EIGHT - Luvon
"I don't know what to do with her, Fentris." We'd both been awake for too long by the time we'd gotten a chance to rest. Once the Seelie had packed up after being scared away by Hanna, we'd cleaned things up as best as we could. I'd spent the morning searching the battlefield for injured men while Fentris had gone off after the horse Hanna had lost. He figured if we had a shot at desensitizing one of the horses to lightning we might as well start with the one that had thrown her the night before. I regretted that she wouldn't be going home, but then I thought about the crumpled slip of paper in my pocket and her story about Zinvaris and regretted that I couldn't immediately rip his balls off and feed them to him.
What if she hadn't been on her toes?
But she had, thank the gods, and I'd spent the early afternoon with her asleep in my paws as proof of it.
"In what way, boss?" Fentris dragged me back into the present. The bonfire in front of us consumed most of the wreckage of broken carts and other burnable junk that had accumulated over the last several days. Most of the officers wouldn't have helped, but then again, a good portion of them had just gotten killed while the troops stood around and let it happen.
I sighed, throwing some more broken and unsalvageable cart wheels onto the pyre while I tried to sort out my brain. "She thinks someone was trying to kill her, but I think they were trying to capture her."
Fentris' eyes narrowed. "I've been wondering about that Zinvaris feller that you sent me to Jiyya with."
Fentris may as well have smacked me with some of Hanna's borrowed lightning. I'd never said anything to him about my concerns regarding Zinvaris, but he had come to the same conclusion on his own. "What do you mean?" I asked, eager to compare notes.
"He's always hangin' around, seems a little too concerned with her, if you ask me. He doesn't say anything, but he's always there at the villa, just like he was always around the office."
"Was he?" I'd always been inside the office, but Fentris had frequently been assigned to guard it from the outside. Once I started promoting him he spent less time guarding it but I asked him to try and stay close. For the most part he had, blending in seamlessly while grooming horses in the nearby stables and taking care of other messaging-related tasks that no one else paid much attention to, all the while keeping a weather eye on Hanna's guards.
"I thought, since he was a sergeant, that he'd have better things to do. But he'd always be there, sniffin' around and tryin' to look invisible. He's no good at it, that one. Loud, clumsy, of course I guess he's usually not concerned with sneaking up on his victims." Fentris laughed darkly, but his words chilled me beyond what the growing desert night had on offer.
"Hanna thinks he was in our bedroom each night I was gone." I said it quietly, unsure if anyone was near enough to hear us over the roar of the fire. Fentris looked more dangerous than I'd ever seen him. The firelight illuminated his rough features, lending them a harder edge than they normally possessed. He was half-fae and really didn't look like us, other than his size. His face was uniquely human but there was always something wolfish about him. I worried I shouldn't have said anything about Zinvaris.
"If he'd captured her-" Fentris began.
"I know," I interrupted him. I thought about the mage-rope in my pocket. I'd collected it from the Seelie warrior that had almost taken her on the battlefield the night before. I didn't want it to fall into someone else's hands in case anyone else had the same idea, nor leave it behind for the Seelie to claim it and try again. Had Zinvaris been smart enough to carry such a thing? Or had he thought he'd be the first man to have a one-on-one with a lightning-tossing tempest and win it? It was a fool's errand, and I wondered who had sent him on it.
"Until today, only you, Krana, Travaran, and those rabid puppy-killers of yours knew she was a tempest. If it wasn't for her magick, why else would he want her? Somehow word hadn't gotten out - likely due to the respect Fentris' new unit found for him almost immediately, and Hanna's gifts had remained a secret until her debut on the battlefield.
Fentris cleared his throat, left briefly, then returned to feed more trash to the fire.
"I don't know how to say this nicely, boss, so I'll just say it."
"You're the closest thing I've ever had to a real friend, Fentris. You can speak freely with me."
Fentris nodded and nibbled on his lower lip. "You know your, let's call it, intimacy issues?"
Upon swapping Fentris' conscription ribbons for his officer's ribbons I'd learned that he was the same age as me and had a wife and children. I'd confided in him that I didn't know much about women. I'd told him Hanna was afraid of me, confessed I didn't know how to avoid impregnating her, and then, after the help of lots of ale, told him I was afraid she'd roast or drown me mid-coitus. It was humiliating, but I was glad to have it off my chest at the time, and glad for the advice and instruction he'd given me in return. Now I wondered where he was taking this.
"Yes," I said as quietly as possible.
He shifted uncomfortably. "Isn't it the case in fae-law that if you don't consummate it, someone else could? I mean to say, Krana thinks you control her, right? But he's angry that you won't use her how he sees fit, could--"
"Shit," I snarled fiercely, unintentionally startling him. I'd told him about the meeting with Krana and Travaran, of course. I told Fentris almost everything these days. He was a solid man and a good friend, and I knew even that sick master-sadist Zinvaris couldn't get anything out of him. Now that Fentris had brought it up I wondered about Krana's motives. Did his comment about women bely his apparent dissatisfaction with his human wife? If I had forced him up against fae-law, would he try to force it up against both of us?
Why not? I realized it should have raised enough red flags to build a circus tent at the time, but I'd been too smug about outsmarting them and getting my way.
"How would he know, though? You can't tell, can you? Is my frustration that obvious to everyone?" Could others sense that I hadn't lain with my wife? Had the guards figured out we didn't share the same bed? I had no idea. I had no experience with women but perhaps because I didn't brag about it while the other men seemed to talk about nothing else Zinvaris or someone else had put it all together.
Fentris cleared his throat uncomfortably again before leaning over and tugging on my jacket. I leaned in so he could whisper in my ear. "They usually bleed the first time, if it's their first time," he told me, then gave me a meaningful look.
It took me a minute to understand. "How would you know unless," I began to say, then stopped, realization hitting me like a cart full of cannonballs. "That's horrible," my stomach turned sour.
He pulled me in again and whispered, "she might not, with the horse-riding and whatnot, some don't. But if he sent you out here to die it wouldn't matter anyway." He released my coat and watched my reaction.
An ambush. That fat conniving fucker.
I'd already suspected it, but not for this reason. Krana had a lot of reasons to want me dead, however, being desirous of my wife was not something I'd anticipated. Now that Fentris had brought it up it made too much sense to ignore. Sticking my hand into my pocket I felt the mage-rope and wondered if it would be a solution to some of my problems. I'd survived, so it wouldn't be easy for Krana to step in and take my wife, and unless he humiliated her no one would agree that we hadn't consummated our marriage. I couldn't let him have even a chance of getting what he wanted.
"Do you have any of those herbs to prevent, you know?" I asked him hesitantly. He shook his head. "Shit." I growled. I would just have to risk it.
"I'll make sure you two aren't disturbed," he said solemnly, then gestured for me to come close again. "If she bleeds, save the sheets. You might have to prove it later." I grimaced at him and recoiled, but he sighed and pulled me in for one of his no-bullshit pep-talks that was starting to become famous among the troops. "Krana wouldn't do anything differently. He'd do worse. Wipe yourself on 'em if you have to. If you were still the prince him and Travaran would be watching you seal the deal and you well know it. You'll have to play their game if you want to beat Krana at it. Remember the other stuff I told you." He gave me a meaningful look and released my coat sleeve. I nodded and left him to manage the pyre, feeling the mage-rope in my pocket the whole way to my tent. It wasn't that far but it felt like miles. What if the binding spell didn't work, and she killed me anyway? The alternative scared me more, frankly. What if I tried to keep a souvenir like Fentris said to do and she got angry with me? I would have to chance it, otherwise Krana would try his luck one way or another.
