The Scourge of Muirwood (Legends of Muirwood #3)

She stiffened.

He looked at her, gazing at her face, feeling through her wild hair with his fingertips. He brushed the back of his hand across her cheek. “Do not fear my touch, Lia,” he whispered. “Your father foresaw it perfectly. I knew who Hillel was truly. Your father’s tome told me what I had to do to bind myself to you forever. When I was at Billerbeck, I shared the knowledge with the Aldermaston since I had broken the binding. I showed him the tome. He saw what was written and he agreed to perform the ceremony, binding me forever to Ellowyn Demont. We are bound, you and I, by irrevocare sigil, the same way your mother and father were bound together while they were apart, she in Dahomey and he in Pry-Ree. The orb works for me now, you noticed, because of you. Because of that binding. I share many of your Gifts. Hillel took the hetaera oaths, but she did not deceive me. I let her believe she swayed me. But I never let her lips touch mine. I am saved from the Blight.” His fingers clenched in her hair and his forehead brushed hers. “You are mine. Forever.”

With his hands tangled in her hair, he brought his mouth down on her cheek and kissed her. Then he kissed her chin. And then finally, as her heart nearly melted with fire, he kissed her mouth. It was not a soft kiss or a tender one. It was a kiss that stole her breath with its urgent claiming of her mouth. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer until their bodies touched and she leaned into him, grabbing his hair, kissing him back with every pent-up longing and feeling she had experienced. He kissed her again and again, breathing her in, clutching her as if she would float away and leave him. She trembled inside, awakened to feelings she had never experienced except in dreams. The world blurred around them for that moment, gasping and breathless. She could not believe how it made her feel. The worry and torment since he had buried her in Dahomey melted into nothingness. The agony and loneliness of winter was gone like the frost. He was there. He was hers. And they would go together to a new land and build new Abbeys together.

She thought she would faint with joy and was grateful his arms had managed to loose themselves from the tangled weave of her hair and clutched her shoulders to keep her up.

Glancing up at him, she blinked as if in a dream. “Are you saying, Colvin Price, that we are married?”

“I am,” he whispered huskily, greedily.

“But do not I get a say in this?” she asked with a teasing voice. “Am I bound forever to you then with no choice of my own?”

His eyebrows raised in mock solemnity. “You must accept the binding for it to be sacred. I suppose I was presuming…?”

Lia ran her finger down his mouth. “Yes.”

“Yes?” he asked.

“Yes, I accept it,” she answered. “I give you all that I have and all that I am.”

“Then kiss me again,” he demanded.

She was only too willing to oblige.





*





Lia awoke first before the blush of dawn lit the windows of the kitchen. After rising from the pallet, she summoned fires from the oven Leerings to warm the tiles and quickly set about making something for them to eat. She was starving and knew Colvin would be too when he awoke. For a moment, she remembered the day she had made him porridge and he had tried to guess her age without asking and how they had argued. She warmed the kettle and added some spice to the dish before tossing in the seeds to the boiling water.

As she fretted by the trestle table, she heard him shift and come away and slowly pad over to her. His chin nuzzled her neck and she smiled and trembled, enjoying the bristled feel of his cheeks and chin, the tickling feeling it caused down to her feet.

“I thought you would sleep longer,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at him.

“I was cold after you left. I want you near me…always.”

“The ships will be cramped, I imagine you will get your wish,” she said playfully. “Now, you said the Holk will meet us on the coast?”

He nodded, kissing her earlobe and making her gasp. “Please, Colvin. I do not want to burn your food. You must let me concentrate. The Holk will take us to Pry-Ree and then…?”

“We cross the mountains to Tintern and bring the Aldermaston back with us. He is the last to be saved. We will be on the boats for some time. The land we sail to is very far. Across the great ocean.”

“You said that the orb was meant to direct us there,” she continued, stirring the porridge and nodding with satisfaction at how it thickened. “The Holk will be the lead ship.” She frowned. “What about Martin? We did not speak of his part to this story yet.”