Ragnar had her by the shoulders, was already pulling her to his body, when he realized exactly what he was doing. What she’d gotten him to do.

With some gods-damn nuzzling and the mere mention of chains!

Viper!

Ragnar shoved her away, and instead of being angry, she laughed. Her façade of sexual abandon slipping away to show the hardened dragoness beneath. “What’s wrong, warlord? Are chains not the way to go with you?

Do you like the coquettish ingénue more? Or the struggling virgin who keeps saying ‘no, no, no’ but really means ‘yes, yes, yes!’?” Her laughter rang out across the lake.

“What I like, princess—”

“No, no. Don’t tell me. I’ll bet you like the whole regal majesty thing, yes? Tail up, head down, ready to take one for the future survival of one’s bloodline?”

She was irritating him, and he needed to leave. “As a matter of—”

“That seemed to be,” she cut in, her tail picking up a stone and tossing it into the lake, “what your father favored.” She sat back on her haunches and raised her front claws. “Not that I’d know personally. But is that it?” she asked. “Is that what you like?” She smirked, brown eyes sizing him up, purposely going for his weakest spot. “Are we having a ‘like father like son’

moment?”

And that’s when something inside Ragnar broke. Even though he knew on some level she was merely taunting him to distract him from the questions he’d been asking, he could not hold his anger at bay. Not over this insult.

“No, princess,” he replied, his voice low. “What I like, what I’ve always liked, is someone with the ability to think, to reason, to have a life that those in the future will consider meaningful. Don’t get me wrong. I have no problems taking a working whore to bed, because I appreciate any female who understands business and the use of coin. But a vapid virgin with nothing in her head is as bad as a vapid slag with nothing in her head.

Because when the f**king ends, and all you’re left with is each other, then what do you do?” He gave a small shrug. “I guess what you do is leave. You know, before some male looks too close—and sees absolutely nothing.” He expected talons to claw across his face. They didn’t.

He expected tears, accusations of hatred. They never came.

He expected rage, storming off. None of that either.

Instead her gaze was steady, her back straight, her voice even and calm. “I guess I should be grateful you don’t have your sword tied to your back, because clearly I touched a nerve. But that’s all right.” She stepped around him. “We played a game that went too far. Now we know the boundaries.” She headed back to camp, saying as she walked, “Although if you call me a slag or whore again—I’ll have you killed. I only let my sister and mother get away with that, and that’s because they’re more dangerous than you could ever hope to be, warlord.”

She left him standing there, staring at the ground. Never before, not once in his life, had Ragnar lost control of his tongue. Words had always been his weapon as much as Magick and good steel, because most of his kin, especially his father, were unable to fight Ragnar on that level. But, he used to think with pride, he never went for the easy strike. He never used words simply to hurt, to destroy. When he used them, it was to get what he wanted.

Yet suddenly, in the middle of some Southland forest, he’d used words like his father once used his favorite warhammer. Brutally and with no care for the outcome.

Disgusted with himself, Ragnar again sat on his haunches at the water’s edge and tried hard to convince himself that the look of pain he’d seen in Princess Keita’s brown eyes was not nearly as bad as it had seemed.

Chapter Eleven

He wished he could say that for the next two days of their trip she wouldn’t speak to him, refused to look at him, that she flounced off every time he asked her a question, that she hissed at him, or told him to piss off anytime he opened his mouth.

Ragnar wished he could say Princess Keita had done all that. That she’d played the wounded royal to the hilt. Too bad her way of getting even was much more artful, much more brutal.

Keita did in fact speak to Ragnar. Very politely. When she asked for something, she always followed her request with “please.” When he told her to do something, she did it without question and followed what he said to the letter. She joined into conversation only when spoken to directly, and her replies were never too short or too long.

She kept her back straight, her head high, and even borrowed one of her brother’s books to read during their breaks.

Ragnar soon realized that Keita had become everything he’d always expected and wanted out of a proper royal princess. He also now realized how much he hated a proper royal princess. He never thought he’d miss her laugh or the way she flirted with his kin or himself, or those annoying giggles and the way she teased her brother. But he did miss all that. At the very least, he missed them from Keita.

But she’d frozen him out, hadn’t she? Like an avalanche of snow burying him beneath a cliff.

The others knew something had happened. They all watched the etiquette-correct moments between him and Keita and they knew something had changed, but none knew what. Except the Eastlander. He glared at Ragnar every time Keita’s back was turned.

Not that Ragnar blamed either the Eastlander or Keita. He’d been unable to sleep the last two nights, flinching each time he remembered what he’d said to her.