by C. L. Wilson
For the first time since the prince of Calberna had come to Konumarr, genuine anger glittered in his eyes, turning them from warm molten gold to something cold and hard and scary. Not scary because she feared he would hurt her. Well, maybe a little. He was lethal after all. But mostly, the look in his eyes was scary because she realized she never wanted him to look at her that way again. Ever.
“My contract with your sister cost many lives—some so dear to me their loss is a hole in my heart that will never be filled. So, no, I will not dishonor their sacrifice of my Calbernans and my friends by throwing away the right they paid for with their lives.” Each word was a sharp bite of sound that flayed her skin. “Nor will I let you dishonor your sister by breaking the conditions of her sworn oath, any more than I will let your insult your brother’s chef by refusing to appreciate the meal she has spent the last week planning and preparing to please you. You are better than that, Gabriella Coruscate. Act like it.”
Heat stung her cheeks. Her jaw dropped. The momentary pain she’d felt for his mention of lost friends—she understood the horrible ache of loss—dried up the instant he’d turned the whip of accusation on her. She couldn’t believe he’d just reprimanded her—and with such razor-edged sharpness to boot! Biting her lip, she sank back into her chair and stared pointedly at the hand shackled around her wrist until he released her. She put the napkin back in her lap. “I thought Calbernans prided themselves on never losing their temper with a woman.”
“I did not lose my temper, Gabriella. I would never do such a thing with you or any other woman. But I will not stand silent while you shame yourself by showing no care for the sacrifices, oaths, or efforts of another.”
Stung, but unable to defend herself against a truthful accusation, she sat in embarrassed silence while the servants replaced the soiled tablecloth and spattered centerpiece, wiped clean the rims of the two soup bowls, and brought Dilys a new spoon. She felt like a rude, mannerless, misbehaving child. She didn’t like the feeling one bit.
“Thank you,” she said in a subdued voice when the servants finished cleaning up her mess.
The woman who had replaced the centerpiece with a fresh vase of flowers bobbed a curtsy. “My pleasure, Your Highness,” she said.
The servants backed away to a discreet distance. An awkward silence fell.
Gabriella wouldn’t look at Dilys. She stared at the garden, a nearby butterfly, the refreshed table setting. Her fingers traced the pattern of the silverware aligned perfectly at the side of her bowl.
He sighed. “Please, try the soup, Gabriella. Ingarra created it especially in your honor. She calls it Summer’s Sweetness.”
Summer didn’t want to give in to him, but she wanted even less to hurt Ingarra by sending the soup back untouched—especially when she’d created the dish in Summer’s honor. It never occurred to her to doubt Dilys’s claim. If he said Ingarra had created the soup in Gabriella’s honor, she had.
Gabriella dipped her spoon into the bowl and brought it to her lips. Exquisite flavors burst across her tongue.
“This is delicious,” she admitted. Too good to hold a grudge because he’d made her try it. She sighed and let go of her simmering resentment.
“I told you, you would like it.” The hard glitter in his eyes had already receded, leaving them warmly golden and fixed upon her with approval and something more that set off the butterflies in her stomach.
“What’s in it?”
“A variety of fruits, nectar, spices, and I think a little magic. Ingarra would not admit it to me, but I am certain she is some sort of cooking enchantress.” White teeth flashed.
The flutters in her stomach quintupled in strength. That smile of his should be outlawed. She bent her head quickly to take another spoonful of soup, and gave a wordless murmur of pleasure. Light, sweet, fruity, tart, filled with surprise and delight, Ingarra’s concoction was amazing. Perhaps Konumarr’s chef truly could work some sort of enchantment with her cooking.
Or, perhaps, Summer thought as Dilys left off watching her to attend to his own food, the real enchantment at work was the man sitting beside her, close enough she could practically feel the warmth emanating from his fragrant skin. He smelled of exotic oils, rich and masculine and utterly enticing. The bronze of his skin was decadently dark and gleaming against the pristine white of the table linens and his equally snowy shuma. His hands were large and strong. Her gaze wandered up his arms, paused at the impressive bulge of his biceps, then swept across the even more impressive breadth of his shoulders and chest. Everything about him was large and strong.
A disturbing warmth unfurled in her belly. Since coming to Wintercraig, she’d grown used to being surrounded by giants. The shortest Winterman she’d met yet stood at least six feet tall, while Wynter himself towered well over seven, all of them as strong as they were tall, rippling with hard, powerful muscles. Yet none of them made her feel as small, as delicate, or as womanly as Dilys Merimydion did right now, just sitting beside her at a dinner table. She wanted to stroke her hands across all that naked, gleaming skin, to rediscover its silky softness and the hard swell of muscle beneath. She wanted to explore all those intriguing, iridescent tattoos, trace their swirling lines with her fingers. Taste them with her tongue. Take him inside her body again and again and again as she’d been dreaming all week. Summer squirmed a little in her seat, then glanced up to find Dilys’s gaze fixed on her with such drowning intentness that her heart slammed against her chest.
She dropped her gaze, scolding herself soundly for her abominable lack of control around him.
Summer desperately cast around for some topic of conversation to stop him looking at her like he wanted to eat her up and blurted out the first nonsexual thought that came to mind.
“Tell me about your friends who died fighting the Ice King.” Before the words had even fully left her mouth, she was flushing with equal measures of shame and horror. The Calbernan had unsettled her so badly, she’d forgotten how to make polite conversation! In no culture anywhere on Mystral was it considered acceptable to probe a guest about the recent loss of a loved one. She reached out instinctively to lay her hand upon his arm in apology. “I am so sorry! Please, forget I asked. It’s none of my business.”
Instead of taking offense, Dilys covered her hand with his own. “The question is no offense, moa myerina. Calbernans who die with honor would wish to be remembered, their victories celebrated. Besides, their deaths earned me the right to sit here beside you today, so why should you think they were none of your business?”
“I don’t mean to cause you distress. It’s clear you mourn them still.”
“Of course. I will mourn them all my life.” His thumb stroked the back of her hand, each brush a featherlight caress. “But a Calbernan’s heart is large. Though his losses may be many, so too are his joys.” He smiled. “Aanas Holokai was the oldest of my friends who fell that day. He and I were cabin boys together on our first voyage to sea. He had a bright smile and a voice that could sing birds from the sky. He had just earned his ulumi-lia”—with his free hand, Dilys brushed a finger across the swirling blue tattoo that looked like stylized waves across his right cheekbone—“and he was eager to find a liana of his own and start a family. He dreamt of a sweet, soft-spoken woman who would allow him to protect and pamper her. A woman to whom he could sing each day to bring her joy. He wanted a large family. As many children as his wife would wish to give him.”
“If he hadn’t found the liana he wanted here, would he have bought one off the slave markets?”
A shrug. “Probably. There are many women on the slave markets who are in need of devotion and care.” His jaw tightened. “Sadly, Mystral is full of barbaric brutes who treat women no better than cattle. It brings us joy to free women from such places. Even those rare few who choose not to wed a Calbernan are offered safe haven in the Isles.”
“You free the women you buy from the slave markets?”
His brows rose. “Of course. What di
d you think we did with them?” There was no offense in his tone, only curiosity.
“The obvious, of course. Your men want wives. They buy women from the slavers.” She spread her hands.
He sniffed. “No Calbernan who has earned the ulumi-lia would ever take an unwilling woman to wife, no matter how much gold changed hands. All enslaved women are freed and courted and wed to the Calbernan they choose of their own free will. Or wed to none of us, if that is their desire.”
“Yet you just told me your contract with Falcon promised you one of the Seasons in marriage.”
“Yes, and whichever one of you I chose would have come to Calberna, where I could have courted you properly, and you would have accepted me freely before we were bound in marriage.”
“Have you always been this arrogant?”
“Not arrogant,” he corrected. “Confident. There’s a difference.”
“Not much of one, from where I’m sitting.”
“I am a prince of Calberna. I have trained my whole life not only to lead our warriors to victory into battle, but also to serve and protect the women who are our heart and our true strength. I have spent years learning what women want and how to provide it to them, so that when the day came for me to find my liana, I would know how to be everything she needs. And, believe me, Gabriella, those were lessons I attended to very intently.”
Her cheeks went hot as she remembered how well he’d provided what she’d needed during their interlude in Snowbeard Falls Grotto. Ducking her head to hide her blush, she took a last spoonful of Ingarra’s Summer’s Sweetness, then nodded to the servants who’d come to clear the table in preparation for the next course. “So what will you do when your three months are up and I won’t marry you? Will you seek a wife on the slave markets?”
He tossed his head, sending the long, silky ropes of his hair flying back over his shoulders to stream down his back. “That is not a concern.”
“Don’t be so sure of that.” She tugged her hand out from under his and reached for her flute of sparkling wine.
One sleek, dark brow arched. “Ah, kalika u moa kiri, sun of my heart, before my time here is over, you will freely choose me to be your akua. You will claim me and bind me as your husband, your lover, your life’s mate, the father of your children, your helpmeet and your protector.”
She forced the corner of her mouth to curl. “In your dreams,” she scoffed and lifted the wine flute to her lips.
“Yes, Gabriella. In my dreams.” His voice dropped to that low tone that sent shudders of fire through her veins. “And in yours, too, I suspect.”
Her hand shook, making wine slosh over the crystal rim of the flute and drench her fingers. Her gaze shot to his. He couldn’t possibly know about those dreams . . . could he?
His lips curved in a knowing smile. He took the wine flute from her unresisting fingers and set it aside. Then, holding her captive with those mesmerizing golden eyes of his, he lifted her hand to his mouth and slowly licked the wine from the fingers.
Each slow, warm, moist rasp of his tongue shot through her body like an electric current, sizzling from the sensitive pads of her fingers straight to her feminine core. Still holding her gaze, he dragged her hand down to press her palm against the hot, naked skin of his chest, curving her fingers around the massive swell of his pectoral muscle.
Her mouth went dry. Sweet Halla, he felt like sin, like every wicked fantasy she could ever dream of. Rock-hard muscle beneath soft, satiny skin. Her fingers flexed and trembled against his flesh. Her whole body trembled. His mouth curved in a slow, simmering smile that made her squirm in her chair, and his golden, leonine eyes glowed with lazy, masculine satisfaction.
“Oh, yes, moa halea. You will be my liana. Of that, there is not the slightest doubt.”
Gabriella pulled her hand back. “If you’re serious about courting me, you need to stop that. There is more to marriage than sexual attraction.”
It pleased Dilys to no end that both her hand and her voice shook as she pulled away. It pleased him even more that she acknowledged the attraction between them. The mention of marriage was, of course, just a ploy, a bait to manipulate him into surrendering one of his most powerful weapons in their war of wills. But he liked that she’d mentioned it all the same. The more often she spoke of marriage, the more used to the idea she would become.
“Indeed there is,” he agreed, settling back into his chair to give the illusion of a small retreat. “I believe it is customary for couples to use their courtship to get to know one another better. Let’s start with you. I already know that most people think you are honest, even though you lie whenever it suits your needs.” She rolled her eyes, which made him laugh. “I know that you love beautiful flowers but only those with an equally beautiful fragrance, and that you are very generous—except when it comes to sharing Zephyr Hallowill’s chocolates. Those you hoard, even from your sisters.”
She gaped at him. “Who told you tha—” Her lips pursed in an exasperated scowl. “Autumn.”
He grinned. “She and I have become good friends these last few weeks.”
“Too good, it would seem,” Summer groused.
“Her first loyalty is to you. She just happens to agree that I would make an excellent husband for you.” Before consenting to help him with his pursuit of Summer, Autumn had vowed to roast him like a sausage on a stick if he ever mistreated her sister in any way. She hadn’t been joking. “My cousins and I thoroughly enjoy her company. I get the feeling it’s rare for her to have male friends, especially attractive, unmarried males in their prime.”
“Your modesty continues to leave me speechless.”
He laughed. “I was actually referring to Ari and Ryll, but thank you. ”
The servants delivered the second course, a salad of baby greens topped with sliced pears, candied nuts and apricots, and crumbled goat cheese. He waited for the servants to depart and Summer to pick up her fork before saying, “Tell me about your mother. What do you remember about her?”
Gabriella shrugged. “Not much. I was very young when she died.”
“You were seven, I believe?”
She poked at her salad. “Yes.”
Old enough to remember more than vague impressions. She had memories. She just wasn’t sharing them. “I understand she was very kind and gentle, a calming influence on your father.”
“She was.”
“I’ve heard you are very like her.”
“So people say.”
He reached for his wine, took a sip, and regarded her over the rim of the crystal flute, until the silence made her stop shoving her salad around on her plate and look up at him. Gently and without recrimination, he said, “A conversation works best when both parties actually participate, Gabriella.” Setting his glass aside, he reached across the table to take her hand. “Or should we dispense with getting to know one another and just go back to exploring our mutual sexual attraction?”
She yanked her hand back. “Yes, my mother was kind and gentle. She was probably the kindest, gentlest, most loving person I’ve ever known. She had a way of smiling that was like the sun shining in your heart. And when she laughed . . . not even the most miserable person in the world could have clung to bitter feelings after hearing her laugh. I remember the day she died like it was yesterday.” She rubbed a hand over her heart, as if it ached. “I miss her. Every day. There’s a hole in my heart where she used to be, and nothing has ever filled it. I don’t think anything ever will.”
“She sounds wonderful.”
“She was. And except for my looks, I’m really nothing like her at all.”
“Oh, I doubt that.”
She looked up at him, her blue eyes so bright against the black frame of her thick lashes and the Summerlander darkness of her skin. But for all their brightness, those eyes held many shadows, too. “No. I’m really not. Trust me on this one.”
He wanted to wrap her in his arms and kiss away her pain until all those shadows disappeared. “Ther
e has never been a creature in all Mystral with a bigger heart or a greater capacity to love than the Sirens. The intensity of their emotions was a reflection of their power, the source of it, in fact. What they loved, they loved deeply, wholly, without restraint. No one could love like that without grieving the same way. Your feelings for your mother are a perfect example, though to be honest, it’s a small miracle that you survived the grief of her death without manifesting your power in some violent way. Especially given your youth at the time. Your father couldn’t have anchored you. He would have been too wrapped up in his own grief. And your brother and sisters were too young to be of much assistance.”
“Then perhaps you’re mistaken about me being a Siren.”
He hid a smile. She was so quick to deny anything that unsettled her. So determined to cling to her masks. “Ono, moa kiri. There’s no mistake. Just another mystery. From what I’ve been taught, most Sirens don’t gain full control over their gifts until adulthood, but perhaps you somehow learned control much earlier.” He took a bite of his salad and waited for her to follow suit, before asking, “Do you recall any other traumatic loss you may have suffered before your mother’s death? Some occasion where your gifts may have manifested in such a way that the shock of it frightened you into repressing your power?”
If he hadn’t been watching for her reaction he might have missed the way her fork paused in midair, trembling slightly as her hand shook at the memory.
“Not that I recall,” she said. And there was that tone in her voice he had come to recognize. The little vibration that told him she was lying. Again.
He backed off. He’d confirmed that there had been an incident. One traumatic enough that Gabriella felt the need to lie about it even now, twenty years later.
He still needed the truth, though. He needed her to tell him about the demons of her past so he could help her exorcise them. He changed tack, trying to get at the root trouble from a different angle.
“Considering the gifts you possess, it isn’t surprising that your father eventually went mad after your mother died. For you to possess the power you do, she had to have enough Siren’s power in her to at least partially bind him to her. When that connection was severed . . . well, the fact that he survived as long as he did is a testament to his own strength. And to you. Of all of your sisters, you were the one he loved the most, weren’t you?”