Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(42)
“Shut up, or I will prove to you just how much of a man I am. Remember, Niko, that one day you will be very old and I will not. At the moment you are stronger than I—fractionally—but one day you will be dribbling and incontinent, and I will be much stronger than you. Then you will regret all the mean things you say to me.”
“Then I will be confused with an addled brain and will not remember anything I have ever said to you—or you, possibly.”
“Good God, is this conversation supposed to be cheering me up and taking my mind off Faelan or making me want to jump from the falls tomorrow?”
I shuddered for some reason and pulled him tighter, kissing into his hair. “If I forget you, I can fall in love with you all over again, can I not?”
He eased away slightly and put a hand to my face. “It is like falling, isn’t it? I feel the air sucked out of me when I look at you sometimes—although I know I do not tell you this very often, for you are vain enough—and then there is the jolt like hitting the ground when I realize that you are mine—that you actually came to Hesse-Davia and I met you. I do not think there would have been anyone else for me—you are the one man in all the world I was meant to be with.”
I sincerely doubted this given Aleksey’s extreme beauty and his incredibly attractive personality, but I obviously did not say this to him. I was actually hot from the rare praise, basking in it as a sleepy cat in front of a roaring fire.
“You drew me to Hesse-Davia, Aleksey. I heard your name on the ship as I crossed the English Channel, and then I fell too—the first moment I saw you emerge from the forest, all grubby and arrogant as you were.”
“I was filthy, I grant you that, although I think I was very polite and shared my breakfast with this horrible, angry warrior who looked at us as if he wanted to kill us. Faelan said….”
Dammit. All my hard work and we were back to Faelan.
I wondered, though, and said hesitantly, “Do you remember the time he pissed in your uncle the Cardinal’s house, and so you broke the vase of flowers in the spot to try and cover it up?”
He laughed. “He never did like my uncles. He shared your opinion, I think. But he disliked my brother more.”
“Well, your brother tried to kill him.”
“True. Do you remember how he always snarled at you and I told you he liked you well enough? Well, I was actually lying a little. I think he saw a rival from the first moment he saw you.”
“That might be misconstrued, Aleksey.” Once more he hit me. I would be black-and-blue in the morning, but we always enjoyed examining my bruises and remembering how I got them. I think that although we were now talking about Faelan and I was not trying to distract him from the very thought of his wolf, it was good. Perhaps it was like the relief of an abscess. If we stored up thoughts of Faelan, they would go bad and poison us: better to talk about him and remember him with pleasure. I rolled onto my back, and he came with me, sprawled across me, his head upon my chest.
“I think Boudica is in foal again.”
I raised my head. “Really? That is good news.”
“I do not want you to trade this foal, Niko. He stays with us, as does Freedom. I am going to call him Blueberry.”
Oh God. Imagine calling that out to your horse in the company of other men. “Yes, that is a very good name.” Let us pray the foal was a girl.
“It will suit equally well if it is female.”
I squeezed him tighter. “Go to sleep now. Our sentry duty will come very soon.”
He was quiet for a long time, and I thought he had fallen asleep, but just as I was sinking down into that quiet darkness, he whispered, “Thank you. For tonight.”
I grunted.
We understood each other very well.
Chapter Ten
ALEKSEY AND I had never been to the falls nor crossed the border of our land at this farthest point north. We knew what lay beyond only from tales—me from listening to Etienne, and Aleksey from stories he heard at the colony on the coast. Thus I knew that there was a great confluence of rivers at this point and that the combined power of their joining ran for a mile or so as one mighty river before pouring over a vast cliff. Opinion on the height of the falls varied depending upon the teller of the tale. Etienne said they were taller than the tallest pine and that he had not seen their like anywhere in Europe.
The river did not fall in one great plummet either. Its path was interrupted at the very edge of this great cliff by a piece of land, an island. The Indians called the island Matinicus, but this had been corrupted to Matins Island by the French and thus Morning Island by those Europeans on this side of the river. Even Etienne had never ventured onto the island, and he said it was an accursed place, which I had taken to mean there was not much worth him seeing there, as he had seen so many wonders in his life. He told me once he had stood at the summit of a mountain that spat fire—that it was like liquid inside the mountain. He was a great storyteller, and I did not believe everything he told me. I wish I had listened better to his tales about the island, however: that it was entirely barren of life and that no animals or birds would or could live there; that many, many generations ago, it had been used by a savage tribe that lay on the northern borders as a sacred place for strange rites but that their gods had turned on them, and they had disappeared from the earth. Perhaps, upon reflection, this was the reason I had not introduced Aleksey to Etienne. Aleksey’s overactive imagination was bad enough without Etienne’s encouragement.