His knuckles cracked as he balled his hands into fists, but they slowly relaxed. “You think that by trying to stop others from killing, you’ll be saving lives? You don’t even realize what you could’ve done.”
She hadn’t intended things to go the way they had, but was he this upset that she’d taken control and saved everyone? Despite the enemy light-elves and griffins—griffins!—no one had gotten killed. Could he say the same if she hadn’t intervened?
“The griffins flanked us as we were fighting the light-elves,” he said, nodding to one of the dark-elves as he rejoined everyone on the path with her. They headed deeper into the wilds to set up camp. “After you charmed us all, what would’ve happened if more enemies had ambushed us?”
If they had been immobilized, and more enemies had…
They could’ve been hurt or—
Her skin went cold, and she shivered. Although her mouth dropped open, she quickly closed it with a click. I would’ve stopped them, too.
He exhaled an amused breath. “I just spent half an hour frozen in place because you couldn’t control your power.”
Well, that… That had been different. When she felt strongly in the moment, things just happened. Like the locks opening in Roccalano. Impassioned, this time she’d wished the fighting to stop and for the aggressors to leave, and it had happened. But once the danger was over, it wasn't so simple to make her wishes come true.
“If more enemies had emerged, could you have done it again? What if you’d exhausted your power?”
I—
“We could have all died. And you would’ve been responsible.” His eyebrows drawn, he speared her with a piercing gaze.
She shifted her withers. Yes. Things could have gone badly. She'd been so desperate to prevent any more deaths that she could have caused more bloodshed; he’d made that clear to her.
But only a fool could miss what she had done. Her charm had immobilized the entire field, and because of it, no one had died. If she figured out how to control it, she, herself, could be an instrument for peace, and she was not about to walk away from that. Before, she’d wanted to reverse her Change, return to her true form and her normal life, but her years as Renato had craved the kind of power to stop violence that she had now. She wasn’t about to give up on preventing senseless death because the method wasn’t immediately perfect.
The answer isn’t to give up on trying to save lives. It’s to continue improving the method, she answered. That was what she’d do—work with Noc until she could control her abilities. She wouldn’t charm Dhuro or the other dark-elves again, but once she trained more with Noc, she would use it on their enemies if necessary to prevent deaths.
“Wrong answer.”
Wrong? She sniffed. If he was set on taking lives, and she was set on saving them, then he left her no choice but to be at odds. There was nothing left to say to him. She split away to bed down next to Noc.
As she chose a dry, grassy spot, Prince Dhuro approached with a bedroll under his arm. He laid it out next to her, descended, and rolled up his cloak before stuffing it under his head.
What was he doing? She couldn’t help but stare.
“You think I want to sleep here, Arabella Belmonte?” He grimaced, jerking his head toward a female guard who gaped at him blankly. “My queen tasked me with getting you to Gwydion’s herd, and so shall I do. I’m not about to let you get yourself killed by some human assassins and ruin everything.”
Ruin…? But he’d already closed his eyes.
Lying there, handsome and muscle bound, with his eyes closed and—more importantly—his mouth shut, she could almost understand what that female guard saw in him. Almost.
Chapter 5
He didn’t agree with Arabella Belmonte about much, but at least they were out of those dreaded marshes. Ahead, the Altobelli Mountains towered over green hills, their staggered gray peaks biting into the high-noon sky. He wouldn’t relish how long it would take to travel the meandering mountain path, steep, narrow, and rocky.
At least the air at that altitude would be fresh, crisp, a welcome respite from the stink he’d breathed in the marshes. Before the Sundering, he’d spent a lot of time topside, both as a boy with his ata and best friend Dakkar, and then as an adult, scouting, hunting, guarding spice caravans. He’d come to know humans well, a few very well, enough to learn never to trust them. Given the Sundering—when humans betrayed all the Immortal races, leaving them petrified for over two thousand years ‘til the Rift—it seemed he’d been right after all.
With a grunt, he led the way up, keeping a careful watch for any sign of enemies, whether they be the dark-elf rebels or Arabella Belmonte’s alleged assassins.
When she’d mentioned the bounty on her head for her “publications,” he hadn’t asked her about the nature of them—he’d never give her the pleasure of knowing he cared enough to be curious. But still, he had been curious, so he’d asked Noc instead.
He snatched a fistful of the grass as he climbed uphill, inhaling the crisp, fresh scent.
Nonviolence. A woman whose people worshipped war, whose family lived and breathed it for coin, wrote about the alternatives of nonviolence, their potential to resolve conflicts, and their implementation in other cultures, both human and nonhuman. And with the humans’ magic, the methods she supported weren’t ridiculous but reminiscent of the Dragon Lords’ preferred style of rulership over all Immortals before the Sundering. Using magic to usher in peace and maintain it? Not the worst idea he’d ever heard, even if it had its issues, which she had covered in long-winded thoroughness.
The peasants who fed into military recruitment would probably entertain her arguments, if they could read. And the nobility who benefited from constant skirmishing and raiding should have laughed her little treatises away, but they hadn’t. Someone had cared enough to put a bounty on her head, which meant her “little treatises” weren’t as inconsequential as he’d have assumed. They had merit, enough to make her a threat to fortunes made by nobles and their instruments of war.
But it was not his people’s way. Even when it came to his best friend, there was only one answer. Mati’s.
How could Dakkar have betrayed his own people like this, leaving them vulnerable to losing the humans’ help and potential retaliation? That wasn’t the friend he knew so well. But if Mati had said it, it had to be true. It stung like nettles.
He beckoned the cavalcade on toward the mountain path, watching them navigate the uneven rocky soil, and when his eyes met Arabella’s, she huffed and turned her head away. Ah, thank the Darkness, she wasn’t speaking to him. There was that. The brink of war and starvation, possible death on this mission, and his best friend’s betrayal wasn’t compounded by her ceaseless complaints. It had never failed to amaze him that human women believed the silent treatment was a punishment.
No, the true punishment had been taking her constant barbs and needling. If not for the four legs and horse body, he might have sworn she was a dark-elf woman. Except the sharp repartee that took place between two dark-elves usually led to a clash in the Ring… or the bedchamber. He didn’t need that kind of frustration from a unicorn. His interest began and ended with women of the two-legged variety only, for Darkness’s sake.