By then Xanthe was back. She had drawn her sword. She gestured to him with her free hand. “Come on, we must go this way.”
She led him on a different, more difficult route than they had taken earlier, further upstream for a while before they cut back across the path, and through a tangled, overgrown thicket, until finally they arrived back at the cottage.
As soon as they stepped inside, she grabbed her wrist guards that held throwing knives and began to strap them on.
“I need to follow them and discover what they’re up to,” she said, in a rapid, quiet voice. “It’s possible their presence doesn’t have anything to do with us, but we need to know if they’re hunting you. As soon as I leave, I want you to bolt the door and the windows. Don’t answer if anyone knocks. There are the kitchen knives if you need weapons. I’ll return as fast as I can.”
“Don’t do this,” he said. He grabbed her by the shoulders.
She stared at him as if he were crazy. “I have to.”
“Then I’ll come with you.” He glared around the cottage. “Gods damn it, there’s only one sword.”
“Of course there’s only one sword. You are not yet healed enough to face another fight.”
“No one will refrain from attacking me because I’m not yet healed enough to face it,” he snapped. “I can hold my own if I have to.”
“Aubrey, listen to me.” Her face was fierce. “In this one thing there is no equity between us. There is only one person in the world like you, and there are dozens like me. You are the Chancellor. I am your guard. I swear to you, I will be back.”
Her words struck him like individual blows. He grabbed her and spun her around to face him, his fingers digging into her shoulders.
“No, you listen to me,” he said between his teeth. “I will not let you go out there alone. I will not remain tamely in this cottage and wait for you, without knowing whether or not you are all right, or if you may have been killed. There is no one else in the world like you, and I will not run the risk of losing you just after I found you. We go together or we stay here. Together. Either way, you choose, but that’s the only choice you’re going to get.”
Chapter Seven
Love
She stared up at him, mesmerized by the taut emotion that transformed his expression and clenched his long body. His hands felt hard as iron as his fingers dug into her shoulders, but she paid no attention to the discomfort. All she could do was hear the echo of his words resounding in her head.
“There is no one else in the world like you.”
“I will not run the risk of losing you just after I found you.”
He sounded—he sounded like he might—
By sheer force of will, she yanked herself back to the only thing that was relevant. She hissed, “I will not let anyone hurt you again, ever.”
He said, “You said yourself their presence probably doesn’t have anything to do with us. And if they are hunting for us, they will find the cottage soon enough.”
“Not if I find them first.” She raised her hands and tried to knock away his hold, but she refused to strike him hard, and he refused to let go of her. “If they are hunting for you—if they find the cottage, they can pin us in here.”
He shook her, not hard but tightly enough to snap her attention back to his face. “Stop reacting and think,” he said, still in that harsh-edged voice. “Nobody knows I’m here, just you, Tiago and Niniane and they would never breathe a word to anyone, yes?”
Her breath came hard. After a moment, she said, “Yes.”
Although his features had calmed somewhat, the tension had not left his body. He pushed her backward until she came up against the wall. He said softly, “So the only way anyone could possibly think to look here is through the wildest chance that either Tiago or Niniane let slip some very specific information. Yes?”
She didn’t know where he was going with this, but she was pretty sure she didn’t like it. She snapped, “Yes.”
He pushed his body against hers and rested his forearms on the wall on either side of her head, pinning her. Then he put his forehead to hers.
If he had been an enemy, she knew exactly what she would do to get away. A knee to the groin and a hard clip over the head with both hands locked together. That would buy her enough space and time to draw her sword.
But he wasn’t the enemy. He was the dearest thing in the world to her. Even the thought of doing violence to him caused her to feel slightly queasy.
“I’m willing to take that wildest chance and stay here with you,” he said. “I am not willing to take that wildest chance and let you go alone into a situation that might be deadly for you.”
Somehow her arms ended up around his waist. She held him in a clinch. “I cannot stay safe and guard you at the same time.”
“You’re fired,” he said immediately. He lowered his head and nuzzled her.