He did so.
And even knowing the size of his hands, she had misjudged the amount of grain he might hold cupped in his palm. He drew out such a great heap that the weight of the bag between them was halved.
Gripping the edge of the sack tighter, Yvenne also reached in and buried her hand deep in the cool, shifting grain. When she drew back, seeds slipped over the stumps of her missing fingers, yet still her cupped palm held a fine heap.
“Whether you rule or lead,” she said softly, “with your people it is always better to keep an open hand. For even in sour times, with an open hand you will be able to carry them all—and their loyalty will remain with you. But the moment you tighten your grip, no matter how strong or weak you are”—slowly she formed a fist, Maddek copied her motion, and grain spilled like a waterfall into the sack—“they will begin slipping through your fingers.”
With seeds raining from his powerful hand, Maddek asked quietly, “Is this what your father has done?”
“It is.” She clenched her fist as tight as her strength allowed, then opened her fingers to show him the small number of grains that remained in her palm. “He clings to his power and squeezes those still loyal to him, and now there are hardly any left.” Abruptly she frowned as Maddek also unrolled his fist. “What have you done to your fingers?”
“It is nothing.”
Amusement filled his reply. And perhaps it was a joking lie, or perhaps he believed it was truth, but Yvenne could not. She caught his hand and held him still for a closer examination. Multiple bloodied slashes crossed his fingers and palm, as if he’d repeatedly gripped a knife by the blade.
But not a blade, she realized. Gently she drew her fingertips down the strong lengths of his fingers, brushing away the grains that stuck to the shallow wounds. “This is from the grass you cut to feed the horses?”
Maddek grunted.
Sudden and hot tension gripped her body. That sound had been confirmation—and more. She could not always decipher his grunted replies . . . but his arousal, she could, for her own rose quickly to meet it.
So quickly. In a single breath, concern for his injury dropped away and so many imaginings replaced it. Of sucking his fingers into her mouth, of watching his need burn until he begged her to do the same to his cock. Of urging his hand down between her thighs, where she was slick and aching, so that he might ease her need as he had the night before.
But that would not disentangle her heart from his.
Even as Maddek curled his fingers over hers, as if to catch her hand and drag her closer, Yvenne slipped out of his grasp, stepping back and beyond his reach.
Agitated, her body trapped in a hectic rush of pulsing blood and prickling skin, she folded her arms over her chest and tried to hold her rioting emotions within her breast. Yet despite that effort—or because of it—her voice emerged in a strained whisper. “This lesson is done.”
Maddek would teach her another. His fiery gaze and the primal stillness of his body promised it without words.
But he would not teach her now. For he only gave a sharp nod and said, “Then prepare to ride.”
He strode away, his arousal still etched in harsh lines upon his face and his erection jutting behind his red linens, though every warrior must see him and know what it meant. Nothing did he conceal or repress.
If Maddek felt any affection for her, if there was any hope of love or trust, anything beyond lust—he would not likely conceal that either.
And she saw nothing of the sort. But it mattered not.
Hers would surely wither soon.
CHAPTER 18
MADDEK
Maddek’s bride was truly a southerner, for she loved to build walls. He had not attempted to breach the wall of silence she’d erected that morning—her punishment was one he’d well deserved. Yet several walls remained even after she’d begun speaking to him again, and Maddek was truly a Parsathean, for he could not resist the challenge they presented. Not a moment passed that he did not imagine ways to climb over them, or break through them, or dig beneath them.
For there was little else to do on this journey, and her walls filled him with hot frustration. Yet Maddek would not need to breach them at all, if he could lure her out. First the wall that she intended to put between their beds until her moon night. That one required patience, because she claimed not to fear him, yet he could not mistake the way she’d stiffened and pulled away from his hands. She no longer punished him for pulling at her tongue, and he’d seen how his touch still heated her blood, yet he’d foolishly damaged the one easy bond they’d forged between them—a bond forged by mutual desire. The repair there was his alone to make and it would take time.
Yet now there was another bond: she would teach him to be a king and he would teach her to be a warrior. So when they took to the road again, and she put up yet another wall that was made of short responses, tight smiles, and averted eyes, Maddek had bait that Yvenne could not resist.
“Another lesson,” he said to her. “Before any Parsathean becomes a warrior, first she must learn to hunt. If you ever wish to become a warrior-queen, you must look with a hunter’s eyes.”
Those moonstone eyes were not a hunter’s yet and gazed at him full of wariness and doubt. He saw none of the joy of that morning’s lesson before she nodded.
“How does a hunter see, then?”
As Maddek did. He showed to her the mounds of earth that told him of the giant rodents burrowed beneath them. The quivering stalks in the fields that said long-toothed cats slinked between them. The large and shallow depressions in the mud where heavy reptiles bedded down for the night. Every marking in the soil, every broken stem or twitch of a leaf, every disturbance that was not created by the wind or the rain, they all told him of creatures that might be hunted—or that might be hunting them.
Her eyes brightened all the while as she began looking anew. As the sun dipped toward the west, it was no longer Maddek pointing to what she should see, but Yvenne noting each marking and asking him what he made of them.
Until she was not always asking, but seeing for herself. “That trail there,” she said, indicating a swath through the long grasses. “It is as wide as the trail made by mirens, but those stalks are flattened and these are cut short, as if by a scythe.”
Maddek grunted his approval. “Well seen.”
Pleasure flushed her cheeks. “But it could not be a scythe, could it? What else could do that?”
He could name many creatures, but only one of that size. “A giant millipede—which also tells us there is likely a stream nearby. They are usually near water, or areas where the ground remains moist.”
“A millipede?” Eagerly she glanced at the path. “I’ve heard they are tasty.”