A Hint of Frost: Araneae Nation ( Book One) (13 page)

“Lourdes, I have won you.” He nipped my wrist, and a foreign part of me thrilled at the danger. “You’re bound to me. Soon you’ll be wed to me. We won’t be parted. I won’t allow it.”

“Why do you want me?” I searched his face for some clue. “Would anyone have done?”

“You understand duty, so you must forgive me when I say I would have wed any maven of your line if mine asked me to.” His eyes darkened. “But none of them would have been you.”

Pleasure burned tight in my chest, filling the empty places with delicious heat until one errant thought snuffed out my bliss. I screwed up my courage. “Have you been bound before?”

“No.” His utter bewilderment was endearing. “It was never asked of me.”

I prodded him. “Usually the male does the asking.”

His frown deepened. “I’ve never been inclined to ask.”

“Would you have asked me?” I don’t know why the words sprang from my mouth. The instant they registered with Rhys, his lips parted, and I wished I could swipe them from his ears.

“Yes.” Raw truth rang from his single world, and I believed him.

Heady relief made my shoulders round until my mouth opened on one last question. If I had a measure of sense, I would have clamped a hand over my mouth. “You say you’ve never been bound.” He tensed. “How do you know your venom isn’t the cause of your regard for me?”

With his head angled as he stared at the hen in his hand, I almost missed the slow spread of his smile. “No.” He chuckled, the sound dark and rich. “It’s not the venom, I promise you.”

“How can you be so sure?” My voice cracked. After all, I’d blamed venom for my attraction to him. If he said venom wasn’t to blame, and I believed him…then my desire for him was not some manifestation of our bond but meant that I’d wanted this male from the very start.

How was such a mutual need born between two strangers during the blink of an eye?

He rolled his shoulders. “I know myself and own my actions.” His eyebrow arched a second time.

Was he daring me to do the same? “There is comfort to be had in familiarity with one’s self and actions.” I was hedging again. At this rate, I’d sprout roots and sink my toes into the dirt.

When I glanced at my boots, my nape prickled in an icy rush of foreboding.

Leaves crackled and footsteps scuffed behind me. Rhys’s gaze slid past my shoulder, and his eyes narrowed. I turned, expecting Vaughn had come to search for his dinner. Instead, a bloated pecora stumbled on unsteady legs, weaving through the dormant forest as it crashed against trees.

I stepped back as its nostrils flared in a flagging trumpet. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It must be sick.” He tucked me behind him and drew his sword.

The wisp of sound from his blade as it left his scabbard brought the awkward animal’s attention our way. Its head lowered at a wrong angle. Weaving on its feet, it prepared to charge.

The wind changed, and I smelled it, the same oily wrongness that had drenched the others.

“Do you smell that?” We spoke over one another. “Do you see that?”

“It smells the same as the others.” He pointed, and I answered by grasping my bow.

Gold fabric hung from the lowest point on its rack. I’d recognize the color anywhere.

“My mask.” The sun had kept us warm, so the masks weren’t necessary and the slight discomfort had been worth the fresh air, but I’d lost mine hours ago. “It can’t have been following us all this time.”

“Sick animals do all manner of odd things.” He kept his voice low as the animal stamped its hooves. “It’s going to charge.” He shoved me. “Get back. I’ll need room to swing my sword.”

I did as I was told, but a single arrow could end this standoff without the risk of injury to Rhys. After all, if the animal was sick, I’d rather not risk its blood contacting him. Some forms of illness carried with a touch, and I was unwilling to risk his life by discovering if this was one.

Stepping back and to his right, I circled until I lined up a broadside shot, sinking an arrow behind the creature’s front shoulder. Rhys’s head snapped toward me, as did the pecora’s. Wobbling, it lunged and failed, then lurched again. Without pause, I drove two more arrows into my mark, but still its buckling legs carried it forward. While its disturbing focus settled on me, Rhys crept up behind the sick beast and ended its struggling with a merciful sweep of his sword.

When I stepped in for a closer look, he shouted, “Stay back.”

After another glance at the pecora, and a sweep of the woods, he came to me with his sword in his hand, which worried me.

“What’s wrong?” Nothing moved now. Surely the danger had passed.

“We’re leaving.” He grabbed my upper arm and dragged me.

“What?” I bent to retrieve the forgotten hen. “Aren’t you going to—?”

He slapped it from my hand, then scrubbed my palms with his coat. “Touch nothing.”

I had the sense to realize it was a rare thing for this male to be jarred, and I did my best to keep up with him as he plowed through the briars and brush to reach the road. Once we neared Marron, he tossed me on her back and then led Brun and Noir toward Vaughn.

“Leave the fire. It’ll die on its own.” Rhys scanned the area. “Mount up, we cross the veil tonight.”

“We haven’t eaten more than dried berries today. We need meat in our guts.” He stabbed the air in Noir’s direction. “Our mounts need to eat before they decide their riders are palatable.”

“Stay then, if you like.” Rhys waved me closer. “We’re leaving.”

I spoke up. “We encountered a pecora in the brush.”

“What of it?” Vaughn folded his arms across his chest.

“It approached us, completely unafraid. No wild animal behaves that way unless it’s sick.” Out here, animals were food, not pets. “It had my mask hanging from its antlers.”

“Pecora aren’t predatory, and I hardly think you’re some snow princess for the northland creatures to court with gifts of your own clothing.” He frowned. “Where’s the hen? I’m starved.”

“It’s in the clearing, with the pecora.” Rhys held his sword at an angle so Vaughn and I saw it. “Along with whatever in the gods’ names bleeds yellow blood.”

Vaughn stalked to Rhys with his hand outstretched. “Let me see that—it reeks.” He examined the blade. “It must be some infection.” He winced. “Pus explains the color and stink.”

“What about the absence of blood?” Rhys reclaimed his sword, taking a moment to wipe the blade clean before he sheathed it. “What of that?”

“Perhaps it was the nature of the infection,” Vaughn argued, but he sounded less sure.

Rhys glanced at me. “I suppose asking you to cover your ears is out of the question.”

“Yes, it is.” Marron began shifting from foot to foot as if she were impatient to leave.

“I beheaded the beast,” Rhys said on a gust of breath. “From what I saw, it was rotted.”

“Rotted?” Vaughn echoed my thoughts.

“How could it have…? It responded to me when I shot it.” I had no doubt it had been aware. “How is that possible?”

“I don’t know, and we aren’t waiting to discover the trick should another arrive.” Rhys swung himself onto Brun’s back and gave his brother a final chance. “I won’t risk her by remaining here. We’re riding for Beltania.”

“You’ll never find the runaway without my help.” He caught Noir’s bridle and paused a moment before mounting. “Besides, this will prove far more interesting than a night spent out in the open.” His mood improved sevenfold. “Family reunions are so enjoyable, don’t you think?”

I tried puzzling his meaning. Had he meant my reunion with Pascale? I didn’t think so. Judging by the tic working in Rhys’s jaw, this was yet another slight I’d failed to comprehend. Perhaps I’d find the root of their animosity in Beltania. Any answers I found would be welcome.

Grinning broader than made me comfortable, Vaughn urged Noir into a clipped gate.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen your brother in such high spirits.” My remark met dead air.

“He enjoys Salticidae hospitality more than most.”

“Why is that?” I genuinely wondered what had put that gleeful light in his eyes.

Rhys gave the road ahead his full attention. “I’m sure he’ll see to it that you know soon enough.” He gestured before him. “Go on. I’ll bring up the rear. I’d rather keep you in my sight.”

I’d rather have kept him by my side, in plain view. After all, he had no better sense than to draw his sword against that pecora. Who was to say he wouldn’t do so again? Though my arrows aimed true, they required my keen eyesight to guide them, which meant I’d sneak peeks over my shoulder between here and Beltania. Whatever made his brow pucker with what I assumed was worry kept his full attention focused outside of guarding himself. So I would guard him instead.

Chapter Seven

Gods, but my neck ached. For hours, I’d kept watch over my shoulder as Rhys retreated within himself. Every so often, a sound would lift his head. Or perhaps my focus dragged him from his thoughts. Either way, his attention invariably sank back into the core of what ailed him.

I rolled my head from side to side and watched the scenery tilt and roll. I braced a hand to my stomach, which managed a weak attempt at nausea each time the fetid stink of pecora wafted from my hair or from Vaughn, who rode upwind from me. My eyes watered as I inhaled.

Prayers born of the dawn filled me with a small measure of hope.

May our journey end in victory and may our travels be made in peace
.
May the Salticidae clutch us to their bosoms as welcomed friends, and may we never encounter other such creatures as those whose bodies littered the road to Beltania
.
And
may the two gods bless and keep my sister
.

Above this tired bend of road walked by weary ursus, white clouds billowed on a secret breeze. Sunlight bathed me, but winds snatched heat from my cheeks in greedy swipes of icy air.

Shrill whistles snapped my hands up to cover my ears.
What have we run afoul of now
?

Must be good news the way Vaughn was grinning as he forced Noir to spin a tight circle in the center of the road. An exhibition of showmanship, why? He released another whistle, the sound fading when his pursed lips stretched into a broad grin as fetching as it was sharp and cruel.

Faint pressure on my wrist forced my arm lower.

“We’re almost to the veil.” Smudges darkened the skin beneath Rhys’s eyes.

Exhaustion made the wheels of my mind spin slower, but I’d figured as much once my head stopped ringing like a chimed bell. “After we cross, how much farther is it to Beltania?”

He gave a halfhearted shrug as though his shoulders were too heavy to lift. “Not far.”

“Rhys?”

“It’s nothing.” He waved me forward, allowing himself to fall back and his face to set in troubled lines. His focus centered, and exclusion from his private turmoil chipped at my nerves.

Unease slithered along my skin, oily as the stink of the pecora’s yellow death.

I’d visited the Salticidae several times. Enough I knew their clan heads by sight if not by name. Theirs was an agricultural community who valued peace and space to commune with nature. I also enjoyed a sense of kinship with their maven, whose marriage had earned her clan protection.

Rubbing my face with cramped fingers, I hated my twisted view on that dependency. How the thought of a welcome smile for their clan heads would crumple my aching heart as I introduced myself as the Araneidae maven.

I’m not ready
.

I had to be. There was no other choice.

In all truth, I hoped this rest did more than rejuvenate us. I prayed Pascale and Kellen had visited them as well. Any tidbits gleaned would soothe my soul.
Let her be safe, whole and well
.

Lost to myself, I forgot Rhys and failed to notice his appearance at my right until his concern blanketed me. His eyes shone, twin pits of despair, his stare unfathomable.

“Why the long face?” If I’d meant to amuse him, I’d failed. He withdrew into himself, traveled miles away without physically moving a muscle. I swallowed my concern and rode. The veil lay ahead, and no seasoned traveler passed through it without their wits about them. No one who had ridden through it disputed it was energy’s purest form, but was it a natural phenomenon? Some believed the veil was a mystical remnant from when the two gods forged this world. Some said the northland’s winter was too fierce a creature for mere seasons to contain, and afraid their creations may perish in their cold, the gods divided the Araneae Nation into perpetual winter and summer to strike a balance.

A traveler who found himself several hours south of Erania, bundled to his eyes and with his teeth chattering, might find once he had passed through the veil, a half mile of pulsating energy, he had to peel down to his pants and shirt from the sweltering heat. That sort of divide wasn’t natural.

Regardless of how it came to be or what it truly was, the fact remained that some passed through while others vanished. Veil lore stated the price of maintaining the gods’ magic in their absence was the blood of their creations. During plentiful times, local wildlife fed its needs, but during leaner times, it was Araneaean blood that spilled to sate its hunger. Although I admitted I was unsure where my faith lay, I erred on the side of caution where it was concerned and resolved to do whatever I must to snap Rhys from his melancholy state in case the veil was attracted to negative energy. I only needed a plan.

Tepid winds blew hair into my eyes. Power lent the air a burnt smell. We were close.

I tried again. “Rhys.”

He scrubbed his face as if he hadn’t heard, no doubt swiping the static itch from his skin. He gave me no answer and regarded the bald patch on the back of Brun’s head with undue focus.

Crackling hisses spluttered ahead as Vaughn was enveloped in a bright and swirling mist.

We’re next
. “Rhys.” His name was a plaintive whisper. His head lifted. Soft eyes met mine as the veil loomed horribly closer. Our ursus bumped shoulders, pressing us together from toe to thigh. Their noses brushed once, for luck? Their ritual inspired me.
We’re here
.