Don’t tarry, Miz.
Or they will all die. This last a knowing within me as certain as a sunrise. They will die.
The smoky haze before my eyes vanished, and I met the stares of everyone seated around the table.
“Your Highness?” Jeb asked cautiously, his pupils, pinpoints. Everyone else’s gaze looked much the same. What had they seen in my face?
I stood. “Colonel Bodeen, I’ll be leaving first thing in the morning, along with Kaden.” I turned to Griz, “Once you’re completely healed, you and Eben can catch up with us somewhere in Morrighan, but you can’t ride yet. I need you fit and healthy—not as an added worry.” I spoke quickly and firmly, not giving Griz or anyone else a chance to protest. “Colonel, we’ll need our horses readied and additional supplies, including weapons if you can spare them. I promise that I’ll repay—”
“What are you talking about?”
Everyone’s attention turned toward the doorway of the dining room. Rafe stood there, tall and formidable, his eyes blazing. By his strained tone, it was obvious he had heard me, but I said it again anyway.
“I was just telling Colonel Bodeen that I’m returning to Morrighan in the morning. Any doubt about the Komizar and his intentions are gone now, and I—”
“Lia, you and I will discuss this later. For now—”
“No,” I said. “We’ve already talked, Rafe, and I can’t put it off any longer. I’m leaving.”
He walked across the room and took hold of my elbow. “May I speak with you in private, please?”
“Talking is not going to change—”
“Excuse us, please,” he said to everyone as he led me out of the dining room, his grip tight on my arm. He shut the doors behind us and turned on the veranda to face me. “Just what do you think you were doing in there? You can’t go around giving my officers orders behind my back!”
I blinked, taken aback by his immediate anger. “It was hardly behind your back, Rafe. You were only gone for a few minutes.”
“It doesn’t matter how long I was gone! I return and you’re shouting orders for horses?”
I struggled to keep my voice even. “I was not shouting—as you are now.”
“If I’m shouting, it’s because we’ve gone over this already, and you don’t seem to be listening! I told you I need time.”
“And time is a luxury I don’t have. I will remind you it is my kingdom they are descending upon—not yours. I have a duty to—”
“Now?” he said, throwing his hands in the air. “Now you suddenly decide that duty matters? You didn’t seem to give a devil’s hell about duty when you left me at the altar!”
I stared at him, a hive of bees swarming in my chest, and I desperately tried to swallow my growing irritation. “I’m regrouping and moving forward with new information—just as some fool told me to do.”
He walked across the wooden veranda and then back again, his boots punctuating his growing anger. He stopped in front of me.
“I didn’t run across a whole continent and risk good officers’ lives just to let you traipse back to a kingdom where you’ll be killed.”
“You’re assuming the worst,” I said between gritted teeth.
“You’re damn right I am! You think one little lesson in swordplay and you’re ready to take on a kingdom of traitorous cutthroats?”
Swordplay? I trembled with fury at his dismissal of my abilities. “I will remind you, King Jaxon, that all of your fingers are intact now thanks to me. You think you’d be giving anyone sword lessons without them? I endured weeks of the Komizar pawing me, beating me, and sticking his tongue down my throat to save your miserable life. And I will also remind you I felled four men in our escape. You are not letting me go anywhere. Where I go and what I do is still my choice to make!”
He didn’t back down, and his eyes became molten steel burning me with their heat. “No.”
I looked at him uncertainly. “What do you mean, no?”
“You can’t go.”
An incredulous puff of air escaped from my lips. “You can’t stop me.”
“You think not?” He stepped closer, his chest as imposing as a wall. His eyes glowed like a beast’s. “Have you forgotten? I am the king of Dalbreck,” he growled. “And I decide who comes and goes here.”