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I fix the old woman with a narrow stare. “You seem to know me.”
Her expression grows proud and flinty. “We’re not all ignorant around these parts. Some of us pay close attention to the stories, and we know they aren’t merely tales to tell around the fire.” Her gaze flicks scornfully over my armor. “So he’s returned, gods preserve us.”
I exhale sharply through my nose, an expression of displeasure I’ve picked up from Scourge. Apparently she doesn’t think much of the man currently filling her tiny room. The first person in Maledin who knows who I am, and this is the welcome I receive?
“Where did they take the girl?” I growl.
“Your dragons are invading. The whole country is in an uproar of sparks and smoke. Why do you care about one little village girl?”
“Because she’s mine,” I snarl. I know my eyes must be burning red in the darkness, but if the old woman is afraid, she doesn’t show it.
“Have you scented your mate,Ma’len? Is she comely?” the hag asks slyly. “Does she have lovely pink cheeks and bright, glittering eyes?”
My teeth clench together. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her face.”
The woman nods slowly. “So it is like that. A trueMa’len, and a trueMa’len’smate. Hard found, and carelessly lost.”
An Alpha king and an Omega queen. Meant to be together. Meant to rule together. It’s the stars telling me I will win this war—if I hadn’t lost her.
“I was not careless,” I snap. “I left the battleground and flew with her to my camp where she would be safe.”
“And then?”
“She ran away,” I grind out through clenched teeth.
The hag cackles again. Mocking my frustration. Delighting in my failure.
“I have known the chit all her life, and I can tell you if she is a beauty,” the hag offers. “What she’s like. Her temperament and her charms.”
“It doesn’t matter what she looks like. Scourge and I have other methods to find her, and the rest I will discover for myself.”
I found her veil in a tent back at camp. She’d pulled it off and cast it aside, ruining my hopes to draw it back from her face and gaze down at her for the first time. Ihungeredfor that moment, but the girl crumpled it up and hid it beneath a stinking sleeping pallet, along with her dress. Both garments are still bathed in her scent, but they also reek of sweaty, unwashed soldiers. It’s obscene that her garments smell of any man but me.
The hag casts me a coquettish expression, which looks strange on her haggard old face. “But don’t you want to know for certain that she’s as comely asMa’len’sbride should be? What if you waste your time hunting her, only to discover she doesn’t please you?”
I hunker down on my heels before the crone and put my face close to hers, grinning nastily. “Not be pleased by my mate? I will look upon her and see the most beautiful woman in the world. Even if she is your twin.”
The hag’s expression turns sour. “I was a beauty once. You should have seen me before that trickster, Time, stole all my gifts.”
I wave a dismissive hand. I wouldn’t have been interested in her even if she was the Goddess of Beauty herself. “You still have gifts for me. Your clever mind. Your powers of foresight, of farseeking. Where have the Brethren taken my bride?”
“Me? Have powers? I am an old woman who boils weeds in a cauldron. I have no talents to interest you.”
“Lies,” I seethe, moving so close that my nose is nearly touching her hooked one. “The stench of witchcraft is upon you.”
The hag mutters, sitting back. She regards me for a moment, and then snaps, “I have no strength left for farseeking. With my help, the girl had a vision not two hours hence, and it drained me so much that I could not flee for my life if this cottage caught fire.”
My mate had a vision?
“Of what?” I ask calmly, though my heart is suddenly beating wildly. Was it of me? Of us? Did she see us together? As we are meant to be. As wewillbe. If she did, it probably terrified her because she knows nothing of our ways. Apparently, no Maledinni does except for those who escaped the mountain with me and this hag before me.
The woman hesitates, leaning closer with gleaming eyes. My breath catches in my throat as I anticipate what she’s about to tell me of my mate’s vision.
“I can’t say. She didn’t tell me what she saw.”
I get to my feet, nearly cracking my skull on the ceiling once more. The hag cackles at her own jest, and I dearly want to put my fist through the wall. How much of the gods’ favor would I lose for running one of their blessed through with my sword?
I’m barely holding back the Brethren, and I’ve lost my mate within minutes of finding her. I can’t risk it.
