Snug in the blanket, she shifted in his lap until she could lay her head against his chest. “I can hear your heart beating,” she whispered as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Aren’t you going to ravish me here, in this place we have all to ourselves?”
He looked down at her in amusement. “Do you wish me to, my insatiable little love?”
She snuggled even closer against him. A part of her felt invigorated by the storm blustering outside and the small haven of their hunting shelter. She imagined Rangar stripping naked and joining her under the blanket, their bodies moving together until they moaned into the wind. But another part of her was content just being in his arms.
“Newlyweds supposedly can’t keep their hands off one another,” she said.
He chuckled low in his chest. “Darling, it doesn’t matter what newlyweds should or shouldn’t do. We rode hard today. It’s cold. If you want me to simply hold you, I’ll hold you.”
She realized then that was exactly what she wanted. There would be other nights of wild passion, but here in the safety of the mountain shelter, she only wanted to close her eyes and fall asleep in Rangar’s arms.
Chapter 28
THE ROAD TO WOLLIN . . . mountain crossing . . . love magic, fear magic . . . a near tragedy . . . hayloft
Rangar roused Bryn before dawn, and they mounted Legend and Fable to head higher into the mountains as first light broke. The mountain range separating the Baersladen from the Wollin was high but compact as opposed to the mountains that led to Vil-Kevi, which seemed to stretch endlessly. By mid-morning, they had crested a pass and begun to descend into a river valley that would take them to the Wollin’s border.
“You spent time in the Wollin as a boy, didn’t you?” Bryn called up to Rangar on the trail ahead.
“One summer,” Rangar answered back. “My brothers and I were wards of the Hytooths for a few months. They treated us well, given that every other royal family in the Eyrie considered us savages.”
“What are Queen Amelia and King Marthin Hytooth like?”
“Haven’t you met them?”
“Only briefly at my family’s gatherings. The Hytooths attended, but I was the wayward third child, which made me utterly irrelevant.”
“King Marthin is a fool,” Rangar said thoughtfully. “I do not say that to be unkind. He is a gentle man but no cleverer than a child. It was rumored he was kicked in the head by a horse in his teenage years, but by then, he and Amelia were already betrothed. He could have been a drooling invalid, and they’d still have had to wed.”
“Amelia is Woll born?”
“Yes, she comes from the Wollin. She was the daughter of a minor lord with just enough noble blood to count as a royal. I’m told she was quite beautiful in her youth.”
“And now?”
“She must be almost ninety years old, but she still has a grace about her. Ever since she married King Marthin, she ruled in her husband’s name, and everyone knew it. He might have made proclamations before a crowd, but she decided the Wollin’s course of action beforehand. When I was their ward, her mind was not as sharp as I imagine it once was. She was forgetful, would repeat herself often. I cannot imagine it has improved since then.”
In her readings, Bryn had come across the progeny charts for each of the royal families of the Eyrie. Queen Amelia and King Marthin had born no children, though there were ample cousins and nieces and nephews potentially in line for the crown.
Once they descended the mountains, the horses could move faster on the valley road. Bryn and Rangar galloped for some miles, hoping to make up time. For Bryn, racing over long stretches of land was both frightening and exhilarating. Her heart rose to her throat with every hoof fall, her torso pitching forward into the wind. Prayers not to fall off spilled from her lips.
They stopped at a farm to water the horses, and the farmer and his wife came out to greet them. Rangar and Bryn had stowed their bronze crowns in their rucksacks so that they might have been any wealthy couple, not royalty.
After trading the farmer some coins for grain for the horses, Rangar asked, “You’ve heard of the wolf attacks in the north, I assume?”
The farmer and his wife grew serious. “Awful news. I’ve also heard terrible things from Vil-Kevi and the northern Mirien.”
“But nothing around these parts, south of the mountains?” Bryn asked.
The farmer pressed his lips together in a somber frown. “We hear howling at night. It sounds unlike any wolf I’ve heard. But King Rangar’s army came last week and laid traps all through the mountainside, and we’ve been safe since then, thank the gods.”
Bryn fought the urge to extend a knowing look to Rangar. “Thank the gods,” she repeated softly, then added more hesitantly, “If you have protection hexes, I advise you to use them.”
Silence hung in the air. Bryn had asked the question as a test.
The farmer remained silent, and Bryn was afraid she’d hear the same anti-magic rhetoric as before, but the farmer’s wife blurted out, “I agree.” The woman rolled up her sleeve to show off several hexes on her forearm. “We’ve cast every last spell we know that might keep us and our livestock safe.”
Bryn’s shoulders eased. “So, you don’t believe magic is to blame for the wolves?”
