Chapter 30

Chapter

Thirty

TAMAS

I rubbed my jaw as I watched Tressya from across the bonfire. Holding a bone of meat, she laughed with Andriet's lover. It seemed decorum was lost during the revelry, and most of the courtiers indulged themselves in ways they wouldn't dare in Tolum.

My jaw had continued to bother me since returning from the trial. My nose wasn't much better, but I remembered how that came about. It was unsettling having no memory of what happened during the trial, and I worried about how I acted in front of Tressya. She seemed a little distant on our return.

Andriet sat beside the king, with Cirro at his side. The north were yet to give me a signal, which meant all three would stay alive for tonight. The timing needed to be perfect.

Daelon had held Tressya's attention too long for my liking. There was that rare and unfamiliar jealousy rearing up again. And since I didn't want to add him to my list of kills, I made my way around the bonfire, weaving through the dancers until I stood in front of them.

Daelon saw me first. Tressya turned, following his gaze.

"Your Highness," I dipped my head.

"I see the Salmun's creatures haven't tried hard enough," she said.

I smirked. "It's hard to stop a man with a mind like an iron cage."

"I could name a few ways, swamps for one, a fist to the jaw maybe another."

I touched my jaw. "'Er what?"

"Never mind." It was close to sounding like a sigh.

"I'm needed elsewhere," Daelon announced, then ducked away into the crowd as quickly as he could. Smart man.

A dog pounced on Tressya's discarded bone, then she wiped her hands on the kerchief she'd tucked inside the belt, cinching her dress to hug her waist, and slid off the large barrel. "I'm going in search of a drink." She strolled off toward the myriad of stalls erected as a side alley away from the bonfire and dancing. Knowing my little princess like I did, I took that as my invitation to follow.

Flaming torches on long poles staked in the ground provided the light for the crowds gathered to peruse the stalls, from herbs, trinkets, oils, and soaps to hot, spicy food. The peasantry from Tolum made good money on these rare occasions.

"I can only guess I embarrassed myself out there today."

"You can't be embarrassed if you don't remember. But who was the woman?"

"No one special to me. I do remember one thing, which ties into the provocative position I found us in."

She turned her head away, pretending to inspect posies of herbs. "Lots of weird things happened," she mumbled, seemingly uninterested in our conversation, and that only set my determination not to let her escape from my questions.

"You call a kiss weird?"

"That was the weirdest of the lot."

I moved in close beside her and leaned down, speaking in a low voice. "It did happen?"

When she turned, our faces were close enough it wouldn't take much for me to lean forward and dare another kiss. I was sorely tempted, but I wouldn't put it past her to punch me in the nose, again.

Large washing troughs were our only means of bathing out here, and Tressya had made the most of it. Her fragrance was delicate. Her usual lilac was replaced with an earthier scent tinged with a mild dash of spice, which suited her better. My feral little princess was better wearing a fragrance reminiscent of the wilds and not the perfume of cloistered courtiers.

I plucked a posy of dried herbs and sniffed the sweet woodruff and anise.

"A perfect complement," I said and slipped it into the belt at her waist, then flicked the stall owner a gowl.

"It happened, but it was poorly performed." Then, with a quirk of her lips, she tried to get away from me, but I slipped a finger into her belt and hauled her back.

"I demand a second chance."

"You had a second chance. It was much like the first."

In my surprise, I released her. "What?"

Tressya backed away. "Don't believe I would be so foolish as to allow a third attempt. The second was how you got your sore jaw. Or was that the first?" She turned and strolled away.

I marched after her, then jumped in front to cut her off, but she spoke first. "Was a bloody nose and sore jaw not enough?"

"Not even?—"

She held up a finger, her face solemn. "Let's not turn this into something."

"I have to. There's a distinct cooling between us, and I want to know why."

"We never burned, Bloodwyn."

She attempted to escape, but I wouldn't let her go. I burned. I burned so bad I was surprised everything I touched didn't incinerate. And I wanted to make her burn. We both deserved to be in flames. Besides, I'd done something unforgivable during the trial to erect her walls. That I wouldn't tolerate. There would be no walls between us.

Hitching a finger in her belt again, I flushed her against me. "There were sparks. Sparks need time to catch alight."

"You had your chance?—"

I seized her chin, her cheeks caught between my fingers and thumb, and tilted her head up. "No. I was caught in an illusion. That's not a fair chance." Before she could argue, I silenced her with a kiss filled with a brutality and longing that savaged even me. Everything in my heart that I couldn't voice aloud, I unleashed into my kiss, a kiss to seal hearts, a kiss to join souls.

I had severely underestimated how perfect she would kiss; how delicious she would taste; how wonderful she would feel. She came with me, folded into me, fell with me, responded with her own style of savagery. And for a wicked moment, I lost my shield of strength and opened myself to the flow of her emotions to find they were united with my own, fiercer and wilder than the Ashenlands beasts.

It startled me when I realized what I'd done, so much so I almost wrenched us apart. A shout nearby did that for me. The throb of my fury when she pulled away, released a claw, which I struggled to force back inside.

"We shouldn't have," she whispered, her face flushed. She glanced around us.

"We most definitely should've." I loved hearing her small feverish pants.

Any doubts I once harbored about Tressya's significance to me, to my path—to our shared journey—had long since been demolished.

"My lady," came a voice from beside us.

She was dressed in well-worn robes with a weave of thick gray hair tangled into long braids then knotted at her nape, her face harshly lined with age. The woman believed herself to be an augur. I knew their look only too well.

I took Tressya's elbow intent on steering her away, in no mood for prophetic nonsense. But Tressya resisted me and turned to the woman, whose head reached Tressya's shoulders.

"Do you want something?" Tressya said.

"It's you, my dear, in need of something. Come, let me show you."

"She's not interested in anything you have to say," I said, and took Tressya's hand.

Her eyebrows shot up. "That kiss doesn't give you privileges."

I groaned and leaned to speak in her ear. "She claims to be a seer. They're crazy at best."

"I've had to endure crazy since meeting you. I think she'll be much easier to take." She turned back to the woman. "I'm ready."

I rolled my eyes, silently cursing and followed them as the augur wound us through the stalls, the frustration still humming through me from our interruption. My body had yet to cool down, and I felt close to clawing someone down their middle, so when we ended up in a dimly lit tent behind the stalls, which smelt of burning oils, I wanted to growl, then laugh, then claw my way through the back of the tent.

I huffed and snorted through most of what the woman said as she instructed Tressya to take a seat on a low wood stool that looked fashioned by a blind man.

"Hold out your hand, my dear." The old woman had seated herself close to Tressya and pulled the single candle flame from the middle of the table close.

"Wouldn't one require good light if one wishes to see the lines on the hands more clearly." Palm readers were charlatans.

"Experienced seers, perhaps not," countered Tressya, frowning at me.

"Palm readers are hardly seers," I scoffed.

"All that you say is true, young man. But I have no intention of reading her palm. I don't know how."

Tressya smirked at me.

"I'm far more interested in this mark." And she exposed Tressya's inner wrist by pulling back her lace sleeve to run a finger over the bite mark.

I stifled my gasp. There was no way she could've known it was there. Tressya was no longer smirking.

"I was bitten by a savage animal," she remarked.

"An animal that has left a lasting mark," the old woman said. "Both inside and out." She shifted her eyes to Tressya. "But you already know that."

Tressya glanced at me. "And is there a way to remove what's inside?"

"Hmm…" The old woman continued to inspect the mark, seeming to genuinely pondered Tressya's question.

If I could explain how she'd even known the mark was there, I would throw a few gowl on the table and lead Tressya away, but a weird and uncomfortable feeling had settled across my chest.

"I would say yes…but it would only work if it was truly desired."

"It is desired. I do want to be free of it," Tressya snapped, avoiding my gaze.

The old woman closed her eyes as she patted Tressya's arm. I expected Tressya to pull her arm away, claiming the old woman a fake, but she waited, seeming hypnotized to the woman's next words.

"There is a silent war raging within." The woman murmured; her eyes still closed. Here came the crazy babbling and weird prophetic announcements.

"A dormant hunger yearning to be free. A wildness yet to be known. A spirit long forgotten."

I rolled my eyes when Tressya glanced my way. If Garrat were here, he'd laugh, then perhaps bare some sharp teeth at the woman.

"I think you've said enough," I rose, offering my hand to Tressya.

"The same wilderness roams within you, northerner."

A chill froze my heart. Beside me, Tressya gasped.

The old woman's gaze returned to Tressya. "You're losing, my child. But perhaps that's the way it's supposed to be."