“The men are returning to the field. Another wave of darkwalkers has appeared.” He clears his throat. “S-sorry to interrupt.”
Battle. I’d completely forgotten in my lust-drunk haze.
Boreas begins to step away when my hand whips out, snatching his arm and hauling him toward me. “You will not leave me here like this.” My core aches with stymied pressure, failure to reach completion, just as his arousal presses into my belly in unfulfillment. I don’t want to stop. I want to see this insanity through to its end.
Breathing heavily, he removes his hand from between my legs, curving it around my hip. “I must.” Dampness transfers from his fingers to my skin, and cools there.
My stomach drops in hurt. In my mind, he is making a choice. And he is not choosing me.
The air between us grows cold. “Very well.” I’m utterly calm as I step back to adjust my trousers and breastband, as if I didn’t nearly climax with the Frost King’s fingers deep in my core. I’ve made plenty of poor choices in my life, but this is one of the worst.
“Wren.”
I turn from him, moving to stoke the fire so I might hide the evidence of my trembling hands. What a fool I was. What a fool I have always been. “Go,” I say. “They’re waiting.”
I wait, yet I don’t hear his departure. A glance over my shoulder reveals Boreas studying me, his clothes adjusted, forehead dimpled with a frown.
“Take care with your wound,” I say. “You can’t lose more blood.”
His eyes drop to my mouth and linger. “I’ll be fine.”
Then he is gone.
34
“MY LADY?ARE YOU DECENT?”
I pause in the midst of cutting fabric into bandages as a man’s voice sounds from beyond the tent flaps. Orla sits beside me, washing clothes in a pot of hot water that’s been heated over the fire. “You may enter.”
Pallas lurches into the tent.
Orla gasps. I’m on my feet, the bandages forgotten. Just as the man lists to the side, I catch him by the arm. A long, ugly gash oozes from his shoulder. His tunic, stained black from the gruesome wound, squelches when he sags heavily against me, the breastplate cold against my skin.
“Orla,” I bark in alarm. “Wine.”
My maid darts to obey as I help Pallas into a chair. He sinks into it with a pained grunt, his chin drooping against his chest as if it’s too much effort to lift his head.
The wound looks serious, and of course Alba is back at the citadel where she is of no use. What of the other healers?
“Don’t die,” I instruct Pallas.
He cracks a smile, slumping deeper in the chair. “Don’t plan on dying, my lady. At least—” He grunts. “Not today.”
That’s good. I’ve little desire to dig a grave.
He’s so translucent I fear he will dissolve straight through the chair. Outside the tent, the camp is suddenly alive with noise, the previous quiet shattered.
“I was sent,” Pallas wheezes, “to deliver a message.”
The stench of battle infiltrates the space: smoke and iron. It makes my head swim. “What happened?” I think of Boreas striding from the tent hours earlier. What has become of him?
Pallas snatches the wineskin from Orla’s grip, tilts the opening, and upends the contents into his mouth, seemingly unconcerned when half the liquid splashes down his front. The wine was meant for his wounds, but this works, too. Gently, I pry his fingers loose from the container and set the drink aside before I’m tempted to take a sip myself.
“The message?” I remind him.
Pallas glances at the wine, takes a shallow, quaking breath. I realize then how young he is. He must have been around my age when he died.
“My lord was pushing back an attack when a new wave of darkwalkers hit from behind. It almost seemed as though the attack was an organized affair, but there was no leader anywhere that we could see.” He coughs, a wet hack from his chest. “We weren’t prepared.”
