The Fiery Crown

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Did I? What an interesting idea to consider. I’d been so annoyed with him after that meeting, and frustrated with myself that I couldn’t indulge in sex with him and keep up my guard enough to hold him at arm’s length. Messing with him by sending that ridiculous outfit had been an entertaining distraction from … well, everything.

  I supposed if I did have a sense of humor, I’d had little opportunity before this to exercise it. Mostly I amused myself, in the discretion of my own thoughts, having learned long ago not to reveal how truly ridiculous I found most of the court posturing. In the pitch and gravity of recent events, I’d lost some of that satirical internal voice.

  Or perhaps I’d discovered an outlet for it in my unlikely husband.

  “I’ll try to restrain Myself,” I offered.

  “Oh, don’t change the game now that I’m catching up.”

  “Is that what this is—a game?” Absurdly, it pleased me that he didn’t want me to change.

  He regarded me with alert interest. “Sometimes I think everything is a game with you.”

  “Except when it’s deadly serious.”

  “True.” His gaze wandered over my face. “I like it, that a lot of what you do is part of your little joke on the world. It makes you more human.”

  I caught my breath at the unexpected sting. Oh, how he had the power to pierce my armor. I must have looked stricken because he reached over, putting his hands around mine where I clutched the nosegay. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “Not … the real you stuff. I meant that you’re always so regal and remote…” He paused, searching for words. “Poised,” he declared with some triumph.

  “I see.”

  “I mean, knowing that you’re laughing inside at your little jokes helps me understand you.”

  Oh. That warmed my heart in another unexpected way, salved the sting. “I see. All right.”

  He didn’t move immediately. “You’re sure?”

  Con looked so earnest, eyes soft with concern in that roughly handsome face, that I couldn’t resist. And I’d missed touching him. I leaned in, tilting my head just enough to meet his lips and keep the crown balanced. The crowd roared jubilation at the kiss, showering us with flowers and delighted cries. Con slipped a hand behind my neck, holding me there a moment longer, deepening the kiss, which turned quickly hot. Laughing breathlessly, I broke off, straightening. His gaze held mine, molten gold. I wanted you in the garden, even with hundreds of people watching, his voice echoed in my head, hoarse with desire, and I trembled, the need hitting me hard and fast. Worse than ever for the one night of denial.

  “A crowd-pleaser,” I managed to say, waving out both sides of the carriage to roaring approval. A fountain of magical flowers bloomed above, jetting from Ambrose’s staff and raining down on us with soft sparkles. “I wish Ambrose wouldn’t do that,” I commented, jumping at the distraction, working to keep the pleased smile on my lips instead of letting them firm with disapproval.

  “Why not?”

  “Magic work attracts attention. I’d think the wizard would know as much.”

  Con shrugged. “Probably. But if it’s the Imperial Toad’s attention you mean, I’d guess that Ambrose knows this journey is partly designed to make sure we draw Anure’s eye.”

  I supposed he had a point. “How can he know? He wasn’t at the meeting where we discussed it.”

  “Apparently he told Sondra he’d be ready to travel to Cradysica before you even came to visit me in the map tower and I asked you about the place.”

  I tried to focus on that extraordinary information, not on what we’d done on that visit. How Con had spread me out naked on the representation of my island, sending me mindless with erotic release. Still, I had to search for words. “You’re saying Cradysica was … inevitable.”

  Con nodded, then shrugged. “I don’t know how this stuff works.”

  “When did you know that the wizard said this?”

  “Right before the meeting started. Sondra told me about a minute before you convened it.”

  I considered that with some surprise. “But you didn’t use that in your arguments.”

  He met my gaze, a raw honesty in his eyes. “I never wanted to bully you, Lia. I know I can be an ass, and I’m always sure I’m right, but I wanted to convince you we can win. I believe we can. I didn’t want to…”

  “Use predestination to push Me into capitulation?”

  Smiling slightly, he shook his head. “You’re about as easy to push around as I am.”

  I found myself smiling back, the unexpected understanding humming between us. Another shower of showy magical fireworks went up and I glared in the wizard’s direction, much good as it did.

  “I’d say you should order him not to, but we both know that Ambrose does as he likes.” Con sat back, folding his arms, muscles bulging in his shoulders beneath the closely tailored black silk and leather. He’d been so annoyed about the pastel-blue outfit my ladies had pranked him with—and so relieved to see the real one—that he’d simply put it on without comment. He looked good in those clothes, though. Deadly, physically powerful, as always, and also regal. More like the king of Oriel as he’d been destined, instead of the Slave King. “If you can figure out how to govern the wizard, you will truly be a ruler to fear.”

  He’d meant it as a joke, of course, but there was truth in that. “How did you meet the wizard?” I asked.

  Con cocked his head with a slight smile. “By my count, it’s your turn to tell me something.”

  Ah. “Is that why you told Me about the stones in your bagiroca?” And about the mines. That glimpse of horror remained in my mind, like spoiled grease I couldn’t quite cleanse from my mouth.

  “I thought, yeah, I should tell you something about me, if I’m going to ask about you.” He glanced around as the road wound higher up the hills, leaving the last of the crowds behind, the forest too dense on either side for anyone to gather. We’d have quiet until we reached the next village, and privacy. “Seems like we have time,” he noted, echoing my thoughts. “And you owe me two answers, by the way. Pay up, sweetheart.”

  I squirmed internally, wishing now that I’d let him ride a horse. Regrettable that I’d allowed a foolish moment of jealousy stop me, but I hadn’t been able to dredge up the generosity to be pleasant about Con riding with Lady Sondra. I knew they weren’t lovers, or even thought about each other as anything but comrades in arms. In some ways, that made it even worse. I possessed plenty of weapons to fight a sexual attraction. Their deep friendship … well, it was clearly nothing I understood, since Tertulyn had so thoroughly fooled me. It annoyed me that Con preferred Lady Sondra’s company and conducted easy conversations with her when I found extracting words from him akin to pulling teeth.

  Of course, I didn’t think I’d had an easy conversation with anyone in my entire life. I’d been assiduously trained never to speak of anything I hadn’t precisely determined to reveal. From my earliest utterances, my father had taught me to weigh every word before I spoke it.

  As I was doing at that very moment, Con observing me with that mocking challenge glinting in his eyes, and I wondered if he found the same difficulty conversing with me. Very likely so. All right then, he had a point that this ride was as good an opportunity as any, and that I owed him. It would be a delicate line to walk, revealing some of my abilities while keeping enough hidden to use against him, should he turn out to be my enemy, as Tertulyn had.

  “The two questions are, I believe, how I incapacitated you and how I made you feel better, yes?”

  He smiled slightly, a glimmer of admiration in it. “I love how you can do that—keep track of a conversation that way. I bet you never forget anything.”

  “You’ve spent a great deal of time learning the weight of your bagiroca and how to effectively swing that rock hammer. I’ve spent a great deal of time learning to pay attention to what people say—and what they don’t say.”

  “Heh.” He huffed out a laugh. “A warrior of wo
rds.”

  Unexpectedly flattered, I smiled at him, then set the posy on the seat next to me. “I didn’t ‘punch you with a hex’—I don’t even know what that would be—but I did reverse the flow of your life energy.” I paused, letting him absorb that. That particular ability wasn’t unique to me, so it was relatively easy to discuss.

  He frowned, reflexively rubbing the back of his skull again. “I understood the individual words, but they’re not stringing together into anything that makes sense,” he complained.

  I laughed, and tried again. “Everything alive has energy. That’s how plants grow, how we move around, and so forth.”

  “I got that.”

  “Intelligent beings focus the flow of life energy into intention.” I picked up the bouquet and handed it to him. Bemused, he took it, the flowers a delicate spray of color in his darkly scarred hands. “I formed the intention to hand you the posy, then directed My body to hand it to you. More than that, My intention communicated itself to you so that you understood I wanted you to take it.”

  He studied the flowers. “That seems like a complicated way to explain a simple thing.”

  “True, but bear with Me. When you formed the intention to hit that child with your bagiroca, I—”

  “You were in danger,” he interrupted on a growl, “and I didn’t form an intention—I acted.”

  “I know that. And while I appreciate your readiness to defend My person, I couldn’t allow a defenseless child to be harmed. You would have felt terrible about it.”

  He gave me a humorless smile, making me wonder if he would have spent a moment on regret. Perhaps not. The mines—and the war—had honed him into a remorseless killer. Something to bear in mind, no matter how charming he might be, or how hard he might endeavor to be a gentle lover as well as a passionate one. “I think you give me more credit than I’m due,” he said slowly. “I wouldn’t have given the kid a second thought if it came to a choice between your safety or theirs.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I studied him and he gazed back, face a remorseless mask. “What if you’d hurt the child then discovered the truth, that I was never in danger?”

  He shrugged, the restlessly pacing wolf in the gesture. “I’ve learned not to dwell overlong on mistakes like that. People get hurt in war, the good and bad, the young and old. What happens to people has nothing to do with their innocence or evil deeds. We might want to believe people are rewarded for doing good and punished for doing wrong, but it’s not the way of the world we live in. None of us actually get what we deserve. Which works out well for me, or I’d be dead long since.”

  I didn’t have a reply to that, uncertain what I believed—or if he was even telling me what he truly believed. I wouldn’t put it past him to take a stance to see how I’d react. “You’ve saved many people,” I said.

  “I’ve killed more. Destroyed lives and terrorized others.”

  “Are you certain? It seems to Me the exact math would be difficult to determine without an objective survey.”

  “Don’t romanticize me, Lia,” he replied after a long pause. “You’re smarter to be suspicious of me. I’m not a good man.”

  I wanted to argue that—then wondered how I’d ended up on the side of defending his actions, or of losing my resolve to observe the Rule of Suspicion with him. Certainly I didn’t romanticize anything, least of all this dangerous warrior I’d married for expediency and nothing else.

  “Besides,” he added, “we can’t save everyone.”

  “That doesn’t mean we don’t try.”

  He stared back at me, some thought moving behind those golden eyes, but he didn’t speak it. Instead, he inclined his head as if granting me a point in the game he claimed we played.

  “Back to the subject at hand,” I said crisply, aware of the irony that I was changing the conversational topic back to one I’d previously avoided. “You acted, yes, but not without forming the intention first. You’ve simply trained yourself to act on your intention so fast that you aren’t aware of a … process of deliberation, as other, less proficient fighters might have been.”

  He grunted at that, thinking it through. “And you can sense that.”

  Not a question. “Depending on the intention, yes. In this case, you formed the violent intention and initiated your attack. I simply reversed it, so that the power of your life energy you’d poured into doing that thing instead slammed back into you.”

  “Huh.” He studied me. “Violence again.”

  “Excuse Me?”

  He laughed, a voiceless huff of breath. “Your whole thing about how blood can’t be spilled in violence on Calanthe. By the way, you still haven’t explained what exactly would happen.” When I only stared back, lips pressed firmly together, Con shrugged. “I didn’t figure it would be that easy. But it’s interesting that your defensive magic hinges off violent intent—and maybe so does Calanthe’s.”

  When I still didn’t reply—it took all my effort to conceal my reaction and not reveal how very close he’d come to the truth—he smiled in grim resignation. “On to the answer you currently owe me, then. When you made me feel better—was that my life energy, or yours?”

  Clever man. “Mine. I gave you some of My well-being to ease the ache.” And salve my guilt for having to hurt him, even if I had tempered the lash of power and he’d recovered quickly.

  “You do that during sex, too, don’t you?”

  The question took me by surprise, particularly since I didn’t have an answer. I made a show of considering, however, while I thought about it. He burst out laughing, a rare full-voiced belly laugh from him. He shook a finger at me. “I got you on that one. You didn’t cover your reaction in time. You didn’t know you do that.”

  “I’m not convinced I do,” I replied coolly, though it came out on the prim side. How could I know? My only other sexual experience was with my ladies, and they were chosen for my retinue in part because they shared this ability and thus could serve as bodyguards. Though I had always found their sensual touches soothing and rejuvenating in a certain way. All except Tertulyn, who’d enjoyed pride of place without having this ability. We’d had another sort of closeness—or I’d thought we had—so I’d never really considered that difference.

  “You do,” Con confirmed, sitting back again in satisfaction. “I wondered why I always feel so good when we have sex. That explains a lot.”

  That disconcerted me even more. I couldn’t decide how I felt about it, either. “Perhaps it’s more that fucking in general feels good? There’s a reason it’s the favored pastime of so many.”

  “Yeah, well, Calanthe is different that way. You all have sex on the brain. Not everyone is that easily distracted by it.”

  “No? Weren’t you the one being mean and broody because we didn’t have sex last night?”

  He frowned. “That’s because you weren’t talking to me and I thought you were upset with me. Not because I have sex on the brain.”

  The man should know better than to give me a challenge. As we remained unobserved and well screened by the high sides of the carriage, I slowly raised the ruffled hem of my gown, easing it up my stocking-clad legs. His gaze followed the movement. With the lacy underskirts lifted away, I uncrossed my ankles and gave Con a good look at what I wore beneath—and what I didn’t. His golden eyes riveted to the view, he swore under his breath.

  “I’m sorry, Conrí,” I said sweetly, “were you explaining about how you’re not easily distracted by sex?”

  His gaze rose to mine. “It’s different with you, Lia,” he said, voice so husky that I wanted to suggest he get on his knees and put that mouth to good use.

  Tempting … but we weren’t quite alone enough for that. I dropped my skirts, arranging them and crossing my ankles again. It surprised me how much I wanted it to be true, that I was different, but believing it would be kidding myself. I did believe, though, that he’d been worried about me shutting him out. I hadn’t liked it, either. I just didn’t know how else
to handle the terrible vulnerability he evoked in me. Could I afford to be weak in front of this wolf?

  “You can’t know if it’s different with Me,” I pointed out. “I’m the only lover you’ve ever had.”

  He regarded me thoughtfully. “True. I don’t have much basis for comparison.”

  “Do you want to?” I surprised myself by asking. A serious lapse in my much-vaunted skills at carefully selecting what I planned to say.

  “Do I want to … what?” he asked slowly, keen eyes on my face.

  “Explore with other partners to form some comparisons. You could take other lovers. All the Night Court has been in anticipation of when you’ll indulge.” I couldn’t seem to stop myself, a relentless sort of self-flagellation.

  He frowned, the expression black. “I thought you were certain we travel to our doom and final defeat and that you won’t return to the palace.”

  “Theoretically then,” I said, unable to stop myself, not at all sure what I wanted to hear from him, what lonely, frightened part of my heart drove me.

  “We’re married.”

  “That doesn’t mean monogamy.”

  “I’m pretty sure it does mean that.”

  Interesting. “Why do you think that?”

  He shrugged, a bit restless. “My parents had a good marriage. Loving. Monogamous.”

  “We could always indulge together,” I suggested, aware that I was in part needling him and part testing the boundaries of this supposed loving monogamy.

  “What are we talking about here—bringing another woman into bed with us, or another man?”

  “Either. Both, if you like. Though until you got Me with a legitimate heir for Calanthe, I personally would abstain from intercourse with another man, but you could.”

  I’d shocked him. Then he considered that I might be teasing him. I saw the moment he decided to treat the suggestion seriously, just in case. “Is that what you want?”

  It shouldn’t have surprised me that he asked, but it did. I supposed I didn’t expect him to be genuinely interested in what I wanted. I also hadn’t expected him to be … hurt. Yes, he’d been hurt by my rejection the night before. “I want many things,” I temporized.