King's Warrior (Renegade Lords)

“To get the blade I slid into your basket.”

“The blade you slid into…?”

She untangled her legs and shoved to her feet, backing up so fast she banged into the bench Tadhg had righted barely a moment ago. It squealed as it toppled over. The one thing righted in the room, already overturned again.

Isn’t that the way? Tadhg thought, rising. He did nothing by half-measures, not even ruination.

“How dare you?” she demanded, the words soft but furious.

“You don’t know the half of it, lass. Now if you’ll just—”

Her arm snapped up, straight as an arrow, a veritable yew of feminine fury, terminating in a slim, trembling fingertip pointed directly at the door. “Get out.”

“Once I have the dagger.”

“Get out.”

“Lass—”

“Get. Out. Now.” She looked ready to start screaming.

Alchemist eyes or no, that could not be allowed.

He was on the move, striding toward her, and she was smart enough to back up, but there was nowhere to go, so she backed into the wall. He folded a hand over her mouth and slid the other around the back of her head, trapping her, fixed and immobile. Her complicated eyes stared up at him, not at all complicated now. They were glinting with a single overweening emotion: fury.

“Heed me now, lass,” he counseled softly. “You’ve no notion what you’ve got mixed up in here, and for that I am rare sorry. I’d never have involved you if I thought it would go this way. But it has, and now, I need that dagger. Give it to me, and I shall be gone, and all this will pass away like so much smoke.”

Which wasn’t entirely true.

Her hair spilled over his hands and her breath panted hotly into his palm.

“Mmff fmmp mmppft,” she said into his palm. Judging by the glint of fury in her eye, she wasn’t telling him the location of the dagger.

A loud hammering exploded at the front of the building.

Under his hand, her body jerked. Her eyes cut to the door. Tadhg’s heart slammed inside his chest as he stared at the door too.

A muffled shout came from the building next door. Through the wall, they heard the unmistakable rumble of a male voice issuing orders, then the loud thump of objects being overturned and crashing to the floor, then a single cry of impotent outrage, cut short into silence.

The shop next door was being searched.

Tadhg stared down into her wide, frightened eyes, and for a moment, his hard heart faltered.

Forgiveness.

The single word wafted through his mind. He could have wished for any number of things just now, the wisest being that she would pass out cold from fear. But that was not what he wished for.

For this witch, with her earnest intentions and her fire-struck hair and the lost cause of her life in the middle of this rotting dung heap of a city, had conjured a whole host of emotions in Tadhg, sentiments that had nothing to do with his mission. And the one marching through him right now was an irrelevant, unnecessary, and almost aching desire, deep and powerful as a flood in spring, to be…forgiven.

It was gone again, as quick as it had come, and he was once again rock-hard, steel-edged, and utterly determined.

She stared up at him, panting against his palm, clearly terrified, but her fear meant nothing. Could mean nothing. Heeding fear meant death, certes his, and likely hers now too. They were past the point of running. She was in too deep for escape. He simply had to drag her along after him.

It was not only their lives at stake, but a kingdom.

“They will be coming here next,” he told her in a low murmur.

She nodded, once.