do you think you are? I’ll have your head for this, you… you…barbarian!”
Caleb laughed softly and continued on. He had been threatened by men far more dangerous than this little spoiled brat and been called stronger insults by his own sister on her best day. Though he had to admit Baltrasard’s daughter was a stunning brat. Like a pesky dream he found difficult to wake from, images of her dark eyes had already invaded his thoughts. They blazed like coals through a dense forest of sooty lashes on a face that should have belonged to a statue. Before he could stop himself, his thoughts drifted to the defiant thrust of her chin when she challenged him, and the sweet scent of cherry in her hair when he spun her toward Jonas. Sighing, he told himself that she was just another pampered, rich noble. One of many he had encountered in the years he fought to recover the land of their fathers.They would pack up what they could carry and leave. At least if Caleb had the king’s daughter, the bastard might try to contact him.
Until then, it was as he told her. She was his charge, nothing more.
Some hours later, Willow watched, tied to a column in Silvergard’s foyer, while the painted warriors finished packing up all her possessions, including her mother’s things from the times they’d spent here together.
Jonas and the slightly smaller savage, whom she discovered was indeed the Caleb the commander, whom her father had talked about, argued quietly until Jonas ran his broad hand over his mustache.
Even if she didn’t already suspect it, it was clear from her vantage point that Caleb was in charge. There was something dangerously alluring about him. The shadows from his painted mask across his eyes were like storms over aqua waters, warning her that it was not a mere man she gazed upon, but a merciless, savage Warrior. His hair positively glimmered in streaks of liquid gold beneath his scarlet bandana and fell heavily onto broad shoulders. He was more than she had ever imagined.
He spoke with the authority of a king and the self-assurance of a trained killer. Still, she would have thought the big, mean looking buffoon was Caleb, the one everyone was so afraid of.
She clenched her bound hands and yanked at the thick rope around her wrists. When Jonas passed her on his way to retrieve more of her family’s belongings, she cast him a look of disgust.
“Do you always take orders from him like an obedient hound?”
The moment the insult rolled off her tongue, she regretted it. For the man dropped his deep blue gaze on her and the piercing light in his eyes made him look every bit the bloodthirsty savage she was sure he was. She had to admit the beast didn’t look like he blinked in the face of death. His bare arms and torso rippled with glistening muscle. The leather straps that supported the mighty broadsword across his back gave him the appearance of a most fearsome fighter, but he was clearly submissive to his quiet commander.
Thankfully, the beast only glared at her for a moment, and then he smiled.
Willow felt the brunt of his insult more than if had struck her. For his expression told her that he considered her nothing but a half-wit. “Yes, I do take orders from him. And so will you from this day hence.”
“Ha!” she retorted indignantly, thrusting her chin out again. “I would rather be stripped of my clothing and sent out among the commoners.” To Willow, it was the highest mortification one could suffer, and that was why she used that particular example. She blanched a shade of sickly yellow when Jonas lifted his russet brow and hooked one corner of his thick mustache in a delighted grin.
“That, fair princess, can be easily arranged.”
Her cheeks grew red hot, her lips pulled back tight in an angry grimace of flashing white teeth. “I swear you will regret this.”
Now the thug threw his head back and laughed. “A handful of hours spent with you and I already do.”
While Jonas chuckled at her, Caleb hooked his thumbs into his thick leather belt from which hung a dagger the length of his arm. He sighed looking around the great hall with its marble floors and rich Culderian furnishings. They couldn’t carry anymore. There were paintings, vases and statues from as far north as Dianale.
“There are enough riches in this place to feed our entire village for six