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“I was just, um, thinking about preparing you for when we return to my home.”
“Please, enlighten me. I’ve been gabbing for ages, and I’m quite sick of hearing my own voice.”
She gasped when he cupped her elbow through her cloak and helped her over a large tree root, then released her as if he’d done little more than brush off road dust.
“Besides, there’s only so much I can say about cars, video games, and social media. Tell me more about what I’ll be walking into, at least. These games . . . what can I expect?”
You can expect to win them all and marry me, so I might have at least one male I can convince to speak on behalf of my people and overrule my father.
And there it was. Her remaining worries rang loud and clear through her consciousness, except even in her thoughts, she wasn’t entirely truthful. One only had to spend five minutes in Bronze’s presence to know the male couldn’t be convinced of anything he wasn’t inclined to agree upon first.
No, her ploy wasn’t about convincing him of anything but manipulating him into letting her rule the way her people deserved. The way she could rule them if her father was finally forced to stand down.
“Well, there are usually three tasks, one to represent the three different credos of our monarchy,” she offered, keeping her eyes firmly on the path before her and not on the male at her side, who’d resumed his stride to match hers. As he drew nearer, a trickle of sweat teased her hairline at the base of her neck, despite the late-spring’s cool breeze.
“And what would those be?”
Clara took a deep breath and recited the words that were as dear to her as her own name. “With power, we run. With strength, we capture. With the moon’s senses, we detect and safeguard.”
If Bronze held any opinions on what she’d revealed, he kept his own counsel on the subject. “I take it you’re not going to tell me what those particular games entail?”
“I would if I could, but they are created by the king. Each trial pays tribute to a different credo. How they are constructed and what is involved is unknown to all except the monarch.”
“Have these games ever been rigged?”
She paused and looked up at him. “Rigged?”
“Fixed. Predetermined.”
“No. Not that I know of, at least, though the last games happened before my time. But when I was researching the histories in the annex, there was no mention of anything dishonest ever occurring.”
Bronze softened his gaze and offered her a simple smile. Her heart sank and nearly dropped clear through to the soles of her boots. She knew that look all too well. It was the look of an adult breaking hard news to a fanciful child.
“History’s usually written by the winners, Clara. I can’t imagine that’s different from one culture to another. If things did go south or there was ever any tampering evident, I doubt your historians would have been allowed to paint the truth of the picture, even if they were inclined to do so, especially in a monarchy.”
She flinched, and the veracity of his words pricked like freezing rain on heated skin. Hot shame flooded her cheeks, and she shrank deeper into her hood. Of course he would think her naïve. Not only had she foolishly landed herself in the exact wrong company she was searching for but now the very male who stood a chance at helping her maneuver this ridiculous deception saw her as no more than a silly female. One he needed to coddle like a child to help her understand the hard truths of the world.
Because her truths hadn’t been hard enough, apparently.
Stupid, Clara. So utterly stupid you are.
“Yes, I realize that,” she said softly, hoping to keep the stinging pain out of her voice. “Still, I must believe it would be highly unlikely for that to occur. It is in the king’s best interest?—”
“Here, warm this up for me.”
He dropped a small circular object, heavy for its size, into the center of her palm. Before she could question him further, he dropped to his knee to retie his bootlace. Left with no other alternative, she examined what he’d given her.
A compass. Yes, that’s what it was. She’d heard that some of the human traders used them when navigating the White Mountains. Lycans had no use for them, of course, what with their acute senses and deep connection to the moon, but she was not so ignorant as to not know what one was. A guide of sorts, if she recalled correctly. The minuscule N, S, E, and W stood out in emerald green against a backdrop of black, while tiny white dashes punctuated what she assumed were different degrees of measurement between the letters.
Wait, what had he just said? Warm it up? How on earth was she supposed to do that? Was it something to do with its functionality? Well, she certainly didn’t want to give him any more cause to think she was dull-witted. She was aware of the object’s general uses, after all.
At a loss for clarity but determined to prove competency, she covered the compass with her palms, rubbed her hands briskly, began blowing warm breath into the small opening she made, then held it out to him, quite satisfied with her work.
Bronze didn’t look up, however, and instead started plucking the laces from his other book, retightening those to match.
Damn. Had she not warmed it up enough? She snatched it back quickly before he could notice and resumed stroking the thing.
“Why don’t we not talk about what’s in the king’s best interest,” Bronze said, addressing her earlier comments, “because if that was even remotely high on your priority list, you wouldn’t have almost died looking for someone to champion you in a marriage competition, which, by the way, we haven’t yet ironed out all the particulars of.”
