Page 69

I ’m not awake when the delegation back to the First House leaves. I sleep for another several hours, and when I wake, the sun has chased its way beyond the Meridian mountains. I’m alone, with no other pallets filled around me, not even Tennet’s.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to wake up.”

I jerk up and around to see Fortiss watching me from a ledge, his feet dangling over the rock.

I blink in surprise. I’ve never seen him looking quite…

like this. Relaxed, almost. Like he’s just a man about to set out on a leisurely journey, not a warrior or a leader.

He’s changed into a tunic and breeches, with only a slim leather satchel slung over his shoulder, and his long, flowing cape is packed away for the moment.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, as the moment stretches awkwardly between us.

“Good,” I say, my voice sounding like rocks. I clear my throat. “Better, anyway.”

“You can stand?”

“I can try.” I swing my legs over the side of the pallet, grimacing as my head starts to swim.

Fortiss jumps lightly off the ledge and strides over to me.

I’m so focused on my own challenges I don’t try to gauge how steady he is on his feet.

Clearly, he’s in better shape than I am.

Then again, he still has his connection to his Divh.

I glance quickly, almost reflexively to his head as he helps me stand. “Where’s the crown?”

“Here.” He pats the satchel at his side, and I exhale in relief that the crown is so close but still safely packed away. “When the others left there was some question about sending it back with them?—”

“No,” I say hurriedly, and he laughs at my outburst but lays a hand on my shoulder. It might be to reassure me, it might be simply to steady me, but I accept it all the same.

“Don’t worry. While Miriam argued that the safety of the artifact was paramount, and so speed in getting it under lock and key at the First House was potentially ideal, she agreed that, once again, it would cause more questions than it was worth, especially without me there to answer them.

We will ride with it, maybe test it to some degree.

Not by putting it on.” Once again he squeezes my shoulder, and I realize I’ve started trembling.

“Just by holding it. Maybe if you held it, you could find your way back to your center, and Gent could find his way to you.”

I grimace. “I don’t think it works like that.”

“Talia.” Fortiss’s voice changes, and I blink up at him, surprised at how much taller he suddenly seems to me. Granted, he’s wearing boots and I’m still barefoot from the sick bed, but it’s more than just simple height. Fortiss has changed subtly, or perhaps I have. Either way, it makes me uneasy.

But there’s no disguising the expression on his face, equal parts remorse and wonder—and even a little curiosity.

“I forced you to take an unthinkable action by my own rash foolishness. You acted without hesitation, without any question or thought to your own safety. You ripped that crown out of my hands and placed it on your own head. What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking.” I sigh. “I just wanted you freed.”

A smile flickers across his lips as he shakes his head. “You’re a gift I’ll need to work a lifetime to be worthy of,” he murmurs. And before I can move, before I can think, he reaches up a light finger to my chin and tilts it higher.

Then his mouth comes down on mine.

I don’t know if it is the profound sadness that I feel, the loneliness at the loss of my connection with Gent, or the residuals of my body being battered and blown across the Protectorate these past several days, but I don’t want to fight the feelings that wash over me when Fortiss kisses me.

I don’t want to do anything but collapse in his arms and allow this to be.

I sag a little, and Fortiss’s arms come around me, holding me tight.

His kiss deepens, his tongue pressing against my lips until I open them, then dipping in to touch me, taste me, meld my body to his.

My pulse pounds in my head, my blood fairly sings, and I’m—warm, I realize.

Warm, safe, and whole, in a way I never would have thought possible.

Maybe Fortiss really is pure magic.

He hums against my lips as if he somehow can read my thoughts, and my mind goes spinning off again in sheer, delirious wonder.

His arm drops down to cradle my waist, his right hand lifts to cup my chin, my cheek, and his mouth moves, though the words he speaks make no sense to me.

It’s a language, but no language that I know.

It has the rushing sinuous seduction of bodies sliding over each other, slick and wet and?—

We both freeze.

“What…were you…just saying?” I ask haltingly, my words barely a whisper against his lips.

He lifts his head back from me, sucking in a heavy breath.

“I don’t know,” he admits shakily. “I don’t know.

I knew I wanted to kiss you, wanted to hold you, wanted more than anything to connect with you.

When I realized you were here without a guard, at first I was angry and then just relieved.

When I finally touched you, kissed you, all I wanted to do was heal you and make you whole.

And then—just now—the words came to me on how to make that happen. ”

He pulls back farther from me, eyeing me with curiosity. “Ahh…so. How are you feeling?”

I laugh shakily and push him away, but when he steps back, I blink.

“Actually, I’m feeling pretty good. I feel almost myself.

” I cast my mind out, seeking, searching, hoping for some sense of Gent, some connection or spark, but that is still a bridge too far.

I shake my head at Fortiss’s questioning glance, but there’s no denying how much better I feel.

“You did all that with a kiss ?” I demand. “Is that something you’ve been working on with the healers?”

He grins at me. “If it is, you can bet we’re going to need to have more female warriors among our troop.

I don’t think Tennet would necessarily appreciate that particular form of healing.

But come on.” He holds out a hand to me, and I take it, feeling lighter and easier in my own skin than I have in longer than I can remember.

Perhaps not since that day in the forest near the Shattered City, what feels like years but wasn’t even two months ago, when I first saw Fortiss of the First House, and didn’t know who he was.

He was merely a traveling lord on a mountain path, a brief adventure for me to enjoy before I took my rightful place in Lord Orlof’s house.

So much has changed since then.

Fortiss pulls me along, but while before I thought he’d probably have to drag me away from my bed, now I move easily, almost comfortably. I squeeze his hand, and he looks back at me and lifts his brows.

“Whatever it is you’re about to ask me, hold that thought,” he says. “I have horses ready. I wasn’t sure you’d be upright this quickly, but there’s something you really need to see before the sun goes down, especially since we’re going to be moving out at first light.”

I stuff down my questions, bemused as he leads me out to two saddled horses, then helps me up onto one of them.

Even that is far easier than I would have expected.

If I hadn’t known how badly I felt just a few hours ago, I wouldn’t have believed such a transformation was possible. Now I feel…almost normal.

Fortiss mounts his own horse with smooth and easy precision, then turns us both out of the Savasci encampment.

There’s no one around, and before I have a chance to ask, he fills in those blanks as well.

“Only about a dozen of us will be heading to the First House on horseback. The rest are off to give aid up and down the border. Nazar helped return some of the warriors and their lords to their houses via the Blessed Plane, while others preferred to discharge their Divhs and return on horseback.”

“Seriously?” I ask, not even bothering to try to hide my surprise.

He laughs, and once again the sound strikes me as oddly joyous, making my bones shiver.

“Believe me, I share your reaction. But the habits of five hundred years have been instilled in these men, and they won’t shake easily.

We can afford to be gracious as they come to terms with the possibilities of what these Divhs can do—and not only the Divhs we know. ”

With that last cryptic comment, he urges his horse faster, and the two of us gallop around the rocky point that marks the separation between the Savasci encampment and the Eighth House.

I marvel again at the protected enclave that Lord Daggar suffered to exist on the periphery of his awareness—content that if he didn’t have to look at the Savasci, he didn’t have to worry about them.

Still, he had to have known they were there, he had to . And he let them live.

He didn’t deserve to die at Rihad’s command.

Those thoughts trouble me for another several minutes as we pound around the rocky outcropping of the mountain and then press on to the Eighth House, for that’s surely where I’m going.

The mountain is already shrouding the manor in gloom as we approach, and I squint up at it, my eyes affronted by the strange, misshapen form that I vaguely remember from the night before. “What is?—”

“Eyes straight ahead,” Fortiss orders. “Don’t look at it full-on until I tell you.”