The Destined Queen

by Deborah Hale

  All at once, his hungry heart filled to bursting, for there stood Maura. Rumpled, travel-stained and exhausted, she was still a feast for his eyes.

  She hung back a little as if uncertain what manner of welcome she would receive. Rath ached with regret that he had ever given her cause to question. A sob caught in his throat as he surged up from his bedroll and caught her in his arms. It took every morsel of restraint he could muster to keep from crushing her in his embrace of welcome.

  “Aira!” His lips blundered over her face, eager to kiss every beloved feature. “Aira, aira, aira!”

  He seemed to have forgotten every other word he’d ever known, but the lapse did not trouble him, for he recalled the most important one. The only one he needed at the moment.

  She melted into his arms with a whimper of longing and love, both so intense they pained her. The weeks of their separation seemed like an eternity, and some long-slumbering part of him roused with ancient echoes of a reunion that even death and time had not been able to thwart.

  How long they clung to one another, trading kisses and whispering garbled endearments, Rath could not tell. But when his surprise and joy tamed enough to think of anything beyond their passionate welcome, Maura felt larger in his arms than when he’d first embraced her.

  “Come, aira.” He drew her down to his bedroll. “You look weary and you must be starved. Let me call for food.”

  “In a moment.” She smoothed back his hair in a tender, possessive caress. “Just now, I am only hungry to be near you.”

  Her gaze roved over his face, as if eager to satisfy herself he was not some elusive vision that might vanish the instant she looked away. When their eyes met and he looked deep into hers, Rath thought he glimpsed a shadow lingering there.

  Perhaps it was the reflection of his own foolish worry that their reunion might be only a dream. Or did she fear that once the passing thrill of it had faded, the earlier strife between them might return to blight their marriage?

  He would soon ease her mind on that score. “I feared I’d never see you again, aira. All these weeks I’ve longed to beg your forgiveness for how I behaved before we parted. I swear I did not lack faith in you, only in fate. I feared our love was too good to last. And I let that fear poison it.”

  Maura’s arms went around his neck and she clung to him like a rock in a storm-tossed sea. “Is that truly all it was?”

  “Is that not enough? What else could it be?” He held her close so she would not draw back, search his gaze and guess the truth if she had not already.

  “Nothing.” Her cheek nuzzled his shoulder as she shook her head. “It all seems so foolish now to have come between us when we ought to have savored our time together.”

  “The day you sailed, I came looking for you to ask your pardon. Grant it now, I beg you. I cannot bear another moment without it!”

  “You have not been without it.” She pulled away just far enough to cradle his face in her hands. “If there was anything to forgive, I did long ago. I was at least as much to blame.”

  “Never! You were being true to yourself and to our people.”

  His words did not seem to reassure her as he had hoped. “Even if you believe that, humor me with your pardon.”

  “To humor you and for no other reason.” He wrapped his hands around hers and brought each to his lips in turn. “Now let us put that all behind us, except to take a warning never again to part in anger.”

  Like the soft, pink, magical petals of a queensbalm flower, her lips blossomed into a wondrous smile. “You have a bargain.”

  They sealed their pact with a kiss that made Rath ache with the memory of every night they’d been apart. Sensing his desire, Maura slid her hand beneath his robe to fondle him with a tempting touch that kindled fire in his flesh.

  “Hold.” He spoke the word almost in a groan. “You must have food and washing water to refresh yourself after your journey. My need can wait.”

  “Can it?” Maura planted a kiss at the base of his neck, then parted her lips to swipe her tongue over flesh that tingled with his barely curbed desire for her. “I fear mine cannot.”

  The whisper of her breath on skin moistened by her tongue gave him a ticklish chill. Though he tried to resist, his hand rose and cupped the gentle fullness of her breast through her clothes. Her nipple puckered at his touch.

  With a wanton chuckle, Maura began to shed her traveling clothes. “Once quick and hot, to appease our appetites. After, I can eat and tell you of my mission.”

  Her mission, of course! Rath wanted to smack himself on the brow for not asking or even thinking of it. What kind of king let affairs of the heart distract him from such a vital matter?

  “The staff—have you brought it?” Surely if she was here it must mean she and Delyon had succeeded in their quest.

  “It was not in Venard. But we know where it is and hope to recover it soon.” Her clothes shed, she untied his robe and slipped her arms into the now-loose sleeves with his. The soft fullness of her backside settled on his lap while her bosom nestled against his chest.

  “Delyon is briefing his brother about everything that happened in Venard, as I will you…in due time.” She raised her face to his, offering an invitation he could not resist a moment longer. “There is nothing we can do about it tonight, certainly not this very moment.”

  She kissed him on the chin. “If you resist much longer, I may think you are not as pleased to see me as you claim.”

  “That will never do, will it?” A husky chuckle rumbled deep in Rath’s throat.

  They both knew that was nonsense. But it gave him an excuse to surrender to his desire without feeling like an inattentive husband and an undutiful king.

  “Very well.” He eased her back onto his bedroll. “Let me show you how much pleasure I take in being with you again.”

  His mouth closed over hers, hot and eager. Into a single, deep kiss he distilled all the regret, worry and longing that had wrung his heart during the endless weeks they’d been apart. Then he sweetened it with the joy of reconciliation to create an intoxicating brew. “And let me show you how much pleasure I can give, now that we are together again.”

  “Together.” Heat shimmered in Maura’s gaze, like the air of the Waste in high summer. “Is there a lovelier word?”

  “None that I know, aira.”

  “So the Staff of Velorken was never in Venard at all?” Rath asked a while later as Maura consumed a tray of food he’d ordered for her. “Then your going there was all a great waste and put you in danger for nothing?”

  He looked ready to throttle Delyon.

  Maura shook her head and hurriedly swallowed the food in her mouth. “If we had not gone to Venard, I’d never have found out what the Han are planning. Then everything you have done might have been for naught.”

  Nor would she have discovered the distressing truth about her parentage. She had almost swooned with relief when Rath made it clear he suspected nothing. Now that the first blissful rush of reunion had ebbed a little, she wondered how and when she would tell him…and where she would find the courage.

  “What are the Han planning that we cannot overcome?” Rath gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “When we first landed on the Dusk Coast, I would not have wanted to meet even part of their army in open combat. But that was weeks ago. Every day more Umbrians join us. We are a great host now. I believe we can beat them, even without the Staff of Velorken.”

  His brow furrowed. “Which may be just as well, for I doubt I have the wisdom to use that kind of power.”

  “I trust that you do,” said Maura. “And I fear we will need it, even with the army you have gathered.”

  She told him what she had overheard while hiding beneath the High Governor’s council table—how Rath’s army had been lured eastward to be crushed between a Hanish army from Westborne and another sent from Dun Derhan to help put down the rebellion.

  “I don’t understand.” Rath flinched as if a hard blow had hit him
from out of nowhere. “How do they know there is an uprising to put down?”

  “One of the death-mages claimed to have mastered a spell for communicating with the Imperium.” Maura described the underground chamber where she had found him with the large crystal. “It must tap some line of power that runs deep beneath the earth to carry thought messages.”

  While they were on the subject, her conscience urged her to tell Rath what else she had discovered that night. But where could she begin?

  “Thank the Giver you have returned to me, aira.” He raised his hand to graze her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Even if you had not brought this news. Even if you had no idea where to find the Staff of Velorken. Without you, the burden of playing king grinds me down. But when I have you by my side, I feel I can do whatever I must.”

  Then perhaps she had better keep silent a little longer, if Rath needed her for support and to find the staff. After all, it was not as though discovering her parentage had altered her loyalty. Her blood might be some unfortunate mingling of two enemy races, but her heart was Umbrian. Nothing would change that.

  “About the staff,” said Rath. “How did you come to figure out its true hiding place?”

  “Delyon deciphered an ancient scroll with a spell that helped me tap memories buried deep in my mind. The ones handeddown from Abrielle through all her line to my mother and through Langbard to me.”

  Rath’s eyes widened. “It is a good thing you insisted on observing the ritual of passing with Langbard the night he died. Or those memories might have been lost.”

  She had not thought of that. “It is a good thing you gave me time to do it rather than dragging me out of danger like you wanted to. It was the first kindness you ever did me.”

  “I thought it was the daftest thing I’d ever done.” Rath rolled his eyes. “I’m glad it turned out well. So what was this memory Delyon’s spell helped you uncover? Where did Queen Abrielle hide the staff if not in her castle?”

  “She did hide it in her castle,” said Maura between bites of food. “A different castle. An old castle that must have been very fine in Abrielle’s day, and not yet hemmed in by forest.”

  “Aldwood, you mean? Vang’s camp?”

  Maura nodded. “If I had not been captured by his men, I might never have recognized it when I saw it in my memory vision.” A shiver rippled through her. “It gives me the strangest feeling to look back and see how so much of what has happened to us, both good and bad, served this destiny of ours.”

  “It comforts me in a queer sort of way,” said Rath after a thoughtful silence, “to think that if some ill befalls us, there may be a hidden purpose to it. One we may only fathom later.”

  “Highness!” called the guard outside Rath’s tent. “Lord Idrygon craves an audience with you. May he enter?”

  Rath exchanged a glance with Maura. “Do you mind?”

  She tugged at the spare robe Rath had lent her to cover herself more modestly. It would be clear to anyone with eyes what they had been up to. If that came as any shock to Idrygon, too bad about him!

  “Let him enter.” She flashed Rath a mocking grin. “He has shown uncommon restraint waiting this long to barge in on us.”

  Rath chuckled and the tightness around his eyes eased. For an instant he looked like the same impudent outlaw she had lugged back to Langbard’s cottage last spring.

  “Let Lord Idrygon come,” he called back to the guard.

  The words had scarcely left his lips when Idrygon strode in. He looked just as forceful as Maura remembered him from Margyle—though perhaps more in his natural element armed for battle. If he guessed what she and Rath had been doing only a short while ago, and if he disapproved, he did not show it.

  “Highness.” He snapped a crisp bow first to Rath, then to Maura. “I have been informed of the vital news you and my brother have brought.”

  “So have I.” Rath motioned Idrygon to sit with them around the low table from which Maura had been eating. “A shame the coasts of Norest and Southmark do not have warding waters like the Islands.”

  “Aye, Highness.” Idrygon looked grim. “I had hoped by the time the Imperium got wind of the rebellion, our forces would be in control of the kingdom and ready to repel any invaders.”

  “So had I.” Rath picked up a thick slab of oatloaf and smeared it with fresh white butter. “I don’t fancy being caught between two Hanish armies.”

  “There is only one thing to do,” muttered Idrygon. “Make for this Aldwood place with all speed. The forest will provide our army with cover while Her Highness locates the staff.”

  Rath nodded as he chewed on the oatloaf. “Only one problem with that.”

  Idrygon raised one brow in an unspoken question.

  “Vang Spear of Heaven.” Rath’s tongue lingered over the name with a kind of grudging fondness. “His band of outlaws hold the castle. He won’t be fussy about handing it over to us.”

  Idrygon drummed his fingers on the tabletop, his frown deepening. “In that case, we will have to take it from him.”

  “Do you reckon he means it?” Maura asked later that night as she snuggled beside Rath on his bedroll. “About taking Aldwood from Vang?”

  “He wasn’t in jest.” Rath yawned, anticipating his first truly restful night’s sleep since leaving Margyle…and even before. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Lord Idrygon, it’s that the man hasn’t a scrap of humor in him.”

  Maura’s body vibrated with a silent chuckle. “It must run in the family.”

  “What? Are you saying Delyon has learning but no wit? I thought he was the living image of Langbard.”

  Hard as Rath tried to prevent it, an edge of his old foolish jealousy sharpened his tone. What had passed between Maura and Delyon during their dangerous quest? Had she ever turned to the handsome scholar for protection or comfort? Could that be the lingering wisp of shadow he’d glimpsed in her eyes?

  Maura punctured his suspicions with a hoot of laughter. “Rath Talward! Don’t tell me you fancied a rival in poor Delyon? Well, put your mind at ease. He’s improved a good deal from when we started out, but I’d have given anything to have you as my traveling companion, instead. The trouble he got us into!”

  As she told him how Delyon got them arrested by tearing down the Hanish sign, Rath longed to thrash the young fool for his heedlessness. Yet he could not stifle a contrary inkling of satisfaction that Maura had found Delyon more bothersome than attractive.

  “You must have felt the same way about me when we were traveling together,” said Maura, “and I kept landing us in trouble trying to help people all the time.”

  “Now and then.” Rath ruffled her hair with his cheek. “Tricking the Han into giving you a ride to Venard—that was daring. I’m not sure I’d have had the nerve to risk it.”

  Even safe in the knowledge that it had all turned out well, the thought of her taking such a chance alarmed him. But that alarm was tempered with admiration for her quick thinking and courage.

  “It’s exactly the sort of thing you would have done! That is what gave me the idea. Anytime we found ourselves in a tight spot, I’d think, What would Rath do if he were here?”

  “Soil my breeches, likely, if I’d been stuck under a table surrounded by Hanish officers and Echtroi!”

  “You would not. Just think what you’ve accomplished since you landed at Duskport. Your name is on the lips of every Umbrian, and the Han are at their wits’ end how to stop it. You’ve given people hope for the first time since the Conquest.”

  Much as he craved her approval, Rath could not claim the honor. “That was all Idrygon’s doing. I’m just an overgrown puppet who puts on a show for the crowd and does what he’s told whether he agrees with it or not.”

  “Like what, aira?”

  He did not want to burden her with all his worries on their first night back together, but the open-armed warmth of her sympathy and support seduced him, just as her touch had seduced him earlier. Before he kne
w it, he was pouring out all his misgivings—about the butchery he’d witnessed in the Hitherland, and his continued pose as superhuman legend come to life.

  “Now this business about seizing Aldwood from Vang. I am no great friend of his, but I hate the thought of using my army against our own countrymen. There must be some other way.”

  “To think I would hear you looking to solve a problem by means other than force.” Maura’s hair whispered against his shoulder as she shook her head. “Like it or not, you are more king than outlaw, now, aira. Idrygon may have given you the kernel of your fighting force to begin this rebellion, but the mainland folk who have since joined were drawn by you. Not by the trappings of the Waiting King legend, but by what it stands for. Something of King Elzaban lives on in you, and you must be true to it, Idrygon or no Idrygon.”

  Rath tightened his arms around her, silently vowing he would never push her away again. “It all makes so much more sense when I hear you say it than when all these daft thoughts are spinning around in my head. And Idrygon is so cursed persuasive. With your guidance, I will be able to make decisions I can live with and stick to them.”

  “Now that we are together again, we can support one another.” Maura sounded weary but resolute. “Even against Lord Idrygon, if need be.”

  “Agreed.” Rath pressed a kiss to her brow.

  Though the Han were poised to sweep down from the mountains and in from the coast to crush his ragtag army, he had not felt so settled in his mind for a very long while.

  Morning came far too early and with far too much noise. The beat of drums and the deep blast of horns roused the rebel army. Soon a rumble of voices filled the morning air along with the whinnies of horses. Maura clenched her eyes tight shut and burrowed deeper into Rath’s embrace, wishing she could shut her ears, too.

  Being back in Rath’s arms gave her a deceptive sense of safety. But she knew it was only an illusion. The Han would soon be closing in from both sides and it would take the fight of their lives to liberate the kingdom.

  Rath continued to snore softly. He seemed unaware of either the noise or the gathering danger. Maura wished she could let him sleep. But if she didn’t wake him, someone else would.