Free Love in the Time of Dragons by MacAlister Katie

surprise as Baltic stopped writhing on the ground, his eyes open and glaring at me with promised retribution. He uncurled himself, his face beautiful and deadly.
    “You . . . will . . . pay . . .” he finally managed to get out.
    “No, I think you will pay—you will take me home.” I kept my ground as he got painfully to his feet, his body hunched as if . . . well, as if he’d just taken a very hard kick to the privates. “Do you deny that I won the challenge?”
    His face worked again, and I was certain that he was going to either spit at me or strike me, but he did neither; he simply turned and slowly made his way up the stairs to where the bedchamber was located.
    The guard Matheo, after a long look at me, followed him. Pavel shook his head and gathered up Baltic’s armor before doing the same.
    Only Kostya was left with me, and he watched me with an expression that I found difficult to read.
    “You do not approve of my method of winning?” I asked him.
    He was silent for the count of six, then shook his head. “You are a woman. He is a wyvern. I would expect you to use whatever method you could to disable him. It is not how you struck the blow that you will regret.”
    “Then what?” I asked, feeling more than a little ashamed at the way I’d taken Baltic off guard.
    Slowly, Kostya smiled. “There may come a day when you wish to enjoy those parts you have this day so grievously injured.”
    Heat flooded into my cheeks as he, too, made a bow, then went outside.
    Had he seen me staring at Baltic’s mouth, and assumed I was a woman of no virtue? I couldn’t blame him if he did. I didn’t feel particularly virtuous around Baltic, not with my mind reliving over and over again that kiss in the forest.
    “By the rood,” I swore to myself. “Kostya’s right. But the saints help me, Baltic is driving me insane.”
    Guilt ate at me later, as I sat alone in a cramped bedchamber, nothing more than a closet, really, with a pallet crammed up against the eaves, a three- legged stool, and a cracked chamber pot.
    The inn boasted two rooms—this one, and the larger room that took up the remainder of the upper floor—but as it was a communal room, one containing several pallets upon which Baltic and his guards would sleep, I had been given the closet. I walked the two paces that was the available free space, turned, and paced back, listening with half an ear to the sounds coming up through the floorboards.
    Kostya had evidently made things right with the innkeeper, because earlier, when I had come in from using the privy, two lads and a frightened-looking woman were clearing away the debris left by Baltic’s fit, and shortly after that, three new benches appeared. Two hours later the locals slowly arrived, no doubt reassured that the mad lord was safely asleep upstairs. The soft murmur of conversation drifted upward, livened now and again by a hearty laugh that was stifled quickly, as if the patrons feared causing too much noise.
    “This is silly. He challenged me. He held a sword to my neck. I shouldn’t feel the least bit sorry for what I did,” I told myself, touching the spot on my neck where the sword had pierced my flesh.
    The wound wasn’t there. It had healed almost immediately, and if a thin trickle of blood hadn’t seeped into my chemise, I might have thought I imagined it. I had changed my torn clothing once Pavel brought my traveling basket, but my chemise lay on top of it, the rusty stain a glaring accusation. I rubbed at the dried blood and tried to ignore the feeling of guilt and shame.
    “It’s no good,” I said finally, and straightening my shoulders, opened the door and entered the main chamber.
    There was no light but the moonlight that came in through the shutters. I held high the candle from my closet, scanning the pallets to locate the one Baltic had chosen. To my surprise, they were all empty, all but one.
    I approached the dark shape cautiously. I couldn’t tell which man it was—a