The Redwood Rebel (The Redwood War Book 1) (12 page)

‘Such as?’

Naomi shifted her position slightly and tried to put it into terms he might actually understand. ‘Nothing is perfect unless you accept every facet of it.’

He looked thoughtful for a moment, as though he were entertaining some possible answer, then shook his head very slightly and seemed to release the thought onto the breeze to float away. They sat in silence for a long while, until Naomi began to feel a little cold, and noticed Arun was trying very hard not to shiver.

‘Come on, let’s go back,’ she sighed, climbing down and under where he was perched. ‘We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow. Several more after that. We need to rest.’

*

Genevieve was dying. Her wounds were many and deep, infecting her blood as they festered. Most of the arrows had snapped, making them impossible to remove. It had been agony to drag her mangled body away so that the humans could not finish what they had set out to do and kill her. None of them had come close enough to check if she still lived, believing her already dead. They gave her body a wide berth as they hurried to escape before her sisters found them. Even now with her strength leaving her, unable to fly, unable to hunt, she refused to die in this pitiful manner. She would take her revenge, she swore it, and feast upon the blood of the small warrior her Master coveted.

The small warrior with eyes of shattered glass, and who was wrapped in the scent of death and torment. She had seen her, smelled her. She would die by her claws, she swore it; no matter her broken wings and life-force were still leaking from her onto the leaf-scattered ground. They were not far, she could smell them. If only she could fly, she could catch her prey easily. Her talons pierced the soft ground and she bared her sharp teeth, imagining it was not soil, but the flesh of the small warrior she clawed.

'Ah, Genevieve, of all three sisters, you are the strongest.' A familiar voice spoke softly, and recognising it, she cawed piteously. 'Hush now, mighty one. The small warrior will die, but you will not be the one to deliver the blow. You ignored my orders, but I will forgive you.’

A powerful shock tore through her body, and opening her razor-filled maw, Genevieve tried to scream. No sound came, and another pulse of energy pierced her. She could not move, but felt something molten hot flow through her body, burning her from the inside even as it threatened to tear her open. It was excruciating, but still she refused to die.

Suddenly it was not the small warrior she craved now. It was the blood of her mate, furious and burning, the heart of a dragon. A heart she would consume while the small warrior watched. Genevieve had seen how she protected the male, knocked him down to keep him back, pulled him away as she charged.

'Yes. Yes, you will devour him. You shall feast upon his flesh, take his blood as your own and steal his strength and spirit. This I know. I will give you a gift so that it will be possible. Take my gift!'

A bright light blinded Genevieve and she gave herself up to it. It was not death that thrummed through her veins, but power, and she would take it. The pain began to fade, and at last she screeched.

The voice in her mind began to laugh, and she beat her powerful wings, feeling stronger than she ever had. The sun glanced off her now-shining steel feathers, an armour that she could never have dreamed of, her vision sharper and her nose filled with the scent of the small warrior. She shrieked in triumph, tearing through the sky towards her prey like a poisoned arrow.

Chapter Twelve

'Get off me!' Naomi yelled, heart in her throat as she awoke to find herself draped across Arun's chest, wrapped up snugly in his arms. 'Let go! Get off!'

Shoving at his chest and trying to kick him, Naomi found herself unable to escape, the thick, rough blanket hindering her movements. Arun's eyes snapped open and he instantly grabbed her wrists to keep her from hitting him further. Pushing her down and pinning her hands above her head, she found herself trapped. His strength far outweighed her own in this position, and she ceased her struggles, knowing it was pointless.

Anger flashed in his yellow eyes as he snapped, 'I'm not on you, woman!'

'Yes, you are!' She glared up at him, her voice high with panic as he continued to hold her down. Part of her registered that his words were correct, and until she had woken him so rudely it was she who had been resting over him, but her anger was at the boiling point and she chose to disregard the fact entirely.

He looked down at her, furious at being woken in such a way, then blinked and tutted, releasing her wrists and sitting up. Naomi, just glad to be free of him, rolled quickly away and almost fell off the side of the sleeping platform. She managed to save herself at the last second, realising her error, and grabbed the edge with her arms while quickly hooking her leg up and over the top. Now clinging on, literally a second of thoughtlessness away from the long drop to the ground, Naomi clenched her teeth and tried to calm down. Arun's head poked over the side of the platform, and despite his concerned expression as he looked down at her, Naomi had the overwhelming urge to punch him in the mouth.

'I hope you're not going to wake up in this kind of mood every morning,' he muttered, shoving his sleep-mussed hair out of his face. 'Are you alright?'

'Fine,' Naomi growled, trying to muster the energy to heave herself back up. 'Please leave me alone.'

Arun simply rolled his eyes as though he was dealing with a petulant child. Her emotions felt unusually volatile, but her anger was receding, and that gave her small comfort. She began to pull herself back up again, still weak from sleep and shaking from the fright she had taken. Then, as though deliberately testing her, he reached down, scooped her up and lifted her easily.

'I said leave me alone!' she snapped. 'I'm perfectly capable-'

'Will you please stop shouting?' Arun spoke over her.

'Will you please stop touching me?' she quickly shot back, shrugging his hands from her shoulders as he placed her back on the platform. He quickly released her, holding up his hands in an almost placating manner. Naomi might have bought it had his face, twitching with effort to appear calm, not given him away.

'You were having a nightmare.'

'I was
not
!' she denied. 'I just didn't expect to find a strange man using me as a pillow.’

Even as she said it, she realised that wasn’t strictly true, either. After they had come down from the treetops, Arun had clearly been struggling with the cold, and feeling tired and chilled herself, sharing body heat had been the natural course of action. It wasn’t as though they hadn’t slept together before, after all.

'I didn't touch you,' he assured her quietly, then cleared his throat and looked unrepentant. 'But you were having a nightmare. You were cold. Freezing. It was too dark to see, and there were men screaming.'

Naomi felt the colour drain out of her face and her blood chill. 'What?'

'I never heard such screams. It was agony.'

He sounded horrified. Of course he did. Those screams, the cold and the heavy, pressing darkness had nearly driven her insane. Still, hearing it spoken of, knowing he had somehow seen it, left her feeling vulnerable. If there was one thing in the world that Naomi hated it was to be vulnerable, and in her insecurity, she fell back on her most efficient defence mechanism.

'How dare you,' she snarled. 'How dare you go poking about in my thoughts like that?'

'Now, wait,' Arun replied. 'You don't understand. It's the Bond, I didn't have a choice. Your dreams just meshed in with mine and the strongest overpowered the other.'

He stood and made to move towards her, but she quickly backed away. She didn't want anyone near her right now. Didn't want to think about what he had seen, what he knew. Her own personal hell on display for him to see and bring up in her waking hours.

'Firefly...'

'Don't keep calling me that!' she snapped, latching onto it to escape the current topic. 'It's ridiculous!'

Arun seemed to catch on, his eyes still concerned but his expression altering to something less intimidating. 'It suits you, that's all.'

'How, exactly? Fireflies are just irritating, noisy, tiny little pests!'

He raised his eyebrows.

'Go away.' she muttered, grabbing a water skin and taking a mouthful. She heard Arun chuckle quietly at her expense, then there was a shot of magic and she nearly dropped the skin in her hands. Whipping back around to face him, she found him washed, dressed and clean-shaven. He looked surprised by the sudden anger on her face.

‘What?’

‘Do you ever listen?’ she asked furiously. ‘What did I say about magic yesterday? You’ve just highlighted our presence to half the cussing forest!’

The surprise was quickly replaced by anger of his own. ‘You don’t think your continual shouting might already have done that?’

A stream of abuse was pressing persistently against the inside of her lips and it took all of her self-control not to simply open her mouth and allow it to spill out. Keeping her seething gaze fixed firmly against his own, she barked orders to the ears she was fairly certain were all listening in. ‘Alright gentlemen, rise and shine! I want these platforms dismantled and all of you ready to move out on the double! No magic, do you hear me?
No magic
.’

There was an immediate scuffle from the nearby trees as the soldiers moved to do as they were bid. The tension between her and Arun was practically crackling as she threw the water skin down on the bedroll with a loud thump, before pointing her forefinger in his face.

‘I’m going to get you out of here and safely back to your ship, Your Majesty, and you can apply whatever reasoning you like to that promise, I couldn’t care less,’ she hissed. ‘But you have to understand that for me to do this job, there are rules that everyone, including you, have to obey. I can make do with your cruel restriction on my movements, I can even make do with you leaving me completely unarmed, but when I say that magic isn’t to be used except in emergencies, I expect you to listen. Is that clear?’

‘I wasn’t-!’

‘I asked you if that was clear?’ she interrupted his protest, trying not to just reach out and shake him until some sort of sense lodged itself into his thick head. He looked flustered for a moment, then drew himself up, taking a small step towards her. More intimidation tactics, she scoffed inwardly. When was he going to realise they didn’t work on her?

‘You need to get out of Ffion alive just as much as we do.’ he said, more calmly than she might have given him credit for.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘And that is exactly why I’m not going to put up with any more of your stupidity.’

*

Arun had never been as conflicted in his entire life as he was right now. This pale, scrawny
girl
he found himself married to was both infuriating and fascinating at the same time. The group was making their way slowly through the dense forest of Ffion, completely avoiding the main roads and meandering through the trees, with Naomi in front. The terrain was rough and he was surprised she wasn’t disoriented by the trees that they were weaving through. Occasionally her booted foot would sink into a bog of some kind, and after easing it out again, completely unconcerned by the mud that now caked her slender legs, she would find a safe way for the rest of them to go. It was taking a long time, but he knew that she could go a lot quicker if it wasn’t for them slowing her down. He didn’t like to think how bad it would be without her.

Briefly his mind flickered back to Rayan and Esta, trying to hope that they were fine while becoming increasingly aware of how dangerous these lands were, even without the threat of being hunted by outside sources. His cousin was well-travelled, and unlike him had been to Ffion a few times before now. As Naomi herself had said, he had to just cling to that knowledge and focus on getting out of here alive himself. Thinking the worst wasn’t going to help anyone at this point. Hopefully by this time tomorrow, he would have recovered his strength enough that he could use his dragon form once again. From there, he would find them and return his family and his wife to their ship.

His eyes found their way back to Naomi again, and her quiet amusement as she spoke to the young guard, Rostam, was making him feel very unpleasant. Why was it that she seemed perfectly happy to talk and be amicable with everyone except him? Since his rude awakening this morning, Naomi's obvious terror at the Bond giving him so much access to her mind while she slept and her refusal to accept it still, they had barely said a word to one another. Any attempt on his part to initiate conversation had been met with hard eyes and curt answers.

She was still angry with him for using his magic this morning, and although he so far had been unable to admit it, he knew it had been a stupid mistake. He just hadn’t been thinking, that was all. It had been years since he’d dressed and shaved by hand, it had become such a part of his normal routine he barely even registered that it was magic any more. He knew he should just apologise and get it over with, but she always made him feel so… so….

He didn’t know what he felt. She had terrified him yesterday, running into the thick of battle like that. She had been completely fearless, but he had felt it like a knife. It had made him angry that he should worry for her when she seemed to have so little regard for her own safety. He’d tried to tell himself that there was nothing attractive about a woman who would throw herself into danger like that, but it didn’t ring true. The more he saw of her courage and skill, the more he grew to appreciate it.

This woman really was capable of taking care of herself. More than that, she seemed to have taken it upon herself to take care of him as well. It was such a peculiar thought, and he had absolutely no idea how to deal with it.
He
was supposed to be protecting
her
, not the other way around. That was just the way it worked. Watching her and lost in his thoughts, Arun found himself smiling slightly. It seemed that no one had ever told her that.

He wanted to know about her. He wanted to know how she had become a prisoner, who she had been before. She was obviously from a better background than she had recently been living, and remembering how she had fallen into immediate military leadership, he could only assume of soldier class, if not higher. Esta had told him she believed her to be of noble birth, and the more he spoke to her, the more he had to agree. She was always very firm and sometimes abrupt, but she was also eloquent and well-educated. She wore authority like an old pair of boots, and he knew that sort of comfort with command was born, not taught.

The problem was that Adrienne’s coup against King Maximilian had been so long ago, Arun’s memory of the old Court was sadly lacking. He had no need to remember the names and positions of foreign Courtiers that were dead or no longer in power. It sounded harsh, but it was true. He had enough to remember just with the living, and even then found himself struggling on occasion. He did remember King Maximilian, however, as the man had attended his own coronation not five years previously. He didn’t remember very much, the days around the celebrations being busy and stressful, but he remembered his easy laugh, his sharp humour and bright green eyes.

A suspicion he wasn’t yet ready to name had been creeping up on him since their conversation at the river yesterday. She had been deliberately evasive about the lost Princess of Ffion, and had very quickly tried to change the subject. The way she’d looked at him, anxious and uneasy, was uncharacteristic of her usual self-assurance. She hadn’t expected him to know the rumours. Perhaps she had even been unaware of them herself? Most people believed the heir to the Redwood Throne long dead with the rest of her family, but whispers of an escape, that her body had never been displayed with the others in the city square, had been quietly circulated. He had initially dismissed it as false hope and speculation, but now he found himself wondering.

If only she would tell him, but who was he kidding? Naomi had made it perfectly clear on more than one occasion that she had absolutely no intention of telling him anything. Angry and betrayed, he had initially told himself that she was just being difficult, but experiencing her nightmares, feeling her fear, made him think twice. It had been horrific, the way the darkness had wrapped around her like a shroud of death, the cold causing her to shiver uncontrollably, despite how she had burrowed against his body for warmth. The screams of tormented souls still echoed around his head, and the feeling of her locked muscles as she tried to stave off her deep and abiding terror. It made him question his treatment of her.

The crux of their problem until now had been that she had used him, with apparently little regret. Now knowing what she had been through, the state of her life, brought Esta’s words back to the front of his mind. Yes, she’d had a choice, but the alternative had been abhorrent. It didn’t make the situation any easier, but he found his anger with her softening quickly.