Enchanting the King (The Beauty's Beast Fantasy Series) (12 page)

His magician only grunted in reply, clearing not wanting to risk his concentration by speaking.

Thomas gave Llewellyn’s shoulder a small, encouraging pat.

“Riders,” Godric murmured, practically humming with excitement as he wheeled to face Thomas.

“Tiochene, or…?”

“Definitely not, my lord. I—I think it is the Jerdic princess and her women.”

Thomas’s pulse jumped at the words. “You three, with me. Godric, stay behind to guard Llewellyn and Mistress Helen.”

Thomas did not even wait to see his order acknowledged. There was a chance Princess Aliénor was alive. His whole body prickled and chilled in cresting waves as fear dueled with the stirring hope in his chest.
Alive. Aliénor is alive
.

Aliénor did not understand how they could be riding so fast toward the approaching army and yet the line of men never seemed to be any closer. The sound of the army too seemed to cut in and out like an ill-played instrument. With a sense of sinking dread, she realized what she must be seeing.
Magic
.

Though it pained her to do it, she reined in her horse at once and motioned for her ladies to stop as well. They’d grabbed a packhorse and taken what supplies they could from the broken wagon, need warring with their desire for haste. Fortunately, the pack animal was well-trained and stopped when her horse stopped without her having to tug on the leading string.

“What’s wrong, Princess?” Noémi asked. She was pale and cradling her head. Poor Violette had to ride in front of the much larger woman because she could not control a horse with her own broken wrist. They were all three a proper mess.

Aliénor pointed toward the horizon. “I do not believe that is a real army.”

“An illusion?”

“Yes.”

“But
why
?” Violette’s voice threaded upward with strain and fear.

“Either this is a trap meant for us or it is a trick to drive the Tiochene away. But we dare not ride further until we know which.”

Violette voiced a low moan, and her shoulders rolled down with defeat. “Riders approaching.”

Aliénor wheeled around in her saddle, and her nerves jolted to see three men riding hard toward them from a small outcrop of rock on the road ahead. Aliénor had finally thought to grab herself a sword off one of Philippe’s dead guards, but she didn’t really know how to use the thing. She’d looked for a bow, but all the ones she’d found had a draw too heavy for her to manage. Besides, it had hurt too much to linger on that field of death for long.

She drew her borrowed sword and braced her feet in the stirrups. Violette kicked her horse forward, Noémi grimly clinging to the back. Violette drew her own sword. “We’re with you, Princess.”

“No, no, look.” Noémi pointed, a smile blossoming on her face. “Those riders are not the Tiochene.”

Aliénor squinted, and it suddenly felt as if her heart had sprouted wings. “Thomas!”

Princess Aliénor might have been a vision from myth or legend as she rode toward him, her long hair streaming like a banner behind. He smiled to himself and admired the way her summer-red hair glinted in the sun.

She reined her horse in beside his, the packhorse tied behind sliding to a stop a moment later with a puffing grumble. Aliénor flung out a hand to greet him. He caught her fingers and dropped a quick kiss against her palm.

“You found us—”

“Thank Kind Fate you’re alive. We feared—”

They talked over each other but stopped after a moment and laughed. Thomas looked down and realized her slim white fingers were still tangled with his own. Embarrassed, he gently released her hand. Blushing, she settled it in her lap and covered the hand with her other.

It was foolishness on his part—still Thomas let his eyes drink their fill of her. That hair. A bright, coppery red that flashed in the light like a live flame. It looked almost warm to the touch and temptingly soft. Yet his stomach quailed as he took in the rest of her and realized she did not wear a red gown as he originally thought. The poor woman was soaked all over in blood. “You’re hurt.”

She frowned in confusion then looked down at herself. Her face tightened, her lips going white. She shook her head. “It’s Philippe’s. He…” She broke off, a puff of air escaping her lips, a dark laugh entirely without mirth. “Everyone.
Everyone
back there is dead. All our men.”

A band of grief tightened around his chest.
So much loss, so much waste
. “Come. Let us collect the rest of my people, and we will be on our way.”

Aliénor’s hands fluttered in confusion toward the illusion of the army. “Is that you then?”

Thomas quirked his mouth, already turning his own horse toward the rocks. “Yes, come and—”

His men erupted out from behind the sheltering rocks, Godric in the lead with Llewellyn riding half-conscious in front of him. Thomas surveyed his men in confusion. One knight’s clothing was actually smoking as if it were recently on fire. “What happened?”

Godric swallowed, his jaw tight and angry beneath his dark beard. “That blood witch, sir. As soon as you were gone, she let off some kind of spell.”

“Tried to set me on
fire
,” one of the knights muttered.

“And then, while we were running around all distracted, she took off with two of the horses.” Ned’s gray eyes were wide in his ruddy face.

“Two? Why would she take two?”

Godric shrugged. “Maybe she plans to eat the other one.”

Aliénor, whose mount was still close to Thomas’s, shook her head. “I think she did it just to be spiteful. She saw you were short of mounts, and she doesn’t like you, so she took two.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “How do you know she doesn’t like me?”

“She doesn’t like anybody. She didn’t even like Philippe, I think. Just what he could do for her position.”

“I hope the Tiochene murder her in the wilderness,” Godric muttered.

Llewellyn stirred in the knight’s arms, and the illusory army began to fade, like bits of fabric tearing at the seams. The music and other sounds had already stopped when Mistress Helen fled. The magician’s gaze fastened on Thomas, his face grave and pinched with worry. “It does one other thing besides inconvenience us—it slows us down.” Llewellyn looked to Princess Aliénor. “Can you think why she wants us slowed down, Your Highness?”

Aliénor shook her head. “I’m scared to think why she would. King Thomas, one of your men is welcome to my packhorse.”

“Thank you, Princess Aliénor.” He gestured behind, and his page, Ned, hustled forward to wrestle the women’s meager belongings off the horse. Thomas noticed it had a saddle, which meant it wasn’t originally a pack animal. Llewellyn slid off the other horse out of the supporting knight’s arms and, with a loud groan, heaved himself atop the packhorse. Ned darted a look at Thomas, his lips twisted with uncertainty. Thomas gave a short nod, and the lad scrambled atop the horse behind Llewellyn, taking the reins away from the exhausted magician. It was an alarming testament to Llewellyn’s exhaustion that he didn’t protest any of this.

But there was no time to worry about Llewellyn just now. Thomas drew in a deep breath and hissed it out through his teeth. He pitched his voice to carry toward all his assembled knights and the ladies as well. “We must ride hard today. We need to get as far away from here as we can.” He was turning to apologize to Aliénor. “This will be difficult for you and your women—”

“Never mind that. Let us be off at once.” Suiting words to action, she spurred her horse forward.

Grinning, Thomas urged his own mount forward to catch up to her.
Oh, I like this princess very much
.

Too much,
probably, but that was a concern for a different hour.

One good thing about riding to the point of total exhaustion was that Aliénor had no energy left to think about Philippe or to worry over the fact that she was not heartbroken. King Thomas and his men set a brutal pace. It was all she could do to keep her seat on a horse that was meant to be ridden by someone much stronger and larger than her. Her eyes were gritty and burning with lack of sleep, her muscles stiff and aching. Yet she felt almost as if the king gave her that discomfort as a gift, gave it to all of her ladies, really. They could lose themselves in the very real struggle of staying on their damned horses for just one more minute despite an aching back and chafed thighs and weary minds—and they didn’t have to remember that battlefield, didn’t have to remember their lost men for this small respite of time.

When the sun at last sank toward darkness, and King Thomas finally,
finally
called a halt for the night, Aliénor practically had to fall off her horse into his arms. Her muscles had locked up, her legs like runny pudding. King Thomas even went so far as to carry her himself to one of the bedrolls set up by the fire.

Once he set her down, she snuggled into the rough blankets on the chill ground, her mind fuzzy and already running toward the welcoming arms of sleep.

“Shouldn’t you eat, Princess? And wash?”

“Hmm…”

“Are you already asleep?” His voice was tender, warmly amused. She could actually hear the smile in it.

As her mind floated away to blessed blankness, she smiled into the folds of her blankets, carrying his warmth and gentleness with her into her dreams.

When she awoke, much later, it was early morning. Her body was almost unbearably stiff, and Aliénor’s muscles burned and protested when she sat up. Her rump especially was afire with pain. Still, the sleep had done her good, refilling some well of energy inside her.

The camp seemed mostly empty except for Violette sitting on her bedroll a few feet away, propped against a rock and dozing. Some healer in the king’s party had set her broken wrist. Of Noémi there was no sign, and few of King Thomas’s men were around except for one or two drowsing in their bedrolls, including the king’s young page. The horses were all still in camp, though, tied up together next to a small stand of trees.

A low baritone voice rang out nearby from behind the clump of horses. He was humming under his breath as he worked. She caught the tune, an old song about spring flowers and a maiden’s hair. Aliénor sang a few of the verses low and half under her breath as she rolled her blankets up to be packed.

Unfortunately, her singing had opposite to the desired effect, because the deep baritone humming stopped at the sound of her voice. Still, her singing did produce some good results, as King Thomas appeared from behind the horses he’d been tending and approached her. “You slept as if bespelled, my lady.”

“It was a good spell if so.” She stretched and it hurt—of course it did—but it brought warmth and a tingling into her muscles, a healing kind of hurt. “I feel much better.”

“Good. Your other lady is stealing a chance to wash while my men hunt and gather for some food. We want to save the packed supplies for any bare stretches.”

“Food.” Her stomach emitted a most unladylike grumble, and she clapped a hand over her gut, hoping to muffle the sound.

The king’s eyes crinkled with amusement, but he made no comment. “Godric caught two rabbits, and Llewellyn coaxed some fish out of the river.”

“Llewellyn’s your magician, isn’t he? Did he use his magic to catch the fish?” She had been trying to sound light, unconcerned, but she was rather afraid her voice came out stiff or stilted. She dropped her gaze from his and nervously pleated the fabric of her filthy skirts.

The king cleared his throat, gruff but clearly embarrassed too. “You are Jerdic. You were all Jerdic in that damned camp. How was I to risk telling you, even you, that I had a Lyondi magician with me?”

She worried at her lip and stared at a cluster of pebbles on the ground before her. “You were right not to tell anyone in that camp. I don’t blame you. If I’d found myself lost in a camp of Lyondi strangers, I would have kept every advantage I might have as a secret too.”

“You’re very understanding, Princess.”

“No, just practical.” Still, there was a sick sort of aching in her gut. Thomas was not just a man of Lyond—he was the
king
of Lyond, a nation that had been fighting her own for her entire life and more. Even with Philippe gone, she was still the Jerdic princess. Thomas—
King
Thomas—was still her enemy, and the enemy of her whole people.

She allowed herself to sneak one small glance at him, at the rugged handsomeness of his face, the line of his leonine nose, the softness of his lips, those clear, piercing gray-blue eyes of his.
He does not feel like my enemy
. He felt like warmth and safety and solace. He felt like home.

You’re just overwrought
. Latching onto the nearest strength and comfort. These wild, foolish feelings didn’t mean anything.

Aliénor shoved herself to her feet. She teetered unsteadily, and King Thomas caught her elbow to keep her from falling down again. They stood close enough that his breath stirred against the skin of her face.

“Your Lady Noémi will be missing you by the river, and there isn’t much time left before we depart. You should go. ’Tis that way, over the hill. I have a guard posted, but he will not disturb you.”

“Thank you.” She walked away, stopping to rouse Violette enough to tell her handmaiden where she was going.

Violette looked thoroughly ashamed to have fallen asleep. “I am supposed to be guarding your honor while we travel among these rough Lyondi men. I failed you, Princess. I’m sorry.”

Aliénor only motioned Violette to follow her up the hill. The king had returned to the horses, stroking his hand down the silky neck of one of the geldings. She looked back at King Thomas once on her way to the river and saw he had not returned to his work yet. He was watching her walk away.

She tore her gaze from his.
Oh, what fools we are
.

Godric probably should have been content with the two rabbits he’d already brought back to camp to stretch their supplies, but they had those three lovely ladies to feed now too. His luck had already been good that day. He hoped Kind Fate would extend her care to two or three more rabbits.