She stared hard at him. “I have work to do.”
He’d made her uncertain. Good. It was better than her absolute confidence that she already understood everything about him. Magnus would let the pleasure of his victory soak in instead of charging for the last word. His gaze drifted down to her boots, which she’d exchanged with her sandals four days prior. He glanced back up. “You should let me rub them.”
Whatever reverie she’d been in, those words snapped her out of it. Her eyes widened before narrowing on him. “What?”
“Your feet. They’re swollen, aren’t they?”
He could see it in her hands already. Mountain sickness took many forms. Many of the Ebronians had spent the past days vomiting. The very unlucky ones would start fainting soon, too.
Magnus succumbed to temptation. He reached out to take her hand in his. “Come sit with me. Take off your boots.”
Nadine snapped her hand away. “Lance yourself.”
Magnus sighed. It had been worth a try.
“We’ll be hiking in the snow tomorrow. The danger will grow with it.”
Nadine grunted and started back toward the camp. “I’ll get the rest of the report from your brother.”
Resentment toward Erik shot through him. He raised his voice so it would carry over the distance. “Sleep with Yrsa and me tonight.”
Nadine stopped. “Excuse me?”
“I sleep tucked into her body. It’s warmer that way and ten times safer. It only makes sense.”
The words weren’t even out of his mouth before Nadine had crossed the space between them and gotten into his face. It would have been heady . . . if not for the anger emanating from her in waves.
“Understand this, barbarian. You and I are not lovers. Not husband and wife. Were I to take you into my bed, it would only ever be as a dalliance. There would be no dignity in it. Nothing legitimate. And that stunt you pulled with my second put my leadership in question from the very start of this mission. I’m still trying to recover the respect you stole from me.”
Magnus bristled because he knew she was right. He hadn’t meant to lash out at Samar as he had. He still wasn’t sure what exactly he’d seen going on between them. Even so, a moment’s pause might have kept him from doing the one thing he’d promised himself not to do: make Nadine hate him.
He’d tolerated this past week of separation only because he knew he deserved it. These were not her men, and the last thing she’d needed was a poor first impression. Yet that was exactly what she was fighting against. And with every snide comment, or dragging of boots after a command was issued, Magnus knew he’d contributed to crumpling the reins of her command.
He had to do better. At least in front of the men. No more spoken endearments or familiar touches. He thought of Samar’s haughty expression, and a spike of anger made his insides heat. Well, he’d curb his teasing in front of all but that Ebronian.
Nadine cracked her jaw. “Don’t ask me to sleep with you again.”
She stormed off. A cord of regret tugged in Magnus’s chest with each of her retreating steps. He sighed and turned back toward Yrsa. “Well, girl, it’s just you and me again.”
The gegatu cracked a green eye in his direction and grunted deep from her belly.
Magnus chuckled. “Yeah, she smells better than you, too.”
9
Beneath the Surface
“You should let us fly you over to the other side,” the blond Dokiri told Nadine. His gentle but insistent blue eyes stayed on Nadine, pointedly ignoring Samar, who huffed beside her.
The afternoon clouds rolled over the sky, blending with the white snow all around them. Yudvir, how Nadine hated the frigid stuff. Would she ever feel warm again? A massive tract of flat, barren terrain stretched out behind Erik. A frozen lake, he had explained. An impassable, frozen lake.
Nadine glanced at Samar, who pulled out his lancet and flipped the switch at its side. The telescoping weapon extended, and he planted it into the snow by his feet. He leaned against it as though it were a walking staff, as though the savage’s words had wearied him. Nadine’s lips thinned. She was no happier at what she’d just been told, but she didn’t relish the thought of skipping over unsteady ice either. She met Samar’s eyes.
Her second’s gaze held a stiff warning: don’t trust them. They’d been over this before. To him, no amount of speed or convenience was worth the risk the men felt at climbing into the wyvern’s saddles, trusting the Dokiri not to somehow betray them. She swallowed, forcing her own instincts aside. These were not her men. Not really. And it felt too soon to ask this much of their faith in her judgment. Too precarious.
Nadine turned back toward Magnus’s brother. “We’ve been marching up this mountain for a fortnight. We’re not suddenly going to climb onto the backs of your steeds and let you carry us where you will.”
“As I recall,” a familiar voice sounded from behind Nadine. “You had more than a little fun the last time you spread your thighs on my mount.”
Nadine drew in a breath, and her eyes slid shut. Don’t kill him.
Magnus came up alongside them, turning their trio into a quartet. He muttered something to his older brother in that foreign, raspy language of theirs, and Erik answered him in kind. Samar stiffened beside her. Nadine’s own hand shifted toward her belt, but this time her instinct wasn’t to stand back to back with her friend. Rather, she thought to play mediator between him and their tenuous allies. A very pointy mediator, if necessary.
Magnus, now standing with his brother, turned to face Nadine and Samar. “We didn’t make it here fast enough. The spring winds have set the ice to thaw. It’s not safe.”
Samar jerked his chin at the lake just beyond them. A thick layer of snow covered it that glittered whenever the sun broke through the oppressive clouds. “It looks solid to me.”
Magnus snorted. “That’s because you’re blind as a mole compared to us. And you don’t know shit about ice.”
Nadine bit the inside of her cheek. Samar and Magnus had disagreed on nearly everything from the moment they’d met. It wasn’t as though her friend was a passive person on a regular day. There was a reason why men followed him and why, like her, he’d been promoted to captain at a relatively young age. But the hostility he directed toward the savage went beyond his natural bent. He didn’t like Magnus, didn’t trust him. And he’d made no secret of that opinion to her. Not that it meant anything; she wasn’t here by choice. None of them were. The Ebronians and Dokiri were allies by necessity, so Nadine would do what she could to keep the two men from tearing one another apart.
Easier said than done.
“What’s our alternative? Going around? We don’t have time.” Nadine fixed her gaze on Magnus and felt a thrill of satisfaction at the tentative glint in his eyes, the one he always got whenever she showed him even an ounce of attention.
Yudvir, it was like getting her attention was all the man could think about. And he’d get it any way he could. Even if that included making her furious. Nadine was coming to realize that allowing Magnus to incite her with every taunt only fueled her own vexation. If she were strategic, she might entice him to make better use of that burning need to see her pleased. “Your brother said going around will add days.”