AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’s been days since I’ve seen Carleah. Three agonizing days since that day she walked out of Bowman’s tent and I’d forced myself to turn away from her. Days that feel like years. Like lifetimes of missed time together.
I dodge a blade then swing around and drive the side of my wooden training sword into the hip of a young soldier. He stumbles forward into the dirt though he doesn’t stay down long. Bowman’s army may not be well trained, but they have heart.
Men and older boys they gathered from villages they passed through blend with the handful of soldiers left behind from the fall of Navalis. Out of the four thousand soldiers we’d had, only two dozen remain.
Twenty-four out of four thousand.
It makes my stomach roll.
“You’re doing well, Timothy,” Bowman commends. “Fort here bested more than one of us at a time, and he had an arm tied around his back then.” He smiles at me, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“He’s so fast.”
“Fort isn’t special,” he says, gaze still on me. “He’s just well trained.” Bowman looks back at Timothy. “And you’ll get there, too.”
Timothy grins back at me, completely unaware that Bowman just tried to put me in whatever place he thinks I belong. “One day I’ll beat you.”
I return his grin and offer a nod, letting him know I agree.
“Great. Go rest up. It’s nearly dinner time.” Timothy walks away, leaving his sword in a rack by the edge of the training ring. It’s not until everyone has left that Bowman says to me, “We need to talk,” then turns and walks away.
I follow even though my desire to seek out Carleah is far greater than my interest in speaking to her brother. I haven’t seen her all day, and even though we can’t be seen together, I long to look upon her just one damned time before the end of this day.
It’s the longest I’ve gone without seeing her since Nemoregno separated us, and it’s killing me.
Bowman pushes into his tent, and I follow, ensuring it closes behind me. No one else is here, so I keep my distance because, based on the look on his face, he’s going to say something that’s going to make me want to ram my fist down his damned throat.
“Where is the Pegasus?”
“Excuse me?”
Bowman glowers at me. “The horse that you rode in on. The one that has been attached to Carleah’s hip since you got here? He and Lacrae are gone. Have been for three days now. Have you truly not noticed?”
Panic tightens my chest. I’d been so focused on missing Carleah that I hadn’t bothered to look for the elf or Shadow. How the hell could I have missed that! “Carleah—”
“Is still here last I checked.” He narrows his gaze further. “Do you truly expect me to believe that you don’t know where they are?”
“If I did, do you really think I would confide in you something that Carleah has hidden? I’m assuming you asked her as well.”
A momentary look of distress crosses over his features. “She’s not talking to me right now.”
“And here I have to wonder why that is.” I turn away. “If there’s nothing else.”
“What did you tell her to twist her loyalty?”
And there it is. The thing that makes me want to slaughter a man I would have killed for. “I didn’t twist a damned thing,” I snap, whirling on him as I clench both hands into fists. “I told her the same truth that I revealed to you, and she chose to see the good in me. The same good that Alex saw when I told him everything before the Tenebris attacked us.”
“And conveniently, my eldest brother is no longer around to corroborate that story.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” I growl.
“You haven’t proven to me that you’re anything but a liar,” Bowman retorts. “You know I’m right about Soreno. That we need them to regain our kingdom, and you’d rather sleep with my sister than guide her toward a destiny she should have accepted long ago.”
“Carleah and I were not just sleeping together because it was convenient,” I say, my tone warning him that he needs to tread as carefully as one would on a frozen pond. “I love her. She loves me. And as far as Soreno is concerned? I will be surprised if they come to your aid as you’re expecting them to. With or without Carleah’s hand. Wouldn’t they be just as likely to claim Navalis as their own? Why the hell would they put a Rossingol back on the throne?”
“They. Are. Our. Allies,” he snaps. “They have to put me on the throne.”
“No, Bowman. They don’t. And that thinking is precisely why you are nowhere near ready to be king.”
