assistance, Princess?” he queried then called out cheerfully to Caleb. “She doesn’t want my help.”
Caleb’s expression darkened only slightly. “Then leave the tent there. She can sleep on the ground tonight, but she has three minutes left before we leave her here.”
“He means it, Princess.” Jonas warned her, looking thoroughly amused by the whole thing.
“Fine, do it then.” Willow folded her hands across her chest in defiance but watched carefully as Jonas pleated and tucked. Tomorrow, she would know how to do it herself.
They were finally ready to go. Jonas mounted first and then lifted Willow with one hand and deposited her behind him. As her hands came around the damp skin of her new escort, she crinkled her nose in utter repugnance. She would never make it to wherever in blazes they were going. Her nose kept hitting into the long scabbard of his sword.
“I think I would prefer to sit with someone else. Jarod perhaps,” she tried just before the commander flicked his reins.
“Too late now, Princess.”
Oh, where in blazes was her father and his army? Didn’t he care that the Warriors had her? She thought she would have been rescued by now. She didn’t know how much more she could take of these men. She was thankful though and surprised that they hadn’t tried to have their way with her.
They rode in silence for a little while, then, “He told me my father killed his father, is that true?” she asked Jonas hoping to break the uncomfortable silence, and once the queasiness wore off.
“Is that all he told you?” Jonas steered his stallion with one hand, the other resting easily on the hilt of a small dagger strapped to his side.
“He told me about the water.”
The man in front of her nodded. “It’s true. Your father killed his father.”
“So, he’s a man of revenge then,” Willow said, thinking out loud, though she was quickly learning that there would never be a battle with the cheerful brute with whom she rode today. Jonas often looked at her with something akin to pity in his blue eyes, sometimes humor, as if she was too daft to understand some cruel, secret joke that was being played on her.
“He avenges the land and the people living—or rather, dying on it, not his father’s death.” Jonas corrected her easily.
“That is hard to believe,” she snorted behind him. “You are all savages. You are so thirsty for blood that you cannot even release your weapon. Do you plan on using that dagger on me?”
Jonas laughed. “Not unless you try to harm him.”
Remembering the way the brute had stayed so close to Caleb when they fought against the Catchers, she didn’t doubt his warning. “Is he such a great leader that you risk your own life for him?”
“He is more than that, Princess,” Jonas told her, suddenly more serious than she had heard since she met him. “Caleb is noble. He knows his own mind and cares greatly for those who are in need. He knows the only way to save the people is to heal Predaria, and he has chosen to do so.”
Willow studied Caleb’s back as he rode a few feet ahead of them. Even from this position, with his hair reaching his shoulders, he looked more like a man than any man she’d ever known. She turned her head and looked in the other direction. “You speak of him as if you loved him.”
Jonas shrugged his massive shoulders. “I do. Our fathers were great friends. Caleb is more my brother than leader, or friend.”
“And what is your ‘brother’ going to do with me when my father does not come for me?”
“I believe he’s praying about it.”
Her jaw dropped and her eyes opened wide. “Praying? To whom?”
This couldn’t be happening. Her life was in the hands of a group of madmen! She felt dizzy. She didn’t want to touch her escort.
“To the Lord God.” He turned to smile at her.
She blinked. “Jonas.” She tried to swallow. “He’s putting my life into the hands of something I don’t believe.”
“Someone,” the barbarian corrected gently. “And trust me, lady, there is no safer place to be.”
Something in his words resonated deep within her, and for an instant she was thankful that Caleb prayed for her.
They were both quiet for a little while, and then she spoke, and her breath fell on his sword. “I don’t know why I care that he’s angry with me.” Or worse, why she was telling a savage about it.
She spied