Honor-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book III ]

59

When Uachi awoke to the sun beaming in through the thin walls of the tent he had shared with Diarmán, he was startled. He'd been so weary, he had not noticed how close they had been. Now, the Faelán man was curled up half an armspan away, his leg draped so close to Uachi's that they touched. In the light that filtered through the fabric walls, strands of his flame-red hair were highlighted gold, and his face was peaceful. The mischief and calculation that could so often be seen in his expression when he was awake were absent; he looked innocent.

Beautiful.

Uachi drew back slowly and sat up, trying not to wake the man. The last thing he needed was to deal with some wry commentary from Diarmán this morning. His head ached. He had been tired before, but he did not know if he had ever been quite so exhausted. The long weeks on the road, the stress of chasing after Ealin, of finding Uarria, of keeping her safe—it had all taken a dreadful toll.

He got up. There was nothing to do for his state of his clothes, so he simply shook out his tunic and wrenched it back on over his head. When he emerged into the morning, he caught the scent of cooking bacon and of tea, and his stomach lurched in his gut. He paused outside of the tent to wash his face and hands with the water that had been left for them. Then, he strode toward the fire.

There, Uarria on his knee, sat Matei. Naturally, there were no clothes in an encampment of fighting men that were suited for a girl so young, but they had found a tunic for her and she wore it with a belt tightly cinched around the waist, the rolled-up sleeves falling all the way down to her wrists. Someone had combed and braided her hair. She now sat with a strip of bacon between her hands, drowsing against Matei's chest with his arm around her. Uachi hesitated on the edge of the group.

"Come have some breakfast," said Matei. "I'll meet with my commanders soon to discuss how to proceed, and I want you fully awake."

"You should go back to the Holy City," Uachi said, taking a seat across from Matei. He reached for the pan of bacon and dragged it closer to him. "Back to your wife. Leave your orders with your captains and take your daughter home, Matei."

"I cannot leave my men within the clutches of our enemies."

Uachi cocked a brow, folding a piece of bacon into his mouth. "Well, I suppose some things never do change," he murmured. "For a few years there, I was worried you'd forgotten how to put your own boots on, sitting on that padded throne of yours."

With a wry expression, Matei tossed a water skin to Uachi. "I and the sores on my backside can assure you that the throne wasn't padded," he muttered.

Uachi chuckled, chewing his bacon. Although he joked, he had expected nothing less of Matei in times like these. The sharp contrast between the man who sat before him, refusing to leave his soldiers to fight for him, and Koren, who'd magicked himself away when things turned sour, was proof enough that Matei was ten times the leader his erstwhile brother could ever be.

Matei's gaze shifted, fixing on something over Uachi's shoulder. He turned his head to see Diarmán emerging from the tent, his heavy-lidded eyes and rumpled hair betraying his sleepiness. He had stripped off his shirt to sleep, but before emerging from his tent he had donned it again.

"I had not expected to meet you with a Narrian friend," Matei said quietly while the Faelán man was still out of earshot, consulting in an undertone with a passing soldier.

"Nor had I expected to find myself with one," Uachi muttered. "Speaking of pains in the arse."

Matei was grinning when Uachi turned his attention upon him again. Taken aback by the look on his face, Uachi felt defensive, but he could not frame any question or response before Matei was saying, "Did you not trust him with your life, you'd never have brought him into our encampment."