“Ah, a joke?” I muttered. He lifted one eyebrow at the lie. My cheeks burned. “I’m sorry, Lex.”
I didn’t make a habit of apologizing. I lived my life not looking back, not worrying about what the people I’d left behind thought or said about me. But I had a feeling that habit would come back to stab me in the kidney when we arrived at the army’s encampment.
I’d never been so right.
RADA
“That’s her? That’s the Warqueen?” The Starlakian warriors who’d brought me and Alexios to the camp guarded us as we waited for word of Goran, but they didn’t guard their tongues. “I thought she’d be taller.” A group of Alphas, all younger ones, lingered a dozen feet away, gnawing on sticks of meat and staring while Alexios and I sat outside a tent. We’d been told to wait inside, but there was no way I would take my eyes off an army of Starlakians who all apparently wanted me dead.
And they did want me dead. Hatred and disgust shone on their faces as every warrior in the camp made his way past, like we were some festival oddity.
Two burly redheads stopped to gawk, along with a skinny-armed, dark-haired Alpha with more pimples than I’d ever seen on one face. He spat to one side. “I thought she’d be stronger. How couldshehave bested Goran? Was he asleep when they fought?”
Alexios let out a short, near-silent laugh. He knew that story. He knew almost all my stories about Goran.
“She cheated, I’ll bet,” one of his friends offered. “I heard she used poisons for all her killing.”
The third one curled his lip. “Poisons are a woman’s weapon.”
They all agreed. “She’s a thief, too. Stole from the royal treasury on her way out. No honor at all. The Warlord should’ve known she’d betray him.”
Alexios’s hand landed on my arm just as I slipped my brass blow dart out of my cloak. I raised my eyebrow at him. “It’s just tramela powder.”
“He’s only a boy,” he replied. “He hasn’t harmed you.”
That was true. And the boy wasn’t wrong, though I hadn’t precisely stolen from the treasury. As Warqueen, everything in the vaults at Wargate Hall had been mine to take. But it was the principle of the thing. If I allowed one spotty Alpha to be disrespectful, the cleanup later would be bloody.
But Alexios would be upset, so I put back the dart and took a deep, calming breath like he’d taught me, trying to let my anger leave me on the exhale. Unfortunately, the movement reminded me of the pain I’d been ignoring. I rubbed at my abdomen, where the sharp tugging was getting more persistent, now that we’d stopped traveling north.
I hadn’t lost any sleep over any of the murders I’d committed, with blades or poisons. But when Alexios showed me how his own iron-fisted control gave him the upper hand on those rare occurrences when he was forced into a fight, I’d decided mastering my anger was a skill worth having. That and I loved watching him train in his meditations, learning the odd, smooth motions of his fighting techniques that centered on balance and a deep knowledge of the nerve centers of the body.
It didn’t hurt that he often did the exercises without a shirt. He had the most finely honed abs, like a waterfall had carved them into his torso…Oh, fuck.I had to stop thinking of his body. Imagining what I would do to it if I could was practically blasphemous.
The Alphas’ ongoing comments distracted me well enough. I closed my eyes as they insulted me, my hand moving over the surface of my nautilus pendant as I considered how difficult it might be to slip a mild dose of tramela into the whole camp’s dinner on my way out of camp. Maybe just enough to help them develop a slight resistance, after they’d finished puking and shitting themselves. It would be a kindness, really.
The pimply one’s voice broke as he stepped closer, bravery making him stupid. “Yeah, I thought stronger, and prettier, too. And for sure that she’d have bigger tits. Of course, hard to see them under all that cloth—oof!”
“You may not touch my mistress,” Alexios said, his leg sweeping out and knocking the young Alpha away and onto the ground at the same instant the idiot had reached for me.
Alexios didn’t do anything else, merely folded his arms in his wide sleeves like the priest he had been, though the glimmer of a dark smile played over his lips for an instant. He may have taken a vow not to harm anything unless it was in service to the Goddess—which he took to mean protecting me from anything and anyone—but I had a strong suspicion he enjoyed being given the chance to use his skills.
And I had a chance to use mine, once his friends reacted to their companion being tossed on his bony ass.
“Get him!” one of the redheads yelled. Alexios stepped smoothly away from me and adopted one of his stances, moving like water as he dodged and weaved. He wasn’t hurting them at all. No, they were doing that themselves. It was funny as hells to watch, until the pimply kid got back up with an axe in his hand.
“You’re fucking joking me.” I stood, offended in my depths. I might not be the little shit’s Warqueen now, but I had been. I also hadn’t had time to learn every nuance of Starlakian culture and tradition—Goddess knew they had more of those than could possibly be healthy—but this runty Alpha’s behavior,reaching for my tit? That would’ve gotten him flogged or worse at Wargate Hall.
I found myself disappointed that this was how Goran’s warriors behaved. He’d been the most extreme example of chivalry and respect for women that I’d ever met, until Alexios. Had he changed so much in the past decade? My heart sank.
“Stay back, mistress,” Alexios told me, his breathing only slightly elevated as he ducked and weaved. “Allow me to handle the garbage.” The little shit with the axe went after him. Another few Alphas who’d been lingering nearby came running to join in.
Stay back? It was like he’d given me an engraved invitation to the fight. I let my two smallest daggers slide into my hands and stepped forward to meet the new assailants. “Fuck that, Lex. I need the practice.”
“Do you?” he called back, censure in his tone. He was always telling me I needed less practice killing and maiming and more in being “gentle like the spring rain” and ridiculous things like that. “Don’t let them hurt you, mistress.”
“Of course not.”
Damn me, but I loved fighting, and there was nothing more fun than beating the shit out of cocky Alphas so thoroughly, they’d recall it in the afterlife. I spun and whirled, dodging and slicing as one Alpha approached, then another. More came running to protect their friends, or to watch the fight. I didn’t care. They could get in line, and I’d teach them all a very important lesson about me: I always had time to kick Alpha ass.
