The wind breathed ice through his spirit. The ancient hills bent under the weight of the storm.
Something was waiting farther away even than the approaching storm. He could not see it, but he felt it along his skin, a prickling like sparks in the frigid air.
Down a long distance, he heard an owl’s faint call of warning.
Something is coming.
He fell hard through the shivering night air, back into the prison of his body, jerked upright as he came back to himself. Lips brushed his ear. The Salian woman leaned against him, overcome by the lassitude brought on by the drug, moaning under her breath with such a perfume of desire that he at once, all of him, came alive with shamefully intense arousal, hot and strong.
His hands strayed to the laces fastening her jacket. He felt the promise of her skin so close, only the thin layer of clothing separating her from him, all of it easily discarded. She pressed eagerly against him. He followed the movement, gaze sliding down the length of her body to the sensuous curve of her bare feet, but the twisting patterns in the rug caught his eye, seducing him along their unfolding paths. While the slave woman nibbled gently at his ear, he followed this other trail with his gaze until he ran up against the cold stare of the mothers.
They were waiting for him to bare the chink in his armor. They were waiting for him to lose face, even if it meant sending their slave to couple with him publicly as a bitch in heat seduces any nearby dog.
Every man has his weakness.
He pulled away, scrambling to his feet. The musician still sang as his companion bowed that infuriating drone on and on. “He heard thunder in the air. Tarkan heard the thunder of wings, these wings which were beating as the hunter approached. Now the heavens were full of the sound as the great creature approached.”
Was that thunder, or the boom of wind against the tents?
Abruptly, the musicians ceased, bringing silence.
The griffin warrior leaned forward to blow along the length of his iron wings; the tone that sang so softly from them was sweet and deadly.
It did not sing alone against the rising wind.
Sanglant stepped to the entrance. Hathui stood beside him as he lifted the flap and listened.
“Something is coming,” he said.
2
“ANNA! Wake up!”
A hand pinched Anna’s forearm.
“Anna! Wake up!”
“Ouch!” She sat up to find Blessing crouching on the pallet they shared. The girl’s breath misted in the air. Lying back down, Anna pulled quilt and furs up to her neck, shivering.
“Anna!” The girl’s voice was a hoarse whisper. Around them, the prince’s courtiers slept hard, some snoring, some whistling in their sleep, others still and silent as the dead.
“Something’s coming. I’ve got to go out and see what it is.”
“Your Highness!”
“Don’t call out! I command you.”
Already dressed, Blessing moved fast. She had an almost supernatural sheen to her, apparent only when it was dark—a faint suggestion not of light but of being, as though her soul could be glimpsed as a shimmer beneath the surface of her skin. By the time these muddy thoughts made sense to Anna, the entrance flap had stirred and Blessing had slipped outside into the deadly night.
She drew in a breath to shout for help. Stopped.
The last time they had let Blessing slip away, Prince Sanglant had whipped Thiemo and Matto and threatened to cast her out should she fail in her duty a second time. She still remembered the way his switch had cut into the dirt, the way grit thrown up by the force of his anger had lodged in her teeth. He would banish her and Thiemo and Matto out into the killing winter night.
Terror made her stutter out a bleat. Her voice choked off as if a hand throttled her. Shaking, she groped for her third tunic, her cloak, and furs, fumbling and clumsy as she struggled into them and fastened pins and brooches.
Thiemo and Matto had been banished to the far side of the large tent, forced by the prince to share a pallet so they would learn to tolerate each other, but the merciless cold and the seemingly endless journey had done more than this punishment to dull their anger. She crept between the pallets and sleeping figures to reach them, shaking them awake.
“Hurry! The princess is gone missing.”
She reached the entrance without mishap. The slap of the night air was cruel. It hurt to breathe, but she pushed out past the guards, scanned the dark camp, and turned on them.
“Where is the princess?” Her eyeballs hurt, stung by air so cold it seemed likely to freeze them in their sockets.
“The princess?” That was Den’s gravelly voice, though she couldn’t make out his features. “Anna, you must be sleepwalking. I’ve not seen the princess out here. She’s in her bed, and warm, unlike us. You’d best go back in.”