“Markos keeps insisting we speak to Xadom first, but he is just a power-hungry puppet. We never saw eye to eye, and I am sure that gods-forgotten bastard will do everything in his power to piss me off rather than help.” Dahr heard his own words and scoffed deeply. “He never helps.”
“Why are you doing this?” My words came out so slow, they became a whisper by the time they reached Dahr’s ears. Nevertheless, he lifted his gaze from that paper and flicked it upward to me.
“Because I am not willing to lose my mate before I have a chance to actually mate her,” he said pointedly, his fingers somehow still forming words on that paper.
“Don’t you meanoffering?” I retorted while struggling to keep my rising pulse at bay. Only then did Dahr let go of the letter, his attention fully focused on me.
“What exactly did they tell you?” His tone of voice was so harsh that it did not leave room for anything other than the truth.
“That you require an offering when you… explode.”
Dahr chuckled then, the sound beautiful, yet so out of place in the sombre surroundings I had made sure to create.
“Explode, huh?”
“Yeah,” I shook my head slightly to reinforce my meaning. “They said you explode and take out the entire territory. That they remain in lines and kill whoever manages to escape.”
Dahr pressed his lips together, not shoving away my accusation, but not defending himself either. A few seconds wilted between us until he spoke again.
“I do not explode, Nora. I am not a bomb or a grenade. What I do is channel the power of Belgarath, our god. I have been constantly doing that, once a month, since I was seventeen. The ‘offering’ you mention is the presence of a person connected to the place that needs to be encapsulated.”
I released a loud snort at the delicate way he’d put it. “Don’t you mean destroyed?”
“I have only been following orders,” Dahr tried to explain, his deep voice rough with something I could not name. Regret? Annoyance? Self-defence?
“What’s changed now?” I asked while my heart thumped inside my body, sending waves of anguish into my very bones.
“You,” Dahr said as if it was the most obvious answer.
“Me?” I huffed. “Right, the mighty Grannicus is going to give up killing because he started to fuck one of his victims,” I jolted with the crass way I had put it.
“He’s going to give up killing because he started to fall in love with one,” the man replied, the glint of his night-sky eyes flickering into my very soul.
“You don’t mean that.” He couldn’t. I started to shake my head slowly, forcing denial to overpower any other feeling but Dahr stopped my attempt.
“Isn’t that why you couldn’t kill me, Milenora? Isn’t it because you feel it too?” His words fell on me like a boulder over the surface of a smooth lake.
“No!” I snapped, forcing my body into a stand. “No, of course not! I only feel hatred for you. I despise you with every single fibre of my being!” I shouted, trying to convince myself more than I needed to convince him. Because I couldn’t be falling for this man. I. Could. Not. Be. Falling. For. This. Man.
“It’s alright, little flame,” Dahr did not move from his seat, did not show any intention of coming after me or even standing. “Take all the time you need to accept the beating of your heart. I have already accepted mine.”
I gasped in disbelief at the sheer nerve of this man. I opened my mouth to speak but he cut me off.
“I’ll be here when you do,” he threw me a wide and encouraging smile. “Then, we can talk some more and start making plans.”
“I will never!” I snapped between furious panting breaths, adrenaline spiking my blood.
“Then I guess we will never leave this tent,” Dahr stared at me intently, before he pinned his attention back to his papers and proceeded to ignore me.
For the rest of the day.
Neither Dahr nor I broke our word. He did not leave the tent for even a second and I didn’t speak to him for most of the night, let alone about something I might or might not be feeling.
Which pushed us into some difficult situations.
Such as using the necessities pot with Dahr in the tent while doing my best to hide under the dressing panel Karisha had brought for me alongside the wardrobe. For all her faults, I had sent a thousand blessings her way for giving me that little shred of privacy and some bottles of perfume that hid the unpleasant smell.
As soon as I was done and returned to the bed which I had claimed as my territory, while Dahr remained situated mostly at the table or doing some walking around the tent, the warrior pushed his head outside and called someone to clean after me.
