Leida held her garments, watching as Magnus tore through his pack, pulling out a fresh change of clothing. “Lying, deceitful bitch,” he snarled. “You kept my daughter from me because of some fear you can’t even name?” His hand closed around her wrist, and he dragged her stumbling after him.
She gasped, struggling to hold on to her bundle of clothing and still keep the blanket around her with one hand. “Where are we going?” she asked, trying to plant her feet and hold her ground. It was futile. Magnus was far stronger than most men. Her resistance was no more effective against him than a gnat’s.
“The lake. I’m in desperate need of a bath.” He glared at her over his shoulder, his message clear. He wanted her scent off him, and his off her.
That look, of sneering superiority, made her temper rise to match his. She couldn’t break free of his grip, but she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. His surprised grunt let her know she’d accomplished her task when she abruptly sat down. The dewy grass was cold and wet on her bare buttocks, but Leida clenched her teeth, refusing to let him see her discomfort.
“Get up, Leida,” he snapped, tugging on her arm.
“No. Not until you let me explain. I know you’re angry, but if you’ll just—” Her sentence ended on a screech as he suddenly dropped his bundle of clothes, bent and heaved her over his shoulder. The move drove the breath out of her as his hard shoulder dug into her stomach.
The stinging slap across her bottom elicited only a breathless wheeze. She pounded on his back with her fists, and he adjusted her so that she could breathe again. There was time only to take in a huge gulp of air before she found herself flying through the air. A kaleidoscope of color flashed in her vision, the green of the willows, the brightening blue of the morning sky, before a shock of stinging cold water met her back and swiftly closed over her head.
Magnus’s expression was smug with vengeance when she resurfaced, wiping water from her eyes and coughing and sputtering. Leida raked her hand over the surface of the water, sending a spray at him. “Bastard!” she yelled. “Are you trying to drown me?”
“Don’t tempt me,” he shouted back and dove beneath the surface, coming up briefly before diving again, only to reappear in front of her. He circled her in a lazy, predatory fashion, reminding her none too comfortably of the great sea sharks of which she’d heard gruesome tales.
She stood in shoulder-deep water, her teeth chattering hard enough to make her head ache. Magnus’s dark hair was slicked back from his face, highlighting its sharp planes and angles. He seemed completely unaffected by the frigid water, not even a single chill to be seen on him, while she stood there, shivering and nearly blue with cold.
His green eyes no longer burned as he stared at her. Instead, they glittered with contempt. “Now,” he said an even voice devoid of any emotion, “I’m ready to listen.”
Leida only glared at him and began wading to the shore, her chattering teeth making it impossible to form a coherent word. And he called her mad? What person in his right mind decided to hold a conversation in the middle of a freezing lake? Naked at that, for any passerby to witness?
She could only growl when his arms wrapped around her waist, lifting and turning her so that she faced him, her breast flattened against his taut chest. Magnus spoke softly against her ear, words that sounded strange and garbled. She gave a grateful sigh as the water around them warmed instantly, chasing away the shivers that left her quaking in his arms.
“Better?” he asked, stroking her back with one hand as the other supported her weight, holding her to him.
She was still angry, but grateful for the warmed water. “Yes, much. Thank you.”
He nodded, but offered no mercy in his hostile gaze. “Tell me, Leida. Make me understand why you would keep my daughter a secret from me.”
Leida shook her head. “I wasn’t hiding her, Magnus. I didn’t know I carried her until more than a month after I left your service.”
His face darkened again. “And still you continued to run.” She could see the muscles bunch in his jaw as he clenched his teeth. “Dragon pages found you, forced you to return to me. You held your silence about her, made a fool of me by letting me believe someone else sired her. Don’t tell me you didn’t purposefully conceal her. You just did so in plain sight.” A harsh growl escaped him. “You have your cruelties, Leida. You only dress them in the finery of self-pity and imagined persecution.”
Her hand arced out of the water, for once her reactions swifter than his. The crack of her palm against his cheek bounced off the surface of the water, echoing for several seconds. Magnus’s head snapped back from the force of the blow, and he responded instantly, the hand previously pressed against her back, lashing out to shackle both of her wrists in an unrelenting grip.
Leida didn’t struggle, but she held herself stiff in his arms, panting hard and glaring at him with tear-filled eyes. “It’s not pity, nor is it persecution. But I’m a person, Magnus, not livestock. Even as your favorite, I was still no greater than any other servant in your household—easily cast off, easily replaced.” She sobbed, her words running together in a breathless sentence punctuated by sniffles. “And there was Vala. I could have returned. Life might have been easier. I wouldn’t have had to labor in the fields as I did, but I welcomed the work. My life, and that of my daughter, didn’t hinge on the whims of a dragon lord.”
Magnus’s eyes narrowed. “That is the most foolish thing I’ve heard in many years, Leida,” he snapped. “So you threw off some imaginary yoke I’d placed on your shoulders, found your ‘freedom’ so to speak, and placed your welfare and that of your daughter, my daughter, into the hands of nature and fate.” He shook his head, his fingers tightening on her wrists. “What if there had been crop failure? Plague? All the things that have hounded the heels of men since before dragon memory.” He squeezed her wrists hard enough to make her wince. “You and your strange, misplaced nobility. Had you any sense about you, you would have returned to me.”
Her anger drained away, leaving only a bleak melancholy “Returned to what?” She sighed. “You with your new favorite?” She shook her head when he made to interrupt. “I only acted on what I knew then. What if you greeted Vala’s arrival with celebration? Claimed her, but refused to allow me to stay? I couldn’t take that risk, Magnus. Vala is everything to me, the finest thing I ever made. My decisions may have seemed foolish to you, but my wisdom isn’t more than three hundred years in the making. And I swear, on any sacred thing you put before me, I didn’t hide her existence as some way of exacting vengeance on you. You have every reason not to believe me, but I love you too much to be that cruel.”
There, she'd said it at last, acknowledged it aloud and was glad for it. Now she would wait and see how Magnus dealt with such a declaration. At some point in her speech, he had released her hands so that they came to rest on his shoulders. His silence unnerved her, and Leida lacked the courage to raise her gaze any higher than the hollow of his throat.
“Look at me.”
His voice was soft, beguiling, as if he prepared to sing to her. Leida raised her eyes to his, stunned, then overjoyed by the expression in them. The anger was still there, the frustration and the hurt, but she saw love as well. The same love she espoused for him shone back at her, deep and abiding. Tears blurred her vision as he kissed her, a worshipful touch of his lips against hers. She kissed him back, sliding her arms across his shoulders to hold him close. The ticklish feel of his fingers at her nape made her break the kiss, and she cried out, elated to feel the weight of the choker gone from around her throat. A faint tingling of power flowed through her, weak, but still present.
Magnus dangled the choker off his fingertip, watching as sunlight glinted over the silvered links. “No more bindings, Leida. You are free to use your magic. Free to make your way in the world, without me if you so wish it.” He frowned at that. “You feared I would make you leave. I feared you wouldn’t stay unless I forced you. There’s been enough fear between us.” He tossed the necklace from him, and they both watched as it flashed once more in the sunlight before sinking below the surface.
“What say you,” he asked, a hint of urgency in his tone. “Will you stay?”
Leida hugged him, nearly strangling him in her joy. “I will stay, always, for as long as you will have me.”
Magnus’s chuckle was muffled against her newly bared throat, and he pried her arms from around his neck. “Then you will grow old in my caverns, and we will watch Vala grow up.”
He kissed her again, and they floated together, lost in each other as the world narrowed to the rhythmic lap of magically warmed water and the twine of her legs around his waist. Leida moaned as Magnus slipped inside her, gliding in and out in slow, easy strokes while she rained kisses on his neck and nibbled his earlobe. He caressed her beneath the water, cupping her buttocks when he came inside her, his grip tightening against her back when she soon followed.
