TheKingsViper (16 page)

He made her feel safe, and warm, and replete with joy.

“We are going to need to get washed all over again,” she
pointed out, slurring a little.

“Uhuh,” he agreed, nuzzling into her hair but sounding
half-asleep already. “Later.”

“Mmm.”

“You smell like springtime,” he said indistinctly.

She felt herself slipping down into the warm darkness and
knew that there would be no more Later that night.

* * * * *

Eloise slept in the next morning almost all the way to noon,
and it was only the sound of a door shutting that woke her then. She raised her
head to find herself alone in the bed, with the sunlight lying across the
sheets and her bare ass. A small heap of clothes—her own, cleansed of muck and
blood and smelling only of the wood fires they’d been dried over—lay at the
foot of the bed, and nearby stood a new bucket of hot water.

Rolling onto her back, Eloise stared at the roof beams.
Slowly she broke into a grin, one that built until she wriggled with sheer
delight. Memories danced through her inner eye and Severin’s words of the
previous day echoed in her head.
I tumbled you in the hayloft, did I? I hope
we both enjoyed it.
She sobered a little as she remembered what that
fiction implied. In Ystrian custom, just as in Mendea, a seduced maiden could demand
that the man marry her or pay her off.

Except that that wasn’t what had happened here, was it? He’d
not seduced her. She’d offered herself to him. Unequivocally.

But that whole subject was too ominous to think about. She
wanted to feel, not to think, so she shook off the clustering inner voices and
lifted her face to kiss the sunbeams. As quickly and neatly as she could she
scrambled to make use of the water. Her wet body gleamed, abuzz with a sense of
well-being. Across her left hip was a scattering of tiny bruises, the imprint
of gripping fingers, and the sight filled her with wonder and joy.

I lay with him. I lay with him, and he was good to me,
and he liked everything about me, and it was wonderful.
It was a little
shocking too, what they had done, but even that made her feel a giddy glee.

When she was dressed she went outside. Severin was sitting
in the courtyard below, in line of sight of the door. He paused momentarily as
she came into his view, then went back to cutting a wedge of cheese and laying
it upon a bread trencher.

Eloise felt lightheaded, almost unreal, as she descended the
stairs. What did one say, the morning after? Things were now so different
between them—surely nothing could be the same? Surely the words must be
altered, the looks, the gestures—everything.

She approached within a few paces of Severin before he met
her gaze. His expression was one of glacial calm. “Have you packed?” he asked.

All the air left Eloise’s lungs. She wanted to throw herself
into his arms. She wanted to tangle her fingers in his hair and kiss his lips.
She wanted all the passion and possessiveness he’d shown her last night—or at
the very least some acknowledgment of that. But his words were like a warning
flag. She felt the blood draining from her face.

“What’s the plan?” she asked huskily.

“I think we’ll take the Cheam road.”

So they did. And later in the afternoon they left the road
and climbed into the rough country, keeping to the steep little valleys choked
with willow and away from the skylines. For the rest of that warm autumn day
they kept moving, and didn’t even approach the river again until after sunset.

In all that time, Severin barely spoke a word to her. When
he did, his voice was clipped and uninviting and he barely glanced in her
direction. All the while, Eloise walked in a fog of humiliation and misery. She
wanted him to embrace her, so much so that she could feel it as a grinding in
her belly. Sometimes she wanted to shout at him, and then a moment later she
wanted to sit down and weep, but she bit the inside of her cheek until it was
raw and didn’t do either. She couldn’t bear the thought of the cold contempt
she knew she would provoke.

He thinks I’m a slut. A slut, a whore, or else a
desperate foolish little girl—but either way, a traitor to my husband and my
people and my king.

When they stopped to eat she mumbled her food with a dry
tongue, not tasting anything, forcing the crumbs down. Her churning,
unarticulated emotions made her feel nauseous. Severin had to remind her to
drink.

He said I was his
, she told herself over and over.
He
said I was his for always. How can he say that and then treat me like this?
But she already knew the answer to that. She could imagine exactly what he
would say if she threw his words back in his face, and that knowledge curdled
in her belly like bile.
What lesson do you learn from that, Ella?—that the
words of any man who’s aiming to shoot his load up your ass are hardly to be
trusted. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.

In the deep gloaming, Severin finally signaled her to stop
and rest, under the shadow of a boulder and the canopy of a split, half-dead
tree. She could hear the rush of the river somewhere off ahead. Just the sound
made her shiver.

“We’ll wait here ’til the middle of the night,” Severin
said, leaning against the rock.

Eloise ran her fingers across her face, trying to ignore the
hot tears that were leaking out onto her lashes. By now she’d stopped wanting
him to make love to her, and she’d stopped wanting him to be kindly. She just
wanted him to speak to her again. Anything would do. She felt so desperately
lonely that even words of contempt would be something.

“Are you angry with me?” she asked, her voice quivering.

“Angry? Why should I be angry with you?” He was furious. She
could hear it in his hoarse whisper.

“Because I…” The word
seduced
seemed feeble. She bit
down on the kernel of all their troubles. “Because I made you betray Arnauld.”

“
Made
me?” There was a long moment’s silence. “I
chose.”

Oh, there was his pride showing. “And chose badly,” she
finished off for him, since he was too coldly polite to say it. “That’s the
truth, isn’t it? You regret it with all your heart.”

“And you don’t?”

She caught the inside of her cheek with her teeth again,
tasting blood, and lifted her chin. “No. I do not.”

“Ella—” He bit his words off.

“I’m a fool, aren’t I?”

He said nothing, neither denying nor confirming the
accusation. Instead he sank down on his haunches, his back to the rock, his
eyes narrowed. She could feel her soul burning up under his regard. Her throat
grew dry, closing up.
Not a fool but a faithless whore. That’s what he
thinks.

“I’m not angry,” he said at length. “I’m frightened.”

Oh.
She flinched inside. Oh, that wasn’t the same at
all. Severin de Meynard—frightened? What did he mean? Her mind raced. “I won’t
betray you,” she promised. “I won’t! I’ll keep quiet, whatever happens.”

“You’ll try.”

“I will not tell!” she hissed. “I’ve trusted you all this
way, haven’t I? And you can trust me!”

His mouth pulled strangely. “But that’s not what’s scaring
me.”

“Then…?”

“Ella…it’s me.”

“You?”

He shook his head slightly. “All these years, I thought I
knew myself. I thought I knew exactly what I could do and what I couldn’t. I
honestly thought my loyalty unbreakable. Then—it broke. It turns out I’m not as
strong as I believed I was.”

“Severin…” His words both scared and elated her. She
clenched her fists. She was so used to his confidence in himself—it was what
had sustained her belief in him. Now she saw a hollowness behind his set jaw.
He was no longer invulnerable.

“Now I’m frightened that I don’t have the capacity for this
after all. That I’m not strong enough to get us over the river. That I don’t
have the wits to get us past the guards. That I’ll break under questioning.
Ella, I don’t trust myself anymore.”

She felt a moment’s pure, dizzying hope. “Then,” she said
raggedly, seizing her chance, “don’t cross the river at all. Stay in Mendea. I
want to stay with you. You may love the King but I don’t. I don’t. Do you want
me to say it out loud? I want to stay with you.”

He looked away. “Ella. That’s not possible for us.”

“Yes it is. We could—”

“Does money grow on trees, Ella, or under rocks? We are
landless, lordless and guildless. We’re living hand-to-mouth now, in harvest
season. What will happen, do you think, when winter comes?”

“You have skills—”

“Not the sort that will save us here. How many years do you
see me patching walls for widows in exchange for crusts? And what will we live
on if you are eight months pregnant, and I happen to break an arm?”

His logic was irrefutable.

“I love you,” she said in despair. It was all she had left.

Severin’s jaw was set, his face stiff. “I know,” he
answered. “And I’m sorry. Because it doesn’t make any difference to what we
must do.”

She parted her lips, but she could not bring voice or shape
to the question
Do you love me?
because she knew there was no hope. Only
her eyes pleaded.

“I will take you home,” he said, forestalling her unborn
words. “You will be safe. That’s all that matters.” And then, with a brutality
that took her breath away, he added, “If we survive this, Ella, we will not see
each other again.”

She turned her face away then so that he could not see the
pain that wrenched it all askew. She heard him rise.

“Stay here.”

Then he was gone.

He was gone a long time—hours, perhaps. She didn’t allow
herself to cry, though she wanted to. She held out until the pain became a
great clawing emptiness inside her. When it got colder she walked around a
little. It was long after midnight before he came back, almost soundlessly, his
silhouette a thicker darkness against the clouded sky. There was no moon
visible that night.

“This way.” They left the pack and he led her by the hand
downhill and to their right. Then, step by step, down a rocky cliff, on which
he had to place her feet in the invisible footholds. They ended up on a stony
shore surrounded by the clamor of moving water. Severin placed her hands onto
the smooth curved flank of a beached log.

“Here. We’re going to push this off and use it to float
downstream. It’s dead so it should ride high. There are branches for you to
hold onto…there, you see?”

Eloise could see little except blocks of shadow, but she
could feel where to get a grip on the stubs of broken wood and she mumbled,
“Yes.”

“Right. I’m going to rope us together. We must cross to the
far bank before we get far enough downriver to see the lights of
Rounay—otherwise both sides will use us for target practice. So when I tell
you, we both swim hard as we can, and upstream—the current on your right and in
your face. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Strip down to one skirt and blouse.”

She started to obey, feeling almost numb. That feeling
lasted until he took a hold of her waist, knotting a loop of rope around it.
His touch was like a burning brand on her skin; it couldn’t be ignored. She
reacted by grabbing his hand and laying it upon her breast. Her flesh nested
soft and heavy in his palm and through the wind-chilled linen her nipple
pebbled eagerly in response to the touch. “Severin,” she whispered, pressing up
against him and lifting her mouth to his.

“Ella, don’t do this—”

“Take me.” She had no ulterior motive, no plan to change his
mind. She knew it was too late for that, and she spoke out of sheer desperation
and the hunger of her body, her lips burning against his jaw. “One last time.
Any way you like. Please, Severin! Don’t you want it?”

He caught her up against him, pressing her back against the
log. She could feel the heave and jut of his cock as it hardened. “Ella,” he
gasped, his lips blurring against hers, his breath tangling with her own. “Oh
God, don’t doubt that!”

“Just once more!”

He groaned, blaspheming painfully, and seized her bottom lip
between his teeth, taking her to the brink of pain. Every muscle in his body
was tensed, his erect cock was stabbing up against her through his loose
clothes and his hands were heavy on her ass cheeks. “No,” he growled as he
released her lip, crushing her up against him in direct contradiction of his
words. “We can’t, Ella. I can’t.”

Then he pulled her with him, slithering down the shingle
into the water. The bank dropped steeply. They were up to their hips in
seconds. The chill of the water took Eloise’s breath away. It quenched every
fire and she fell against him with a sob. He buried his face in her hair.

“Oh my little mouse—remember, not a word! Our lives are in
our hands.” He clasped her hand in his, furling his fingers about her fist.
“You hold my life here.” Then, without warning, he lifted her face and kissed
her lips softly and lingeringly; a kiss into which almost anything might be
read by a young woman—regret and tenderness and desire, certainly. For a moment
they clung together.

It was the last warmth Eloise was to feel.

The river should not have been bitterly cold at this time of
year but it certainly seemed so. She heard herself whimper with discomfort as,
pushing against the log, they took step after step away from the bank. She
could feel the current pulling at her already—and then suddenly it caught the
tree trunk and they were all moving together. Severin shifted behind her, so
that she was floating within the circle of his arms. She lost her footing as
the water deepened and then felt her knee smack painfully off an unseen rock,
but she clenched her teeth and didn’t cry out. They had to be silent.

There was no room for thought now, nothing beyond the
imperatives—breathe, hold on, stay quiet. The night was moonless and she could
see next to nothing, only the paler strip that was the clouded sky beyond the
black rock walls, and Severin’s hands, a paler blur still, bobbing in front of
her where they clutched the wood.