Free Bound in Darkness by Jacquelyn Frank Page B

stay here in Docking Bay,” he said suddenly. “Where we are going is very dangerous.”
    “I know it is. But you keep telling me that the rewards are worth putting my trust in Maxum’s hands.”
    “Not your trust. Never your trust,” Doisy said seriously. “Maxum has an agenda. Something is driving him. It isn’t just power and glory for him. I think that, given a choice, Maxum would sacrifice anyone who got in the way of his goals. We’re just along for the ride, plain and simple.”
    Doisy turned back to his horse, cinching his saddle, leaving Airianne to absorb that perspective for a minute.
    She had to stop equivocating, she decided sternly. She had to make a choice and stick to her choice for all she was worth. Doubt wouldn’t do her any good. But did she trust Maxum to know what he was doing?
    She was pretty sure she did. Maxum was determined to get to Thiss. There was something there that he wanted, something he thought would only take him a day to retrieve. And she was pretty certain he would go after whatever it was alone if he had to. If anything, he needed his men to help protect him from himself. She could be a part of that. The question was, did she want to?
    Well…yes. She had nowhere else to go, no obligations to anyone but herself. She had been alone in the world since she was eleven. She could and did take care of herself. And she didn’t know why, but she was up for the idea of taking care of someone else for a while. Someone needed to look out for Maxum, and for some reason she felt it should be her.
    Strange.
    Maybe it was just because he’d been sort of nice to her, buying her something new to wear, putting a roof over her head.
    Sure, he’d also been an ass, but it hadn’t been anything she couldn’t handle. No, this was the right thing to do, the right place for her to be. She was going to put herself into this venture with both feet and keep her eyes wide open.
    Besides, everyone was kind of growing on her…
    “Finally you are dressing the part.”
    There was no mistaking that nasty sneer of contempt. But Kilon’s attempt to insult her had the opposite effect than he desired. She put back her shoulders and said, “Yes. Yes, I am.”
    “I meant the part of a whore,” he said coldly. “Proud of that are you, slink?”
    “I could be the cheapest whore in town…the hungriest…the neediest…and I still wouldn’t fuck you if it meant saving my life or starving in the streets.”
    “Oh ho!” Doisy chortled.
    She heard Dru chuckling back behind his horse somewhere. Kilon’s face went hard, his eyes cold with anger as he went toe to toe with her, his unpleasant breath flowing with sour warmth over her face.
    “When we get in trouble out there—and I can assure you that there’s going to be trouble and plenty of it—when that happens and something is coming after you and the only thing between you and certain death is one of my arrows…I
am
going to fuck you. Be sure of it.”
    “Enough, Kilon,” came the barking command from over Kilon’s shoulder. “Where have you been?”
    “Out,” he said shortly.
    “I said to wait here. So we wouldn’t be held up waiting for you.”
    “I’m here now. No sense complaining about it when no one was inconvenienced.”
    “This time,” Maxum said. “I won’t let there be a next time. I’ll leave your surly ass behind.”
    Kilon didn’t say anything else. He just turned and walked over to his horse and began to saddle it. Maxum walked up to her and laid a hand on her shoulder.
    “Everything all right?”
    “It’s fine,” she said breezily. “Let’s get going. I have a feeling I’m going to get to see my first weredragon.”
    “The idea is to avoid seeing one at all costs,” he said. “One thing you don’t want to do is to get in the way of a weredragon.”
    “I kind of figured that part out.”
    “All right, men. Let’s go,” Maxum said. “We push off just after juquil’s hour, but I want us all packed aboard as