to the temple, the priestess refused to speak to me about a quest. Because I was drunk.”
He shook his head, his voice perplexed. “But she gave to you the cloak.”
A cloak that was not deep red and was soaked through, and so could not be a cloak worn by Vela’s Chosen. Of all the things the innkeeper had believed of Lizzan, only that had struck her as true—though she had not been trying to fool anyone else by wearing it.
Instead she’d been fooling herself. “The priestess only gave the cloak to spite you, I think. After you snarled at her. And because I kept pestering her for one, even though she said I was not on a quest. And Vela, too, said she would not give me a quest. But then she relented and gave to me a task, so I thought it was the same. Now I am not so certain.”
“Then you will not die in battle?” Fierce satisfaction hardened his voice. “As it should be.”
Her chest tightened. “I am not certain of that, either. Vela said that the path she would put me on was the very same path that I would choose. So whatever battle lies ahead—and whatever happens to me—is nothing that Vela will or will not do. All that she truly did was make certain that I would be near to you.”
“To protect me,” he said flatly. As if rejecting that path, too.
“Perhaps. Or perhaps it is a gift.” Lizzan was glad to have finished her supper, for now her throat felt so swollen that she could not swallow. “I would have kept running from you, Aerax. You’d sent me away from Koth alone, and when you appeared again, you hadn’t come for me. And I didn’t know then the truth of my exile, or the purpose that kept you on Koth, or that you would find me again when it was done. So it was as if the very last hope I carried with me had been destroyed, and all that I had left was lifting my family’s shame.”
Gripping her thigh, he pressed his forehead to her knee. His voice roughened in sheer agony. “Always I would have come for you—”
“I know.” She pushed her hands into his hair, urging him away from that supplicant’s pose. Nothing did he have to apologize for. “Now I know. But that is what I mean—if not for Vela’s task, I would have stayed far from you, terrified that I would be hurt worse. As it was, still I tried to stay away. Yet if this path takes me toward a battle that I will not survive . . . I want nothing more than to be with you until that day comes. After all the time we have waited and wasted, Aerax—if we only have until the first snowfall, I will take it, and be glad of every moment.”
He raised his head, and even through the dark she saw the fierce gleam in his eyes. “As will I. Have you finished your meal?”
“I have.” She set aside the pot, her blood seeming to pulse hotter and slower, her every word breathless. “Are you restrained?”
“Until our moon night,” he growled softly, his head bending to her knee again. “Spread your thighs so that I can see your need.”
“I do not know how you can see anything,” she whispered, but did as he said and let her legs fall wide.
“I see how eager you are by how quickly you open to me.” His open mouth scorched a path up her thigh. “I feel how you tremble when I touch you, and that fires my blood hotter than anything my eyes might see. Do you think you will scream?”
Breathing ragged, Lizzan shook her head. “We do not want to wake the kitten.”
His lips curved against her skin. For Caeb was already awake, purring rough and loud—but no attention did he pay to them now. He never had, as if human matings were nothing more remarkable than a fly buzzing around his head.
“It is not the kitten who will hear,” Aerax said gruffly before nipping the taut tendon of her inner thigh. “They will look to our tent as we looked through the wall at the inn. Which one would you have them see if it were you and me?”
Lust poured through her veins, hot and thick. “The brute and the boatbuilder’s wife.”
He growled softly in approval, moving higher. “It is always the brute and the boatbuilder’s wife. Tell me why,