The Fire Prince (The Cursed Kingdoms Trilogy Book 2) (30 page)

Innis blinked, looking confused. “You’re not angry he’s angry?”

Petrus shook his head.

“I thought you didn’t like him.”

“I don’t.”

Innis frowned. “Is this a male thing?”

“Huh?”

“Male pride? Male solidarity?”

“Huh?” Petrus exchanged a glance with Justen. Justen shrugged, clearly not understanding the question either.

“Never mind.” Innis shook her head. “Which is your room, Ebril? Cora wants us to swap.”

Justen pushed away from the wall and headed down the corridor. “You’re naked, you know,” he said over his shoulder.

Petrus changed back into a dog.

P
ETRUS SWAPPED WITH
Gerit halfway through the night. He let himself quietly into the room he was sharing with Frane and climbed into bed. The sheets smelled unwashed, but he was too tired to care. He woke at daybreak, scratching. Frane was dressed and doing the dawn exercises, moving across the bedchamber in a series of lunges and retreats.

“Morning,” Frane said.

Petrus grunted. He sat up and rubbed his face and scratched the bites on his jaw. Three of them, curse it, and another couple on his throat.

“Don’t scratch them,” Frane said. “They’ll just get itchier.”

“I know that,” Petrus snapped. And then after a pause, “I beg your pardon, Frane.” He climbed out of the lumpy bed and pissed in the stained chamberpot. He was tired, he was hungry, and he cursed-well
itched
.

“I’ll heal them for you,” Frane offered.

“I can do it myself. Thanks.”

Petrus used his healing magic on the bites, then dressed and did the dawn exercises. He went down to the taproom feeling more alert, less irritable. He wasn’t the only one who’d been bitten overnight. Katlen had bites on her face and Ebril had them down both arms.

“Once we’re back upstairs, I’ll heal them,” Frane promised. “Just
stop
scratching them.”

Rand joined them.

“How is he?” Cora asked.

“No swelling, no pain. He’s fit to ride. And sire children.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

B
RITTA WOKE TO
the sound of Karel talking softly. She opened her eyes, saw lamplight and dark shadows. Rutgar lay alongside her, fast asleep, but Lukas—

She pushed up on one elbow.

Karel sat on his pallet, holding Lukas. The little boy was curled up against the armsman’s chest, trusting and relaxed, his eyes open, his expression absorbed.

“The woodcutter ran all night,” Karel said quietly. “With his axe strapped to his back, and at dawn he came to a huge cave in the side of the mountain.” He glanced up and saw her. “He’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

Britta obeyed, lying down, snuggling close to Rutgar, feeling safe and warm.

When she next woke, it was daylight and she was in the bed alone. She could still hear Karel. “That’s right,” he said. “Hold it like that.”

She sat up, rubbing her eyes.

Rutgar was drilling a hole in an old wooden plank, his tongue poking slightly between his teeth as he concentrated. Lukas crouched alongside, holding the plank steady, watching the drill bite into the wood.

Her eyes went from the hand drill, to the trunk standing against the wall. Karel had drilled holes in it yesterday, while the boys napped. “Now I don’t have to worry about them suffocating,” he’d said, sitting back on his heels to examine his handiwork.

“They could have?” So many things she’d been afraid of, but not that.

“I don’t know,” Karel had said. “But now they can’t.”

He hadn’t returned the hand drill to the ship’s carpenter; instead, he’d fetched a wooden plank. “All-Mother only knows what they think we’re doing in here.”

Not this,
Britta thought. Not two children playing at being carpenters.

Stubble was dark on the armsman’s face. His clothes were rumpled, his black hair tousled. He looked very different from the man who’d guarded her for three years.

He glanced up and saw her and smiled, his eyes creasing at the corners. “Good morning.”

Neither boy looked up. They were too absorbed in the wonders of the drill.

“How’s Yasma? Did she wake? Could she eat?”

Karel lost his smile. He shook his head. “She was ill again.”

Britta scrambled out of bed and crossed to Yasma’s pallet. The maid was thin and still beneath her blankets.

“I had to use All-Mother’s Breath this time,” Karel said, crouching beside her. “There’s not enough poppy syrup. I gave her a third of the dose we used on me.”

“She’ll be all right,” Britta said.

Karel smoothed hair back from Yasma’s brow. “She deserves a better life than she’s had.”

“She’ll have that from now on. You saved her, Karel.”

Karel’s mouth tightened. He shook his head. “Not soon enough. Or you, either.”

Rape. That’s what he meant. Her own rape by Duke Rikard. Yasma’s many rapes when she was barely out of childhood.

Britta looked away.

“Osgaard destroys people,” Karel said. “I pray to the All-Mother that Lundegaard is different.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

J
USTEN AND THE
prince entered the stables while Petrus was saddling his mount. The prince’s gaze skimmed over him as if he didn’t exist.

Arrogant bastard.

Petrus buckled the girth, then walked across to Prince Harkeld. He put his hands on his hips and lifted his chin. “I don’t apologize for obeying my orders, but I do apologize for invading your privacy.”

The prince looked at him, narrow-eyed, then gave a stiff nod. “Your apology is accepted.”

Huh. Petrus lowered his chin. Maybe the prince wasn’t such an arrogant bastard after all.

“Thank you for coming to my aid.”

That
must have hurt to say. Petrus almost grinned. “You’re welcome.” He turned back to his horse. A stiff-necked whoreson, Prince Harkeld, but not completely without merit.

T
HE
R
IVER
H
ROD
was wide and brown and turgid. Downstream of the jetty, oxen lowed and men wrestled tree trunks into the water. The rain clouds pulled back and weak sunlight shone down. Innis glanced at Ebril gliding overhead, and then at Prince Harkeld, seated on his horse.

The prince had been tersely civil to Rand when the healer had checked him, curtly polite to Petrus in the stableyard, but otherwise he’d not spoken a word to anyone. His simmering rage seemed to be directed at them all.
Except for Justen
. This was how he’d been when they’d fled Osgaard. Grim. Uncommunicative. Hating everyone except his armsman.

Innis sighed. She scanned the riverbank, looking for Broushka and the black-bearded man. She couldn’t see either of them, but... That youth with the bright red hair leaning against a wall, chewing an apple, idly watching the packhorses being loaded onto the ferry... hadn’t he been at Gdelsk?

She looked around for the nearest shapeshifter. “Hew?”

Hew lifted his eyebrows.

“Between Gdelsk and here, was anyone on the road behind us?”

“Other than the oxcarts? There was that merchant with all the pack mules, and... uh... a single rider was all I saw, quite a way behind us.”

“How far behind?”

Cora turned her head to listen.

“He got closer, the last few days. Still about four leagues back when we reached here.”

“So he could be in Lvotnic now?”

Hew shrugged. “Probably.”

“That youth over there, the one with hair redder than Ebril’s. Is that him?”

Both Cora and Hew looked briefly. The prince turned his head too, a quick frowning glance, before returning his gaze to the river.

“Can’t say,” Hew said. “I only ever saw him from a distance, and he had his hood up. It was raining.”

“Do you recognize him?” Cora asked Innis.

“I saw him at Gdelsk. He was at the jetty, watching.”

The prince’s gaze was on the jostling logs, but he was listening. His frown deepened.

“You’re certain?” Cora said.

Innis opened her mouth to say
Yes,
and changed it to, “I’m fairly certain.”
Am I confusing one redheaded man for another?

“You think he’s following us?”

“I don’t know.” She began to feel foolish.

“Hew, point him out to Gerit and Petrus,” Cora said. “See whether they noticed him between Gdelsk and here. In fact, point him out to everyone. It’s as well we all know what he looks like. If he is following us.”

T
HEY HALTED BEFORE
dusk. Mud. Tree stumps. It was as if they hadn’t progressed at all, but were just covering the same miles over and over. Harkeld pitched tents with Justen. Rage and humiliation fermented in his chest. The witches had been
watching
him have sex.

“Flin.”

Harkeld stiffened. The voice was Cora’s. He didn’t bother to stand and look at her.

“Do you wish to have a lesson tonight?”

Wish? What he
wished
was that Cora was a man, so he could give her the beating she deserved. He hammered a stake into the muddy ground.

Cora crouched in front of him. “I’m not going to apologize for setting Petrus to watch you,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact. “My task is to destroy the anchor stones and end Ivek’s curse. If I have to, I can do it with your blood and your hands, but
my
preference—and I think yours—is to accomplish it with you alive.”

Harkeld lowered the mallet. He met her eyes.

“Now, do you wish to have a lesson? I bought three hundred cheap arrows in Lvotnic. You can practice burning them out of the sky.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say
No more lessons
, but they had a deal. If he reneged, Cora would renege. And burning arrows from the sky was an exercise that suited his mood. Harkeld gritted his teeth and gave a curt nod.

Cora didn’t stand. “Fire magic should never be used in anger. And you’re angry.”

Very angry
.

“But I think it could be a good exercise for you.”

Harkeld almost snorted. Exercise? It would be a good release of rage.

“Healers can’t bring dead people back to life. If you think there’s any risk of you losing control of your magic, we’ll postpone tonight’s lesson.”

The words brought a flash of memory: the assassin’s charred body in the canyon.

“Now, tell me truthfully... are you in control of your anger?”

Harkeld considered the question seriously. He unclenched his jaw. “Yes.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes.” He might hate Cora, but to kill her with his own fire, to watch her burn, screaming... “I have control of it.”