“On the plains of Elysium, where the flowers are everblooming!” Carus added as he raised a hand in the air and swept his eyes over his comrades. “And there’s no finer valley in the whole of the
“And what remote hamlet do you hail, Lady Holt, that you are ignorant of the nethral?” Secundus spoke up.
A little color drained from my face, but I managed a shaky smile. Still, my reply came out in a tiny squeak. “Me? I, um, I hail from, well, it’s a little place called, um, New Hamlet.” Brilliant. Just brilliant. Put that on a plaque and nail it to the wall.
Secundus was as impressed as my inner voice. “New Hamlet? What a strange name.”
I stared straight ahead and prayed he wouldn’t notice the tremor in my hands. Even tightening my grip on the horn didn’t help. “It’s, um, a strange place.”
“It must be a very nice place not to have nethral,” Carus mused. Some of his humor fled as he swept his eyes over the woods. “A throwback to the time before the Great Sin, as it were.”
I desperately wanted to ask what that was about, but Secundus’ intense gaze told me that wouldn’t have been met with happiness.
“We should move faster,” Scalyvar spoke up as he nodded at the sky. “It will be dark in a few hours, and we have a long ride.”
Chapter 6
When he said we had a long ride, he wasn’t kidding. We rode for hours, and my butt was shot by the time we reached a little clearing filled with their white tents. The clothes were of various sizes, with some being hardly larger than pup tents, but one having a porch and a sizable rear. I guessed that one belonged to their king. They all surrounded a makeshift campfire of round stones.
I glimpsed all of this under the encroaching cover of night. Only the faintest of glows peeked out from the western horizon as we dismounted. The experienced riders slid down from their horses. I crawled.
My legs had forgotten how to work and almost collapsed beneath me when I slid off the saddle, and my feet hit the ground. Scalyvar caught me by the waist, and I turned my head around to sheepishly smile at him. “I did say it was my first time.”
His eyes danced with mischief even as he solemnly nodded. “So you did, and you are providing ample proof to your word.”
I turned and took a few steps away from the horse, and a grimace twisted my face. Sharp pains ran up and down my legs, and I couldn’t get them to stop being bowed. “I wish I wasn’t providing this much proof. . .”
Carus sauntered over to us, leading his steed by the reins. His dancing eyes looked me over while his smile played the main tune. “You appear to be rather stiff there, Lady Holt.”
I suppressed the urge to massage my inner thighs. “Just give me a day or two to heal.”
He chuckled. “We leave at the crack of dawn.”
My face drooped. “In a week?”
“Tomorrow.”
I lifted my eyes to His Majesty. “And how far away is that inn?”
“Three days’ ride.”
Several muscles in my legs twanged, and I could hardly suppress my grimace. “I. . .see.”
“We could carry you in the cart,” Carus offered as he nodded at the vehicle. A donkey stood nearby, tethered to a wooden post and chewing away at the grass. “The wheels are as unbalanced as the ass that pulls it, and the path we travel on is very rough, but your legs will be spared.” The sorry ass lifted its head at the mention of it, and grass dribbled out of its mouth.
“I, um, I’ll think about it,” I replied as my focus zeroed in on the campfire. Overturned logs surrounded the stones. “I think for now I’ll just take a seat.”
The king stepped up to my side and swept his arm toward the large canvas with the porch. “My tent is at your disposal if you would like to lie down.”
“I’ll try bending my knees first and then see about straightening them,” I suggested as I hobbled my way to the campfire under the bemused eyes of most of the company.
The exception was the Lord Secundus, who watched me with all the warmth of a viper watching its prey. I only hoped the snake was too old to have much bite to his antagonism.
I eased myself onto the most moss-covered log among the lot and let out a sigh. The men didn’t miss a beat, but started the fire and tossed a mess of various herbs and meats into a cauldron that hung over the pit. Another piece of meat was added to a spit.
One of the men clapped their hand on the corner of the spit and turned to his compatriots. “Whose turn is it to turn the meat?”
A laugh broke out from among the men, though the youngest among them didn’t look pleased at all. He was a clean-shaven youth without the shadows of age, and with eyes that were still as bright as young stars.
