Page 12 of Tarnished Crown
Suddenly, I missed him so much it physically hurt. All I wanted was to lay my head on his chest, to feel his heart beating under the palm of my hand and let the rest of the world fade into the background.
To be anywhere in the world but here with a man who had taken me for reasons I still didn’t understand.
CHAPTER10
We had already stopped for our second break the next day when it dawned on me.
This would have been the eighth and final day of the Summit, the day my fate would have been decided, had things gone differently.
The day I turned eighteen.
If I were home now, my mother would have awoken me with the same long story about my birth that she repeated every year. My father would have told me all the things I had done that made him proud, though that list was likely to be short these days.
It was a momentous day in my family, the day we officially became responsible for our people, our holdings, our succession, everything.
But now, did they think I was dead? Missing? Was my family holding a vigil at an empty grave instead? Was my older sister drowning in even more grief? Were the twins still playing pranks and filling the house with much needed laughter, or had the weight of one tragedy after another stolen that from them?
Longing for my family washed over me in a palpable wave, settling onto my skin like a thousand needles prickling at the back of my…
Stars.
That wasn’t longing. It was a warning.
Another storm was coming, this one significantly bigger than the little snowstorm that had made us so miserable the day before. We would need shelter well before we stopped for the night.
When I glanced up at the clear blue sky, a curse escaped my lips, and a sickening feeling of déjà vu overtook me.
Damn Socair and its stars-blasted ridiculous weather.
Was it worth the risk of revealing I knew the storm was coming? Was it worth the risk if I didn’t? Kirill offered me his canteen, as he always did at breaks, and it steeled my resolve.
Even if I was willing to risk my own life, which I had done more than enough of lately, there were three dozen men here and only one I would have no real qualms about leaving to face the elements.
In Lochlann, the weather moved in more predictable patterns, storm clouds visible miles away. On the rare occasion I had sensed something the average soldier couldn’t, a member of my family was around to make an excuse to stop.
Only Socair had put me in the position of claiming to have a stars-damned weather toe.
Where is Davin when I need him to pretend we’re stopping early because his favorite brothel is nearby?
I took a deep, fortifying breath, bracing myself to be ridiculed.
“What time are we stopping for the day?” For a rare change, I addressed the question to Evander instead of Kirill.
He raised his eyebrows. “Overexerted yourself already, Lemmikki?”
I shook my head irritably, turning to Kirill to ask instead when Evander’s voice sounded again. “We ride to Ryaya today, so not long after sundown if we make good time.”
“We need to stop sooner than that,” I blurted out.
Nicely done, Rowan. That was both convincing and very un-suspicious.
An uneasy silence fell among the men as they looked to Evander to see how he would take that assertion.
His gray eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Do we?”
I sighed, looking out at the sky and then back at him with resignation. “A storm is coming soon. A dangerous one.”
“And you know this because…” He gestured for me to expound.