“Or you can always seduce me into giving you the dagger and take my heart,” he mused.
I stiffened, because damn he was good at reading me. Then I shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea a few days ago. Now I’m sure I couldn’t have done it.”
He went still. “Seduce me?”
I gave him a small smile. “Carve out your heart. Even to save my people, I can’t take your life. I’m not a killer, Stryker. I’m just a bookworm with a weak heart.”
The energy in the carriage felt charged. Stryker’s chest heaved slightly and I could see the pulse in his neck throbbing.
I leaned closer to him, wanting to reach out and touch him, but thought better of it. “Maybe you can help me? Get word to Dawn and I can try to find another way to save my people.” I would do anything for there to be another way to break the curse. A way that didn’t involve killing a man I was getting more and more attached to everyday. “I don’t want to hurt you or anyone else, but I can’t give up on them.” There was a pleading in my eyes.
Stryker swallowed hard, shaking his head as if dislodging his own thoughts. “I need some air,” he said.
Reaching down he unlocked his shackle and then before I could say another word, he leapt out of the moving carriage and onto a cloud of waiting shadows.
Chapter 11
Stryker left me shackled to one of the corner posts inside the carriage and rode beside us on a horse, sending me a clear message that he didn’t want to have any more conversations like that. We didn’t stop to rest or sleep in our tents, instead we rode through the night and all the next day. Stryker and I slept in the carriage sitting up. Barely sleeping was more like it. What had been a leisurely ride to the Jewel Spring Mountains on the way over had become a race to the southern border now. We rode fast and hard and I often felt nauseated from the way the carriage shook.
It felt like we’d been on the road forever by the time we reached the southern border. The flowering dogwoods, redbud and magnolia trees of the Eastern Kingdom turned into beautiful and lush palm trees, the sun was low in the sky.
After crossing the border we rode deeper into the Southern Kingdom for several more hours. It was late into the night and at some point I’d nodded off again, but I woke with a jolt when the carriage finally came to a stop and Stryker’s voice rang out.
“Get a ways off the road and make camp, then wait for word from me,”he ordered one of his men. I peeked out the window to find him mounted on his horse only a foot from the carriage.
“You,” he said, calling another one of his guards. He lowered his voice when the guard moved closer. “Take five men and change out of your uniform and into plain clothes. Go to the gambling halls, brothels, and taverns and try to dig up any information you can about the black market here. Ask about rubies for sale but be discreet.”
The guards nodded before taking off and then Stryker looked down and caught me peering at him from within the carriage. The moment his gaze connected with mine I felt my heartbeat flutter. I took in a slow breath, embarrassed it only took a single glance to get me so flustered and at the same time thankful there was no way he could know that my heartbeat just spiked. But even as I thought it, his gaze dropped to my neck where I imagined he could see my pulse jumping wildly in my vein.
“Where are we?” I asked.
Why does my voice sound so breathy?
Stryker frowned down at me, but it only made my heart beat faster. What was wrong with me? The air between us had changed since that raw conversation in the carriage. He hadn’t shackled himself to me in a while and he’d stopped calling me a witch somewhere along the way.
“Just outside the town of Beggar’s Hole,” he said, and I let out a half-laugh.
“Beggar’s Hole? You’re kidding.” That can’t actually be the name of the town.
His frown turned into a full-blown scowl. “I wish I were.This is a gambling village in the northern region of the Southern Kingdom. A cesspool of corruption and our best guess as to the location of the black market where my stolen riches are being sold.
“We don’t want to ride into town in a group and tip off the thieves, so we’re splitting up. Some of my men will stay back and wait for my orders. You’ll be riding with me. I’ll need you by my side if we have to interrogate anyone. We’re going to pretend to be a married couple to keep suspicions low.”
Married couple! I should have balked at that, but instead it somehow felt … right. Like an exciting role to play. And I wasn’t half as freaked out about that as I should have been. Maybe I wasn’t fully awake yet?
“Oh, very well,” I said, proud that I managed to keep my voice steady.
Stryker dismounted and then came to the carriage, swinging the door wide open. Without getting in, he reached forward and grasped my ankle.
It was a chaste touch, but a pulse of warmth shot up my leg from where his fingers wrapped around me. I didn’t have to look in a mirror to know that my cheeks were heating, but luckily Stryker’s focus was on my shackle and not my face.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a key and then a moment later the shackle fell off my leg. Even though the shackle hadn’t been terribly uncomfortable, it still felt amazing to be free of it. I looked down on Stryker with a question in my eyes only to find his gaze fastened on my lips.
Noticing I was watching him, he quickly straightened and cleared his throat. If I didn’t know better I’d say he was embarrassed.
“I can’t keep you shackled if I want people to believe we’re married,” he said in answer to my unspoken question.
I shrugged. “Some people have weird marriages.” I tried for a joke and was rewarded with the corner of his lips curling, but the smile was washed away almost as soon as I’d seen it.
