Fantasy of Fire (The Tainted Accords #3)(83)

“You’ve been talking to Sanjay,” he says once he calms himself.

It takes me a few seconds before my jaw drops open in outrage. “This isn’t a sage-fog area?” I ask, mortification filling me. The king chuckles hard as he shuts my mouth.

“No, this is not a sage-fog area. In fact, there is no such thing as sage-fog. It’s a horror story we tell our children.”

“But Ice and Blizzard knew about it too!” I object.

“You were caught in a lie, my—” he pulls back, his hand dropping to his side.

“Bloody Sanjay,” I grumble. “I bet Landon is wide awake too.”

“He’ll live.” He presses a tender kiss to my lips and I move into his embrace, safe in the knowledge he wouldn’t do this if someone could see.

“You’re not really going to lock me up, are you?” I nestle into his warmth against the bitter frost.

“I wish I could,” he says in a low voice. “It would take a great weight off my shoulders to know you’re safe. That you haven’t been hurt … or taken,” he says after a pause. He picks up a tendril of my loosened hair and breathes it in. “But you’d damn well escape any place I tried to put you. And I would never do anything to make you feel like you did when your mother confined you,” he says.

Finally, he sees to the core of the matter. I sniff. “I’m not going to thank you for seeing reason.” He bites my bottom lip gently. I jolt and jerk my head back at the slight pain. He follows me forward and kisses the same spot.

“Jovan?” I ask one instant before his mouth is crushing my own. It’s instant this time. The rush of heady pleasure. What is he unlocking inside of me? I press myself against him, trying to stay silent. The kiss is just what I needed. Brutal and desperate; life-affirming.

We part, gasping; my hands remain twisted in his tunic.

He looks down at me with an unfathomable expression. I push my veil up from where it’s dropping across one eye.

“That was…” I say, searching for the right word.

He brushes his lips against mine once more before resting his chin on the top of my head.

“Yes,” he says. “It was.”

*

The terrain becomes easier to navigate as the mountains and small hills ebb nearing the outer edge of Glacium’s First Sector. I watch the Oscala, like the men surrounding me. Waiting for a glimpse of the Tatum’s army and searching for the reason behind my disquiet.

“No sign of them, my King,” Malir reports.

Jovan nods shortly. “We must be ahead of the Solati.” His comment only increases my unease. How else should I feel going into battle? I shake it off and slow my march as we look over the campground of the five hundred Bruma already here. Their tents are placed in neat rows toward the base of the hill, leaving a relatively flat plane before the drop-off into the Great Stairway. The battlefield.

“I can always go and find their position,” I offer. I jostle the Soar slung across my back.

“Absolutely not,” Jovan says immediately. I grind my teeth.

“I never thought I’d be part of a battle like this,” says Shard. “It goes against nature, don’t you think? For a person to waste so many lives over greed.”

And that’s all my mother’s war was about. All those times Mother had me beaten has provided me with a good insight to her ambitions and character. She wanted Glacium’s resources. She wanted their iron, and she wanted their stone. And now I’d started to wonder if she also wanted control of the huge Bruma population—her own private workforce. Slaves. She’d probably kill most of them, but the ones she left alive would be forced into grueling hard labor and torture for the rest of their lives, just as she was doing to her own people already. Maybe this is the odd feeling I can’t shake. Maybe it doesn’t sit right that the Tatum could be so depraved. I wouldn’t have thought I could be surprised by this anymore.

“It’s her mother,” I hear Blizzard whisper on Shard’s other side.

“Yeah, but she doesn’t like her, idiot,” Ice whispers back.

“I don’t think everyone here knows that,” muses Shard. I glance at him.

“If we lose you in the battle, watch your back,” he warns. “Emotions are high, and while the Bruma you’ve lived with know you, those who come from elsewhere only have our word for it.” He faces forward. “In the middle of battle they may start looking for someone to blame.”

I glance over my shoulder at the hurried bustle behind me. Suddenly I feel as though a hundred unfriendly eyes are resting on me. That explains my discomfort.

“Understood,” I say shortly.

*

I wake, refreshed after a night unworried about the adverse effect of sage-fog inhalation. A quiet word to my brother after breakfast the previous day relieved him of concern too. We would keep up the fa?ade, though. Our revenge on Sanjay will be exacted at a moment of our choosing.

I wind through the camp flanked by my men, ignoring the halt in conversation as men see me. My tent is not far away from Jovan’s. The guards recognize me and stand aside as I duck into the king’s—much larger—tent.

The advisors are already inside bent over tables and maps.

“Good sleep, Tatuma?” the king looks up briefly.