Page 66 of The Champion

Rowena sat on the pallet Stryder had made for them on the floor and leaned back against his hard chest, while they drank wine and shared secrets with each other.

“Are you sure this school will make you happy?” Stryder asked as she lay nestled against him. It was the most joyous sensation Rowena had ever known.

He was comfortable and warm. More than just a friend, he felt safe and soothing. Things she shouldn’t experience while in the company of a knight. Yet, he gave her such a feeling of elation that she wanted nothing more than to kiss him again.

Stop thinking of his lips...

So she lowered her gaze to his muscled thigh and answered his question. “Aye. Better than being slave to a man who has no regard for me other than a broodmare for his children.”

“True.” His words were a bit slurred. “I should hate to be a broodmare for a man.”

Rowena laughed at the ludicrous image. She leaned her head back to look up at him. “Are you drunk, my lord?”

“Aye,” he confessed with a smile while he caressed her cheek with his calloused hand, “but only a little.”

She tsked at him and pulled his goblet away.

He scoffed at her gesture. “Why are you bothering, Rowena? I have nowhere to go and nothing better to do than drink myself to stupor.”

For some reason that angered her. Granted she wasn’t one to desire battle or to urge anyone to fight, but something about the defeatist nature of his words set off her ire. “Is that what you do whenever you are defeated?”

His eyes sparked like blue fire. Even his cheeks mottled with the fire of his wrath. “I have never been defeated. Nor will I,” he said earnestly. Then he relaxed ever so slightly. “I am merely biding time.”

“For what?”

“For the moment when I am out of here and am able to wreak havoc on the one who put me here. I’m going to pull out his innards through his nostrils and dance around his entrails.”

Rowena screwed up her face at the grisly image. She cringed at the very thought. “Please, Stryder. I pray you jest and are speaking from desire and not actual experience.”

He blinked at her. “Nay, I have never danced on anyone’s entrails. But, I should like to, just once.” He relaxed and pulled his goblet back before he continued. “It bothers me beyond explanation whenever I see injustice. I can’t bear to think that out there is the killer, just waiting to strike at his next victim.”

He took another drink.

“Is that why the Brotherhood is so important to you?”

“Aye.” He set the goblet aside. “Every person I save is another victory against the evil that festers in this world, and I will not rest until every captive is free.”

It was quite a goal her knight had set for himself. “So, you will never rest? Never know marriage or family?

“Marriage,” he spat the word as if it were poison on his tongue. “’Tis an unholy union between two people, for what purpose? To make them both miserable.”

Rowena was taken back by his hostility. True, she had often said similar things, but deep down she didn’t mean it. Nay, marriage could and should be a wonderful union.

“I don’t believe it has to be that way,” she said, confessing her true thoughts to him. “Imagine a marriage where the man and woman respected each other. Where they were partners and allies.”

He snorted at her. “You are sober and speak more foolishness than I do while drunk.” He pulled his hair away from his neck where a vicious scar curled around his neck. It must have been truly painful to receive it. “See you this?”

“Aye.” She traced the raised, whitened skin with her fingertip. She watched as chills spread over Stryder’s neck, but they did nothing to dull the fury in his eyes.

“My father gave me that when I tried to keep him from killing my mother. He turned on me and said I wasn’t his son.” Stryder’s voice was hollow, as if he told her of someone else, and yet, as she stared into his eyes, she saw the torment he concealed. The grief. “I can still see the hatred on his face as he denounced me for a faithless, worthless bastard.” His crystal gaze locked with hers and it burned her with its intense sincerity. “I am, you know. Kit isn’t my half-brother. We are full brothers.”

His declaration stunned her. “Does he know?”

Stryder shook his head. “I swore to my mother that I would never breathe a word of it to anyone. And I haven’t until now. It’s why the Blackmoor lands and title mean nothing to me. They’re not really mine.”

Rowena sat in silence as she realized Stryder had just entrusted her with a secret that could ruin him. If she so much as breathed a word of his bastard status, he would lose his title and lands.

Not that she would. How could she betray this man when he had just bared his soul to her?