Page 205 of Season Warriors & Wolves

“Every time you fade somewhere, there is this…feeling that you might not return to me.”

“Truth is that I might not one day. But it should not be a reason to fear living.”

Her fingers were gentle on my face. “This is not living, ahana.”

“For now, it is.”

She shut her eyes, resting her forehead on mine. “I should have married a docile woman.”

“Oh?” I asked, tugging on her shirt. “I thought you liked me wilful. What docile woman would know what to do with you?”

She braced her arms on the wall behind me and plastered her body over mine, her mouth lowering to my neck. “But you’re docile for me. When needs be,” she said, returning to kiss me, her knee parting mine to slide between my legs.

A guard stepped towards us, forcing her to part from me. “We have guests.”

I sighed, dropping my head back. We had barely gotten a moment alone since the wedding. “Maybe we shouldn’t be so welcoming, Mor.”

The guard laughed a little. “It is the Isline King, Your Majesty, so maybe we indeed shouldn’t be.”

King Sigurd had studied each paint stroke on the meeting room walls. Everything seemed oddly fascinating to the man who had stripped almost naked from the ‘unbearable’ heat, as he had called it. His chest and arms were covered in an almost faded pattern of tattoos made with bluish ink.

“Ôol,” he said, settling down in the chair opposite Mor. “The tattoos. A map of the region of the Islines mountains we have travelled. It is an Isliner’s greatest honour to be covered as I am. To have seen them all.”

“I know.”

He titled his head back to study me. “Why would my culture interest you?”

“Much interests me. I wouldn’t flatter yourself.” The enemy of my enemy was my enemy, too, and I had to know them just as well.

“Your lands are strangely…pleasant,” he said to Mor, an attempt to soften the hostility in the air. “Much too warm, but pleasant.”

“Thank you.”

He studied my cold wife for a moment. “The Skygard Queen has asked that we remain here until the war, but if we are not welcomed—”

“You will be welcome in my lands as long as peace is the only aim.”

“But you think that is not our aim?”

“I’ve got a few years in me, Sigurd, and if I am taught one thing from age, it is that a Krigborn never has just one aim. And definitely not peace.”

“Then why ask us to join you if there is so little trust?”

Moriko rested her head back on the rest and sighed. “Because we do not need trust to ensure that your aim remains true. Right, Snowlin?”

My friend stood on the entrance door, leaning against it. Pure humour written on her face. “Most certainly. But must we be so hostile to our guests?”

“My guests.”

“Yeah, yeah,” my friend said, pushing off the door to sit beside Sigurd. “I hope your trip has been pleasant.”

He grunted. “As pleasant as you would expect for someone who has never left our borders. The cold of the north guides us, if it hadn’t been for your guide, we would have been lost in these lands.” Sigurd turned to Mor and I. “Lands I have no desire to step on let alone wish to claim.”

“Well, we got that out of the way,” Snow said, stretching back. “Who is hungry? I’m famished.”

“You look quite happy,” Mor commented.

Snow slid a piece of paper across to us. “A note from Moregan.”