“Just as soon as we possibly can.”
Foregoing blankets in the late afternoon heat, they sprawled together, limbs entangled. Despite the mating urge that nagged at him, he fell into sleep as quickly and completely as a stone dropped into a dark, quiet pond.
Just as quickly and completely, he woke several hours later.
The sun was close to setting, shadows lengthening throughout the Elven lord’s luxurious room.
Aryal lay on her stomach, her black hair falling over her face. Quentin’s head rested in the small of her back. He had wrapped one arm around her thigh in his sleep. Her scent filled him with carnal memories. She smelled like fragrant soap and sex.
When he lifted his head and looked along her length, he saw bruises on her hips where he had gripped her. They would be gone entirely in another hour or two. He clenched with the need to lick her everywhere and begin all over again. To avoid starting something he knew he would not be able to stop, he lifted carefully away from her sleeping form.
Out the nearest window, shafts of light lanced the panoramic view of the deserted city like unimaginably long spears thrown by the gods. Soon the city would lay silhouetted against the fiery colors of sunset. Despite his growing obsession with the woman lying next to him, he had to stop and stare. Nature was sending them off to battle in style.
Aryal had bunched bedcovers under her head as a pillow. She muttered into them, “Time to get up?”
“Yeah.” Then he couldn’t help himself after all, and he bent over to press a kiss to her shoulder, watching covetously as a shiver rippled across her skin. He forced himself to say, “We better move if we’re going to pick out a suitable boat before the light goes.”
She picked herself up off the bed in one smooth movement, and her expression settled into a harpy’s unshakable focus.
They washed quickly. Quentin spared a few minutes to use the Elven lord’s flat razor and shave off his new beard, which had begun to annoy him, while Aryal combed through the massive wardrobe. She found sleeveless silk tunics and trousers that were slightly large on her and tight across the shoulders on Quentin, but the lightweight material would breathe while it provided a little buffer against the armor, so it was perfect for their purposes.
Last came the weapons: long swords belted at the waist, short swords strapped to their thighs, and unstrung longbows strapped to their backs along with quivers full of arrows. Aryal used Quentin’s blindfold to tie back her hair. When she noticed that he watched her, she muttered, “Souvenir.”
He cocked his head, immeasurably charmed by the sight. There she stood, looking as lethal as he’d ever seen her, and …
He asked, “Did you just blush?”
She made a face and strode for the door, saying over her shoulder, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“And now you’re running away.” He prowled behind her. Inside, delight filled him with airy lightness.
“Don’t be stupid. Of course I didn’t. And I’m not.” She wrestled with the locked door.
“Yes, you did. You blushed and ran away.” He reached around her, pulling her hands away from the door. As he unlocked the door, he nuzzled her neck. She smelled clean and wild. The scent went straight to his cock, of course. “It was fantastic.”
She shook her head, sounding winded as she said, “Because it’s always all about you, isn’t it?”
“Damn right it is.” He bit her gently, slipping an arm around her waist as she leaned back against him and reached over her shoulder to stroke his hair.
She twisted and kissed him, and he clenched her to him, kissing her back hard and hungrily. How this much emotion had fountained out of nothing was something he couldn’t understand, but he would never get enough of her, never.
Adrenaline at what lay ahead had already started to beat a tribal rhythm in his chest. His hunger for her only heightened it. He bent her back over his arm, his kiss turning savage. They were both shaking when they wrenched apart, all lightheartedness and joking lost. She stroked his cheek and looked him deeply in the eye, her angular face serious. He brushed his mouth along her fingers.
Then, having already said everything they needed to say to each other, they left.
He glanced one last time over his shoulder, out the window at the gigantic stone faces of the gods. Hyperion faced the westering sun. The angled light had turned the god’s blank eyes golden.
Quentin had never been much for prayer, but this time, he decided to give it a go.
They left the palace by way of the kitchens and stopped briefly to collect more portable food and wineskins filled with water—and another two bottles of brandy, because you never know, they might just be able to hang on to it this time—and they distributed it all evenly into two sacks, along with the vials of healing potion they had gathered from the barracks.
The light was fading fast by that point, so they jogged down to the shoreline and strode along the piers, looking for a small sailboat suitable for one or two people. They found one quickly and Aryal jumped in to hoist the sails while Quentin unfastened the ropes mooring it to the pier. He shoved it off and leaped in. The last of the day’s light lay fractured in slivers along the top of the rippling dark waves as they drifted beyond the pier into open water.
Aryal’s cloaking settled over the small boat like a shimmering veil. They had to figure out by trial and error how the tide ran, and how to move forward in the right direction using the angle of the wind. Eventually they settled into tacking in a zigzag course. By then the overlarge moon had risen and it shone with so much silvery light, to Quentin’s feline gaze the scene turned almost as bright as day.
They took turns eating, while the other remained vigilant at the tiller. Watching the island as it neared, he ate lightly, just enough fuel for whatever came next but not enough to weigh him down. While he swallowed his last bite of wayfarer bread, a flicker of light appeared.
It shone from the building that lay up the steep hill, nestled among the trees.
“We’ve got her,” he said softly. He could sense that Aryal had gone tense and still. He noticed something else too. Two piers at one end of the beach held several moored boats. “There are too many boats. We shouldn’t waste time trying to disable them all.”
Aryal asked, “What do you suggest?”
He turned to her. “I take point,” he said. “The current is running at an angle to the island. When we get close enough, I’ll swim the rest of the way to the beach. The witch is smart. She’ll have shadow wolves on the beach as sentries. We don’t know how, but somehow they’re linked to her, so I’ll draw her attention. Meanwhile, you sail with the current, land somewhere along the other side of the island and double back so that you come at the witch from behind.”
She studied his face. “You’ll draw her fire on your own?”
He gestured impatiently with one hand. “Yeah, it’s gonna hurt. That just means you’ll have to move fast. I’ll also try to wait a little while before I engage, to narrow down the lag time.”
Did she pause to think about how this might have been her opportunity to get rid of him, as he had once paused to think about her? No sign showed on her tense features. “I don’t like it.”
“Tough,” he said. He turned back to look at the island. “I’m the one who’s more equipped to fight the shadow wolves.”
“But you’ll be facing them both until I get to you. And while Elven armor is magic resistant, it doesn’t block everything. Once its resistance has been compromised, it’s no better than any other leather armor.”
“It’s better than a simple frontal assault,” he told her. “Her wolves could engage us to cover her retreat, and we’ll have expended our energy and given away the element of surprise for nothing. This way—she doesn’t know that you survived the first attack, sunshine. She might wonder, but she won’t know that you’re coming.”
She was silent for several moments. “Shit.”
“It makes sense,” he said gently.
“Okay, already!” she exploded. “But shit!”
He didn’t say anything. If their positions were reversed he would hate it just as much as she did, and there
