Chapter 21

"This is a good vintage," I said, sipping from the glass of wine I'd been given. "Well rounded, smooth… and with a slight taste of apricot?"

The innkeeper beamed.

"Peach, milady, or at least that's what the wine merchant says."

"You're not tempted to try it, Master Creed?" When I looked down the bar, the man had a long glass of thick, dark stout in front of him. "It's very sweet."

"Why I don't like it," he said, watching every move of my glass as it went to and from my lips. "Sickly stuff. Stout never pretends to be anything other than it is. It's just beer."

I felt a little pang at his words, as if he could see through my designs, so I moved forward to settle beside him.

"I've never tried stout before. Never had beer before the…"

I smiled artlessly, as if embarrassed by the memory of the other night. I was, in fact, mildly horrified by what I'd done but thinking about that now wouldn't help me.

"Would you like to try it, then?"

As Creed edged closer, Arik pulled away from the bar with a hiss.

"I'm going to order us up some grub from the serving girl."

You do that, I thought, glad to be rid of him. I didn't need those eagle eyes of his observing everything I was doing.

"If you wouldn't mind…?" I said, sliding my hand across the bar.

"That won't mix well with the wine," the innkeeper warned, but I ignored that well-meaning advice. I kept my eyes on Creed because it was time to start luring this puppy closer.

Creed lifted the glass to hand it to me, but my hands wrapped around his. His skin felt shockingly hot against mine as I brought the glass up to my mouth. I was conscious that I had a witness to this terrible display but reassured myself I'd never see the innkeeper again, so if he thought me some common slattern, seducing the help, it didn't matter. Because that's what I was trying to do as I stared into Creed's eyes and watched them shift from their normally reassuring hazel to a strange yellowish green. I put my lips to the rim and then parted them slowly, taking a mouthful and swallowing.

"Oh!"

That was an entirely spontaneous response. My eyes went wide as I tasted the stout. The beer at The Siren's Call had been thin, bitter, and harsh, the aftertaste only rounded out by the roseblood. But this? It was thicker, darker, more full-bodied, and yet strangely smooth.

"You've got a little froth…"

Creed's lips twitched and the others burst out laughing as he reached over with his thumb and brushed it across my top lip. He showed me the thin white foam that coated the pad before he pushed his thumb into his mouth and sucked it clean. It was an intimate gesture, exactly the kind of response I wanted. So why did I watch, as if mesmerised, when his lips appeared from behind that dense beard, then were gone again?

"Would the lady like a stout, instead?" the innkeeper asked, and I whirled around, ready to snap at him for distracting me before I collected myself. I forced a smile in the face of his knowing look.

"It's too much of a drink for me," I replied, then held my glass up.

"I've found us a table," Arik said, appearing beside the group.

"If you could send a bottle of wine over to the table, I'd appreciate it," I told the innkeeper.

"Needing a little Lanzenian courage to get you through whatever you have planned for tonight?" Arik asked me, as we wound our way through tables packed with men. Men who were drinking, eating, and chatting at the end of the working day. Men who might be amenable to earning some extra coin helping me. "I've got a pouch of roseblood in my pocket if you need some help."

"What need would I have for courage?" I replied crisply as if I wasn't planning to make my escape tonight. "I'm going to laze around in a hot bath until my fingers turn to prunes and then eat a hearty meal before going to bed."

"Alone?"

I paused at that, and he turned to look at me with a smile. Creed might be able to take the form of a wolf, Silas might carry knives all over his person, and Roan might have his massive sword, but out of them all, Arik was the most dangerous. He was too perceptive, and those keen eyes of his saw everything.

"Are you offering to share a bed with me?" My hand went to my chest, my fingers designed to draw his attention right where I wanted them.

Yet my attempt at seduction failed utterly. That sardonic smile was there again, mocking my assumptions.

"I don't spend more than one night in any woman's bed," he told me. "So if you wanted something from me, you should've taken it last night. It's a difficult thing, though, to deny myself the opportunity of listening to your kittenish little sighs as you reach your peak."

His grin widened as my cheeks flushed far hotter than they had on roseblood.

"Well, perhaps you can press your ear to the wall between our rooms and listen to them as I master what you lot fumbled through." I wiggled the fingers not wrapped around the stem of the wine glass. "If you want a job well done, you're best off doing it yourself."

"Or with the help of someone who promises to listen very closely to your exacting instructions."

Silas came up beside me as if out of nowhere, and his eyes danced with amusement as he offered me his arm. That was fine. No, more than that. It was good. If he sought my attention, it would make my job tonight all the easier.

"But do men truly listen to women?" I leaned in closer, as if our conversation was conspiratorial. "Is it possible for them to actually see us, really hear us, beyond the dense wall of assumptions they have about the fairer sex."

"Some do." Silas escorted me over to the table, pulling the bench out slightly so I could take my seat. "That was the nature of my training in The Guild. We seek to see what actually is, rather than what people assume is before them."

Which made him dangerous. I forced myself to keep smiling as I considered that piece of information while the others took their seats.

"A good thief can't go blundering into a situation based on assumptions. Best way to end up dancing on the other end of the king's rope."

So I needed to keep him off-centre tonight, that was clear. A serving woman approached the table with our meal, carrying the plates by balancing them up and down her arms. She set one before each of us, and the savoury scents of roast meat, gravy and vegetables made my mouth water. When she returned with our cutlery, inspiration struck. At my father's tables, only blunt silver knives were used to cut our meat, as the cook always ensured our food was so tender you could cut with the side of a spoon. The serving woman set bone handled knives down on the table, a lot like the one my mother had given me, alongside some mismatched forks. I picked up one knife, sliding my thumb up and down the handle slowly.

"So we're in Khean now?"

The Kheanian crest was etched into the knife handle. I traced the embossed shape of the rearing stag, their national symbol. I didn't need to draw Silas attention to my actions, as his eyes were already following every move of my thumb.

"We crossed the border yesterday." His voice had become rougher.

"So let's eat this good Kheanian meat while it's hot," Arik said, from the head of the table. "There'll be no sending your meal back to the kitchen for another if your food goes cold."

No one argued with his command. They had been riding hard all day, and I had a night's journey ahead of me. A companionable silence went up around the table as we all set to.

"You should eat more," Creed insisted as I reluctantly set my utensils aside. "You have to be hungry. You've had only travel rations for breakfast and lunch and not many of them."

"I'm fine—" I said, affixing a smile on my face as I had been trained to do.

A woman is to be slender, slight, willowy, where a man is big and tall. A woman shouldn't show a healthy appetite for… well, anything. We were to be restrained in breath, voice, and action, and particularly so at the dining table, as if we were plants, needing only the sunlight to sustain us.

"You're not." He used his knife to nudge my plate closer. "Eat some more. You might be tiny, but you've barely eaten what a child would. You need more than that to sustain you."

My smile was genuine for once. Unwittingly, he'd recognised a reality faced by all noblewomen in Stormare—I knew not about the other kingdoms—and had proposed a very simple solution to it. I'd spent my life hungry. Not when I was a little girl, as children were seen to be fragile things, needing a lot of nutrition to keep them alive, but the moment my first moon time came, that all changed. Portions got smaller, and any request for more was met with a stony stare. To maintain bird-like proportions, I needed to eat like one, no matter that my bones often felt hollow with hunger.

"You seem very concerned with my food consumption," I said. "In Stormare, a man only comments on a woman's plate if he sees her eating too much."

"Oh, well—" he spluttered, his nut-brown skin flushing.

"Are things so different in your country? Do Kheanians prefer great buxom lasses?"

"Creed can't answer that," Roan said with a chuckle. "He's studiously kept his eyes to himself until recently."

His eyes sparkled as he glanced between the two of us.

"But no, we don't try and starve our girls to a certain size. Kheanians are much more omnivorous. Big lasses with curves so wide it's like climbing a mountain." Roan flexed his fingers. "All the more to grip onto in my opinion. Little slender things like otters, that you fear will slip between your fingers, just makes you hold on the harder. Little tits set up high like cakes on a tray; big pendulous things that spill out of their corsets and into your mouth…" Roan was like some crude poet, as he rhapsodised about the wonders of something men didn't discuss in polite company. "All of them are good, all of them are beautiful, each in their own way. So, eat up, lass, if you're still hungry."

Creed ignored Roan's speech, focusing his attention on me and then dropping his gaze to my plate as he nodded for me to continue. He didn't relax his concentration until I lifted my knife and fork again to apply them to my meal, and his eyes flared brighter when I sliced into the tender meat.

"What about you, Master Creed? Are wolf men just as accepting of feminine appetites?"

That pulled his focus away from my plate back up to my eyes, and for a moment I feared I'd mis-stepped. A small furrow formed between his brows.

"You know…?"

"I remember your claws from the night we met." I shrugged nonchalantly. "And put two and two together. I apologise if I've offended you. It was not my intent."

"Most outlander girls shiver in their beds at tales of the beast men of Khean."

His voice was low and urgent.

"Do they?" I looked up from my plate. "If they do, it's surely more due to ignorance than any real fear." I leaned forward, exposing more of my cleavage, but Creed's gaze remained locked with mine. "You have been every inch the gentleman on the trip so far." My eyes slid sideways to where Arik sat, his mouth a thin line. "Unlike others I could mention."

When my focus shifted back to Creed, to try and push my advantage further, I faltered. His eyes burned with a terrible fire and my stomach clenched at the sight of it.

Hope.

It had always been described to me as this fragile, beautiful thing, but it was only now that I realised how savage, desperate, and grasping the feeling could be. Your entire happiness was hitched to hope's bridle, every fibre of your being desperate that it would be your horse that got over the finishing line first.

Because if it didn't, your unworthy mount would be dragged out the back of the stables and given a bloody death for its failure.

I knew what he was thinking: that he was seeing something he wanted, needed, more than anything else in the world. I slid my hand across the tabletop and gripped his fingers.

"I believe I have nothing to fear from you, Creed."

His hand spasmed, gripping mine far too tightly, and I knew why. He feared I'd slip from his fingers, in the same way that I feared that my chance at freedom would.

I allowed my eyes to trace the line of his broad shoulders. I took in all the powerful elements of his frame, and I wanted, so badly, to enlist his help. I imagined how I'd wrap my arms around his neck in truth, not from sheer necessity, and whisper my plan into his ear. He'd sweep me from this place and up onto his horse, riding hard and fast, away from Khean and from anywhere people might hunt us.

Away from his packlands, where the rest of his kind lived. Away from the men he'd sworn a bond of brotherhood with. Away from the king who commanded him. The king who'd hunt the two of us down like dogs, putting an arrow into each of our brains once we were caught. And I knew that it was precisely because of who he was that I couldn't include him in my plans. The men I paid in gold would know what they had signed up for. The entire thing would simply be a transaction, so that if—when—they died at the hands of the King of Khean, I wouldn't cry for them. I nodded slowly, then pulled my hand away.

"Milady, the master asked me to let you know that your bath is ready."

The innkeeper had made the bathing attendant sound as though he was a young boy, but when I looked up, I saw we were of the same age.

"Oh, gods, that is good news," I said.

And, as I stood, I realised he was the perfect age to notice everything my dress revealed. Perhaps he might be my means to finding men I could hire to help me escape. "Could you show me the way?"

Creed, Silas, and Roan each set aside drinks or cutlery and rose to their feet, ready to follow me up.

"The princess doesn't require guarding in the bath, gentlemen," Arik drawled. "Take a seat. She'll be back down before long." He smiled up at me, but there was no mirth in it. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder, doesn't it?"

"You'd have to have a heart in the first place for the aphorism to be true," I shot back, my eyes narrowing as I did. But by the time I turned back to the lad, I was smiling again.

"Princess Jessalyn of Stormare," I said, offering him my hand.

"Princess…" That, that kind of awe was what was currently missing from my life. The lad went to take my hand, then awkwardly bowed over it, placing a damp kiss on my knuckles. "I'm Rion, Your Highness. Please, come this way."

I knew my escorts had more to say, but they weren't my focus right now. I needed to see what information could be wrung from this Rion, then decide on my next move.

"What brings you to Summervale?" he asked, as we climbed the stairs, stopping when I paused on the steps. "Erm… Highness?"

I'd known women at court who were brilliant and well-practised at playing a role. They could cry at the drop of a hat, perfect crystalline tears that would stay at the corners of their eyes, falling only when they wanted them to at the perfect moment to achieve their ends. They could feign misery, joy, excitement, or whatever emotion would have men dancing to their tune. That behaviour had drawn the ire of other women at court, but I saw the sense of it now.

We were given so little access to legitimate sources of power that we had to be merciless with the ones we had. Women were often described as emotional creatures—far too flighty for more serious pursuits—so some women had become adept at portraying every single emotional state when advantageous, becoming actresses on the stage of their own lives. It wasn't something I'd been taught to do, but I'd learn. Oh, how I'd learn, and there was no time to start like the present. I was forced to think for some moments about my predicament, my fate, for the tears to come, but come they did.

"I'm in trouble, Rion," I said, my throat choked with barely suppressed sobs. "The men I'm with… They've taken me captive, and they plan to sell me to a man in the capital."