I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. “Okay.”
“I’ll let you know the details tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
He continued riding next to me, and I couldn’t describe the energy between us as anything but awkward. I wasn’t sure what it was about Otho, besides the fact he changed personalities in laundry rooms apparently, but it made it hard for conversation to flow between us.
“If anyone bothers you, let me know.”
I kept my gaze forward, watching as the soldiers arrived at the rows of tents and dispersed. “I don’t think there are any worries there.” They didn’t seem interested in spending any more time in my presence than they had to. I was a momentary novelty and that was that.
“They’re just getting used to you.” He frowned, lines appearing on his forehead. “Once they do, you’ll have to beat them away with a stick, and you’ll long for the days when they didn’t even glance in your direction.”
I wanted to tell him that I could handle them, but I knew, thinking of my brief soldier training a few days prior, that I probably couldn’t.
He didn’t say anything more, nudging his horse just a bit faster, leaving me to follow the small cloud of dust the horses’ hooves raised from the ground.
There was no grass here.
The tent I was given was about the same size of the cell in Adis’s house, with the same accommodations as well. There was a cot, with two blankets instead of one, though, which I supposed was something. There was no chamber pot, but I was told there were outhouse tents on the other side of camp. Lovely.
Camp wasn’t large—only about forty tents arranged in four rows at the bottom of a slight incline. Most soldiers slept two to a tent and the only ones who had their own were myself, Askel, Otho, and Karl—when he was in camp that is. The twenty soldiers we had brought with us were to replenish those who had been killed. It didn’t seem like enough soldiers to win a war, but I wasn’t well educated when it came to war. Supposedly, Malheim’s men camped not far away, and battles raged just over the hill daily, but it had been eerily quiet since we arrived.
Maybe there was no fighting today.
I glanced around my tent and briefly considered unpacking my measly belongings, but with only two outfits in addition to my own, and the few things I had brought from my life before that Otho had crammed into the bottom of my bag, it didn’t seem worth it.
I kept to myself for the rest of the evening, only emerging from the tent for a few bites of dinner before returning. After a final trip to the outhouse tent, I pushed back the flap of mine only to find a man sitting on my cot.
It took a moment for me to recognize him. “Leif!” I shouted,looking over my shoulder when I realized how loud it was. The soldiers didn’t show any indication they’d heard my slipup. “What are you doing here?”
Leif had changed from the last time I had seen him in the woods. He now wore a soldiers’ uniform, which was why it had taken me a moment to recognize him. His hair seemed to lack its usual luster, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
“I followed you,” he whispered.
“You . . . what?” I don’t know why, but panic for this man I barely knew snaked through my veins. Following me would mean he left Adis’s employ, and perhaps ruined his whole future. While I no longer felt guilty, as he knew more about who I really was, I was still aghast.
And slightly pleased.
Was this what being someone’s weighted felt like?
But I didn’t let that selfish thought stay, forcing it away.
He dropped his head in his hands, and for the first time, he wasn’t the self-assured stable hand I had met just a fortnight ago. He was someone . . . real.
“I wasn’t kidding when I said you’re my weighted. In the woods last night . . . I was so shocked I felt I had to step away, but then I felt something pulling me back. I went back and . . .”
He trailed off, and I let the silence hang between us for a few moments, hoping no one was eavesdropping outside of the tent, before I pushed him. “And?”
He shook his head. “I just thought . . . I’ve always been attracted to both men and women, but men slightly more. So when I first felt you were my weighted, I didn’t question it. Then, when you said you were female . . . I just questioned everything for a moment. Thought maybe you weren’t my weighted after all and it was just lust obscuring my judgment.” He breathed, still not looking me in the eye. “Then I watched you change and realized it didn’t matter, and that I’m attracted to you no matter what your gender is.”
I knew what he said was supposed to be sweet, but my attentioncaught on what he had said just before his declaration. “You—WHAT?”
He grimaced, but he knew what I was mad about. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to. Like I said, I walked away, but then something pulled me back and I had no idea the transformation was happening right then . . .”
I wanted to yell at him, to tell him that was a violation of privacy, but then again, he didn’t know. Instead, my body encouraged me to do the last thing I ever thought I would do when a man confessed to be spying on me—I sunk down on the bed next to him. “What are you going to do about Adis?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. My job is certainly gone now anyway. So, I might as well head home.”
