“Argghh!” Connor snatched his hand away with a frustrated growl and paced away from him, raking his long hair off his neck. “For the love of the gods, Reggie! Be as frightened as you want, but stop saying ‘no’ to everything!”
“I’m not frightened!”
Connor scoffed, and gave a dramatic sweep of his arm to encompass Reggie’s whole person, nose to toes. “You’re bloody petrified, and it’s getting us nowhere.”
He was. That was what he hated about this whole scenario: Connor was right, and hewaspetrified, and he didn’t seem able to take control of his own emotions.
Reggie pressed both hands over his face a moment, listening to the angry scuff of Connor’s boots in the dirt, and decided he didn’t want to do this anymore. Whateverthiswas.
He turned to head farther down the hill, back toward camp.
Behind him, Connor said, “Do you want Leif in charge?”
Reggie halted mid-step. Slowly, he lowered his foot the rest of the way to the ground, and turned back around.
Connor stood with his hands on his hips, one leg jutted forward, his expression exasperated. He looked like a man making a last-ditch effort. “You know that’s what will happen if you don’t at least attempt to ride that drake, don’t you? The drakes are power made manifest. You’re right: they’re our advantage, and without a guiding hand, they very well might fly off. If that happens, then the prince in our midst, the prince who can turn into a wolf, no less, will become the de facto leader of this…” He gestured toward camp. “Shitshow. He’ll make a case because he’s royalty, and it’s his uncle we’re meeting, and he’s big as a barn, etcetera, etcetera, and we’ll be following him. Is that what you want? That great ox making all the decisions?”
One thing war had taught Reggie was that, though he puffed out his chest and never shied away from giving his opinion on everything from the location of a campsite to the formation of a horse line in pitched combat, he didn’t want to be the ultimate voice of authority in any given situation. He wanted to be an important lieutenant, but not a general. He liked being a duke, and had no designs on a kingship.
But he didn’t want Leif in charge of their forces. He was big, and strong, and brave, and magical besides. But he wasn’t Southern; he didn’t love this land, didn’t know it the way they did. And he was far too closeknit with his cousin, a would-be murderer who’d seduced his own kin.
No, he didn’t need to be in charge of an army, least of all their Southern army, hamstrung and struggling as it was.
“Why don’t you lead? You’re the woodsman,” Reggie said.
Connor shook his head. “The only reason I’m given any voice is thanks to you and Amelia vouching for me. I’m damaged goods: the lord who abandoned his own manor. Butyou: you’re the shining knight on the white charger. If you climb aboard a dragon, all of them will follow you.”
Reggie chewed at the inside of his cheek and just breathed a moment. In and out. In and out.
Footsteps crunched on the road behind him, heavy ones. He didn’t turn, and a few moments later, Leif strode past, head up, jaw tensed. He didn’t glance toward them.
Reggie watched him go until he disappeared around a bend in the road, behind a stand of pines. “What are the odds he heard everything we said?”
“With his hearing? Likely. I don’t care,” Connor said with a shrug. “Will you do it?”
Reggie breathed a little more, heart skittering like a spooked horse, and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do it.”
~*~
Leif had no interest in Connor and Reginald’s leadership machinations. He had no interest in leading the Southern forces at all. Without Amelia and her drakes, he wasn’t sure the pack ought to stay with them.
He was nearing camp, its tumble of voices growing louder and more distinct as he rounded the last bend in the road, when three figures emerged ahead of him, walking his direction.
He caught Ragnar’s scent before he could catalogue any of them physically. Then he noted Lady Leda, and her young lover, her former stepson. Three very different faces wearing three very similar expressions.
“What is it?” Leif asked as he closed in on them, his attention on Ragnar. It was so rare to see his mouth pinched like it was, sullen for some reason other than the torq around his neck.
Ragnar opened his mouth to speak, and the Lady Leda beat him to it, voice spitting venom.
“The prisoner’s gone. ThatfuckingSel. He slipped away, and we can’t find him.”
Ragnar huffed a deep, exasperated sigh. “Sels came into the camp. They opened a portal and—”
“I know,” Leif said, cutting him off with a swipe of his hand through the air and earning a scowl for it. “A runner came up to the chateau to tell us.”
“Oh, so I might have been lying here, bleeding out, or already dead, and you weren’t even going to come down the hill and check on me?” Ragnar said, and Leif felt his brows go up.
“Amelia was taken.”
