Petrus’s face tightened momentarily. “Very well.”
Innis watched as he left the room. Was Petrus angry with her? She shrugged wearily and turned back to the bed.
It was a bed worthy of a prince, with posts carved from dark wood and a heavy canopy of green velvet. The room was worthy of a prince, too—the deep fireplace, the branching candelabra, the windows with tiny, diamond-shaped panes. Tapestries hung on the walls. Hunting scenes: boars with spears bristling from their backs, stags brought down by hunting dogs, birds tumbling from the sky, pierced by arrows.
Innis averted her gaze. She sat in the chair beside the bed and turned the sheet back slightly.
She laid a hand on Prince Harkeld’s shoulder. There wasn’t much left to heal. Bruising, some swelling. She closed her eyes and let the magic flow down her fingers, let it flow inside him, along veins and arteries, along nerves, through muscle and bone. The sense of who he was expanded around her again. Honor. Pride. Determination.
Innis worked methodically, seeking areas of damage, repairing them: the bruising around his shoulder blade, the swelling in the tissues surrounding the fresh scar. She checked that no other ribs were cracked, letting her magic feel its way along each bone, and examined his heart one last time. It beat steadily.
Innis opened her eyes. She yawned.
A bath
, she thought, rubbing her face. To scrub the dirt of the past week off her skin, to wash it out of her hair. And then she’d change back into Justen.
She yawned again and rested her forehead on the edge of the bed for a moment.
F
INGERTIPS TRAILED LIGHTLY
across his shoulder, eliciting a tingle of pleasure. Harkeld blinked his eyes open. The fingers stroked over his skin again, feather-light, tracing a path along his collarbone, down his chest.
He captured the hand—a woman’s hand, slender and fine-boned—and turned his head. The room was too dark to see her face.
The woman didn’t pull away. She bent over him. He felt the soft brush of her hair against his cheek, the soft touch of her mouth on his shoulder. Her lips parted, her tongue tasted his skin.
Desire shivered through him. He made a sound in his throat.
She lifted her head and drew back. Her hand slid from his grip.
“No.” Harkeld pushed up until he was sitting. “Don’t go.”
She stilled.
Harkeld reached for her, drawing her towards him, cupping his hands around her face, dipping his head to kiss her. Her lips were soft, sweet. “Don’t go,” he whispered against her mouth.
Her lips clung to his. She leaned into him. She was naked. He felt the silken warmth of her skin against his, the softness of her breasts, the taut crests of her nipples.
Arousal flared inside him, hot and urgent. He gathered her to him, hungrily tasting her mouth, her cheek, her throat. “Don’t go,” he said again, fiercely.
“Are you certain?” Her voice was low, the accent familiar: a soft burr.
Harkeld drew back slightly. The room was lighter now, as if dawn broke outside the windows. He saw the woman’s face, pale, dark-eyed.
H
ARKELD WOKE ABRUPTLY.
He blinked, trying to bring the room into focus. Tapestries. Light streaming in through diamond-paned windows.
He turned his head. The witch, Innis, sat in a chair alongside him. She was asleep, her forehead resting on the edge of the bed. Her hand lay on his arm.
Harkeld jerked away from her, sitting up in the bed. Memory returned: an arrow thudding into his back, Justen holding him up in the saddle.
He felt his left shoulder blade cautiously. His fingertips found the ridge of a scar.
Harkeld shrugged his shoulder, expecting stiffness, tenderness, but there was none. He glanced at the witch. She’d healed him while he slept.
She’d healed him—and he’d dreamed of her while she did it. He flinched from the memory of her fingers sliding across his skin, memory of her mouth on his shoulder, her tongue tasting him, flinched from the memory of his response.
He’d kissed her. A witch.
How could I have dreamed such a thing?
He pushed aside the sheet and scrambled out the other side of the wide bed. His bare feet sank into a thick rug.
Harkeld frowned at the tapestries, at the four-poster bed with its dark green canopy, at the embroidered coverlet folded at the foot of the bed. The room was richly furnished—and utterly unfamiliar.
He strode across to the window. The view was one he’d seen a thousand times: battlements, steeply sloping slate roofs. He was in King Magnas’s castle.
Below the castle were the tiled roofs and cobbled streets of the town, and beyond the town was the broad silver curve of the river Fors.
Harkeld relaxed, and then tensed again as he looked down at himself. He was naked.
He glanced around the room. No clothes were evident.
The witch sighed and stirred slightly.
Harkeld hastily pulled the coverlet from the bed. He wrapped it around himself and retreated to the window.
The witch lifted her head. She blinked, and saw the empty bed. “Prince Harkeld?” She pushed to her feet.
“Here.”
She turned towards the window, clutching the bed with one hand. The alarm smoothed from her face when she saw him. “You’re awake.” She flushed. “I mean... How are you feeling?”
“Perfectly well,” Harkeld said, with stiff politeness. “Thank you for healing me.”
Her flush deepened. She bit her lip and glanced down at the floor.
“Where’s Justen?”
“I think...I think he’s bathing.” The hesitancy in her voice, her shyness, had nothing to do with the woman in his dreams. “Would you like me to fetch him for you?”
“Yes, please.”
His eyes followed her as she crossed the room. She was too slender for his taste, her hair too dark, her manner too diffident.
I don’t find her attractive
, he told himself firmly.
Not at all.
The witch hesitated at the door and looked back at him. “You’re quite safe. There’s a guard, one of the king’s most trusted men. And Ebril, too.”
He nodded.
She bit her lip and opened the door. He had a glimpse of a corridor and the burly back of a guardsman before the door closed behind her.
D
RESSED, AND WITH
Justen beside him, Harkeld went in search of King Magnas. One guard walked in front of them, another at their heels; even so, he found himself tensing at each doorway, at each branch in the corridor. His injury was healed, but memory remained: the thud of the arrow striking his back, the swiftly spreading numbness.
I should be dead.
King Magnas was in the smaller of his audience chambers, with two of his sons and Dareus. They stood around a table spread with maps.
Prince Tomas looked up as the door opened. “Harkeld!” He dropped the map he was holding. “Should you be out of bed?”
Harkeld shrugged. “I’m fine.”
“But you had an arrow—”
“The witches healed me. I don’t have a scratch on me.”
Tomas came across the chamber, grinning. To Harkeld’s astonishment, he hugged him, clapping him on the back, as if they were brothers. “You scared the crap out of me. I thought you were dead.”
“I...uh...”
King Magnas followed his youngest son. “My dear boy,” he said, embracing Harkeld. “I’m so glad to see you.”
Harkeld swallowed.
Don’t you know I have witch blood in me?
The king released him and stepped back. His face was the same as Harkeld remembered: the broad brow, the deep-set eyes, the good-humored mouth. The lines creasing the king’s face were slightly deeper, the hair grayer, but otherwise he was unchanged. A man one could trust.
King Magnas’s eldest son, Erik, came towards him with his hand outstretched. “How are you?” he asked. “Tomas tells us you almost died.” He had the same broad forehead as his father, the same direct gaze, the same fair coloring.
Harkeld returned Erik’s handclasp.
Why are you being so welcoming? I have witch blood
. He almost opened his mouth, almost said the words aloud, and then he understood. King Magnas and his sons didn’t like him; they
needed
him.
Harkeld cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”
“Have you eaten?” King Magnas opened his hand, indicating the food on a side table: platters of meat, loaves of bread, cheeses, fruit.
“Yes, thank you, sir.”
“Then join us. We’re planning your journey up onto the Masse plateau.” The king took his arm and led him across to the table with the maps.
“King Magnas has generously agreed to outfit us,” Dareus said, looking up. “Horses, weapons, supplies.”
Harkeld nodded, and accepted the goblet of wine Erik poured for him.
“And we’ll provide an escort of fifty armed men as far as the escarpment,” Tomas said. “It’s the plateau that’s the problem.” He pulled one of the maps forward. “See? That’s where you’re headed. The ruined city of Ner. A good ten days’ journey into the desert.”
“It’s barren country,” the king said. “There’s some water, but whether there’ll be enough for so many men, so many horses...”
“A smaller party would be better,” Prince Erik said. “But that would leave you without much protection.”
Harkeld stepped closer to the table. Pushed to one side was a map of the northern hemisphere, showing the Allied Kingdoms. His eyes skipped over the Groot Isles, where Justen came from, Piestany, Lirac, and Rosny, home of the witches—
He looked away. “Will I need protection in Masse? It’s Lundegaardan territory. My father’s men will scarcely dare to—”
“You should take no chances,” the king said. “Some of Esger’s men may reach the plateau.”
“And there are others who may decide to claim the bounty on your head.” Tomas walked across to the platters of food and chose an apple. “Bandits. Mercenaries. Fithian assassins.”
Fithian assassins? The skin on Harkeld’s back tightened.
“Or a farmer,” Justen put in. “Or a peasant. Anyone poor enough, or greedy enough.”
Prince Tomas turned to look at him.
“The weight of a man’s head in gold is a powerful incentive to commit murder.”
“Thrice the weight of Harkeld’s head,” Tomas said.
Thrice?
Harkeld met Justen’s eyes briefly. The armsman grimaced.
“But even so, who’d be so foolish?” Tomas said, buffing the apple on his sleeve. “The curse—”
“The curse can still be broken if Prince Harkeld’s dead, sire,” Justen said. “All they need is his blood and his hands.”
Harkeld looked down at his wine. It was as dark as blood. His father’s voice rose in his ears:
Your obedience—or I take your blood and your hands.
Harkeld placed the goblet on the table. He clasped his hands behind his back.
“You’ll take all fifty men,” the king said. “It will slow you down, but—”
Dareus shook his head. “Your highness, we have two more anchor stones after Masse. Speed is of the essence.”
“Thirty then,” Tomas said, and sank his teeth into the apple.
Dareus shook his head again. “Ten.”
They argued over the size of the escort for another hour, settling at last on fifty men until they reached the escarpment, and thereafter, twenty. The table was littered with maps and crumbs. King Magnas pushed away his goblet. “When do you wish to leave?” His manner towards Dareus was courteous, but Harkeld knew him well enough to see the revulsion behind the king’s politeness.
“Ideally, tomorrow,” Dareus said. “Although I realize that won’t be possible.”
“We need at least two days,” Erik said.
“Very well.” King Magnas nodded and pushed back his chair. “Two days.”
“Who’ll lead our men?” Tomas leaned across the table, his blue eyes alight with eagerness.
“Me,” Erik said.
“No, me,” said Tomas.
King Magnas looked at his sons.
“Not the heir,” Dareus said. “It’s too dangerous.”
The king thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Tomas, then.”
Tomas caught Harkeld’s eye and grinned. “It’ll be like old times!”
The witch departed. The atmosphere in the room lightened, as if an oppressive presence had been removed. King Magnas refilled their goblets. “How are my grandsons?” he asked Harkeld, wedging the stopper into the wine flagon.
“They were in excellent health, sir, when I saw them last.”
“My allying Lundegaard with your cause...do you think it will have consequences for them?”
Tomas paused, reaching for a piece of cheese. Erik looked up sharply from his perusal of a map.
By the All-Mother, I hadn’t thought of that.
Harkeld’s fingers clenched around the goblet. “After Jaegar, they’re my father’s heirs. He won’t harm them.” He said the words with certainty, trying to believe them. “He loves them, sir.”