The Conqueror

“Mine was Rebel.”

She smiled encouragingly. “Your horse.”

He nodded, the tension in his jawline receding somewhat. “There was little else for me, either, for a time.”

She laughed, nodding, understanding. “Wind is in his prime. Twelve years old and in the stables.” When that earned a smile from him, she returned the gesture, pleased to have made the grimness recede. “I ride him every chance I get. He is my best companion. And you, do you still ride your Rebel?”

A spasm of something passed over his face. “He died before he reached a year. In a fire. The stables burned.”

Her face dropped. “I am sorry. When?”

“I was eight.”

“Eight,” she echoed, falling silent. A grievous loss, or so it seemed. That one so steeped in strength and power could feel the loss of a treasured horse so deeply, after all these years, said much about him. About what she could trust in him.

How was it, she wondered, that after one night, one revealing conversation, she knew more about this man than she’d known about her brother or her father or any of her friends in all their years together?

“I will sorely miss Wi

nd when he is gone,” she said quietly. “Such things cannot be mended.”

“No, they cannot,” he agreed, his voice low-pitched and rough as wood smoke.

She tucked her lower lip between her teeth and pondered the covers. A minute passed, then another. It was a deep, steady silence, like the man, and she did not feel the need to fill it with idle chatter.

Then he leaned forward, his forearms resting on his thighs. His grey eyes seemed to burn through the darkness, and he said in a soft, rough voice, “Tell me something else, Raven.”

“What?”

“Tell me something else of your home. I have been gone from mine so long, it would be good to hear of one that is loved.”

His face was barely visible in the light from the brazier. Through the hemp towel over the window, only muted flashes of light seeped through the coarse weave, and she could see only the cup balanced between the fingertips of his hands, his dark head bent and watching her.

He was flaming, barely restrained, and the feeling of destiny burned down to her toes: things would happen with this man. He was riding the churning tide of a Fate he himself was carving, like an ancient Grecian god. His very being breathed ruthless, reckless chance.

He filled the Ache.

A slow, thick wave of certainty flowed over her. She sat up in the bed and wiped hair away from her face. “I once talked my father’s scribe into walking me a goodly length of Hadrian’s Wall. It was a long trek, and we were tired when we were done.”

A faint smile lifted his lips. “Along the Scottish border. You are a persuasive woman.”

“Girl. I was ten.”

He smiled more broadly and lifted his cup in a toast.

“Papa was very angry when I returned.”

“No doubt. Which was?”

“Three days later.”

He started laughing. It was low, barely audible beneath the thunder and lashing rain, but it was there, rumbling under the storm and seeping into her blood.

If making him laugh brought her such deep-rooted pleasure, what would it be like to make him love?

She almost fell out of bed at the thought.

“What other borders have you walked, Raven, when your heart feels earthbound?”