“I’ll think of them before summer is gone.”
“Then we have it all sorted.” It was such a neat ending. No messy arguments or losses. In his experience, endings were rarely that perfect.
“Come, then. I’ll show you the pattern for your last tattoo.” Turning her back to him, Rea sauntered to her cottage.
Sebestyén followed, painfully aware of the sway of her hips. Why was he noticing all those things about her when he never noticed them before? Was it because she has become familiar, more human and less Suveri? More woman and less myth?
No, he decided. He wouldn’t look at her. Wouldn’t subject himself to unnecessary conflict. Directing his eyes skyward, he trudged along behind her, blindly, keeping rhythm with the movement of the clouds. He even tried to make small talk.
“That’s a new dress. Did you steal it?” For a Suveri, there was no other way of acquiring something so expensive. They didn’t wear such clothes traditionally, and since they didn’t work, they had no money with which to afford them in a dressmaker shop.
Rea’s voice was tight. “No. Someone gave it to me.”
“The man who passed?”
“Who else? It’s not as though I have other family and friends here.”
Had he been looking ahead, Sebestyén would’ve realized she’d stopped, but he wasn’t, so he kept going and bumped into her. Her body crashed to the ground, and his landed right on top of her.
“Ugh,” she groaned.
“Did you hurt your head?” He raked his warm fingers through her hair, her scalp, checking for any swelling.
“It’ll take a bigger fall than this to injure me, general.”
Beneath him, the rise and fall of her chest pushed her breasts into his chest, filling him with the desire to run his hands over her body and explore every inch of those sinful curves. To lick every spot of her smooth skin until she was as flushed and bothered as he was.
Her soft breaths washed over his skin charging the air with intimacy. Soft, luscious lips, so close to his own, beckoned him. It would be such a simple matter to close the treacherous gulf between their bodies, to place his lips on hers and get a taste of what he wanted.
And it would be disastrous. His brother’s warning from earlier flashed through his head. No. He wasn’t that weak, was he? Anything between them was impossible. She was a Suveri, he was the heir to the throne. What had he even been thinking, coming here to see her every day? What had he been hoping would happen?
“Get up. You’re heavy.” He was grateful Rea shoved him, snapped the thread of heat sizzling between them, and made the decision for him.
Sebestyén dusted his clothes. “I apologize. I should’ve been paying attention to where I was going.”
“Don’t be so careless when you’re in Mesinia, or someone will chop off your head before you know it,” Rea said.
“That’s a brutal image. Me beheaded. But it would make you happy, wouldn’t it?”
She blanched. “What do you mean? I would never wish that!”
“You don’t hate me?”
“There are many shades of hatred. Not all of them are black.”
“So, you want to see me unhappy but not dead?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t wish for your unhappiness or your death. I only wish you would stop treating the Suveri like dirt.”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t you?”
“I have never—”
“Haven’t you?”
He bit his tongue. She was right. He’d driven many Suveri off the kingdom’s lands, attacked them in the middle of the night to scare them away, imprisoned those who refused to leave, and put them to work creating tattoos that would enchant and strengthen his own men. He hadn’t done it personally—that kind of trivial task was too much for an archduke to bother with. But he’d let it happen. Seen it happen. Made it happen.
Not once had it occurred to him that those actions made him evil. A tyrant.
“I’ve asked you before.” He raised his voice. “How did your father die?”
“Does it really matter to you? Does it matter how any of the Suveri die? Aren’t they all leeches you want gone from your lands? Dispensers of curses and magic and ugly tattoos who need to be banished?”
Sebestyén couldn’t refute her. That was what he thought of them. What the entire kingdom thought of them. The Suveri didn’t work honestly, nor did they own any of the lands they camped on.
They stole what they needed from the towns nearby. They plundered honest men. They used their magic to isolate themselves from the rest of the world and to frighten away common people so their crimes would go unpunished.
He couldn’t be consorting with one of them. Sebestyén swallowed. Why was he consorting with one of them?
“Cat got your tongue? Can’t you speak?” Rea provoked.
“Your people—” He didn’t want to call them by their name anymore. “—are thieves. I don’t like thieves on my land.”
Rea stiffened. “Is that so? Then are you going to force me to leave?”
“You’ll leave when summer comes anyway.”
“And it’s okay for me to thieve until then? My, what a benevolent emperor you are.”
“Of course, it isn’t.” The hoarse brutality of his voice made her jump. “Henceforth, you’ll live on what I provide you. I’ll have someone deliver you food. Consider it payment for your teachings.”
“You want me to live on your charity? I refuse,” Rea snapped. Her rage was a visible thing twisting her face into an angry, red circle. Sebestyén couldn’t understand why she was so angry. He was offering to give her food, clothes, everything she needed. And he asked for nothing in return.
“You can’t refuse,” he said. “I’m an archduke.”
“And I’m a Suveri. The Suveri’s way of life is freedom. We are the wind. We don’t belong to anyone—no emperor, no land, no law. No one has a say on where we go or what we do. Our life is lived by flowing with the tide, and I will not allow you to take that away from me.”
“Flowing with the tide? That’s just sentimental nonsense. You need order to run a realm.”
“Why is everything sentimental nonsense to you?”
That argument was going nowhere. Their ways of life were in complete conflict. He needed order. She needed chaos. He wanted to control. She slipped out of chains.
Exasperated, Sebestyén tried one last strategy. “What do you want, Rea?”
“I want you to leave me alone, so I can continue living the way I did before.” Anger simmered beneath her voice. “You have no reason to come here anymore. Also, I do not require your benevolent charity.”
It was irrational. She was asking him to see her die of hunger or be apprehended for robbery. “You can’t ban me from my own land!” he shouted.
“Fine. Then stay. Unlike you, I don’t mind sharing my space with others. But I’ll continue living how I’ve always lived. You cannot make me change my ways to suit you.”
He didn’t intend to change her. Perhaps a little. But couldn’t she see that he wanted her to stop suffering?