“I thought you wanted this, Aelia. You’re never going to learn if you spend half the time lying on the floor. Faster, stop wasting our time.”
“Iam.”
“If you were, you wouldn’t be covered in dirt.”
This time he lunged for her, letting her block the first few before he upped the tempo, pushing her faster and faster. Her technique was still sloppy but anger crackled in those green eyes, driving her on. He just hoped it would be enough to make her forget herself. With a swipe of his leg, he sent her back into the grass. This time she was up almost before she’d landed, the cracks in her restraint showing one of those precious glimmers of her true potential. He didn’t give her a chance to recognise it, to slow down.
He pushed her, harder and harder, until her ego was as bruised as her behind and finally, finally, she lost control. With a snarl any artemian would have been proud of, she threw herself at him. His elation was matched only by his surprise at the force with which she came at him.
The dagger was forced from his grasp, and his blows were knocked aside, one after the other. Something nicked his chest.
Aelia pulled back, chest heaving. Keeran dropped his chin, not believing what he was seeing.
She’d cut him, the edges of the small tear in the fabric darkening with his blood.
He stepped forwards until he was close enough to see her pulse bounding at the base of her throat. The satisfaction in her eyes melted into apprehension as he leant into her, lowering his face until his cheek was mere inches from hers.
“Perfect,” he said, his voice low and sinister. “If I see anything less in the future, you will find yourself on the floor until you give me everything. Do you understand?”
He watched her throat move as she swallowed, her lips parting as her breath hitched, but this time, he didn’t think it was from fear. He shoved the thought aside.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He placed a hand on her shoulder as he passed, just a momentary touch, but he hoped it conveyed what words could not. He couldn’t actually apologise, not when he was prepared to push her that hard again tomorrow if it kept her safe. Nor could he express the pride he felt, not when he had no right to feel it. So he hoped something of what he felt came across in that simple touch before he left her looking down at the dagger in her hands.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Back in the saddle, Keeran grimaced as he adjusted his position. Gods, he hated travelling on horseback. It was uncomfortable, and slow, and such a waste of time. He could have flown the distance they’d travelled since leaving Callodosis in a day. A day and a half with breaks. It was another very good reason for him to have left Aelia…
For the hundredth time in the hour since they’d left camp, Keeran fought the urge to turn and look at her. She’d been quiet since last night, when he’d thrown himself under his blankets and rolled to face away from the fire, away from her. He’d been stiff as a board listening to her get herself ready for bed, tucking herself up in her own blankets on the opposite side of the fire. It had taken everything in him, every single iota of self-control, to stop himself from going to her.
She wanted him to, of that he was now sure, and that knowledge kept him up half the night.
So now he rode next to her, eyes scratchy and trousers tight. He gritted his teeth at the discomfort, his need for her seeming to grow with each moment. Her taunt from the night before played over and over in his head, his embarrassment at his flustered lack of response alleviated only by the thoughts of whathe could do to her to prove her wrong. Thoughts that would not go away.
He gritted his teeth, trying to banish the images from his mind, when Aelia’s voice jolted him from his purgatory.
“Keeran.” Aelia pointed with a trembling finger.
Smoke, and lots of it, rose in the distance from behind a crest of a hill. Keeran looked back at Aelia, and his stomach fell out of the saddle and into the grass. He’d never seen her so angry, the maelstrom of emotion she’d been enduring since Callodosis finally having something real to aim at. He almost pitied the Astraea.
“You don’t think…” she whispered, not taking her eyes off the ominous column. He didn’t want to answer, not when he recognised the seething rage behind her eyes. In that moment, he dreaded the hatred he saw there, fearing the recklessness that might arise from it.
“It could be,” he eventually replied, although he had little doubt as to who was responsible.
Aelia looked into the distance for a single moment, the wind picking up around them, seeming to drive them towards the smoke. It was all the encouragement she needed.
With little more than a touch of her heels, her horse sprang away, reaching a full gallop within a few paces to tear through the grassy plains.
“Dammit Aelia, wait!” He gathered his reins and chased after her. “Wait! Aelia!”
The wind tore the words from him, flinging them back over his shoulder.
Her horse was built for speed in a way that his was not, and she beat him to the brow of the hill, not pausing before she careened back down the other side. Time slowed despite the pounding of his horses’ hooves as he lost sight of her, a thousandthoughts racing through his mind as he imagined what might be waiting for her beneath the column of smoke.
He finally reached the top, accompanied by the rhythmic flutter of his horses’ nostrils, the beast blowing heavily as he tried to keep up with his friend. There was no time to rest, however, as Aelia was ploughing dangerously down the steep bank on the other side towards the source of the smoke.
He could only assume it had once been a hamlet, one far too small to have been put on any map. Now it never would be. Charred beams lying amongst smoking piles of ash were all that remained of the homes they had once formed, their inhabitants nowhere to be seen.
