Hers to Claim (Verdantia Book 4)

by Patricia A. Knight

  A grin pulled at the corners of Hel’s mouth. “Ha! You look like a three-day-old kill, DeKieran.”

  “You should see yourself, you hulking mass of flea-infested idiocy,” Ram retorted, lying motionless. “How Lady DeCorvus tolerates you in her bed is beyond me. She must like sleeping with a mutant goat.”

  “Hell-spawn.”

  “Repellent, pestilent asshole.”

  “Noxious carcass of flatulent gas.”

  Ramsey remained silent for a moment. “That’s your fault. Serve something other than those gods-be-damned potatoes.”

  Hel blinked several times and then exploded in loud guffaws, joined quietly by Ramsey. Their hilarity attracted several townsmen who assisted them to their staggering feet.

  ~~~

  “What have you done to yourself?” Nia entered the bathroom and knelt by the tub. Her anxious eyes scanned Hel’s body and her hands reached for his face, gently turning his head and smoothing back his hair so she could look at the puffy mound of purpling flesh that used to be the prominent ridge of his left cheekbone. “Oh…Hel,” she sighed. “Is this the worst of it?”

  He cleared his throat, feeling like a five-year-old child caught in some mischief by his mother. “Yes. The rest are superficial cuts.”

  “Steffania told me you and Ramsey had beaten each other to a bloody pulp. I brought some crystals. I will heal this quickly.”

  He held her wrist when she would have stood and moved away. “No, I don’t want you to expend any energy on my self-inflicted wounds. They will heal just fine on their own.”

  Nia kissed his battered knuckles and slid her wrist from his hold. “At least let me poultice your wounds. I have some plant extracts that will reduce the swelling and ease your pain.”

  “All right, Healer. Work your craft.” He met her concerned gaze with a wincing smile. “And see to DeKieran, if you would.”

  “I have already seen to Lord Ramsey. He wouldn’t allow me to heal him either.”

  Nia’s exasperation made him smile. “Then I’ll allow him to live one more day. How do you feel? Any after-effects of the rite?”

  “Ah.” She rose and wrapped her arms around her waist, dropping her head. Her hair fell in a velvet brown curtain between them. “Well…ah…” She shifted as though uneasy in her skin. “Yes…well…”

  For the first time, he noticed a slight tremor that shook her slender frame. Hel knew well what his shy beauty hesitated to put into words. “Beauty, it’s that bad?”

  The veil of her hair rippled as she nodded, but he still could not see her face.

  “The hot mineral waters of the Grotta D’oro have been known to temper the burn of cinnagin’s arousal. Would you like to join me there? We can check on the miku amar, and the burial crypt is not far from the grotto.”

  She lifted her head with a smile. “Yes,” she whispered. “I’d like that very much. I’ll just go get my medicines…” She fled out the door.

  With an amused shake of his head, Hel rose, stepped out of the tub and began the painful task of drying off. He’d enjoy a long soak in the waters of the Grotta D’oro, too.

  ~~~

  On the white sand shore of the subterranean grotto, Hel proffered a hand. “Come. The hot mineral waters will soothe you.

  She’d placed her hand in his and followed him to an underwater ledge where she sat straddle-legged on his lap, back to his chest, and allowed the waist-high water to appease her overwrought flesh. “Look, Hel, the miku amar.”

  Adonia had no doubt the sweet creatures had sensed her as soon as she and Hel entered the grotto’s waters. Repressed lust rattled Adonia’s body. She must have projected pheromones to the deepest parts of the subterranean lake. They watched as the delicate creatures swooshed toward them.

  “Look carefully, Nia. Tell me what you see,” Hel whispered, his voice full of burgeoning excitement, and she strained to see what had provoked him.

  There! Sheltered among their parents’ free-floating tentacles and cilia were small blobs of blue and pink, tiny duplicates of their mother and father. She watched with growing delight as the pink female wrapped a delicate tentacle around Adonia’s wrist and her tiny offspring bumped and bobbed against Adonia’s belly. Laughter welled inside her at the antics of the tiny offspring.“Oh! They tickle. Sweet babies. There are so many of them. Do the little ones always behave like this?” Adonia wriggled on Hel’s lap, giggling at the sensations the tiny miku amar made as they continually bumped into her abdomen.

  Hel drew back and looked at her with the strangest expression.

  “What? Oh, Hel, they tickle. I’m afraid to move for fear I will hurt them.”

  “The little ones are saying hello to my son or daughter.” His voice choked out the words thickly and his eyes looked suspiciously bright.

  “What?”

  “Nia, you are pregnant.”

  “What!” she squeaked as Hel crushed her to him and straightened, turning them in dizzy circles in the warm waters.

  “You wonderful woman! Oh, by the Goddess, Nia…”

  Adonia saw the moment he recalled their circumstances and the unsurpassed joy filling his expression faded. He lowered them to the ledge and sat her across his lap; his great hands bracketed her face, and his gaze captured and held hers.

  “You are pregnant with my babe.” Hel said flatly. “Is that distasteful to you?”

  “No! No, never. I’m…stunned…and puzzled. I have used Maiden’s Clover without fail. It is a good contraceptive. How?” She saw sorrow flit across Hel’s face and raised a hand to his cheek. “Don’t misunderstand. I delight in bearing your child. This is just so...unexpected.”

  His lips quirked up on one side, and his eyes lost the pained look they’d worn moments ago. “Another benefit of the miku amar. It’s known they cause ovulation in a woman if the miku are also breeding. It probably happened just before your female went dormant.” Hel wrapped his arm around her middle and cuddled her closer to him with a slight chuckle at the tiny blobs of color bobbing atop the disturbed water then making small darts toward Adonia. “Since they are symbiots, the boost to a woman’s ability to conceive ensures their own species continues.” They both watched the tiny miku swarm around Nia. “You are certain you don’t mind?” Hel murmured.

  Adonia planted a long kiss on his elegant mouth. “I would have chosen a different time, but I am over-joyed to be giving you a new DeHelios.”

  ~~~

  Hours later, damp, cool air washed Adonia’s face as Hel led her hand-in-hand through an immense underground space filled with marble statuary and tombs of the majestic rulers out of Nyth Uchel’s fabled history. He stopped in front of a massive block of unadorned marble bearing a simple inscription.

  Our beloved, Isolde, eternal queen of our hearts.

  We are yours in death as we were yours in life.

  Federago DeHelios & Agentio DeLorcha

  “They outlived her by some years. When Federago died, Agentio followed soon after. Lore has it that their faces wore beatific smiles as they passed—as though they greeted their lost love. I’ve often wondered if she met them. It’s a nice thought.”

  She thought so, too. Adonia’s throat had closed, and her eyes threatened to spill the tears collecting in them. She cleared her throat and swiped at her face.

  Hel drew her close. “Since she has come to you during your healing trances, do you want to try to connect with Isolde first?”

  “Yes.”

  Hel spread a thick blanket on the stone floor and sat cross-legged. He reached up for her hand and pulled her onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her waist and snugging her to his front.

  Adonia spilled the glowing diaman crystals she’d brought onto her lap, took a deep breath and tried to relax her body. “This may take a while. I’m not sure of what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m supposed to find.”

  His lips traveled kisses along her jaw. “I wish I could guide you, but there is no precedent for what you attempt. Whatever time
you need, Beauty. I’m here.”

  Adonia settled into the repetitive chant she’d found most effective for reaching the aetheric plane when healing those of the fading and despite her doubts, found herself in a familiar disembodied state within moments of beginning. She looked down on herself from above and could readily see the slim white stream of aetheric energy that tethered her to her physical body—a body safely enwrapped in Hel’s arms. Thus reassured, Adonia began to quest mentally, expanding her awareness of the amorphous metaphysical plane, calling out for the woman she had come to think of as a protector in this altered existence. “Queen Isolde, it is Adonia. Queen Isolde, if you hear me, please make yourself known to me.”

  Adonia didn’t know how long her spirit wandered in the crypt below Torre Bianca when she felt a masculine presence join her—a presence lacking the welcoming warmth she had come to associate with Isolde DeCorvus.

  Woman, why do you disturb the slumber of kings and queens?

  “I seek Isolde DeCorvus. I have a question I would ask of her.” Adonia hesitated. “Is she known to you? Will you bring her to me? To whom do I speak?”

  Again, Adonia felt the swirl of an intense male essence surround her with a sense of increasing threat until she felt distinctly imperiled—as if the aetheric presence somehow held the potential to harm her.

  Who are you, woman, that you dare ask the name of

  a prince of royal blood, and presume to make him your errand boy?

  Had her mission not been vital, Adonia would have fled on the spot, such was the weight of threat that suffocated her. “I am Adonia DeCorvus, daughter in blood to Isolde DeCorvus. The Great Mother tasked me to summon ‘the mighty asleep from ages gone’ to meet the great evil consuming our planet. I believe I am the raven referred to in the inscription at the foot of Torre Bianca.” Tempest buffeted her spirit as if a great whirlwind whipped the aetheric plane.

  You are the raven?

  Scornful, angry laughter echoed through her mind.

  We shall see. The great deceiver makes lies seem like truth.

  Adonia screamed with agony, and her earthly body writhed in Hel’s arms as an enraged force shredded her aetherial self into a thousand wisps of scattered energy before withdrawing into a boiling cloud. Her essence gradually reformed, and she quaked with internal terror. If her task hadn’t been so urgent, Adonia would have surrendered to hysteria.

  I am Federago DeHelios, my lady raven. You taste of our blood and bear the touch of our Great Mother. You are of the true light. I will bring my queen and Agentio.

  “My thanks … Prince DeHelios … I am very grateful.” She received no reply. She didn’t wait long.

  Daughter of our blood, it is Isolde and Agentio. My beloved Federago says you’ve questions to put to me?

  Adonia mentally exhaled, glad beyond words she didn’t face the spirit of Federago DeHelios again. “My Queen, my Lord Agentio,” Adonia acknowledged respectfully. “Our Great Mother has told me I must summon Her sons and daughters of light from ages past to combat the great evil that consumes our planet. We think that means those illustrious dead from Nyth Uchel’s history—those who are buried in this crypt. But I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, and I don’t know what to tell them to do.”

  Our Great Mother faces grave peril. We cannot foresee the ending. By the blood of the raven, call us by name to the aetheric plane only when all your might is exhausted and defeat an imminent surety. The Great Deceiver is unaware of our strength and cannot be allowed time to marshal resources against us; then pray we will be enough to defeat this darkness. I think we’ll not meet again. Be vigilant. Have courage. Where the light of love burns, so does life.

  Isolde and her lovers departed, leaving Adonia overwhelmed with desolate bleakness. She awoke in Hel’s arms, convulsed with terrible quaking sobs.

  “Nia, ah, love, don’t.” He held her close to him and whispered, “Beauty, please, your tears cut me deeper than any blade.”

  Adonia scrubbed her face with her hands and tried to temper her shudders and slow her breathing. She couldn’t explain to Hel her sense of despair and loss and her foreboding about the future. She had nothing concrete upon which to base her feelings. They were just…feelings. “Don’t worry. It’s just exhaustion.” She forced a smile. “I’ll be all right.”

  “Did you get any answers?” Hel helped her to stand and then gathered the blanket.

  Her smile wavered. “Yes. I know what to do now—sort of. I just don’t know when. From what our Great Mother said, we must act soon.” Adonia turned worried eyes to Hel. “But what is soon? I cannot escape the feeling an imminent disaster looms. I’m consumed by a need for haste.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Hel thought about her concern. He didn’t discount her feelings, but… “A’rken specifically said when Belarus mates with Cirrus in the northern sky. If he is to be believed, we still have months.”

  She shook her head. “I cannot explain my unease. I just…” She faltered to a stop. “I don’t think we have months.”

  Hel wanted a reprieve for Nia after their recent crisis. By the Goddess, he wanted a respite for all of them—but especially his ‘beauty’. “You have done so much these past few weeks. I want to see you rest and recover. I prescribe some relaxation and pampering for you and our child. I want the gray of exhaustion gone from your face. I want to lie next to you at night and know that your sleep is natural and not that of physical collapse. Come.” He enveloped her hand with his and led her out of the crypt into a soft spring-like night scented with green things bursting into life and velvet black lightened to dusk by the shimmering glow of Torre Bianca.

  Adonia paused for a moment on the entryway steps and gazed about her. “I don’t think I’ll ever become used to this magickal place. I wish my father could have seen it.”

  Adonia described her experience in the crypt as they walked back to the castle, particularly her run-in with Federago DeHelios.

  “That was when your body writhed in my arms?” Those minutes were branded in his memory; he’d been helpless to aid her—not a feeling he relished.

  “Yes. He was testing me, I think. I don’t believe I’d have enjoyed meeting him in the flesh.”

  “Hmm. I understand that was the general consensus. History describes him as formidable.”

  Adonia’s eyes met his briefly. “Like you, then.”

  He drew back. “You still consider me formidable?”

  She tossed him a sideways look of skepticism. “Bás dtost? And when was the last time anyone said no to you? Even Lord Ramsey does your bidding.”

  He stopped and drew her to him, first cupping her face in his great hand and then gently running his fingers through the hair at her temple and tilting her face up to his. “You said no to me.”

  She cast her eyes down shyly. “And got a very sore ass for it.”

  Hel dropped his hand and his head fell back as he laughed freely then resumed walking. “Which you rather enjoyed. Ah, Nia, how you lighten my heart.”

  “The accomplishment I take the most pride in during these difficult times,” she murmured with pleasure.

  He warmed at her gentle disclosure and, with an arm around her shoulder, he drew her closer to him. “Of all the miraculous things you have done, you count easing my heart as the one you take most pride in? Not banishing the wraiths and ghouls and saving Nyth Uchel? Not dispelling a lingering winter or saving Steffania from certain death?” Hel felt her shrug.

  “Of course I should count those as greater but you are a miracle more valuable than any of those other deeds. If I can lighten your heart? That is beyond price to me.”

  He stopped and turned to her. The extent of Nia’s loving, giving nature stole all thought from his head but one. Though they could ill afford the time—there was a battle looming—he wanted to steal some precious moments to love her, cosset her, show her how dear she was to him. Lurking in the back of his mind was the thought he might never have another chance. “My dea
rest Healer, I wish to cosset you and attend you for the next few days. We are going to put aside our cares and anxieties temporarily and enjoy a brief hiatus from worry.”

  Her luminous brown eyes found his. A smile turned her lips. “I’d like that very much.”

  Hel raised her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. “Make sure you tell me when the symptoms from the cinnagin abate.”

  ~~~

  Hel heard those words two days later. During those two days, Hel and Nia took comfort in each other as their friends were buried; he held her in his arms while they shared intimacies about their life before the Haarb changed things forever on Verdantia—and he fell deeper and deeper into love with his self-effacing, giving ‘beauty’. They spoke of children’s names, and Hel nuzzled the satin skin of her belly before bed each evening, kissing the nascent life within her and telling the tiny DeHelios how longed for and loved he or she was. It was two days where his world narrowed to include only Nia.

  Soft half-light, what now passed for night in Nyth Uchel post-Great Rite, surrounded them as Hel pulled her slender hind end into his groin and pulled the coverlet over the top of them.

  “I feel normal.”

  Nia’s whisper galvanized him and her squeak of surprise accompanied his surge over her, flattening her on her back. Hel’s hips and thighs demanded she spread her legs to cradle his quickly hardening cock, and his hands wrapped her wrists at arm’s length over her head. His face hovered inches over hers. It had been exquisite torture to sleep next to her these past two days, his cock stone hard and aching with the knowledge she burned for him, too—and do nothing but hold her. Nia had offered him relief with her mouth or hands, but he’d refused. If she suffered unappeased lust, then so would he.

  “Say again, Beauty. Did I mishear you?”

  Her eyes gleamed with mischief as they held his gaze. Her head shook ever so slowly.