chilly there, away from the fire, but she liked the illusion of privacy. She knew, of course, that there was no real privacy and that someone was always watching her, and so she didn’t even attempt to run.
She didn’t want to give Chrisdean a chance to make her nightmare come true.
“Ye canna sleep?”
The voice startled her, and she turned to look at Chrisdean, who stood there, clearly amused that he had managed to scare her. She rolled her eyes before she returned her gaze to the sky, and didn’t look at him again, not even when he perched himself next to her on the rock.
“Me neither,” Chrisdean said, even though Nimue hadn’t replied to his question. “I dinna ken what it is about travellin’. I guess it’s the thought that we could be attacked at any moment.”
It was only then that Nimue looked at him again, her eyes wide with fear.
We could be attacked? By whom?
“Ach, dinna fash yerself, lass,” Chrisdean said, waving a hand dismissively in her direction. “There’s brigands everywhere, but in all the times I’ve traveled, I’ve never lost a man to a brigand. I willna start losin’ men noo.”
“If ye gave me a sword, perhaps I could protect meself, too,” Nimue said, even though she knew that there was no way Chrisdean would give her any sort of weapon. Still, it was worth a try, she thought.
Chrisdean laughed at that, shaking his head. “Do ye ken how to use one?”
Nimue pursed her lips into a thin, straight line and refused to answer. Of course, she didn’t know; no one had ever taught her, and Chrisdean must know that.
“How hard can it be if ye’re doin’ it?” she asked then and tried her hardest to stop herself from grinning at her own words. Her comment didn’t seem to bother Chrisdean, though. He only laughed, as though in agreement.
“Ye’re right,” he said. “If all those lads can do it, I’m sure that ye can do it, too.”
“I didna say anythin’ about them,” Nimue reminded him, pointing a finger at the men who slept behind them. “Only about ye.”
“A personal attack . . . I see,” Chrisdean said, and when Nimue cautioned a glance at him, she found him pouting.
She hated how adorable it was. She hated how their barbed words were not truly meant to hurt and that she found the entire exchange amusing. She didn’t want to be amused by a man like Chrisdean. She wanted to hate him, but a part of her—one that she strived to suppress—found him too likable for that.
For a while, the two of them stayed silent. Nimue’s gaze traced the stars, but she could tell that Chrisdean was looking at her and her only.
Eventually, she became tired of being watched. “What do ye want?”
“What do ye mean?”
“I mean that ye’ve been lookin’ at me for several minutes noo,” she pointed out. “It’s na polite to stare.”
“I’m only admirin’ the beauty that’s in front of me,” Chrisdean said, and Nimue couldn’t help but let out a long-suffering sigh. Under any other circumstances, she would have blushed at those words. Perhaps she would have even welcomed them, and she would be flattered that Chrisdean thought of her as beautiful. But the truth was that this was not one of her father’s balls; it was no feast where young nobles could mingle and declare their affections for each other. No, Chrisdean had kidnapped her, and Nimue didn’t want to hear any compliments from him.
Once again, they fell into a slightly uncomfortable silence. Nimue wished that Chrisdean would just go away and leave her alone, but he seemed to have no intention of doing that.
“Me maither taught us all how to identify the stars,” Nimue said after a while, once the silence had become unbearable. It seemed like a safe topic to discuss, and it was one that had always brought her joy. “When me and me siblings were bairns, she would take us out at night and teach us all their names. We used to spend hours under the stars, just watching them.”
“That sounds verra nice,” Chrisdean said, and he sounded so sincere that Nimue almost felt bad for even bringing it up. She didn’t know anything about his childhood—she didn’t know anything about him at all—but something told her that perhaps it wasn’t as happy as her own had been or that it had stopped being happy at some point.
The same thing had happened to her. One day, she had been happy, and then the next, she wasn’t.
