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He took in my overly polite smile, his expression wavering from defiance into suspicious unease, before biting his lip and letting go.
My soft laughter sounded sadistic even to my own ears. “Very good. I’d have you on your hands and knees for even daring to think it, only you’d slow us down terribly.”
Mathias grunted out his disapproval of the idea. “I thought we agreed I wouldn’t ever crawl for you?”
I’d never heard such nonsense in my life. “We didnot,” I said indignantly. “Are you trying to drain all the fun out of the world? Don’t answer that,” I hastily added, because his pissed off scowl implied that may indeed have been his goal. “I’ve decided instead that the punishment for that mutinous attitude of yours is to walk the next hour in only your boots. Give me all of your clothes.”
He ignored me so thoroughly that for a moment I wondered if my words had merely been wishful thinking.
Never mind. I knew a sure-fire way to have my northerner strip for me, and it would only take a single sentence.
“You-”
We both froze as a long howl split the air, staring back the way we’d come.
“They have dogs,” Mat said hollowly.
“And terrible timing,” I agreed, pretending to sulk as that was better than letting the icy fear in my veins freeze me in place.
“We should run?”
“Nah,” I said. “I think we should stay here and let them tear us to pieces. Yes, Your Highness, I thinkwe should fuckingrun.”
His answer was to scowl, grab my hand, and take off at a pace I hadn’t known either of us were capable of, considering how long it had been since we last ate or rested properly. But I had to admit that the excited barks of the mercenaries’ dog as they gained on our heels wereexcellentmotivators, and the adrenaline carried us through thick underbrush and up steep inclines that I would not have even attempted half an hour ago.
But it was when the next howl came from aheadof us that I realised running hadn’t been the obvious solution my sarcasm had implied. The fuckers were herding us.
“Makes. Sense,” Mathias gasped as we pushed our way through spiky, low-hanging branches whose entire purpose in life seemed to be to inconvenience runaway princes. They left shallow yet numerous gashes across our faces and arms. “Catching people is…what these mercenaries…fuckingdo.Did we really…believe…a pair of royals could…outpace them?”
Outpace, likely not. Outsmart? Perhaps.
“This way,” I panted, leading us to our right where I knew the river lurked somewhere close. We’d been roughly following its course through the forest – again, that was probably predictable but without food we’d neededsomethingto give us sustenance and muddy water was better than none – and if we could get across without being seen, the water would lose the dogs our trail. The men hunting us would hopefully assume we’d continued east, but if we doubled back west for a while, we might be able to evade them long enough to…
“Oh,” I said, as we shoved our way through the last of the trees to find the anticipated river.
Only it was a hundred feet below us.
We stood on a cliff, the rocky ground dropping before our feet so steeply it was almost vertical. The river wound its way below, thinner and not as fast-moving as it had been where we’d first met it – and almost drowned in it – but it was going to be difficult to use the water to dampen our scent when getting to it would require either a half hour of careful descent, or a fatal fall that would quickly sweep our corpses away.
“Maybe we can lose them in the trees after all,” I suggested, but Mathias shook his head. I stilled when I saw his usual stormy-coloured eyes had been replaced with the blue and gold of my family name.
“If we run now, the dogs catch us alone within minutes,” he said, his voice quiet as he reflected on whatever he was Seeing. “But if we stay here, the men will be with them.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t See beyond them all arriving from over there.” He pointed at the tree line a few feet from where we’d emerged ourselves.
“And how is that better?” I demanded, and Mat gave a rueful shrug as the vivid colour receded from his gaze.
“They’re people,” was all he said, and I was reminded of what I’d told him in the wagon about the involvement of people giving us a chance. But that had been with guards or servants who might be willing to take a bribe to let me escape, not a bunch of mercenaries for whom our entire value rested in our recapture.
Oh.
“Do you trust me?” I asked, buoyed by the lack of any hesitation from my lover when he immediately gave me a warm smile and his unflinching assent. I sneaked a kiss from him because I could, and because there was a very good chance this wouldn’t work, and because I wasn’t leaving this world without stealing whatever I could from the man who in turn had stolen – andbecome– my everything.
“Are we interrupting, boys?”
I held up a finger in the universal symbol ofwait your fucking turn,not bothering to look around at the approaching men until I’d finished memorising Mat’s mouth with my tongue and the little dimples in his lower back with my fingertips. So perhaps our this-may-be-goodbye kiss had turned a little heated in the minutes we’d been waiting but I noticed my wildcat wasn’t complaining, melting into my touch with a soul-warming receptiveness that made my blood sing.
