Chapter 5
Corazon’s thigh was starting to ache from all the standing but he held it together and didn’t let it show. The bitter cold of the night and the snow had robbed him of his body heat when he’d gone to the wall to check on his men. Seeing Scarlet huddled into her cape and seemingly taking the brunt of the weather had made him react on instinct. He’d given her his flask, and his gloves had soon joined it when he’d seen how close to freezing she was. He had to do something about the winter armour. It wasn’t padded enough to provide necessary protection against the weather, especially in the slighter women of his company.
He sipped his drink, enjoying the hot burn as it slid down his throat and set his stomach on fire. It was as close to having body heat as he could get, and he was thankful to the officers who disobeyed the law to create it.
The general was laughing about something at his side, but he didn’t hear what she’d said to the other captains and he didn’t laugh. He stared at the door, thinking about the North Wall.
Thinking about Scarlet.
The more alcohol he had, the more the tiny recess reserved for her at the back of his mind grew and conquered the rest. It was this war in his mind, and a victory for her quarter of it, which had made him go to the wall in the first place.
The general had thought it admirable of him to want to check on the walls and see that there was no sign of attack tonight.
He’d been thankful that she’d shown no sign of realising the real reason he was going.
The captain of the twenty-first company, Daliel, grinned and slapped Corazon’s shoulder. He was an arrogant man who believed that the higher your company’s number, the more important you were. He would think that of course, being the leader of the company with the highest number. Sometimes Corazon wished they’d create a twenty-second company just to shut the man up.
What made it worse was that he was young, barely fifty in vampire years, and not a day over thirty in appearance. And for some reason, the ladies found him handsome.
With not a scar marking his face, fair hair and blue eyes, there wasn’t a woman whose attention he couldn’t catch.
Corazon hoped there was one woman that Daliel didn’t have a chance with.
He touched his lips with his fingertips and thought about the other night. She’d given her blood to him willingly, had given him a taste of the sweet ambrosia in her veins. He’d sensed that she’d enjoyed it, and it had left him wondering if she’d let him do it again if he asked, or even if he didn’t ask. His chest tightened and stomach tensed at the divine vision of him biting her neck.
“Corazon is a mile away,” Daliel laughed and nudged him again.
Corazon frowned and glared at him.
“Now, now, Captain Daliel, I will not have the commanding officer of this fort mocked.” General Violet placed her hand on Corazon’s arm and he looked down at it. “You are to follow his orders while here. Once the snow is cleared, your company will be transferred to the sixth garrison.”
Daliel didn’t look pleased by that. The sixth garrison was furthest from the front line and from glory. It was so far removed from the war that most saw it as a place of retreat when another garrison was taken.
The other captains laughed at Daliel’s sour expression, but none of them could outshine the high giggle of the general.
Daliel looked at her and she stopped, staring right back at him. Corazon glanced at Barlow to see whether he’d noticed it too. Barlow looked stunned. It seemed there was something happening, or something had previously happened, between General Violet and Captain Daliel. They had both been posted at the second garrison for some time and Violet had once been in command of the twenty-first.
The horn sounded for a change to the watch, snatching Corazon’s attention away. He stared at the door, waiting to see if Scarlet would make an appearance. His throat turned dry at the idea of her bringing him back his gloves and flask in front of all these people, but he relaxed when he told himself that she wouldn’t be so stupid.
She would find a way to return them in secret.
Minutes dragged past, slower than ice melted in spring, and he was still waiting for her to walk through the doors. Milton and Aradne had come, along with the other soldiers who had been on duty, but there was no sign of her. She wasn’t coming.
“If you would excuse me a moment, I have just remembered something that I need to attend to,” Corazon said to the general and forced a smile as he bowed.
He walked swiftly to the door and out into the night. Turning the corner, he stepped into the pitch black and straight onto someone’s foot.
“Bloody ow,” a female voice cursed him. “These are my best boots!”
He slid into his vampire guise to see better and realised that it was Scarlet. She was bending over, rubbing her toes through her leather boots.
“Watch where you’re going next time, you big oaf!”
He raised a brow. “Corporal Scarlet, you may not be on duty but that is no way to speak to—”
“Crap,” she interjected and straightened immediately, saluting him. “Apologies, sir.”
Corazon frowned at her and then his eyes drifted across to her exposed wrist and the marks on it. He stared at them, forgetting the world existed, and replayed the moment when he’d had his taste of her. An arrow in the thigh seemed worth it. He’d let her shoot him more often if she offered her blood in repayment every time.
“Sir?” she said.
His eyes darted to her face. “You should cover that, before it causes questions that you don’t have answers to.”
She brought her arm down and looked at her wrist, rubbing it with her thumb. What was she thinking as she did that? Did she think about it sometimes too?
She tugged her sleeve over it and buttoned it up. He noticed that she’d changed into her best uniform to match the best boots he’d just scuffed. Clearly, she wanted to make an impression tonight. She was certainly making one on him.
“I put your flask and gloves back in your quarters, sir. Thank you for lending them to me.” There was a hint of nerves in her voice and for some reason it made him smile inside.
It made him feel as though he affected her.
He only wished he had the courage to show her that she affected him too. He couldn’t though. His place in her life was as her commanding officer. Love had no part in war. They were here to carry out their duties, and he couldn’t allow himself to have feelings for her, no matter what his heart said.
“Were you going somewhere?” she said with a smile.
Corazon hesitated a moment and then frowned. Was he going somewhere? He’d been going to find her, but she’d found him instead. Now he had two options—either he made something up, or he said he wasn’t going anywhere and she’d probably realise that he had been looking for her.
“To my quarters,” he said and the smile faded from her face.
“Working this late?” she said with a sigh. “Excuse my manner of speaking, sir, but tonight is about a celebration, isn’t it? You cannot always be working.”
He was surprised by her lack of formality and the friendly taunting in her tone. Sometimes she was friendly towards him, acting as though he wasn’t her commanding officer, but she had never teased him before. He presumed the alcohol had something to do with this change in her.
“There is something there that I need to retrieve.”
She looked towards the assembly hall and then in the direction of his quarters, a small frown marrying her brows as though she was thinking hard.
“Then I will accompany you, if you do not mind. Your injuries aren’t fully healed yet and if there was an attack, you would have difficulty defending yourself.”
“You don’t have to—”
“It’s my duty as a corporal of your company, and as the soldier that caused your injuries in the first place.”
He realised that she wasn’t going to accept anything short of a direct order to stop her from coming, and ordering her to go to the party would label his actions as suspicious. His quarters were only a short walk from the assembly room, and any of the soldiers on duty could raise the alarm and help him defend the fort if there was an attack, but she seemed to want to come with him so he let her.
He started walking, keeping his eyes fixed on their destination as she finally stepped into the light of the torches that lined the main paths in the garrison. Resisting looking at her was nigh on impossible and he knew that when he finally gave up the fight, he’d find a very different looking Scarlet staring back at him.
The glimpse he’d caught of her in the darkness was enough to tell him that.
He ignored the urge and tried to think of something to speak to her about. The movements of the companies between the garrisons and dull news reports that he received on a daily basis suddenly filled his mind. There didn’t seem to be one topic of conversation that didn’t revolve around a boring and safe subject. He might as well have commented on the weather.
“It’s becoming a bit of a blizzard,” Scarlet said and he laughed internally as he realised she was having the same struggle as him.
It seemed neither of them knew how to talk friend to friend, or they were both too afraid of where it might lead.
He could lose her in the next attack, and he would grieve bitterly for his loss, but not as much as he would if he allowed himself to be closer to her. It was the same for her. Captains died all the time when leading attacks on the human settlements, and when the snow cleared a little, he would be due to lead one himself. It would be wrong of him to become intimate with her when he would only end up breaking her heart. It was better not to have loved and lost. He knew that from experience.
“My leg still hurts,” he said and she looked at him. “I think you are right and the cold has made it worse.”
He glanced at her as she looked down at his leg. He had been right. She did look beautiful tonight, with her hair pulled back and tied in an elaborate knot at the back of her head. When she looked up, he saw that black rimmed her eyes and her lips were painted. She didn’t look like the soldier he so often saw, with her helmet on wonky and her hair tumbling from beneath it. Tonight she looked like a woman, a temptress, and it was his heartstrings that she played like a harp.
“Would you like me to take another look at it?” she said, her voice a distant sound in his ears as he watched her lips move in a mixture of fascinating sweeps and curves.
Would he ever. He’d love to have her look at him again as she had the other night. He’d die to have her touch him as she had then—a gentle, tender caress that spoke of her feelings for him.
“I’ll be fine, but my shoulder might not be.”
“Oh.” Her gaze fell to the floor as she walked.
She was worrying again. Maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned his shoulder. He knew she felt responsible for that injury too.
“I can take a look at it.”
He was tempted to say yes this time, but shook his head instead. “It will heal with a little more rest.”
They reached his quarters and he realised that he’d not thought about what he was going to do once they got here. He opened the door and looked around, hoping an idea would jump out at him. What had he wanted? He’d wanted her, and he still did. He shook his head to clear it of those thoughts and removed his coat.
“It was too hot in the assembly room. I thought it best to change.” He grabbed his best coat and handed it to her. She held it patiently while he undid his tunic and stripped down to his shirt.
“Captain Corazon.”
Those words spoken on her lips stopped him as they always would.
He looked at her and she stepped forwards. He frowned as he wondered what she was going to do and then inhaled sharply when her small fingers undid the buttons of his shirt. It seemed a lady wasn’t to be refused after all. Her insistence on taking care of him was charming to say the least.
Her hands were cold against his chest when she peeled his shirt aside to reveal the wound and he struggled to hold the sigh inside and keep his eyes open as her fingers grazed the bandage that covered the wound and then his skin. It burst into flames beneath her caress and he forced himself to watch her fingers, to see the love in that touch, and memorise it.
Because this was as close as he could get to her.
“I told you it would be fine,” he whispered and she looked up at him, her lips temptingly close to his.
“I wanted to see for myself,” she whispered back at him.
He took hold of her hand, swallowed hard, and removed it from him. She stepped back when he let her go. He buttoned up his shirt and hurried into his coat. He cleared his throat, strode to the door, and then looked back at her.
“They will be wondering where I am,” he said, hoping to encourage her to move so the threads of his restraint wouldn’t have time to snap. Once they were outside again, he would be safe from his feelings, unable to take any action, but in here, he was in danger of surrendering to his desire to kiss her.
She nodded and moved past him, opening the door and stepping out into the heavy snow.
He closed the door behind him and walked as fast as he could back towards the assembly room.
“She’ll be wondering where you are.” Her voice was so quiet that he was almost convinced it was the wind.
Corazon did her the courtesy of not looking at her and acknowledging that he’d heard her words. They weren’t spoken for him. They were her heart talking to his.
Yet they stayed with him, swimming around his head and taunting him as he walked.
Scarlet thought that he liked General Violet. Did that mean she was jealous?
“I think I’ve changed my mind. I might not come after all.”
Her words stopped him in his tracks and he turned to face her. She was a short distance behind him, but the gap made the world feel colder than a deep mountain crevice in winter.
He walked back to her, studying her face and trying to see in her eyes why she no longer wanted to attend the celebration.
He was surprised to see them shining with unshed tears.
“Why?” Corazon said, resisting the urge to reach out and brush away those tears that now threatened to spill onto her cheeks.
What had upset her so suddenly?
Was it the idea of him and General Violet? He wasn’t interested in the general, but he knew he couldn’t tell Scarlet that. If he did, then he’d be letting her know that her feelings for him were clear. She wouldn’t like that. She wanted to keep them hidden, just as he wanted to hide his own, only he was doing a better job of it than her.
At least sometimes anyway.
Recently, he was slipping up more and more often.
Scarlet turned her face away, looking towards the company quarters and hiding her features in shadow. His gaze remained locked on what he could see of her profile and he wanted to take hold of her, to make her confess to what was upsetting her so he could make everything better again.
“The snow has made me tired. I’ve not slept well—”
“Then only stay a while,” he interjected.
She shook her head and he frowned when a tear slid down her cheek.
His heart battled his mind as the words rose to his lips. He wanted to give them a voice and reassure her. He only had to set them free and he could have more than just a taste.
He could have her if he would only speak and tell her that he had no interest in General Violet because he only had feelings for her.
“Corporal Scarlet—” He cut himself off, not willing to overstep the mark and order her to attend when she was so clearly out of spirits. It made him ache inside to see her like this and to be unable to do anything about it, but forcing her was only going to make her feel worse. He looked up at the sky and closed his eyes as the thick flakes of snow settled on his face. When he brought his eyes back down to her, she was looking at him again, and he held her gaze, not letting her turn away and wanting her to see the feelings behind his words. “Get some rest. You deserve it. I think I might retire myself.”
A frown flickered on her eyebrows for a moment before it disappeared. There was a hint of relief in her eyes, and he was glad that he had managed to ease her mind after all. It had been the only thing he could do. If she saw that he wasn’t going back to the celebration, then she wouldn’t worry that he was with General Violet, and maybe she would be able to get some decent sleep.
“Goodnight, Captain Corazon,” she said with a hint of a smile and then turned her back on him, walking towards her quarters.
He waited a few seconds, watching her retreating back, and then spoke loud enough for her to hear.
“Goodnight, Scarlet.”
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