“She would not have done the same had you been injured in her realm,” argued Balandria, Draven’s Second.
“And what have I told you about our people?” Draven asked with tightened fists.
Balandria’s weight shifted, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “That we have to be better.”
“Right,” he affirmed, clapping her shoulder. “Besides, I may have a way she can help return the favor.”
Balandria’s jaw tightened. “I don’t like it,” she told him. “She’s as likely to tell her brother you kidnapped her as she is to help you with whatever plan you’ve come up with.”
Draven nodded knowingly. “We’ll see.”
His people’s doubts reigned in the back of his mind throughout the day.
He spent the daylight sorting out the things they would be using for trade in two days. The Bullhorn would be coming through that night, as he always did on the third night of the dead moons cycle, and it never failed that his nerves shook him to his core.
Around mid-afternoon, he went upstairs to change into something warmer for the night, and to check in on Aydra.
When he checked on her, he made a mental note to remind himself of the look on her softened face. This would be what he would force himself to think of when he would inevitably want to kill her upon her waking in a few hours time.
The soft curls of her stark ginger hair splayed out on the brown linens. He could tell she was dreaming by the darting of her eyes beneath their lids. It had been a long time since he’d looked upon her face and not seen her jaw tightened, her bow-shaped lips not pulled into a taut sour purse, or her biting the inside of her cheek.
The thought of her made his fist tighten. Her brother had been the bane of his existence since their childhood. And she… she’d hated him since their first fight, even though she’d won.
Despite her gangliness as a teen, Aydra had fashioned herself into a woman, by all standards, by the age of twenty. And now, eight years later, she’d grown into the attitude she wore on her sleeve on a daily. Tall. Fearless. Passionate. He dared to think he could have cut his hand on her sharp jawline or entangled himself within the confines of her fiery gaze. He found himself thinking about her curves in that dress from banquet on more nights than he dared admit.
She stirred just slightly and rolled over onto her side, grasping the linen blanket in her hands as she curled into a ball.
His eyes squinted at the bruise on the back of her neck, barely visible beneath the raven silhouetted triad tattoo marked on her throat that signed her place as Arbina’s Promised daughter.
He placed the cup of water he’d brought up with him on the table at the bedside and turned on his heel to change his clothes. He didn’t want to be the first thing she saw when she woke up.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AYDRA WOKE IN the unfamiliar bed, the smells of dirt and trees filling her nostrils. Her first instinct was to balk at the smell, but as she lie there, unable to move from the pain shooting through her ankles, she allowed the smell to reverberate through her pores, and a warmth spread through her that she’d never felt before.
Around her was wood. A tree sat at the edge of the room, and the walls were built around it. She squinted at the wide opening across the room from her on the other side of the tree, like a doorway into the forest. She could see the trees outside past a wide deck.
The noise of men outside perked her ears. A tall wooden staff with a small post on the side, a crutch she realized, was leaned against the bed. She turned towards the edge of the mattress and tried to stand, but almost fell as her weak ankles gave out on her. She cursed herself as she looked down and saw the purple whelps around her ankles, the red scratches on her feet.
A few moments passed, and she surrendered to using the crutch to help herself out of bed, taking one step at a time, falling twice, and then finally crawling out to the deck. It was sunset, which told her she’d slept at least one day. A stench radiated through the air as she reached the outdoors. Like wet dog or bear.
One look down into the clearing told her exactly what it was.
The Bullhorn was standing in front of Draven.
The Bullhorn was one of the Noctuans most familiar. He was the only one of his kind. A great beast no less than eight feet tall. It towered over Draven by almost two feet, a double-headed axe in its elongated sausage fingers, long pointed nails like daggers digging into the wood of its hilt. The Bullhorn had the head of the Ulfram, the lengthy tree-limb like magnificent grey horns of the bull, and the torso of a man. Its lower body was more like the haunches of the bull, but it stood on its wheel-sized hooves upright. The black thick fur that covered its entire body was thick around its hips, and splayed out as a mane around his head and down his back in a V. His darkened purple eyes stared at Draven, and
