AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I always listen to you,” I said, offering up a broad smile so he wouldn’t guess my intentions too early and try to wheedle out of the torment I had planned for him.
“Then what was I saying?”
“The usual.” I shrugged. “‘I’m too fucking sexy to be wearing clothes right now, Ren, and as even breathing makes you want to jump my bones, I’m thinking of stripping and bending over this table in a very suggestive manner.’ My answer was going to be a wholehearted approval for the idea, by the way.”
The answering glare I earned could have melted steel.
“Ren-”
I rolled my eyes. “You were saying you can’t believe Quareh’s trackers haven’t yet caught up to us. I gave a vague ‘mmm’, if I recall correctly, because I have no more fucking clue than you do why those with the Scent aren’t on our tail already. You repeated what you’d just heard that group over there say,” – I waved a hand at the cluster of patrons in the middle of the taproom who were eagerly tucking into their food with an unhealthy disregard for their digestive systems and very lives – “which was that the border assaults between Mazekhstam and Quareh have started up again since Welzes’ crowning. I’m fairly sure I swore at that, so you could be sure I was paying attention. And then you asked if I was alright, but before I could respond, you’d detailed all the ways I wasn’t looking well, so I decided to ignore you because I lookmagnificent, fuck you very much.” I drew my fingers through my knotted hair, grimacing. It hadn’t fared well being away from a brush for so long.
“Youthengot a morose look in your eye that told me you were experiencing everything from self-pity to anger to completely unfounded guilt for not Seeing all of this, which you should know is ridiculous.” I smirked, scooped up a forkful of food to punctuate the end of my speech, and then promptly dropped it again because being poisoned wasn’t worth the flourish. “So ask me again if I waslistening.”
Mat didn’t look nearly as impressed as he was supposed to be. “So what were you thinking about while I was doing all that?”
“Fucking you,” I said.
“Deep,” he shot back sarcastically.
I shook my head at him and his sloppy phrasing. “It’s like you don’t even care what you’re saying anymore,mi sol.”
There it was. That little smile, not quite hidden but certainly attempted to be, as he fought his amusement in favour of the sulky scowl he preferred to gift me with.
“...Velichkov,” someone said, and we both flinched before forcing our stiff poses back into nonchalance, pricking our ears to hear more. The inn’s taproom was quickly filling with people who obviously didn’t know they could get their meals for free by eating the dirt outside, and it was making it hard to catch the words of the boisterous group who had been discussing the border before.
“...the king won’t agree to...while his younger brother is abetting the false prince...he thinks... fucking peace?...good riddance to the whole lot of those bastard northerners, is what I say...”
Shit. Welzes was refusing to honour the move towards peace we’d managed to cement with the Velichkovs because Nathanael stood at my side in my alleged treachery? Not only did that give Valeri Velichkov a damn good reason for wanting to hand me over, but it put thousands of lives – Temarian and Quarehian – at risk if tensions between our countries escalated like they clearly already had with Mazekhstam.
Mat frowned where he was seated across from me, closing his eyes as if to hear better, but he was forced to keep his hood up and his back to the room in order to stay inconspicuous. “What are they saying?”
“Can’t make it out,” I lied. There was no fucking way I was going to add to his guilt by telling him that his very presence at our table threatened the entire continent. It might have been enough to get him to leave and publicly denounce any association with me, but after nearly a week of misery on the road and knowing I wouldn’t have made it half a mile without him, I’d lost that streak of selflessness that wanted him to – or would fuckinglethim – go anywhere further than three feet away from me. I hitched my chair closer to the table so I could make it a generous two and a half feet, and immediately felt much better.
Mathias, when at my side, was an impulsive, wild, hot-headed mess of a man more prone to attracting danger and destruction than a hundred kegs of black powder.
Mathias, when not at my side, was all those things and more, and worse, might not have anyone to pull his ass out of the fire when he inevitably turned the mildest of situations into a tumultuous clusterfuck. At least this way, I could keep an eye on him, I reasoned, ignoring that irritating voice in my head that nagged me to acknowledge that it was really because I was a clingy, possessive fool who needed him more than oxygen.
Someone jostled Mat as they pushed past and he clutched his cloak to keep the hood from falling. “It’s getting too crowded in here. We should retire to our room,” he muttered, pressing his hands to the table to stand, and then froze in place as a knife flashed at his throat.
Icy horror passed through me at the sight of the blade and the faint indentation it made in his fair skin. I snapped my gaze up to catch the eye of the man holding it. He was broad shouldered, with bushy eyebrows, and his hair was twisted into a thick plait that hung over his shoulder.
“Stay there,” he said mildly.
I made to rise, preparing to break his fingers for daring to touch my Mathias, yet a second pair of heavy hands fell on my shoulders from behind and shoved me back down into my chair with a clang of wood on stone that was lost in the chatter of the taproom.
The man with the knife gave a disappointed tut. “I see you follow orders as well as you blend in among us commoners,” he said, an amused tilt to his lips.
“If we’ve done something to offend you, señor,” Mat began, evidently attempting to bluff them out, but the knife silenced him mid-sentence with the drawing of a thin line of blood across his neck.
I stilled. “Go ahead. Keep hurting him.”
The man scoffed. “You think you can pretend he doesn’t mean anything to you? The whole fucking country has heard about your attachment to this barbarian.” He glanced down and gave the top of Mathias’ head a disgusted look.
“Go ahead. Keep hurting him,” I repeated in the exact same tone as before, as if he had not spoken at all. “And I willensureyour death will be as painful as it is protracted.”
The man behind me laughed, a deep rumbling chortle of genuine humour. “Oh, I like this one, Filiberto,” he said, wrapping a hand in my hair and yanking it back so I was forced to look up at him. He was an older man with streaks of white running through his otherwise black beard, and ancient scars crossing his cheeks. The face of a mercenary.
“So feisty,” he said fondly to me. When I offered only silence, the man grabbed my chin and steered my jaw up to meet his. His lips were rough, and he tasted like leather and smoke.
