“First, because they can ride on your shoulder. I think all your officers should have one,” she said to Lonen.
“We can’t hear what they’re saying,” Arnon replied, bemused, as Lonen nodded at the wisdom of the plan.
Lonen clapped his brother on the shoulder. “You’d be surprised how much they can communicate non-verbally. Certainly they can alert you to problems or point you in a necessary direction.”
“And defend you with flame,” Oria added.
“I see.” Arnon mulled that over, casting a glance at the struts underpinning the platform as they descended the steps. They looked fine to Lonen, but Arnon gestured at his foreman, who at least hadn’t fled far, then pointed him at something. “Dare I ask what the big ones will be doing?”
Oria grinned, a lethal smile, full of teeth—and worthy of the most barbarous Destrye warrior woman. “They’ll be in my aerial squadron. You and your warriors will handle the Báran city guard on the ground. If the Trom dragons arrive, we’ll face them in the sky.”
“I’m still not convinced this is the best idea,” Lonen argued, fully aware of his hypocrisy—and relieved Oria hadn’t been there that afternoon for the argument with Arnon about women in battle. What she didn’t know, she couldn’t call him on, and he made sure to push thoughts of that conversation down deep where she couldn’t easily hear it. “There were a lot more Trom dragons at the Battle of Bára than I saw today of even moderately sized derkesthai.”
“I’ll be on Chuffta to lead the defense, so I’ll be using magic. And don’t forget the Great One.” Oria turned her back and held up her hair so he could unlace the gown she’d worn to dinner. Another pretty one, though not half so alluring as those figure-hugging leathers had been. “He’ll arrive when we’re ready to depart. Until then he elected to stay warm by his lava lake.”
“I’m surprised the others didn’t do that, too.”
She shrugged a little the loosening gown falling away more. “They were all curious and excited. How could I say no? But, speaking of warmth, did you—”
“Yes, yes,” he interrupted. “I set men to clearing a swath of the moat. The derkesthai are all in there with a good supply of wood lighting their bonfires.”
“Good idea,” she admitted. “I wondered what Chuffta was talking about. It sounds like quite the party. It’s not as if any golems could get past that lot.”
He pushed the gown off her pale shoulders, indulging himself in savoring the texture of her skin. Softer than silk or velvet, that slight shimmery feeling of her magic coursing through her body, her skin enticed him to savor her more and more and more. He kissed the back of her neck, exposed with her hand still holding her hair out of the way, and she hummed with pleasure.
“I don’t like the idea of you facing the Trom and their dragons without me,” he admitted, lips moving on her nape in a caress that made her shiver.
“You’re going to say that, and after you managed to convince Arnon otherwise?” she countered, stepping away and putting her fists on her hips. Her expression was fierce, but the way her copper hair fell in a cloud around her, crackling with static and catching the firelight, her full breasts bare, small nipples pink and tight—she looked far too lovely and alluring. So much so that it took him a moment to catch up to what she’d said. Arill curse it.
“You read that in my mind?” he demanded. He’d have to get better about not thinking about things she could easily “overhear.”
She smiled in triumph. “No. You actually are getting better at hiding thoughts you don’t want me to ‘overhear.’ I read it in Arnon’s mind. He kept going over the conversation in his head during dinner. Loudly. You really upset his tidy world.”
Deciding he’d do better to distract his wife than argue with her, Lonen snagged Oria around her waist, threw her over his shoulder and carried her to the bed. “I think I’d rather upset your tidy world,” he told her as she dissolved into shrieking laughter.
He tossed her on the bed, quickly ridding her of the rest of the gown. She stretched, slender arms over her head, her lovely body pale against her shining hair and the darker furs of their coverlets. Grabbing her ankles, he lifted a delicately arched foot, pressing a kiss to that spot he’d discovered undid her. She moaned, going languid in his grip, then tugged her foot free.
“Think again, Destrye,” she said, kneeling up and crawling over the bed to him. Reaching for his belt buckle, she worked to undo it, glancing coyly up at him. “I believe I made a suggestion at lunch I should follow through on.”
The memory had his already hard cock throbbing. He brushed a hand over her hair as she freed his cock and pushed his pants down. “Are you sure?” he asked, feathering fingers under her chin, coaxing her to look up so he could see her face.
She’d licked her lips, and they glistened full and wet, her eyes full of sensual desire. “Oh, yes, barbarian,” she purred. “Tonight I get to torment you. Isn’t that what a good tame witch does to appease her brutish captor?”
He began to reply in kind, but his sally choked off in his throat as her avid mouth closed over him, and his eyes rolled back in his head from the pure intensity of the sensation. Giving himself over, he let her plunder his body, wondering who in fact had captured whom.
~ 10 ~
“Good afternoon, Natly,” Oria said from her seat at the prettily set table. “Would you like tea or wine?”
The Destrye woman eyed her with suspicion, her gaze then roving over the intimate salon with its dainty table for two. “I’ve lived here my entire life and I’ve never been in this room,” she commented, hovering by the door, even though the lady who’d escorted her there had closed it discreetly.
“They call it the queen’s salon,” Oria replied easily. “I understand the Dowager Queen Vycayla rarely used it even before she withdrew to her hermitage, and it was closed off after that.”
“Vycayla was never much for afternoon tea and sweets,” Natly replied, giving those guilty items a scathing look. “I’m surprised she gave up her rooms entirely. What black magic did you have to work on her to accomplish that?”
Oria decided on wine, pouring them both some. “She called it a wedding gift, certainly a generous one. Possibly being confined here for several days by Nolan soured her on the place. She says she’s happier at the temple and my ladies seemed delighted to fix up this little salon again. It works well for me as there are vanishingly few places in this palace where I can have a conversation. Come and sit.” She added a tone of regal command, lest Natly continue to play the game of standing by the door.
After a beat—not hesitation, but a demonstration of insolence—Natly strolled to the table and sat. Taking up the metal goblet, she drank the excellent wine in one swallow, setting it down with a smile that was more of a sneer. Oria obligingly filled the goblet again, raising one brow in a dare.
If Natly wanted to get roaring drunk, Oria had plenty of wine and its effects would suit her objectives just fine. Natly, however, seemed to wise up and simply wrapped her hand around the cup, her jeweled nails flashing. “If you want to interrogate me, you’d do better with torture than wine.” Natly threw the defiant words on the table between them like a warrior tossing a blade to their opponent, hoping they’ll take it up in challenge.
Instead Oria picked up a cookie and nibbled it. Made from crushed nuts and a sugary syrup reduced from the sap of trees, the cookies had a lovely subtle sweetness unlike anything she’d had in Bára. “I don’t.”
Natly didn’t change expression, or alter the hard stare from her dark eyes, but her thoughts stuttered from their determined path. Oria wasn’t reading her, exactly—she hoped to keep that invasion as a last resort for dealing with anyone, except perhaps her husband, who deserved what he got—but when Natly was practically shouting her anger and jealousy, a change in the flow came through clearly. “You don’t what, Your Highness?”
“Ah, you do know my title,” Oria said, sipping her wine and taking another cookie. The flavors com
plimented each other well. “I didn’t think you were too stupid to be making that mistake accidentally. I don’t want to interrogate you,” she continued smoothly when Natly opened her mouth to say something she’d likely be made to regret.
“Then why did you summon me, Your Highness?” she practically snarled.
Oria pushed the plate of cookies toward her, gesturing in demonstration. “Wine and cookies.”
With an impatient huff, Natly took a cookie and ate it. Then drank down all of her wine in one swallow again. “There. May I be excused now, Your Highness?”
“No,” Oria said in a tone hard enough to freeze Natly as she scooted back her chair. “You will stay until I excuse you. More wine?”
Natly gave her a long and burning look, then held out her goblet. “Might as well, since I’m trapped here.”
Oria smiled genially, filling the goblet and topping off her own. Lifting a metal bell from the table, she rang it. “We’ll need another carafe of wine, please,” she told the lady who popped her head in. Once the door had closed again, Oria relaxed back in her chair. “I have a proposal for you, Natly.”
“Our stallion Lonen isn’t pleasing you in bed?” Natly opened her lushly lashed eyes wide in pretend shock. “I’m afraid the fault there is yours. He always satisfied me very well. Over and over. But then, I know a great deal about coaxing a man to peak performance—nothing a virgin could be expected to employ. I can’t help you, however, as women hold no interest for me. Not enough cock.” She smirked over her goblet.
Oria let her run on and wind down, waiting Natly out with amused placidity. One thing about being the magical runt of the litter with three brothers all far more proficient in magic than she, Oria had learned how to handle this kind of vicious needling. The bullies—Yar sprang to mind—fed off their victims’ pain. Without a reaction, they ran out of steam. As Natly had, now fidgeting in the face of Oria’s silence. Natly took a cookie and ate it, somewhat defiantly.
The silence between them stretched on, broken only by the lady delivering more wine. Oria thanked her and topped off Natly’s goblet. She sat back and waited patiently. It was peaceful, after a fashion, especially with Chuffta off playing derkesthai games, practically giddy to have the company of his kind. And she’d given him a pass, since he always complained so bitterly that Natly hurt his ears.
“Fine,” Natly snapped, folding her arms. “Since you’ll clearly keep me imprisoned here until I listen to whatever ridiculous idea you have, Your Highness, tell me. What is your proposal?”
“I’m glad you asked,” Oria replied with a polite smile, as if the interlude had never occurred. “This is hardly a prison. If it is, it’s far more pleasant than the cell Nolan finds himself in.”
Natly choked on her cookie crumbs, bending her head and thumping her chest. When she raised her eyes to Oria’s, hers glittered with hatred—and perhaps a bit of respect. “Do you want me to say you’ve won—is that what this is about? Gloating is so petty.”
Oria restrained the urge to comment that Natly would know. “You told me that you and Nolan used to be lovers. Do you love him still?”
With a sullen stare, Natly shrugged one shoulder, toying with her goblet. “Love,” she scoffed. “What is it anyway? An occupation for adolescents.”
“So you only offered your affections to Nolan and Lonen because you aspired to be queen?” And to Arnon and their older brother Ion before he took Salaya as his wife, from what Lonen had said.
“Is that what Lonen told you?” She lowered her gaze to her goblet. “It’s easy for you to sneer at a woman like me, I imagine, to think that I only wanted to climb the tallest tree I could. But there’s not much else for a woman of no family. I don’t have magic. I have no connections, no property or wealth. All of that is gone.”
“Lost to the Báran golems?” Oria made herself ask.
“Yes, long ago, when I was a girl. We used to be the wealthiest family in Dru, with fertile lands for ranching and farming. We even had a small township attached to the lands. Lots of water.” She gave Oria a hate-filled stare. “It’s desert now. And I have nothing to offer my children, if I ever manage to have any. So don’t sit there in your Báran arrogance and judge me for trying to be queen.”
Natly’s grief and old despair worked like corrosive acid and Oria had to shield against it. “I can save Nolan,” she said, instead of offering Natly the sympathy she’d only resent. “That’s why you’re here. I’m offering you the opportunity to be the agent of his salvation. What you choose to do with his trust from there is up to you. I can say, however, that once the war is done and Nolan returned to sanity and his rank, if you and he decide you’d like to be a Princess of Dru, then His Highness and I would sponsor your marriage in Arill’s Temple.”
Natly managed not to gape in surprise, covering it with narrow-eyed suspicion. “Why would you do that?”
“We need your help,” Oria replied simply. “And you’re obviously a woman of spirit and intelligence. Dru needs people like that to rebuild.”
Natly considered that. Her brittle attitude relaxed a bit, and shrewd interest showed through. “What would I have to do?”
After Natly left, Oria rested a moment, rallying her reserves for the next interview. Checking in with Chuffta, she asked, “What are you doing?”
“Flying!” he replied promptly. “And setting things on fire! So fun. Do you want me to come get you so you can play, too?”
“No, I have to stay here.”
“Boring meetings. Burning things is way more exciting.”
“You’re not burning anything important, I hope?”
“Of course not.” Chuffta’s mind-voice had a wounded tone. “We are not stupid Trom dragons. We’re practicing precision burning while flying in formation. Lonen told us where we could practice and gave us Mikkon to teach us. Usually Mikkon works with people on horses, so he says it’s a pleasure to work with such intelligent and ferocious creatures as us derkesthai.”
Oria didn’t know Mikkon, but he clearly had the cleverness to flatter the derkesthai. Clever Lonen to assign him, too. “Where is Lonen?”
“Running around, ordering people to do things. The city is all in an uproar, people doing all kinds of things. Shall I send a small one to bring him to you?”
A “small one.” Oria suppressed the laugh at Chuffta’s name for derkesthai the size he’d been only weeks ago. “No. I was just curious.”
Lonen had been up since dawn, planning to move the army out to the tunnel entrance. Oria had been up that long, too, verifying that Nolan’s men were telling the truth about the tunnel’s location, and clearing those stragglers who came in after the offer of clemency.
A polite knock on the door. “Your Highness? Lady Salaya is here for her summons.”
“I have to go. Have fun.” She sent Chuffta a mental caress of affection.
“I’d say the same, but ugh.”
She had to smooth her laugh into a polite smile as Ion’s widow entered the room. The tall woman looked somewhat less haggard these days. Lines of grief still bracketed her full lips, but her deep blue eyes held more interest and less angry despair. She kept her hair close-cropped in mourning, so the curls made black whorls against her lighter scalp. Without the elaborate fall of coiled hair like the others her intense eyes and arched dark brows became even more striking.
“Please make yourself comfortable,” Oria said, gesturing to the chair Natly had vacated, the plates and goblet replaced, the cookie tray once again pristine. “Would you prefer tea or wine?”
“It’s a bit early in the day for wine for me, Your Highness, so tea, if you please,” Salaya replied with perfect politeness, but something of an edge.
Relieved not to feel obliged to drink more wine—it was early in the afternoon for her to drink, too, especially when she needed a clear head for all this mental fencing—Oria poured them both tea into finely made ceramic mugs. And because Salaya possessed far more emotional reserve than Natly, Oria opened up he
r senses to the other woman, seeking the source of her worries. Ah. Salaya believed she’d be run out of the palace, her sons perhaps exiled to prevent competition for the throne from Oria’s future children.
“How are Mago and Kavon?” Oria inquired. “I don’t believe I’ve seen your sons since we returned.”
Salaya gave her a considering look as she stirred the sweet syrup into her tea. “It seemed wisest to keep them out of sight,” she replied baldly. “Though it was too much to hope they’d stay out of mind.”
Oria shook her head. “You have no cause to be concerned for their safety. Please have no fears on that account. I can tell you now that Lonen plans to officially name Mago as his heir, should he and Arnon not return from this war.”
Salaya sat back in surprise. “What of your sons and daughters, Your Highness?”
“It will be many years before any child of Lonen’s and mine is old enough to be considered for the throne. If I bear children, Lonen will address the line of succession then.”
“If?” Salaya raised her finely arched black brows.
Oria met Salaya’s gaze with frank honesty. It would be good if they could be friends. “I don’t know how well a Báran womb will accept Destrye seed. Time will tell.”
A smile tugged at Salaya’s mouth. “Fair warning: Destrye seed is strong stuff, and the men of Archimago’s line particularly… vigilant about planting it. I have no doubt you’ll find yourself with child before long.”
What a wonderful thought—though they had a war to win and survive first. “If that happy day comes, I want you to know that your sons are safe, and they will always have a place in our court and our household. When we retake Bára, we’ll need good rulers for that city, too, perhaps for the sister cities in time.”
Salaya dipped a cookie in her tea and ate it with delicate precision, studying Oria. “Then the rumors are true. Your Highnesses are taking the armies back to Bára.”
“Yes.” Oria imitated her, finding the cookie even better dipped in the hot tea.
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