so quiet and cool, but as a tremor shot through him it found its answer in her and she stepped back, afraid.
“Rohan—”
He crushed her to his chest. For an instant she sobbed and clung to him, and the savagery ran like wildfire through them both. He bent her backward, curving her spine, forcing her head back, and took her lips as he intended to take her body.
She wrenched away from him panting. “No!” she spat, eyes blazing, and he slapped her so hard her head snapped around and blood trickled from her lip.
“You will not rut with me the way you did with her!” she screamed.
A dragon’s death howl poured into his brain and he staggered. There was hate in Sioned’s eyes, her fingers curling into claws that would rip his eyes out if he touched her again. Rohan choked and stumbled away from her, out onto the sand, to his knees. Nearby the victorious dragonsire beat his great, bloodied wings and soared away, leaving a broken corpse in the sand.
I am worse than a barbarian. I am a savage. All his pretenses of civilization, rationality, honor—they were nothing. He had spared Ianthe when he should have killed her, when everything demanded that he kill her—and why? For the son Sioned would never give him. He was a savage with a taste for rape, lusting to reclaim what was his, what others had taken. Lust, possession, jealousy, rape. What had he become? Only what he had been all along but had never had the courage to admit.
The hill shadows gradually stole over him, cooled the sunburned skin of his back and shoulders. He sat up, dully noting that it was only a little while after noon, with a long time to wait before starting across the Desert again. On foot. At night. When they would have a chance to survive.
He laughed then, a harsh and grating sound that snagged in his throat. Survival. What a splendid joke. He could think these things, feel these things, do these things, and still his stubborn fool of a brain told him what was necessary in order to survive. It really was hilarious. He clasped his knees to his chest and laughed, rocked back and forth, threw his head back and shouted his mirth to the sky.
Sioned huddled in the mouth of the cave, hands over her ears to shut out the horrible laughter. She ought to go to him, knew she should, but could not. He terrified her.
When she heard silence again, she forced her aching body to rise, steadying herself against the rock walls. He was pulled in around himself, head on his knees, the wound at his shoulder weeping blood in a thin, trickle down his back. Shadows pooled around him, lengthened as she watched for she knew not how long.
Finally she moved, limped across the sand. He was shaking, muscles rippling in spasms beneath his skin. She knelt, unable to speak or touch, and his head lifted. His eyes had gone dark and blank.
“We’re not going to die, you know.”
She nodded wordlessly, not understanding.
“I wanted to. But I’m too much of a coward.” A long breath shuddered out of him. “I have to live, so I can kill. There’s irony for you.”
Tears slid slowly down her cheeks. He caught one on his fingertip, stared at it for a moment. When he met her gaze, his eyes had kindled with anguish.
“I’m not worth this,” he whispered. “Oh, Sioned. What have I done?”
Chapter Twenty-six
Prince Jastri got the battle he so ardently desired on the morning after Princess Pandsala’s arrival. The High Prince’s troops engaged Lord Chaynal’s just after dawn, having crossed the river during the night at one bridge on the main road to the north and a second bridge hastily constructed much closer to the encamped armies. Chay, alerted before daybreak, nodded his satisfaction at the prospect of a fight, ordered his troops to ready themselves as silently as possible, and was waiting for the attack. His captains were frantic to assault and burn the bridges, but Chay had his own plans for them.
Prince Jastri’s horse forded the river to the south, and came north in a flanking maneuver designed to distract from Roelstra’s main thrust. Design and execution were two entirely different things. Jastri and his unseasoned troop of young highborns proved unequal to the hail of arrows and spears that greeted them a full measure before they had expected to encounter resistance. Shocked and furious, the young prince was