The Fiery Crown

by Jeffe Kennedy

  This was simply ridiculous. I’d lived all my life with these strictures, and I hadn’t thought they chafed, but for the second time that day I keenly felt the absurdity of wielding the power of the crown, and yet also unable to go on a simple errand without five people to help me do it.

  “I’m going to the map tower,” I declared, standing and swallowing the remnants of my brandy before setting the glass aside. All but Ibolya deflated slightly before rallying their smiles and moving to take up their tasks. “But I’m not dressing,” I clarified.

  It was almost comical, how they turned and stared at me, the shock dissolving their carefully cheerful masks. “But … Your Highness…” Calla stammered.

  “Oh, bright Ejarat!” I tried not to laugh, then couldn’t help myself, which surprised them even further. Had I laughed out loud much, even with only my ladies? Likely not. I’d only unbent that much with Tertulyn, and she’d betrayed and abandoned me. Don’t dwell.

  “I’m wearing something more than this, just not—” I waved a hand at the massive closet that held the entirety of the public image of the queen of Calanthe. “Not that. Ibolya can assist Me and the rest of you may go.”

  Calla, no longer relieved, curtsied, bowing her head. “Your Highness, I did not mean to offend. If—”

  “You didn’t,” I said, cutting off the groveling. “Your rank is intact. Ibolya offered and I only need one person for this. Go, Lady Calla,” I added more gently. “You’ve been taking on many extra duties for Me and I appreciate your hard work. Go play or rest or whatever you do to keep looking as lovely as the dawn,” I added wryly. “The same goes for the rest of you. Tell no one, however, that I am out and about. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, I am in My chambers for the night.”

  Once they’d left, I turned to Ibolya. “You were clever with coming up with a wedding gown and less formal wig for the celebration ball—can you dress Me enough to be circumspect and not obviously who I am?”

  She smiled with cheeky mischief. “I believe I can, Your Highness.”

  * * *

  A miraculously short time later, Ibolya accompanied me out of my chambers again. I waved at my guards to remain posted there, as they would if I were still within. Mindful of Con’s dire warnings about the possibility of stealthy abductors—an eventuality Sondra had also instantly grasped, I’d noted—I asked Ibolya to walk with me. Between the two of us we ought to be able to hold off even a group of attackers long enough to shout an alarm. We were in the midst of my palace, after all, and possessed our thorns.

  I wore a simple silk cloak of deep blue, a deeply cowled hood drawn low around my face, and long, draping cuffs to cover the orchid ring, which I never removed. I didn’t think I could if I tried, until Calanthe approved of an heir, and the necessity of my passing the ring to them. Even then, it probably wouldn’t come off until I was dying. Or dead. That’s how it had been with my father, and he’d known death was coming for him. He’d only passed me the ring with his final breath.

  Or, rather, it had passed itself.

  Despite the dramatically incognito outfit, Ibolya assured me I wouldn’t stand out, as that sort of thing was often used by noble ladies traveling to assignations they wished to keep private. I had much to learn about how everyone who wasn’t me conducted their sexual affairs. The flat silk slippers felt like heaven on my throbbing feet, and my body moved with such easy grace, so cool and light without the structure of my heavy garments. I’d even left the crown behind.

  My father would be aghast, though I had no doubt—I’d heard plenty of stories—that he’d left his own crown behind on his various nocturnal escapades.

  I could, I supposed, turn down the hall we passed and follow it to the Night Court, at last observe and even sample its many delights for myself. Alas, the idea held little appeal. Perhaps I’d too strongly inured myself to that particular temptation over all the years I guarded my virginal reputation.

  Also, it wasn’t the untasted delights of the Night Court that had chased me from my rooms, but the desire to find Con. I could tell myself that he owed me this much: physical pleasure in exchange for the many irritations he caused. But following my rule of being honest with myself, I could admit that I craved him, and him alone. One of the many unsettling puzzles surrounding my baffling and difficult husband. I’d been fascinated by him from the moment he strode into my court, arrogant and unlike any man I’d ever known. If he wouldn’t come to me, then I would go to him.

  If nothing else, I’d have the advantage of taking him by surprise.

  The palace is a different place at night—particularly once the queen had retired—its atmosphere both quieter and wilder. None of us had adjusted to my changed status. I’d gone from virgin queen whose closed doors allowed licentiousness to spill through the halls unchecked, to a married woman closeted with her new lover. My formal withdrawal still signaled the end of the business of the realm for the day, so all the folk not interested in nocturnal excesses retired to the privacy of their homes and chambers also. The people that remained were fewer in number, but made up for that in revelry, the sounds of which echoed from the gardens and various salons, as well as the music, laughter, and erotic noises coming from the Night Court itself.

  The few people we passed in the main halls—most of them in states of undress and some engaged in sensual games—ignored us completely. Ibolya wore a cloak like mine and, as she’d promised, the signaled desire for anonymity meant no one bothered us, or even looked closely. They had no reason to recognize me as their queen, but I suspected that even if they did, they’d pretend not to.

  Such is the camaraderie of sensuality in the Court of Flowers. No one is shamed or judged for their proclivities. Everyone is granted whatever anonymity they seek.

  I found the sensation so liberating, so exhilarating, that I wondered why it had never occurred to me to go about as someone other than my formal self. My elaborate costumes disguised my true nature and created the image of myself that it had been ever so useful to perpetuate, but I hadn’t realized that, by establishing the queen of Calanthe so firmly in everyone’s minds, I’d also created an avenue for Euthalia—for Lia, the woman I was only with Con—to exist beyond that, outside of the queen’s tightly governed roles. If not for the ring, I might not even be recognized, a stimulating thought.

  This would be useful, I felt sure, in the battles to come—though exactly how remained to be seen. For the moment, it felt good to be someone else. I could be myself from that other world, that other time line. During the first private meeting with Con in my courtyard, I’d glimpsed the life that might have been if Anure hadn’t crushed the world in his brutal fist. If I’d grown up not having to conceal my nature, instead celebrating it, and being courted in a garden by people who saw me and not the mask I’d been forced to don …

  No. No sense indulging in wishful thinking. That was a dangerously close cousin to denial, the enemy of honesty. For the moment I could enjoy the shrouding cloak of night. Bright morning and its stark truths would come soon enough.

  Ibolya accompanied me up the long spiral of stairs to the summit of the tower. As Calla had reported, Con was indeed occupied exactly as before, inching his way along the coast of Calanthe, nose practically to the tiles as he pushed a lantern along ahead of him. At some point he’d shed the rock hammer and bagiroca, along with his cloak, boots, and all but a sleeveless vest in concession to the lamp-warmed heat captured in the dome by the breezeless night. They sat in an ungainly pile not far away. Perhaps he trusted for once that he’d perceive an attack long before it reached him.

  He’d tied back his hair, though several curling black strands escaped the tie, slipping down around his face and trailing on the floor. With his strong profile highlighted by the lamp, his expression intently focused, he looked unbearably enticing. He, however, didn’t even glance up at our arrival. “I’m not hungry,” he growled. “Go away.”

  Indeed, the food and drink arrayed on a table off to the side
appeared untouched, and whatever attendants Calla had assigned to tend Con clearly had been chased off by his surly orders. That made things easier. Slipping my cowl back, I nodded at Ibolya to excuse her.

  “I’ll wait at the foot of the tower, Your Highness,” she murmured.

  “You don’t have to. Go to your bed. Or someone else’s.”

  “I’ll wait. It’s my honor and privilege.” She slipped down the stairs again, moving soundlessly.

  I turned back to find Con sitting on his heels, hands splayed on his muscular thighs, studying me with a look between astonishment and concern.

  “Lia?” he asked. Then scrubbed his hands over his face, blinking at me as if to refocus his eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Nearly midnight,” I informed him.

  “Hmm.” He glanced out the windows as if to verify that it was indeed night, then back at me. “Why are you out … like that?”

  “I went in search of My husband, who has failed to attend My bed as promised.”

  “Yes, but you’re … you.”

  “Aren’t I always?” I arched a brow, enjoying myself.

  He frowned. “Not outside your chambers, you’re not. Is something wrong?” Full alert returning, he leapt to his feet and had his rock hammer in his hands, ready to bash whatever threatened me. Silly me for thinking an attack could take him unawares.

  “I’m fine, Conrí darling,” I purred, further aroused by the sight of muscled shoulders, ridged forearms, and strong body coiled to fight. I could channel that power into something far more interesting. Undoing the ties at my throat, I dropped the cloak, letting it puddle at my feet. Con’s gaze followed the fall of it, then roamed over my bare skin, the tense readiness in his body converting to another sort entirely.

  “You’re naked,” he said, voice hoarse, and he cleared his throat, gaze darting to the arches open to the night sky. “What if someone sees you?”

  I laughed. Laughter felt so good. I wanted to laugh and love and enjoy the scent of night-blooming jasmine on the humid air, and not think about anything. The nightmares would come soon enough. For the moment, I was free. I strolled toward him. “No one but bats are about to gaze into this tower.”

  He narrowed his eyes as I laid my hands next to his on the shaft of the rock hammer, the wood polished smooth and silky from all the years he’d wielded it, in the mines and in war. “You watched me through bats’ eyes,” he ventured, sounding bemused.

  I leaned in so my naked breasts brushed the backs of his hands. “Maybe,” I breathed, letting my lips fall open enticingly. I hadn’t put on my usual makeup, but Ibolya had added a gloss of color to my mouth, highlighted my eyes. I wasn’t without my vanity, a personal flaw but likely the least of mine. “Do you need this?” I asked, starting to lift the rock hammer out of his hands.

  “It’s heavy,” he cautioned, letting me take its weight but keeping his grip to support it.

  As the density of it sank into my arms and shoulders, I marveled that he could lift and swing it so easily. “How strong you must be.”

  His mouth quirked, not quite a smile, and he took the weight of the hammer back, carrying it to the pile and setting it down. The arrangement wasn’t as haphazard as I’d assumed, but strategically laid out in order of importance, with the haft of the rock hammer angled so as to be quickly seized. Con walked back toward me, his bare feet making no sound on the tiles. Tentative with me in a way he wasn’t with his weapon, he laid his big, rough hands on my arms, stroking down as he studied my face.

  “I thought you were mad at me.”

  “Yes, well, if we only had sex on days you hadn’t annoyed Me…” I ran my hands over the bulging muscles of his arms, savoring the softness of his skin, even the tangle of scars that marked him, and the iron strength beneath.

  “Are you here to seduce me?” he asked in his painfully blunt manner.

  Surely that was obvious? Tempted to toy with him, I made a conscious effort to dispense with games. Queen Euthalia might enjoy needling him for his uncertainty, but his lover Lia knew more about the inexperienced boy inside the intimidating warrior.

  “Yes. If you’re amenable?” I added, my tone making it into a question. How interesting—a bit of insecurity of my own. Though it was possible that he’d tired of me. We’d been thrust together by politics and expedience. Besides, I knew better than anyone that I was hardly the normal woman a man would hope to marry.

  He chuckled, a low coughing sound without music in it. “I seem to be constantly ‘amenable’ when you’re near.” He glanced down at himself ruefully, the thrust of his erection prominent in the leather pants. “I wanted you in the garden, even with hundreds of people watching. I wanted you in that useless building by the sea. I even thought about having you on this map, spread out naked on it.”

  My mouth had gone dry with wanting. “What about when you’re angry at Me?”

  “Especially then,” he answered on a growl, his mouth swooping down to seize mine in a fierce kiss. A cry of longing escaped me and I clung to him, the leather vest unexpectedly erotic on bare skin, my sensitive nipple scraping on some buckle with stinging delight. His rough beard scraped my cheeks and tender mouth, the kiss an avid feeding. I felt as if I’d been thirsty all day and finally drank, my body aching for the hands that wandered over me, hard and rough one moment, then softly stroking the next as he remembered to gentle his grip.

  I loved both.

  I strained on tiptoes to reach him, my hands behind his neck, undoing the tie that held his hair. He passed a hand between my legs, cupping my sex, groaning into my mouth. “So hot,” he muttered, stroking a finger into my folds. “So wet.”

  The climax ripped through me, stunningly fast, my humming body responding with startling immediacy to his touch. But then, the wanting had been building all day. Dropping my head back, I arched into his hand. I’d wanted him all day, too, all those times he’d described and more. “More,” I urged, and he picked me up, carrying me easily to the center of the map and laying me down over the Sapphire Mountains.

  I had to sit up a little, to move aside the long hair of the wig so I wouldn’t accidentally drag it off. I hadn’t wanted Ibolya to spend the time to glue it down properly. Con paused in the act of unbuckling his vest, watching me. “Do you have to wear the wig?”

  Pausing, I fingered the long black hair, the same I’d worn for our celebration ball, wedding night, and every night with him since. I’d thought he accepted it as the natural me. Or, at least, as close to that as I ever got. Having him say something about it disconcerted me in a strange way. “Don’t you like this one?”

  “It’s fine. Pretty, as all your finery is. But I like you best without all that.”

  Still, I hesitated, painfully unsure. Con had seen me without the wigs, but only in passing moments. The longest had been the morning after our wedding, and that had been difficult enough—and I’d been braced for it as something that had to happen. I wasn’t ready for it this time, and the prospect of taking off my wig for sex seemed like a dauntingly new level of nakedness. I didn’t really understand why he’d even want to see me that way.

  “You don’t have to,” he said, resuming taking off his vest. His dark-skinned chest flexed with his movements, the lighter scars crisscrossing his impressive physique catching the light, the strains and puckers oddly enhancing his beauty. I realized I’d frozen there, hands gripping my wig as if it might be stripped from me.

  “I don’t want to be ugly,” I whispered, and it felt like a shameful confession.

  “Oh no. No, my Lia.” He crawled over to me, face creased with compassion. Such a hard man and such a tender heart inside that scarred chest. “You are celebrated as the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  “The queen is,” I replied, my voice still quiet, as if we could be overheard. But we were as alone as I’d assured him, the tower room silent but for the song of chirping insects below, the spit of flame from the torches, and the distant murmur of my seas. “And that�
�s mostly makeup. She is the one who—”

  “You are.” He knelt beside me, framing my face in his hands, kissing me softly now, almost reverently. “That’s the reason I ask. I like seeing you.”

  I gazed back, deeply unnerved. The question was, did I want to be seen?

  “Don’t you trust me, Lia,” he asked, “at least with this small thing?”

  I nearly said it wasn’t a matter of trust, and it was far from small for me. But I also refused to hide without reason. It would be a concession to doubts and fear.

  “All right.” I shivered, though I wasn’t cold, and held still as he slid his hands up to gently pull off the wig. Tossing it aside, he returned his palms to caress my bare skull, the skin there soft and sensitive, his hands feeling nearly hot in comparison. I watched his face as he looked at me, touched me, and saw none of the revulsion I’d dreaded, and gradually I relaxed a little.

  “I see the patterns,” he said, wonder in his voice. “Like you get sometimes on other parts, like on the back of your thigh. Flower petals here.” He traced the skin lightly, then bent and touched his lips to my scalp, kissing that tender skin so I trembled. “Green leaves here. Only it feels like smooth skin.”

  “My ladies shaved My head recently. Give Me a few days and it will feel different.” Weird and rough, the stems of hair that wasn’t hair pushing through, reaching for the sun.

  “All right,” he agreed softly, echoing me. “Let it grow.”

  “I can’t.” Stricken, I stared at him, wrapping my arms around myself, as if I could hide. But something in me had been irrevocably laid open, and I couldn’t seem to cover it again.

  “Shh,” he murmured. “Don’t be afraid, my flower.” He lay down, easing me down with him and draping me over him, arms securely around me. “You’re safe with me.”

  Strangely enough, I did feel safe in that moment, cradled in the bulwark of his big body. Just as I had in the folly that morning. I refused to fool myself that sex with Con, or our marriage, meant anything more than what it did, but I did believe he’d protect me to the end of his strength. Never mind his reasons for it. His goals and mine coincided at least there, and I could trust in that, if nothing else. I didn’t have to be suspicious of the kindness Con showed me, because I’d known from the beginning what he wanted from me.