Emma sniffed, but she clamped her lips firmly together. She’d lost it! There was just no getting around it, no white-washing it or excusing herself for flying into a mindless rage. She’d been furious about the attack, wanted to protect Aydin and Colwin and she couldn’t do anything but scream abuse at the men attacking them and the bastards that should have been keeping order.
It wasn’t an excuse and she had the awful feeling that she’d done more harm than helped in any way.
She didn’t know whether to be relieved or more alarmed when she discovered they weren’t being taken to another cell. Instead, they were led from the building and across the street to what looked like a courthouse. She discovered it was, of a sort. The room they were led into looked like a courtroom, except instead of a judge and jurors, there was a long table in the front. Twelve centaurs in human form were seated, six on either side, of a man that seemed to be a ruler if his trapping were anything to go by.
The twelve on either side were white haired and looked old enough for it. The man in the center didn’t look to be much, if any, older than Aydin. His hair and skin were golden like Colwin’s, however.
They caused a stir when they led in. Uneasiness wafted through Emma in spite of the fact that the similarity to a courtroom had almost been a comfort moments before. This wasn’t Earth, though, she reminded herself.
The guard who’d led her in, bowed deeply, growling at her out of the side of his mouth to bow, as well.
She gaped at him instead but finally turned and bowed.
“Your highness! These are the out-worlders I spoke of.”
“Where did you take them?” the king asked.
“They were only a few yards from the entrance to the passage.”
The king fixed her with a hard look. “Why did you come here?”
Emma gaped at him and turned to look at Aydin and Colwin. “We were brought here,” Aydin said. “We had no intention of coming here.”
The guard next to Aydin punched him in the ribs with his fist. Glaring at the man, Emma balled her hand into a fist and started toward him but her guard jerked her to a halt.
“I spoke to the hoonan!” the king growled.
Emma turned to look at him. She wasn’t familiar with dealing with royalty, but she’d studied history. She bowed. “I’m not hoonan, your majesty. I’m a human and I’m from Earth. It’s another world … connected to this one by some sort of gateway.”
Her comments gave rise to a babble of discussion among the people gathered in the room.
A man standing just in front of the council beat the staff he was holding against the floor and called for silence.
Emma stared at him. She hadn’t noticed him before, but apparently he was important because the room quieted.
“That is not what I asked,” the king said coolly.
Emma bowed again. “My ribs are bruised from our battle with the ogres, your highness. I don’t want to be punched in the ribs for telling you the truth like my mate, Aydin, was. If you’ll just tell me what truth you want to hear, I’ll repeat it.”
Those remarks caused more of an uproar than the first.
The man with the staff began pounding the floor again.
The king spoke. “One more outburst and I will have the room cleared!”
Emma felt a shiver skate down her spine, but she couldn’t see that she could say anything they wouldn’t take exception to! She didn’t dare look at Aydin and Colwin. She knew they were regretting the fact that they hadn’t dumped her somewhere along the way. She discovered when she nerved herself to look at the king again, however, that he didn’t look enraged. It was hard to tell what he was thinking as he studied her, but she thought he was curious.
“How do you know about the gateway?” he asked abruptly.
Emma sent him a startled look. “I didn’t … until I fell through it.”
“You are garbed as the primitives dress themselves,” he said coolly.
It pissed her off that they kept calling Aydin and Colwin primitives. “I needed something to wear.”
The king propped an arm on the chair he was seated in and dropped his chin to his hands. “How came you to be with the dark stallion and the golden one?”
“They rescued me from the hoonans. King Bart had captured me when I came through.” She knew the moment she said it that it was a mistake.
The king instantly went rigid. The other councilors did, also.
“You were fleeing the hoonan king?” he barked.
Emma gulped, searching her mind for something she could say to smooth over her slip. She knew they weren’t going to be happy that the king’s men were right behind them. Finally, she shrugged. “It isn’t
our
fault your guards dragged us here! If they’d left us alone, we would’ve kept going.”
Three of the councilors surged their feet abruptly. “You have brought the
hoonans
to our doorstep!”
Emma stared at them uneasily. “It isn’t as if we knew it was your doorstep!”
The entire room was in uproar within seconds of her announcement. The king leapt up, as well. “Jarvik! Take re-enforcements to the gateway immediately and take those two primitives back to their cell!”
The man beside her bowed jerkily. “What should I do with the female?”
“Kendig, bring the female to my chambers!”
“I will cut your heart out and shove it down your throat if you touch her!” Aydin bellowed furiously, struggling against the guard trying to subdue him.
Even in the mayhem Emma had created, Aydin’s voice carried so loudly people in the room froze in horror.
Emma whipped her head around to look at him in wide-eyed horror for a split second before she tried to launch herself at the guard punching him with his fists. Jarvik caught her before she could get her hands on the bastard, jerking her off her feet.
The king’s face hardened with fury. “Fool! I’ve no designs on your mate! Take them!”
Jarvik passed her into the hands of the man who’d been punching Aydin. Emma narrowed her eyes at him as he reached for her, waiting for the chance to get a few blows in herself. The moment he grabbed her, she attacked him with her fingernails and her teeth, wishing she was a wildcat and could tear him to shreds.
The bastard! Aydin’s hands were bound or the son-of-a-bitch wouldn’t have felt free to use him for a punching bag!
She managed to mete out a good bit of damage before he clubbed her on the side of her head hard enough she saw stars and then twilight and then midnight. She was dangling head down over the guard’s shoulder when she came to. Still disoriented and woozy, she’d just managed to lift her head to look around when the man carrying her turned off the corridor and passed through a door where two guards stood at attention.
He dragged her from his shoulder and dumped her unceremoniously on the floor.
“What happened to her?” the king growled.
“The prisoner attacked me, your highness. I knocked her out.”
The king uttered a snarl and punched the man in the face with his fist. The guard wobbled and fell over backwards, hitting the floor hard enough it attracted the attention of the guards at the door.
“That this stupid fuck to the prison and lock him up until he has had time to consider what he did.”
The guards bowed, bent down and grasped the unconscious man beneath the arms, and then dragged him out, closing the door behind them.
Emma gazed up at the king a little dazedly. He crouched down, caught her chin and examined the side of her face. “You are fierce, but not terribly wise,” he said finally.
Emma struggled to gather her wits. She knew he was right. On the other hand, she’d clawed the hell out of him! He wouldn’t be forgetting
that
anytime soon, she thought with satisfaction. “He hit Aydin and his hands were bound!” she said angrily.
“The dark stallion who threatened the king? Me, in point of fact.”
Emma studied him warily. “You aren’t his king.”
Amusement flickered in his eyes. “Are all humans like you?”
“Only the stupid ones,” Emma muttered.
“Or the very brave … and protective.”
Emma sent him a surprised look.
Grasping her arm, he helped her to her feet and led her to a couch—a padded, upholstered couch. Emma sank down on it gratefully until it abruptly dawned on her how filthy she was. “Oh god! I’ll get it dirty!”
“Sit!” he said testily. Striding away from her, he moved to a desk and punched a button. “Send a physician to my private audience chamber.”
He moved back to her when someone on the other end acknowledged his order. Glancing around, he grabbed a chair and moved it closer to the couch. “Now, without interruption, the entire tale.”
Emma wasn’t convinced it was safe to tell him the entire story, especially considering their reaction to the fact that they were being pursued by hoonans. “That was pretty much all of it,” she hedged.
“Except the part about King Bart,” he said dryly. “Don’t bother to spin me a tale. He has a special interest in you or they would not have pursued you so far.”
Emma eyed him a little resentfully. “It’s the red hair,” she said finally. “It’s always been the bane of my existence! He took one look at me and decided he was going to marry me! He didn’t ask, mind you! He just told me he was—like I should be honored!”
“And did he wed thee?” the king asked with amusement.
Emma cleared her throat. “Well, I wasn’t just going to wait around and see! After I was sick and they locked me in a room, I tore up the bed hangings and made a rope to climb out the window.”
He held up his hand. “You were ill when you came through?” he asked sharply.
Emma grimaced. “I’m not carrying anything! It’s just—he was so horribly disgusting and I have a really delicate gag reflex. He kissed me and I threw up and then they decided I was carrying something.”
He stared at her blankly for several moments and burst out laughing. Emma studied him a little resentfully for a few moments, but she finally saw the humor in it. She smiled faintly and then winced at the discovery that her lip was sore.
The guard!
“It wasn’t really funny at the time. He sent for his physician and that was almost scarier than the idea of having to marry him! I had visions of their physician torturing me to death to try to cure me. And I was afraid to tell them King Bart was just so nasty and disgusting he made me throw up!”
He sobered. “You are wiser than I thought,” he said wryly. “Continue.”
She didn’t really
want
to continue! She’d claimed Aydin and Colwin as her mates. She shrugged. “Aydin and Colwin burst into the room about the time I started to climb out the window and then we all escaped and we’ve been running ever since.”
“And when did you meet your mates?”
Emma winced. She’d been afraid he would ask her that! To save her life, she couldn’t think of a believable lie, though. “When they burst into the room,” she mumbled. “It was love at first sight!”
He studied her doubtfully.
“For all of us!”
She could tell he didn’t believe her. “They were captives of this King Bart, also?”
Relieved that he’d picked another line of questioning, she nodded. “Colwin was. Aydin had sneaked into the castle to free his brother.”
The kings brows rose. “They are brothers?”
“Half brothers, I guess.”
“They are your mates and you do not know?”
“I did point out that we hadn’t actually been together very long, didn’t I?”
He nodded. “Which makes me wonder when the mating ritual was performed.”
Emma gaped at him, feeling the blood fluctuate in her face. They had a
ritual
?
“That’s what I thought,” he said dryly.
Emma had a bad feeling that comment meant he didn’t believe they were mates.
The doctor arrived. The king watched while the bastard examined her. A little privacy would’ve been appreciated, but it didn’t appear to the concept any-damned-body in this world was familiar with!
The doctor bowed to the king when he’d finished. “The trauma to her face appears to be bruising only. Without a scan I can not be absolutely certain, but I do not believe anything is broken. I would suggest a cold pack to bring the swelling down. Her ribs, also, appear to be badly bruised, but I could not detect any breaks. Otherwise, more bruises … a few minor lacerations, some dehydration, perhaps a touch of mal-nourishment.”
The king thanked him and dismissed him with an order to send a guard to fetch her.
Emma chewed her lip when the doctor left. “You could save yourself a lot of trouble if you just took us back to where we were captured and let us go. They’re after me.”
“Emma of the glorious red hair,” he murmured and then frowned thoughtfully. “Flaming hair.”
Emma studied him uneasily.
Thankfully, someone knocked at the door, distracting him. The way he was staring at her was really making her nervous.
“Come!”
The door opened. “Dresden! I just heard!”
The king’s expression hardened. “What are you doing here, Roland?” he asked testily.
“I wanted to see her for myself ….” He stopped abruptly when he spied her on the couch. “Gods! She does have flaming hair!”
And if she’d had any damned sense, she would be wearing a scarf over it, Emma thought angrily!
“We will speak later, Roland.”
Roland stared at him. “We need to speak now! Gods, Dresden! The prophesy! Have you forgotten it? The time is now! We have to strike!”
Dresden frowned, flicking a speculative look at her, but he shook his head. “That is nothing more than old tales spun long ago when our people were superstitious of such things!”