The Redwood Rebel (The Redwood War Book 1) (14 page)

Screwing up her face, she mentally chewed this over. Was he trying to manipulate her somehow? It didn’t make sense for him to suddenly come out with something like that, especially when she was really quite certain he felt no sense of privilege at all when on the blunt end of her tongue.

‘Too bad the Commander isn’t here to corroborate your sudden need to share these very flattering sentiments.’ she hummed, closing her eyes and resting her head on her own shoulder casually.

‘Oh, you don’t believe me?’ Arun sounded genuinely surprised, and she opened one eye, watching him slyly. He seemed either oblivious or uncaring of her scrutiny, and his lips kicked up at the corners in wry amusement. ‘I suppose that’s fair. I didn’t want to believe it either, in truth, that’s why it’s taken me so long to admit it. This little mix up of ours is going to cause uproar, I don’t mind telling you, but I was wrong to blame you entirely. I, at least, have the comfort of knowing that I chose you, even if only subconsciously.’

She forced herself to swallow a rather spiteful comment at that and instead tried to work out just what game he was playing here. He sounded sincere enough, but there was more to it than a simple admission of acceptance. She didn’t trust that it was a straightforward confession and apology; something had driven him to telling her. Most likely was that he was trying to take advantage of her weakened state to coax a positive response to his so-called proposal, but she wanted to think better of him than that. Perhaps he felt guilty or responsible for her current state of health?

Arun sighed quietly. ‘I’ve been worried about my wedding for months now, my choice being quite unpopular with practically everyone…’

‘Imagine that.’

‘…Even the Tsumetese Empress had some very strong words to say on the subject,’ he continued, ignoring her comment. ‘She should be pleased that things didn’t go as planned, at any rate.’

Naomi silently took stock of information she had missed while imprisoned in Chloris Castle. Empress? The surrender of Tsumetai in the Pirate Wars made more sense now, at least. Smiling to herself as she remembered Ayeko playing indulgently with her in the vast gardens of the Imperial Palace as a child, her mother watching and smiling from the side-lines, she felt a sharp pang of sorrow and loss such as she hadn’t felt for a long time. A lump quickly formed in her throat, her eyes stinging as she fought back the ever-waiting tide of tears. After all that had passed, Naomi could imagine just what she had thought of the Korenian King giving power to Adrienne’s false reign.

‘Are you asleep?’ he murmured, bringing her back to the present again. She realised her head had dropped back over his shoulder once more and she was feeling exhausted beyond reason.

‘Why are you doing this?’ her voice came out hoarse from the suppressed grief, but she tried to ignore it. ‘Why are you suddenly telling me these things?’

It took him a long time to answer her, and for a while she thought she might doze off again. The pragmatist in the back of her mind reminded of her earlier hope that she could have simply “walked it off” and knew that without his help the whole group would have been much further behind than they currently were. She knew she should be grateful for his assistance, but for bringing up memories and feelings she wasn’t in any position to face right now, she found herself itching for a fight with him, despite her sluggish limbs and slurring words.

‘The last thing my cousin told me before he left yesterday was that you had no reason to trust me,’ he said at last, speaking slowly. ‘That for you to trust me, I had to show that I trusted you.’

Naomi let out a long breath, exhaling the fight that had been welling up out with it. She knew Rayan and Esta were probably dead by now, and it wasn’t in her nature to give false hope, but still she found herself hoping against the odds. False hope had kept her sane these past years, after all. Who was she to deny it to another who might need its power?

‘They’ll make it,’ she assured him, trying to sound certain. ‘Nothing’s impossible, you know.’

‘Nothing’s impossible,’ he repeated quietly to himself. After a moment, he leaned forwards slightly and adjusted his hold on her gently. ‘You should sleep. I’ll make sure you wake up again, I promise.’

Naomi was already slipping under the darkness, and even as his words lulled her the rest of the way, she wondered if she had actually spoken that particular fear aloud.

Chapter Fourteen

Despite her heightened awareness and the dark magic coursing through her body, Genevieve had been unable to locate her prey. The Small Warrior was clever. A hunter herself, she knew how to hide, using the forest to conceal them from both sight and smell. At first Genevieve had appreciated the challenge, but as she flew low over the thick canopy of trees, the spell her master had gifted her with twisted agonizingly, wrenching her flesh under her metal plumage. His voice whispered in her mind, filling her again with the craving for the blood not of the Small Warrior, but of her dragon.

His magic was strong, but vast. Like a volcano, its true force was deep and hidden, but the ash that it erupted went wide, making it harder to see its source. He was careless with its use, and his presence could be felt by anyone with a sense of magic. The dragon made no attempt to hide his power, yet that was what had kept him safe so far.

Genevieve had managed to narrow the search to a smaller area, but only because some small instinct was fighting through her master’s commands and scented out the blood of the Small Warrior. The blood was laced with the bitter taint of poison. Hunting it, she had drawn ever closer, then realised that while the Small Warrior and her dragon were no longer in the area, others were. Three groups of humans, one hot on the trail of the Small Warrior, another a little ahead, and the last moving along the main road to the salt of the great sea. These last were clever. They had discovered where the Small Warrior was headed, and would wait for her to emerge, bringing their prey to them. Her master coaxed her to find them, to join them, to dominate, and eventually fulfil her mission of bringing death to the dragon and his followers, but there was another familiar scent powerful in the air.

Shrieking, she called her sisters, and within moments, two answering cries came up from the woods. They were on the ground, but after her brush with death, she had no wish to land and screamed again to bring them up to her. Her sisters were in no hurry to do her bidding, not wanting to show deference or weakness, but eventually appeared from the sea of green, flying up to where she waited. As they came closer, the magic sang loudly in her blood, and she could smell their fear and confusion at her altered appearance. They could smell her power, and it pleased her.

Odette, youngest of the three sisters, and weakest, showed concern. ‘Sister, what has happened to you?’

‘Master has given me great power!’ Genevieve cried, circling impressively and flashing her needle sharp fangs of steel. ‘He has torn me from the jaws of death and named me his favourite!’

‘He has given you armour to protect your feeble form?’ sneered Naeva, the eldest. She had always fancied herself the head of the nest and the strongest, but where there may have been cause for contest before, Genevieve knew that now there was not.

‘This is no armour, Sister,’ she replied, flying closer to her older sibling to prove her point, and revelling in the fear Naeva smelled of. ‘My form is no longer feeble, as yours is. Our master has made me his weapon!’

She had expected deference then, but Naeva spoke through her terror at her sister’s altered form and scorned her. ‘He has cursed you!’

The magic screamed for blood, for submission, and losing herself to the call, Genevieve launched herself at her older sister. Her claws pierced her flesh easily, where Naeva’s clanged without purchase, and with a screech of violent fury, Genevieve’s jaws sank into her soft throat, ripping and drinking with a hunger that would not be quenched. The life was drained from the body in her claws, her prey’s struggles useless and eventually ceasing until it was nothing but a motionless corpse. She shook the mangled thing from her talons and it dropped to the distant ground like a stone.

Madness and seized her, and she turned to her other sister, who now reeked with terror and flapped gracelessly.

‘No, my sister!’ Odette cried. ‘I pledge my allegiance only to you, the strongest of our nest and the favourite of our master!’

Genevieve stopped her approach, and spoke with the voice of their master. ‘You are weak, Odette, but you may yet come in useful to me. Keep your life for now, but follow my bidding or you too shall perish.’

Odette lowered her head in submission, flying lower than her more powerful sister, but Genevieve could no longer savour it. Her mind was taken, her body writhing in pain beneath the metal surface her master had given her. Through her agony, all she knew was that she must find the Small Warrior and kill her dragon, as her master bade her.

*

Arun was jolted awake by the sounds of people in their camp. Immediately alert, despite the long day, he looked at Naomi asleep beside him. Remembering that she was unlikely to wake because of the poison still working its way through her system, he very carefully eased out of their bedroll to the edge of the platform high in the trees. They weren’t discovered, he was glad to find, but on the ground beneath where they were spending the night was a group of ten or so men sporting the Ffionite uniform. They looked like they were planning to set up camp there themselves.

He looked hesitantly at the sleeping woman, oblivious to their dangerous situation, and wondered if he should wake her. He wanted her to rest, knowing that despite his own assistance and her attempts to brush it off as nothing, she was severely weakened. That said, he also knew she was the best person to offer up advice in this situation. It was possible they could spend the night without giving their presence away, but if these soldiers decided to use Naomi’s own tactic of sleeping up in the trees, all would be lost. Right now they had the element of surprise, but he was unsure how many of his men were awake, and if it was even possible to signal them. He had his own sword, the dagger Naomi had very quietly kept and a bow with a quiver of arrows, but no other weapons.

He couldn’t risk any of the Ffionites getting away to tell others of their location, but from his current position there was no way for him to reach his own men and organise an ambush. Not while keeping his own restriction spell in place, at any rate. Thirty paces wasn’t far enough to do anything constructive, and if he tried to get to the next tree across where he knew the Sergeant was sleeping, he risked accidentally dragging Naomi off the side of their own platform. Even if she was awake, he didn’t know if she would have the energy to follow him across, negating this thought even as he completely refused to break the restriction spell without a solid cause.

There was always the option of magic, of course. He was powerful enough that he could take out all of their foes with one fell swoop and solve all of their problems. Still, Naomi would be angry, adamant as she was that it would give away their position to a host of other enemies, and he had finally managed to get onto some common ground with her. He didn’t want to jeopardise that, and again glanced at her peacefully sleeping figure. Perhaps he really should wake her? If she could see the situation for herself, she might decide it was a risk worth taking?

‘Looks good, Verne,’ one gruff voice spoke loudly from right beneath their tree. ‘Lots of canopy cover, but a good, clear bit of ground so we can keep watch.’

‘Any water?’ The one called Verne shoved his way through the jostling men and come to stand with the first speaker.

‘A small pool, just a little West of here,’ replied his companion. ‘Won’t be much of a detour in the morning for anyone as wants it. Still got the provisions from those we left back there, too.’

‘Damn clabbert,’ cursed Verne. ‘Four down now, thanks to those blighters.’

‘Maybe they’ll catch us up?’

‘You better hope not, Paget. Leaving them in the middle of this place with no food or water, poisoned up to their eyeballs? We’ll all be sleeping with one eye open if we know what’s good for us.’

There was a dark chuckle from the one called Paget. ‘Don’t be daft, man. They’re dinner for some lucky creature by now, and you know it. Told ‘em all, we don’t carry no dead weight, and once you’re hit by one of those darts, that’s all you are.’

‘Dead?’ Questioned Verne, and they both laughed uproariously, clapping each other on their backs.

Arun’s nose curled in disgust. Clabbert poison wasn’t fatal, as he’d learnt today, so what these people had essentially done was left their own men out to die in the forest, completely incapable of taking care of themselves, and taken their supplies. Naomi had told him it took a good day for the poison to pass through, and only then if you managed to treat it in some way. The men left out in the forest were surely dead by now, and if not yet, would be by morning. Here, he assumed, were their commanding officers laughing carelessly at their grim fate. He found it almost intolerably cruel, and was glad Naomi wasn’t awake to see it. He knew it would shame her.

‘Alright, you lot!’ Verne called out to the others. ‘Get your backsides out there and find wood for a fire and sleeping platforms. Don’t know about you, but I’m bloody knackered!’

Hearing this, he knew he had no choice but to act. Moving away from the edge of the platform, he debated what his best option was. He ought to wake Naomi, but some small part of himself wanted to do this on his own. Something about her always made him feel so incapable, and in truth, he was fed up with having to rely on her help. It was a simple ambush, and judging from the fact she hadn’t moved at all during the loud conversation right beneath them, she was in such a deep sleep that she was unlikely to wake any time soon. If she was still riddled with poison and half coherent, what help could she be anyway? He could do this without her help, and prove to her that he wasn’t as useless as she seemed to believe.

Of course, there was no way he was going to break the restriction spell. They had come a way to understanding each other, and despite her almost thoughtless courage earlier today that had both touched and terrified him, he still didn’t trust her not to make a run for it. Still, it was now painfully evident that the thirty paces was a lot less than he had initially believed, and he felt like a hypocrite for only realising now it was an inconvenience to him, and not the multiple times Naomi herself had tried to tell him as much. Eighty paces, that was more like it. He still had control over where she could go, but it would give them both a little more freedom of movement. It might even help in his attempts to win her over.

Reaching deep into his magic where the spell was hidden from her, he focused on extending the distance between them while still retaining his hold over her movements. She didn’t move at all while he did it, and he was glad that at least mentally the spell wasn’t too invasive. In sleep her defences were lower than they would be usually, and he was very tempted to just have a small peek into her memories and see if he could glean some sort of clue as to her background. He then thought better of it. It was information he could wait for, at least for now, and he really did want to win her trust. With trust came respect, and with respect came friendship. Who knew where that might lead in the end?

For better or worse, she was his wife, and despite everything, he still wanted to have a happy marriage. It had been an unconventional start, but he had meant it when he’d confessed earlier that he had chosen to go through with the marriage based almost solely on their conversation in the dark. He had judged her then as clever, brave, and in a difficult situation. It hadn’t been precisely the situation he had expected, but he hadn’t been far off the mark. For now, all he could do was hope he could somehow talk her around and be patient. It wasn’t going to be easy; the woman was so pig-headed sometimes and made him feel like an idiot almost constantly, but they would get there. They had to.

Careful not to disturb her, he retreated from the connection of their minds and had to force himself not to reach down and softly touch her cheek while she slept. Standing up quietly in order to physically put some distance between them, he turned away from her. Slinging his bow and quiver over his head and shoulder, he began to climb up and out of the tree. Trying to concentrate on being as quiet as possible so as not to be detected by the impending threat beneath him, he found himself wondering if she felt their Bond as strongly as him, and if she did, how she could continue to deny it.

Mulling over ways he could potentially expose her to the irrefutable connection between them, he was only half listening to the exchange between the soldiers on the ground. It was only when he heard a faint tune, not unlike what Naomi had been casually humming yesterday, than he stopped his stealthy movements and looked down between the branches to the platform where he had left her. She hadn’t moved, and he had to lean across the branch he was clinging to a little precariously to find the source.

The song was again wordless, and a little faster than Naomi’s. It sounded almost panicked, desperate, but still somehow beautiful. It seemed to be coming from a sealed, metal crate that a few of the Ffionites had gathered around, and he listened intently even as he began to move again towards the tree beside their own.

‘Can’t make the cussing thing shut up,’ came the voice he recognised as Verne. ‘No tongue to cut out, no throat to slit.’

‘We just got to encourage it to change to its human form,’ replied Paget.

‘And how do you propose we do that, eh?’

There was that horrible little laugh from the man called Paget again, and Arun made a mental note to seek that one out himself when the time came. ‘Easy. It just needs a bit of incentive, you know? Let’s get that fire properly going.’