The stone slab is already descending into the sand, and all around us, the other women have turned to stone and are doing the same. Thunder rumbles, and the sky darkens all around.
“Unhelpful as always,” Warden grumbles.
“You were about to grovel to her,” I respond.
“I didn’t want her to hurt you,” he replies, taking my arm and turning me to him. “Hazel, I would do anything, give anything, to make sure you were always safe.”
A flash of lightning spears the sky.
“And it also means I need to face the Thegn alone,” he says. “I know you want to be by my side, and I want you there, but you can die, and I cannot. If I were to lose you…I don’t even want to contemplate it.”
“But if the Thegn took your mortality, then he can give it back.” I clutch at him, even as I feel his arm slipping from mine. “And he can do that and kill you. How do you think that would make me feel? Knowing I could have been alongside you, ready to help when the time came? Warden, you are mine as much as I am yours. This is not just your fight, not anymore. The Yeaveringkept me from the Faerie for a reason. Perhaps this is the reason right here, this fight at this time.”
Warden stares down at me as great drops of rain hit us, making dark circles on my dress and causing rivers to run over Warden’s chest.
“I am truly blessed with the wisest of mates,” he intones. “But if we are to do this together, then you must always be sure I can protect you, regardless of my immortality.” He places his hand over my abdomen. “For you carry inside you the product of our love.”
My heart stills in my chest. “You can’t know that.”
“I can. Your scent was always delicious, but it has changed to something else, something which calls to me in a way I didn’t think possible. You are filled with our foal, my lady.”
A flash of the heavily pregnant Queen Wynter fills my mind briefly. Of course, anything is possible in the Yeavering. Anything at all.
“I want to be with you, Hazel.” Warden drops down onto his knees. “Forever. But I don’t want to live without you. If I remain immortal…you know what will happen.”
“Then, as I have an explanation as to why I ended up here, it’s time for us to get your mortality back.” I grip the hilt of my sword.
“And time to find out if this amulet was really worth having to deal with Linton,” Warden rasps.
“Is my sister really mated to him?” I ask as the mist is suddenly sucked away from the sea and the shore, replaced by a crystal-clear view of an angry sky filled with death and fire.
“Mated and having his young.”
“Kaitlyn always did like strange things.”
“Not much stranger than Linton.”
“Except, perhaps, the Shellycoat.”
Warden growls under his breath. “That traitor will find out soon enough why he shouldn’t have sided with the Thegn.”
“Shellycoat aside, what is the Thegn going to do? Rain us to death, or rather rain me to death?” I query.
Warden pulls on one of his horns and runs his hand down his face, plucking at his short beard.
“I have not battled a Thegn before,” he admits. “They take, as I have told you, by way of a bargain, where they can. They are cowards. He is likely to hide behind something else, some other army he has devised, while he sits back somewhere safe and watches.”
“So basically, we need to dodge whatever he’s going to throw at us and find him?”
Warden studies me for a second, and his serious face splits into a grin. “When I think you have no more surprises, my sweet little mare, you prove you have the heart of a warrior and the brain of a general.”
“You like my plan?”
“I like it very much, but not as much as I love you, my mate,” Warden says, still baring his teeth in the biggest of smiles.
He winds an arm around my waist, pulling me against him and pressing one of his incredible kisses to my lips. It’s hard to believe not so long ago, this sort of affection was not second nature to him. My Brag is a fast learner, and he’s rapidly blooming into an impressive lover.
“If the Thegn is directing us over there,” Warden says as he releases me and points at the darkening clouds, “then he has to be somewhere nearby.
