Aleksey's Kingdom Read Online Free PDF

journey? And what a discovery it could be: the glance, the knowing, the need . I had passed a man in a street once in a small town in England and had known by the tiny glance he had given me that I could take him there and then to an inn and fuck him. Such power makes a man heady, and I had been as one drunk for many years when I had first arrived back in the land of my birth.
    So I think he had tried to tell me. I have to give him that—Aleksey did not lie, so this betrayal must be hitting him very hard. I had tied him down and cut off his access to air and sunlight just as he was beginning to taste their delights.
    I swam until I was too cold to think more and then made my way back to the cabin. Aleksey had warmed my clothes by the fire, and there was no sign of the jewels. As I dressed, I glanced at him. He was eating some smoked fish strips, his brow wrinkled as he decided whether he liked the taste. The freckles on his nose had increased over the summer. His hair was shiny and rumpled, his eyes the color of the emeralds he had been so recently handling, as if their bright beauty had leapt into his orbs and stayed there, even as they were buried back into the earth. No, I could not blame him. He was as a god, and all must fall at his feet. What deity could deny himself worship when it was so willingly given?
    “What are you thinking? You are very solemn this morning.” He did not look up. I did not think he had noticed me watching him.
    “I said I would take you to see the salmon leap. This would be a good morning for it. I was thinking of that.”
    “No, you weren’t. But you will not tell me what is on your mind until it suits you to do so.”
    Why didn’t I ask him there and then? God help me for being so weak, but I wanted a few hours more of not knowing. A few more hours of thinking he was mine.
    “Are you ready, then? Can we go?”
    I nodded. “Faelan must stay here. You will see why when we get there.”
    Aleksey folded his arms in protest at this, but as Faelan was stretched out in the warm spot I had vacated, on his back with his legs spread and not going anywhere this frosty morning, he eventually gave a rueful quirk of his beautiful lips and left him.
     
     
    W E RODE in silence, which was unusual for us, as normally I was treated to his endless chatter. It was ominous now, therefore, that he was mute. Clearly he had decided to tell me the real news he had returned from the colony with but had yet to find a kind way to break it to me. Aleksey did not have a cruel bone in his body and could not abide suffering. I actually felt sorry for him, having to be the cause of what he must know would be acute misery to me.
    I had brought a new bow I had recently fashioned, but my pleasure in it was ruined, and I could hardly be bothered to test it on a duck that flew up from the far lakeshore as we trotted through the shallows and up into the forest. When he saw the bird pass out of sight unharmed, he glanced across at me. “Is it not good?”
    “Huh?”
    He frowned and nodded at the weapon. “Does it not work? Why did you not shoot it?”
    I shrugged and took Xavier a little ahead of Boudica so Aleksey could not see my face. The ground was very uneven, and it was hard going through the forest, so nothing was particularly strange in this. Aleksey came back to my side, though, when we emerged to follow along the course of a small tributary of the larger river we were heading toward. “You were very restless last night. You should not read Johan’s letters if they remind you of Hesse-Davia so much. Let me read them, and I will filter the news for you.”
    “I was not dreaming of Hesse-Davia.”
    He glanced over, then said, exasperated, “Surely you were not back on that stupid ship again?”
    “I do not remember the ship being particularly stupid, but you may be right.”
    “So you were? Dreaming of—”
    “No, I was dreaming of what we had been talking about, the missing outpost, that is