As the horses were rounding the ruins, the hounds emerged silently from the mist, tongues dangling. Judging by their wolfish grins, they hadn’t found any threats within the rubble or the road ahead. Still Maddek didn’t call a halt until the path began to curve back toward the river, where he could see both the way forward and the way they’d come. This route was well-traveled, and he didn’t expect that Syssian soldiers would catch up to them this day or bandits to be foolish enough to attack a group of Parsatheans, but better to have a view in both directions.
The ground was firmer near the ruins than on the road, yet still soft. Mud sucked at Maddek’s boots when he dismounted. Yvenne moved more slowly. She was just swinging her leg over when Maddek caught her waist. Her thick cloak was still damp from the earlier rain, her spine stiffening at his touch—until she looked over her shoulder and saw that it was he. The immediate softening of her body had the opposite effect on his.
Only seven more nights until he knew the softness and heat within her.
Only seven more misery-filled days.
He brought her slight form against his chest and carried her to the nearest slab of stone—a toppled column that lay half embedded in the soft earth, creating a wide ledge that came up to his knees. “You need boots. Your sandals are not well-suited for riding.”
“Perhaps not, but muddied toes will not kill me,” was her tart reply. “I must tend to my horse.”
“I’ll bring him to you.”
She stood taller than Maddek when he set her upon the ledge—a position he suspected she liked. Her full lips curved as she looked down at him.
“This must be how my mother and her mother felt. It must be a wondrous thing to stand so tall, never having to look up at anyone. Is that how you feel?”
Maddek had never thought of his height as wondrous. He only stood as tall as Temra made him.
But some elevated themselves in other ways. “Did you not look down upon everyone from your tower?”
“No. Zhalen could not risk me being seen. Our windows were shuttered and locked, and we had but cracks to look through.” Her shrug could not be as careless as she tried to make it seem, for her voice thickened. “It mattered not. My mother could still see beyond the chamber walls and describe it all to me.”
It mattered not. A lie. But not all untruths were on purpose. Maddek would not hold that one against her.
Instead he directed her attention to Kelir, who had ridden toward the river’s edge, searching for dangers the hounds might not have scented. “He and Ardyl are in constant competition. When we were younger, she grew taller than he.” Taller than Maddek, too. “It was not until he reached his bearded age that his height overtook hers—but he did everything he could to speed it along. Once I found him hanging from a tree by his legs, because he hoped to stretch their length by a span.”
Her sallow face alight with laughter, she watched the warrior return across the muddied flat. “Is that why he is always the last to dismount?”
She had noted that? It was true that Kelir sat upon his horse longer than any other, but the height it offered was not the only reason he saw the other warriors settled before he took his own ease. As he was leader of the Dragon, the responsibility for Maddek’s security—and now Yvenne’s security—lay heavier upon him.
But she was not wrong. “Watch how he rides by her,” he said, and when Kelir stopped near Ardyl but did not dismount until the female warrior looked up and saw him sitting so high above her, Maddek glanced back at Yvenne and saw her wearing a grin as broad as his.
“Now she will cut him down with her words,” he told her, and though they were not near enough to hear Ardyl’s response, the flush that creeped over Kelir’s cheeks was easy to read.
So was the querying glance Banek sent in Maddek’s direction, for his mare and Yvenne’s gelding were still saddled.
“I will fetch your mount,” Maddek told her. “You ought to spread out your cloak beneath the sun.”
Which was hot and had already dried the ledge she stood upon, though mist still rose from the sodden ground and from the moss-covered rubble behind her.
Returning with their horses, he saw that she’d done as he’d suggested—and that beneath the cloak her robe was wet, the darkened silk clinging to her slim figure. But he did not think she would remove the robe and lay it out, as several of his warriors had done with their belted linens—as Maddek would have done if the damp and heavy material was not the best leash upon his cock. She’d folded her arms tightly against her chest, hands clamped beneath her chin as if to conceal the way the silk hugged her small breasts.
But it was not out of modesty, Maddek realized as he led her gelding up beside the ledge. Her teeth chattered.
Beneath a blazing sun. Though puffed white clouds drifted in the sky, none shielded Enam’s glaring eye. “Are you cold?”
“No.” Brow furrowed, she looked uncertainly around, her pale gaze touching upon the ruins before sliding past them to the rushing river.
“Are you fevered?”
Her mouth flattened with irritation. “I did not take ill in the storm. I am not that frail.”
Even warriors caught chill. He studied her face, the moonstone eyes that were still focused uneasily on the river. “Are you sensitive to magics?”
Her gaze clashed with Maddek’s, her face utterly still. “I would not know,” she said slowly. “Never have I encountered any.”
This would be a place to encounter them. He held out the gelding’s reins, and it seemed an enormous effort for her to unlock her arms and close her shivering fingers around the leather lines.
Her palms were blistered, skin cracked and weeping. Maddek’s fists clenched against the instinctive need to take the reins back from her, but she would not appreciate it or benefit if he tended to her horse to spare her hands. As with saddle-sore muscles, the only remedy was more riding and calluses.
Instead he moved to his mare’s side and said, “There are warriors who feel a chill near Parsa.” The ancient city the Destroyer had razed—just as he had razed this bridge and trading village. “Perhaps the same dark magics linger here.”
With a grunt, she pulled the saddle from her gelding’s back, stumbling under its weight and setting it heavily upon the stone. “Is Parsa still abandoned, as this place is?”
“Yes. It is home to nothing but wraiths.” Malignant specters that raised the hairs on the back of any warrior’s neck, sensitive to magics or not. As he placed his saddle beside hers, Maddek’s gaze swept the fallow fields, the ruins. “The hounds usually sense such things.”
In the alliance’s march against Stranik’s Fang, dogs had often alerted the army to the priests’ magics, allowing Toleh’s monks to cleanse any befouled areas before the warriors passed through. But Fassad’s wolves did not appear uneasy. Instead they were tussling playfully at Fassad’s feet as he fed them treats from his store of dried meat.