I halted, my shoulders tensing. “I didn’t miss him.”
Nicu glanced down, a smirk nudging his lips sideways. “If you say so.”
No comment. I would take my denial to an early grave. “Well, I bet a lot of blokes are going to miss you,” I teased. “I saw all your fans at the revels.”
A blush suffused his throat. “Papa has fans. I just want friends.”
“No handsome suitor to sweep you off your feet? No one who’ll burn the world for you?”
Nicu grimaced. “That’s selfish. To see the world destroyed for my own sake? Who would want that?”
“I meant it in a different context. In which case, most would call the gesture romantic.”
“Not you.”
“Of course, not.” I flipped my axe. “I can save myself.”
Taking the pack from my shoulder, Nicu shook his head. “A real leader doesn’t let someone burn the world for them, just so they can feel important. A real leader protects that world.”
I skirted around a ring of fungi. “What if it’s about survival?”
“Then it’s survival. Not romance.”
“And what if that world is evil?”
Sweetgum trees replaced the beeches. Nicu studied this new species, the branches shingled in gleaming burgundy leaves. Touching his ribbon bracelet, Nicu said, “Then you change that world.”
I nodded. “Much better.”
“Aire has a crush on you.”
Again, I stalled in my tracks. “Nicu! What the fuck—”
“It’s a lust crush for your weapons and body.”
In other words, a sexual attraction based on combat and physical attributes. Not an emotional one. In which case, accurate as well as mutual.
Like father, like son. They were both right.
However, as I discovered in the tournament arena, it wasn’t a mere lust crush. It was a forsaken avalanche.
Catastrophic. Suffocating. Inconvenient.
Nicu stopped beside me, his features piebald in the waning light. “You don’t want to admit you missed him. But the whole clan sees it.” His irises twinkled with mischief. “Only I saw it first.”
Despite the unbidden lurch of my heart, I let out a dry laugh. “Bragger.”
And he might have chuckled with me, if his complexion weren’t blanching at something over my shoulder. I went rigid, squeezed my axe handle, and braced for a fight. Then I growled as a masculine hand clamped over my mouth.
16
Aire
My hand obstructed the monstrous noise that howled from Aspen’s lungs. A string of profanities exploded against my palm like bombs, heat from her insubordinate mouth pushing through the leather glove. Enraged, I shackled one arm around her midriff and trapped the heathen against my chest.
Every destructive inclination rose to the surface. Wrath. Hysteria. Savagery. By fucking Seasons, I would ring her neck. I would gag her dissentious lips. I would bend her over my knee. I would toss her over my shoulder like a fucking sack of barley. I would—
“Stop!” Nicu seized my bicep, his fingernails stabbing into my forearm. “Let her go!”
