“Thank you.” She slipped her arms around his neck, stopping his next step, and reached up to kiss him. When she withdrew, still smiling, he pulled her back and kissed her slower, longer until she felt as if she was drowning in his kiss, dying in his arms.
Shauna tugged her sleeve. “Come on, they have wonderful pots for cooking over there.”
When Willow reluctantly withdrew again, Caleb’s smile washed over her, touching her deeply. “Go on,” he whispered. “Jonas and I will catch up with you later.”
Willow hated leaving him but for some strange reason the idea of looking at cooking pots excited her. It was like she didn’t know herself anymore. Was she a princess? Was she a planter like Caleb? Who would have ever thought Princess Willomenia would love getting her hands dirty? But she did. She was never given the chance to before.
“Look at this one!” Shauna breathed, reaching the vendor before Willow. She held up a clay pitcher exquisitely painted in peaches and blue swirls.
“Did you make this?” Shauna asked the vendor.
Willow listened while Shauna made the woman an offer. There were pots and bowls of every shape and color imaginable and Willow scanned the long table before her eyes stopped on a beautiful golden pitcher. She reached for it, and as she did, a man approached her from the side.
He was tall, with long dirty, knotted hair and his eyes seared into hers. She jumped back and almost dropped the pitcher. “I know who you are,” he said, his voice, low and raspy. “You’re the princess. Baltrasard’s daughter.”
Willow thought he would try to kill her right there on the spot for the horrors her father had inflicted on Predaria. She turned in sheer panic to find Shauna, but the woman Warrior was chatting happily with the vendor.
“I…I…” Willow’s fingers clutched the pitcher so tightly, she thought it might crack in her hands.
“He’s searching for you,” the man whispered, looking around suspiciously. “Word is that he’s terribly ill. Maybe dying even. He’s offering a nice reward to anyone who—”
The sharp pinch of a dagger at his throat snapped his mouth shut. “Get away from her or I will kill you where you stand,” Shauna’s voice left no doubt that she would do exactly as she said.
The man backed away, and then ran off, disappearing into the crowd.
“Are you all right?” Shauna turned to Willow, sheathing her dagger in her breeches.
“Yes.” Willow nodded. But her hands shook. She looked down at the pitcher. “My father is sick.”
“Come on.” Shauna pulled her arm. “Let’s go find my brother.”
Caleb and Jonas searched the village, but the man was nowhere to be found. “What did he say?” Caleb asked Willow again, scanning the crowd with smoldering eyes.
“He knew who I was and…he said my father was searching for me.” Willow’s head spun and ached. Her father was sick, perhaps dying. She had to see him. But how would she ever tell Caleb? She looked up at him and he smiled and lifted his fingers to her chestnut hair. Then he turned to Jonas.
“We have to leave Prandar. Word that she’s been found will get back to Beldar quickly and he’ll come looking for her. We’ll have to alert Prandar’s Warriors that Baltrasard’s men might try to sack the city when they don’t find her.”
Jonas agreed. Caleb took Willow’s hand and led her back toward the inn. But Willow stopped him when Jonas and Shauna were out of earshot.
“Caleb, if I go to Beldar to see him, he won’t—”
“No.”
“Just to see him, Caleb.” Willow stared up at him, her eyes filled with tears. No matter what Baltrasard did, he was her father and he might be dying. “If I let him know that I’m unharmed and happy—” Caleb was already shaking his head. “Caleb, I’ll come back to you.”
“He’ll never let you come back. No, Willow, don’t go.”
“He won’t have a choice,” she insisted. “He is dying.”
“Willow, listen to me—”
“I have very loyal servants. I’ll come back to you. Nothing can keep me away.”
“My love.” He took her face in his hands and stared into her eyes, pleading with her to listen. “You are innocent. It is you who will have no choice the moment he has you back. He will never let you come back to me. Do you understand? He will not die. Men like him do not die. Our God gives them time to turn to Him. Your father is clever. If he does let you come back to