“No, Valorre,” she said with a sigh. “I’m not going anywhere.” She rose to her feet and brushed her hands on her skirts. They’d come untucked sometime between running and sulking by the tree. “Let’s make camp by the stream. We can hide our tracks and I can refill my water skin.”
Valorre snorted.You could use a bath too.
She recognized the teasing in his words, understood his attempt to lighten her mood. It worked. Her lips curled up at the corners. “Fine, a bath too, first thing in the morning. By evening, I’m going back to the camp. Sooner or later, they’ll drink that rum.”
19
The next morning, Teryn Alante gripped his spear in his right hand, relishing its comfort, its familiarity. With his left foot forward, right foot back, he angled his body to the side. In one fluid movement, he raised his spear, rotated his hips, and brought his right arm down in a smooth arc. He released the shaft and sent the spear soaring straight ahead. It landed with a thud in the dirt. He wiped the sweat from his brow and retrieved his weapon, then returned to his previous spot. Set his feet. Angled his body. Threw the spear. Then again. Again.
“Are you going to do that all day?” Lex asked in a bored tone. He sat in the shade at the base of a tree, a novel in hand. The morning sun was warm with only a mild spring breeze to interrupt the heat of its rays.
“Shouldn’t you be practicing as well?” Teryn asked, taking aim for another throw. “We’re close. You heard Helios this morning.”
“Oh, I heard him,” Lex said, then returned his attention to his book. “Mostly, I heard when he told us to wait here because we’re—what was it he’d said? That’s right.Bumbling idiots who he wouldn’t allow to mess things up now that we’re close to our prey.”
Teryn threw his spear with extra gusto this time. It landed several feet farther than the last. Lex was only slightly exaggerating Helios’ parting words when he left them after sunrise. Before that, Helios had spent an hour studying the tracks around the clearing they’d bedded down in for the night. He was certain he’d found additional unicorn tracks, no more than a day old, but was befuddled that they only appeared alongside the smaller set of human footprints, separate from the rest of the hunting party’s tracks. Helios wouldn’t say more than that, only that he’d spend the day scouting, convinced they were closing in on the hunters’ location. That was when he’d told Teryn and Lex to stay put and added some insult over their intelligence and capabilities. It had taken much restraint on Teryn’s part not to throw his spear into the other man’s back as he walked away. Which was why he’d decided to funnel all that pent-up aggression into throwing practice. Spear was his weapon of choice for hunting. If Helios’ observations were correct, he’d have reason to put it to use very soon.
Teryn retrieved his weapon, then stood before Lex. “You do plan on actually helping me, don’t you?”
Lex looked up from his novel. “I am helping.”
“Are you, though?”
“I already told you I don’t hunt.”
“Have you any skill with weapons?”
Lex put a hand to his chest, affronted. “Are you questioning my integrity now too?”
Teryn shrugged. “Just curious how much of this alliance benefits me at all.”
Lex turned a page in his book. “You’ll get your beloved princess.”
His stomach turned at the wordbeloved. Planting his spear tip in the dirt, he slouched to the side and propped an arm on the end of the shaft. “Oh? And how do you suggest we do that? So far, our plan is to return with a tie.”
“Don’t know,” Lex said absently. “Maybe we can slit Helios’ throat in his sleep.”
“Are you offering to do the throat slitting?”
Lex quirked a brow. “Of course not. I’m skilled with a sword, not a dagger. Besides, I’m not going to war with Norun. My kingdom has been avoiding that for a decade.”
Teryn frowned. He remembered when the Kingdom of Norun conquered Haldor and Sparda, two smaller kingdoms that had been south of Norun’s borders. The other Risan kingdoms, including Teryn’s own, feared Norun would seek to conquer other neighboring lands. Thankfully, the conquest never went any further. Menah had the benefit of having two other kingdoms standing between them and Norun. Lex’s kingdom, however, shared a border. “Don’t you have a wall?”
Lex shifted awkwardly in his seat as if the question annoyed him. “Yes, we have a wall. Don’t you have traps to check?”
Teryn held up his palms. “I didn’t realize a wall was such a touchy subject.” Even as he said it, though, he remembered Lex’s rant about his brother stealing the wall-building project from him.
“Yes, well, I’m starving. I get cranky when I haven’t eaten.”
“You know, you could check the traps yourself.”
He turned another page in his book. “And get blood on my shirt? No, thank you.”
Teryn rolled his eyes, but there was only amusement in the gesture. Lex was probably the least helpful ally he could ever want, but he was entertaining in his own way. Best of all, he wasn’t Helios.
“What are you reading, anyway?”
Lex glanced at the cover. “Some naughty romance. It’s about an earl who falls for his sister’s lady’s maid.”
