Hers to Claim (Verdantia Book 4)

by Patricia A. Knight

  For the first time in a decade, a woman sparked his intellectual and physical interest. She was a rarity in his world, a creature without artifice. There was no pretense or falseness in her. She was real. He couldn’t explain his physical attraction, but he’d felt its magnetic pull from the first time they’d locked eyes in the palace hall. In another world, in an earlier time, he would have won her to him with the attention a woman of her obvious high caliber deserved.

  Their first time together would have been in a warm room on a soft bed where time had no meaning—not on the rough, rocky ground in a rushed rite he’d performed mechanically, knowing their lives depended on the outcome. He would have seduced her into the erotic world his particular carnality demanded and reveled in the passionate response he knew he could draw from her. She would submit to him gladly. The Goddess had created her for it. The woman gloried in serving.

  Sadly, his world was not that world any longer. Brutal practicality stripped his relationships of any niceties and turned sex into another duty performed for those who looked to him for protection. He had done his best to make Adonia’s first time with him easy for her. He’d gone hours out of their way to find the thermal springs. It was the most he could offer her now. His present situation infuriated him. It was as if their Great Mother decreed he could have nothing for his own. He hurled the thought away on a silent snarl. I am going to keep this woman.

  “Adonia, stop.” The tall brunette had almost reached the split in the rock. At his barked order, she stopped and stood, head down, arms wrapped around her waist as if she held the pieces of herself together. The glorious, walnut brown fall of her hair hid her face. Hel strode toward her and held the radiant diaman crystals in front of her, cupping the cloth with two hands.

  “Look at this, Nia. This is your doing. The four of us and our mounts will sleep protected tonight because of you.” Hel closed one hand around the neck of the cloth and reached for her. “Adonia, look at me.” She tilted her head up and gradually brought her velvet brown eyes to meet his. “Nia…” He shook his head at the visible confusion and hurt in her eyes. Damnation, I hate beginning like this. He wanted to share with her his own desires and frustrations—but it was too soon. He would frighten her more. “A healer’s first duty is to save lives. You have done that. Hmm?”

  She took a shuddering breath then straightened. “Yes. I did.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, and if possible, more somber. “I’m a healer. I’ve performed my duty. Thank you for reminding me.”

  “Yes…well, we’d better get back to the others. We must set our perimeter before dark falls.” She nodded readily enough, but somehow, Hel felt he’d taken another wrong step with her.

  Ramsey was tethering three of their horses to a high-line strung between two trees and looked over his shoulder at them when they emerged from the split in the rock face. A smile began then broadened into a white-toothed grin. Ram’s eyes lit with devilry. “Hel, you’d make a stunning woman. With that face, I’ll cheerfully top you.”

  Hel gestured obscenely in response, but silently thanked Ram for lightening the mood when Adonia gave a soft huff of amusement and threw him an I-told-you-so glance. Steffania walked up with the other three horses and handed them off to Ramsey. As Ramsey secured each animal to the line above, he threw a question at Hel. “What else do we need before nightfall?” His eyes scanned the horizon. “I’d guess at twenty minutes of daylight left.”

  Hel lifted the improvised cloth sack. “I’ll take three and you take three. We’ll arrange them in a circle around us. Walk off a radius of about forty paces from center. Use our bedrolls as center.”

  ~~~

  Adonia watched as Hel and Ramsey marched off their protective circle. Steffania came to stand beside her. “He’s very pretty, isn’t he? From the brilliance of those crystals, I’d guess there was no failure to rise to the occasion?”

  Adonia choked back a mortified laugh. “Ah, no…no failure.”

  “I told you. Was it what you thought it would be?”

  Adonia struggled for words while Steffania watched, a smile growing across her face. “It was nothing like I thought it would be.” Adonia flashed a look at Hel and Ramsey. She had a few more moments before the men joined them. Normally, she didn’t discuss intimate sexual details, but she was floundering and Steffania seemed a woman of the world. “Is it common not to, ah, consummate the rite?”

  Steffania’s eyebrows rose. “You didn’t have intercourse?”

  “Ah…no.”

  “Did you climax?”

  “He did. I didn’t.”

  “The radiance and color of the crystals indicates significant arousal. He could not have lacked skill.”

  “Ah…no. If he’d been any more skillful, I think I’d have perished from frustration.”

  “So you could have come?”

  Adonia raised and lowered her chin in one, slow nod.

  “He took you to the edge and left you teetering there?”

  Adonia nodded—once.

  Steffania drew back and covered her mouth. Her eyes shown with sympathy and amusement. “You poor thing. You must be horny as hell. Ramsey does that to me all the time. It’s a bitch.”

  Steffania’s astonishing comment surprised a bark of laughter from Adonia, which she quickly suffocated behind a raised palm. “Yes. Yes, that describes it well. He told me not to touch myself—that part of me belonged to him. Is that normal?”

  Steffania leaned over and hugged her. “For men like Hel and Ramsey, yes. Come on. They want us to join them.” Steffania threw a significant glance at Adonia. “I’ll explain later.”

  Adonia was glad to see the four bedrolls aligned together—the men on the outside, the women in the center. She had zero experience with soul-wraiths. The desert of the Oshtesh was too bright and too hot for those monstrosities Hel called ‘leeches.’

  The shadows from the mountains purpled and then, like a candle snuffed, darkness closed around them. The six, diaman crystals glowed brilliant yellow-amber and an indistinct glow connected the individual stones. Gentle light illuminated the entire circle and cast shadows from the horses and the trees. All of them sat cross-legged on the bedrolls and distributed the water and food they’d brought with them.

  “Have you ever seen leeches, Adonia?” Hel broke a piece of bread apart and ate it, chewing slowly. His gray eyes, blanked of expression, held hers. Adonia slowly shook her head.

  Steffania shuddered. “Imagine a ravenous, foul miasma. Add intelligence, blood-red eyes and a round maw of jagged teeth and you have a soul-wraith. It envelops its prey in a gray fog, and when it departs, nothing remains but a desiccated corpse. They prefer human flesh, but they’ll feed on anything warm-blooded.”

  “Their victims sound as if their souls are being torn from their living body, hence the name soul-wraith. I encountered them on the battlefield of Yarudda during the Haarb wars.” Ramsey took a swig from his water bottle then raised it in a mock toast. “To the Haarb for gracing us with soul-wraiths and fell wolves.” Ram filled his mouth, rinsed it, then spat the contents onto the ground.

  The horses stirred, uneasy on their picket line.

  “And the leeches have found us,” Hel murmured without looking up.

  Adonia glanced toward the horses and froze as horror snaked down her spine. Ghosting around the perimeter of the diaman crystals were swarms of gray shadows and multiple pinpoints of red. Occasionally an amorphous shape would charge the light barrier, only to dissolve and reform. “So many of them.”

  “Yes. They like the cold and the long nights in the upper elevations. I’m not sure how we can kill them. I had hoped that re-energizing Torre Bianca would eradicate them. They cannot live in our Mother’s light, but now…” Hel shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Steffania stared at the perimeter, her arms wrapped around her legs, her chin resting on her knees. Her casual manner reassured Adonia—until she spoke. “Those wraiths scare the shit out of me. A mission went wrong and two of
my men and I floated on a raft in the Topaz Sea on the planet Aquarion. Great, thirty-foot, megaton sharks circled us for days, their black fins slicing the water mere feet from our raft. Cortez fell asleep and his foot trailed into the water. They dragged him under in seconds.” Steffania shook her head and looked away. “Poor bugger. I can still hear his screams—see the bits of flesh and body parts come bobbing to the surface. I feel like I’m back on that raft.” She shuddered convulsively.

  “Vixen.” Ramsey held out an arm to her.

  She stood and moved to sit between Ramsey’s legs. Ram wrapped his arms around her and snugged her close. He nuzzled into the hair behind Steffania’s ear and said something in a low baritone.

  Adonia didn’t know what Ramsey murmured to Steffania, but the woman’s whole demeanor changed. She gave Ram a look of such love that Adonia’s heart ached. The red-haired mercenary relaxed into her husband’s arms, laid her head against his chest and closed her eyes. Goddess, to have someone whose words would banish all fears? If only I could possess that. What would I give to be so loved? She sighed. Anything. Her gaze strayed to the ravening leeches testing the limits of the diaman border and tried to suppress her fear. It would be a difficult night.

  ~~~

  Adonia sat up in disgust and almost accused those sleeping around her of shifting every pebble and stone to beneath her bedroll. After what seemed hours of non-productive tossing and turning, and determined not to disturb the other three, she stood and gathered her blankets together to move. She glanced toward the perimeter. Ravenous eyes stared back. A flurry of shadows hurled themselves at the diaman crystals’ barrier only to fall back, dissipate and attack once more. She shuddered in fear at their relentless pursuit.

  “Healer.”

  At her feet, Hel lay on his side, an arm holding his blankets open in invitation. “Don’t look at them. Your fear incites them. Come here.”

  She paused for only a moment before crawling into the shelter he offered and settling along his length.

  He lay back down and covered them both. “The diaman crystals will hold them at bay. The wraiths’ evil finds the pure energy of our mother planet abhorrent. Trust me. I won’t let anything happen to you. You are too valuable to me.”

  As a healer and partner in the rites. For some reason, just as in the grotto, the thought did not satisfy as it should have. She lay snugged to his body, listening to the regular thump-thump of his heart. Its dependable rhythm finally lulled her to sleep.

  ~~~

  Adonia craned her head and turned in a circle, trying to encompass the stunning landscape of a valley lush with grass divided by a clear, wide, swiftly moving stream and framed by towering, snow-capped mountains. They had startled a herd of graceful, lyre-horned chital grazing in the early morning light and, after handing off the packhorse and extra mount, Hel and Ramsey had given chase. Dismounted, she and Steffania stood and let their animals graze, waiting for the men to return.

  Adonia watched the horses pull up huge mouthfuls of long green grass, clods of dirt and roots hanging from the sides of their mouths. Bit by bit, the dirt and roots fell away, while the good grass remained. A horse’s ability to separate the dirt from the edible green always amazed her.

  Steffania glanced over at her. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

  Adonia shuddered, remembering. “After I curled up next to Hel, yes.”

  Steffania grinned. “The big louts are good for making a woman feel protected.” Her grin broadened. “Among other things.”

  “What did you mean yesterday? When you said ‘for men like Ramsey and Hel’?”

  Steffania wrinkled her brow as if replaying their conversation. “Oh! You’d asked if it was common for—”

  “Yes, that question,” Adonia interjected. She didn’t want to hear it voiced again. She’d felt awkward enough the first time she’d asked. “You are ferocious—a deadly fighter. You command a mercenary squad of elite killers and yet…” Adonia lifted her shoulders helplessly.

  “Ramsey controls me sexually.”

  For long moments, the loudest sound was the crunch, crunch as the horses cropped grass. Adonia studied the movement of the waterweeds streaming out in a straight line as the creek ripped past. “Yeah.” She straightened. “And you like it.”

  Adonia turned to find Steffania still watching her.

  Steffania nodded. “Yes. More than like it, I need it—and that puzzles you.”

  “Yes.”

  The redhead sighed. “The Blue Daggers consider me a ball-buster. As their commander, they fear and respect me, and that is how I want it.” Her voice softened. “There is also a part of me that yearns to be known in a different way—desired as a female who sexually completes a male—a feminine being who surrenders herself to serve him.”

  “And that is what Lord Ramsey sees?”

  “Oh, he sees the other, too, and we butt heads.” Laughter filled her eyes. “The miracle of Ram is he respects the warrior yet still sees the soft female. His dominant sexuality liberates that woman, and the more I abandon myself to him, the more he gives of himself to me. It’s a delicious contradiction. He is never more wholly mine than when I am under his total control, in complete service to him.”

  “In complete service…” Adonia’s memory leapt to the night in the inn and the deep male murmur of command, the female moans that filtered through the shared wall. Her imagination supplied scenarios that brought a flush of heat to her lower regions. “And you don’t mind when he leaves you frustrated?”

  “Oh, I mind, but my reward with Ramsey is not orgasms but the knowledge I am his and I fulfill him. Besides, he knows what I need. He never leaves me wanting for long.”

  “But…” Adonia let her voice die, her question unspoken.

  Steffania shot her a quick look. “It’s like being a healer in a way. Do you do it for money?”

  Adonia shook her head. “No. I would be a healer even if I were never paid.”

  “Exactly. There is something in you that must heal people and the satisfaction from the service itself is your repayment.”

  Adonia shrugged and nodded. “Okay.” She had not looked at it that way.

  “For me, it is the same, with one difference. In all the universes, there is only one person I trust enough to give my true self to and that is my Lord Ramsey.” Steffania gave a soft chuckle. “Everyone else can go hang.”

  Adonia listened, head down. There was only one person in all the universes for Lord Ramsey, also. She had seen it in the palace courtyard when he refused to be parted from Steffania. Adonia desired what Steffania had—not Lord Ramsey—but someone who saw her and valued what only she had to give. She wanted that fiercely. A long moment stretched between them as the horses grazed. “Do you think Prince DeHelios wants that from a woman, too?”

  “I think DeHelios demands it. DeHelios and Ramsey are two blades tempered in the same forge.”

  Adonia turned Steffania’s words over in her mind. Did part of her want to serve Hel sexually? He was delicious to the eye. Why was she so interested in DeHelios? Compassion and desire for knowledge, certainly. Well, that and a strong dose of self-preservation.

  She had witnessed healers use Her power to perform astonishing cures. She wanted the ability to do that with a driving passion that bordered on obsession. She had thought the rites required a certain genetic key bred into the noble houses. From her experience last night, that wasn’t always the case. Could she partner Hel in the more advanced rites? Or would her ordinary blood make the highborn prince discount her? Obviously, Mother Verdantia worked in ways beyond her understanding.

  There was something else Adonia didn’t understand and the woman with the answer stood two feet away.

  “Steffania, do you ever wonder why you are still here?”

  The Blue Dagger looked toward her, her brow quirked. “I live here. Verdantia is now my home.”

  Adonia closed her eyes and shook her head. “Two years ago, the battle on the Plains of Vergaza, w
hen She channeled staggering power through Sophi and Eric. You were there that day.”

  “Yes. We all discovered what She meant by the power of the two.” Steffania chuckled. “Eric still glows—how he hates that.”

  “You saw the roiling golden cloud that erupted from Commander DeStroia and swept the battlefield bare of all who lived. Only those born of Verdantia remained standing.”

  “Yes.” Steffania’s unfocused gaze seemed to see that day over two years ago. “Hard to forget that.” Steffania abruptly straightened. “Oh! I see what you are asking. I’m not Verdantian born. Why do I still live?”

  “Yes.”

  “Beats the hell out of me.” Steffania chuckled. “I’m just glad She wanted to keep me around.”

  “Perhaps all your years on Verdantia has changed you, and our Mother considers you one of Her own.”

  “That would mean She has altered my genes, somehow.” Steffania’s face became thoughtful, then she shrugged. “I’ve seen too much crazy shit on this planet to doubt for one moment She could do it.”

  ~~~

  Hel crooned and ran a calm hand down the sweat-streaked neck of the animal underneath him. “You’ve ruined him, DeKieran.” He urged his fretting, anxious horse across the creek and halted in front of Adonia. He leaned behind and undid the leather ties holding a dead chital across the rump of his lathered horse. The dead animal fell to the ground and Hel’s mount slid sideways, eyeing the body with a loud, rolling snort.

  “It’s the rider. Your hands are like stumps. I’ve seen bricks with more feeling.” Ramsey leaned back, released his kill, then swung his leg over the neck of his horse and jumped, landing on both feet. He handed a rein to Steffania. “Should have taken you, Vixen. You’re a better shot and don’t whine when you miss.” Ram dragged his kill toward the packhorse and didn’t see the baleful glance Hel threw at him.

  Hel handed his reins to Adonia, and she watched him as he dragged the second chital carcass toward the packhorse.

  “Your hunt was successful,” she said.