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“Hullo,” the shorter one said, his knife gripped tightly.

“I think you know what is about to happen,” the other one said, laying the handle of his ax on the palm of his other hand.

Cathy swallowed. “We don’t have anything.”

The first one looked her over, head to toe, and narrowed his eyes. She noticed Andor’s muscles tense.

“Looking at you, I suppose that is true enough,” the first bandit said. “But I do like your cloak. It looks so much warmer than my jacket.”

He wore a quilted jacket with holes in it. “And those boots.” He looked down at her feet, and she noted his boots were much more worn-out.

“Look,” she said, the familiar terror of being bullied gripping her whole body. “Just go on your way. We don’t want trouble.”

The taller man squinted at her. “What’s your name, boy?” he said.

Cathy cleared her throat, remembering to lower her voice. “Cathan.”

The taller man’s face straightened, a sly smile spreading in his shaggy beard.

“You know what, Basil, I do not think ’tis a Cathan at all.” With his ax ready, he walked to Cathy.

He approached her, his face dirty and his mouth gaping with black spaces from missing teeth. Her stomach cold with fear, she took several steps back.

“I think it’s a wo—”

A cloak and blond hair flashed before her, and the man was on the ground, clutching at his bleeding throat. The short man ran, but Andor took the tall man’s ax and threw it at him. The man fell with the ax stuck in his back.

Cathy pushed down a scream, her hands pressed to her mouth. The contents of her stomach rose, and only the thought that if she vomited now she would likely starve kept her from giving in to the impulse.

Andor turned to her, the bloody kitchen knife in one hand. His eyebrows rose and one side of his mouth curled up. “You look like you are about to shit yourself, Cathan. I thought you were a warrior.”

She frowned and removed her hands from her mouth. “I told you, I’m not a warrior.”

“No?” He walked towards the man with the ax in his back. “Maybe you should be.”

CHAPTER TEN

“Thank you for saving me,” Cathy said when they resumed walking.

Andor gritted his teeth, his gut still churning with battle fury. “I did not save you.”

“You did.”

“I told you, do not hold me responsible for your life. I merely chose the best moment to act given my disadvantage in weapons. He was distracted by you. I would not have had a better opportunity.”

She stopped and faced him, forcing him to stop, too. “Oh, like if he had reached me, you wouldn’t have done anything. You’d just watch him”—she paused—“do whatever he was about to do to me…”

“Do not read anything more into it than there is.”

Cathy scoffed. “I’m just saying—I think you are a better person than you want me to believe.”

Andor was beginning to lose his patience. “I do not want you to believe anything. I care not if you think me a good person or Loki’s spawn. I stopped the two bandits because they had to be stopped. Your well-being had little to do with it.”

But a tiny voice in him whispered that it had been more than a good moment to act and more than the practicality of having her as his companion.

When the bastard had almost reached her, Andor’s body had reacted like an arrow launched from an overstretched bow. She had been in danger, and fear for her had twisted his gut. The need to protect her had risen in him like a surging storm he could not stop. He could not stand by and watch her get hurt, could not have the same thing happen to her that had happened to Svana. He could not fail a second time.

And he hated feeling compelled to protect her, knowing he could not succeed. Knowing he could not live with the guilt of failure.