Two of the royal guard came and each took one of her arms. She turned and gave Raymond a look which was as dismissive as it was sad.
It was beyond disturbing. Raymond thought upon it until he came upon Ada in the hall moments later... then never thought about it again.
Raymond and Peter walked the long corridor as they had many times before, parting ways at the entrance to Peter's chamber that lay a short distance from Prince Raymond's.
“I take my leave of you,” Raymond said with affection.
Peter smiled. “It has been long this day. I am sure you will feel more like yourself after a night's slumber.”
Perhaps, Raymond thought... or no. He gave a sardonic lift of his lips and a small nod as Peter slid through his door. Peter did not mention Princess Ada's troubling proclivity. It mattered not, as he had committed to the arrangement. Yet, he had hoped for a civil union, possibly friendship... mayhap more.
He understood that would be impossible.
Raymond stood for a moment in the great hall that led to the wing of royal chambers at its end, his thoughts swirling in a tireless circle. Princess Ada would be in one of those rooms as well. Try as he might, he could not conjure even the minutest amount of interest or attraction for the young woman. She seemed intent on luxuriating in the appointments of their station while drinking herself deep into her cups. Not a savory or desirous combination, he thought with disappointment.
Raymond became aware of a dim rhythmic noise down the hall and thought it was most odd. He began to move down the corridor, his long legs easily taking him to the origin of the soft sounds.
He stopped dead in his tracks, almost swaying from shock.
There, pressed against the wall like a pinned blue moth kissed by midnight, was Ada, her back sliding up and down against the rough-hewn stone surface of the royal corridor.
One of the guards was giving her the most intimate attention a male could bestow upon a female, his large hands grasping her underneath the heavy deep navy of her skirt, her flushed face turned to the side as he moved against her.
Raymond came awake with a lurching start of adrenaline that roared up from his toenails and nailed his heart like a stab brought by a dagger.
He staggered toward them, certain to his core that the guard was raping his future wife... then she opened her eyes and stared into his own.
What he saw there caused his step to falter then slow.
Lust.
And something even more evil, triumph.
Princess Ada wished for him to see what she was capable of. She wished for him to know she was far from the blushing virgin her sphere had laid before him as fable.
She was a greedy, drunken... whore of a royal.
And he must marry her.
Raymond felt his gorge rise just as a smile of intense gratification crossed her face, those black eyes glittering like a raven from her hawkish expression. She tipped her face back as the male finished her and Raymond left the hall, the music of their coupling and her satisfied lust following him into his room... and the nightmares which trailed him into an uneasy slumber.
Chapter 5
“Rowenna,” Adair called softly from outside her sleeping room.
Silence.
Adair opened her mouth to call again when Rowenna answered in a voice laden with her sadness, “Yes.”
Adair pressed the flap open, hooking it on the brass eye loop that was fastened against the side. She entered and saw the soft golden mass of Rowenna's bent head, undone and uncombed and could smell the vagueness of the sea about her and gave a smile. Rowenna had taken her anger to the sea and left it there, yet the sadness remained.
“My daughter,” Adair began.
“Do not, mother,” Rowenna said, turning her face away.
Adair was not a foolish woman and narrowed her eyes on her willful daughter. “You cannot have him, my child. The heart does many things... says many things, but in this, it cannot have what it wishes.”
Rowenna whipped her face around, her lips thinning into an angry line. “You do not think that I do not know that?” she scoffed, her hand to her chest in disbelief.
Adair's face softened. “Once you are past this event, and you are filled with the child that is our hope, you and Rolland can be joined and this will all be forgotten.”
“I will never forget him,” Rowenna said with seething certainty.
They stared at each other, blue eyes meeting lavender. “In time, you will.”
Rowenna did not know if that were true. When she was a grown woman with another son and she met her long lost daughter, she knew she would never forget him.
Harland, her mind caressed his name like her touch yearned to do.
*
Raymond could not adequately express his stilted and brittle awkwardness in keeping company with Ada. Nor could he readily dismiss the image of her lasciviousness from his memory. It was clear that she did not wish it, regardless.
He gazed at her as she partook of the most exquisite and difficult fruit to nurture inside the spheres: honeydew melon. She made it seem like an obscene affair. Each melon had been scoured for its pale green meat and then scooped producing small crisp, sweet balls of fruit. Ada carefully plucked each ball and sucked it off the finely tined fork.
Raymond had not touched his breakfast and the young cook and baker, Billy, had sent word that if his royal meals were not up to par that he should be made aware immediately.
Raymond knew the royal cook's skill in fashioning meals had not been lost; only a certain Princess, with her rancid behavior, had come like a thief and absconded with his entire appetite.
Ada studied him as she sucked her balls of fruit, decimating the entire bowl, sucking each ball as though it was not fruit at all but something far more human. Raymond frowned.
“Let us speak plainly, Raymond, my betrothed.”
Of course she must remind him of their carefully constructed arrangement.
It was alarming to him how quickly he was beginning to loathe her and he had been in her acquaintance but one scant day past.
She pointedly gazed at the small flock of servants who lingered at their elbows and he turned to the group of loyal subjects that attended him each day. “Perhaps a moment alone with Princess Ada?” he suggested as was his way. Raymond had always been somewhat uncomfortable in his station.
Ada was not; she seemed utterly content in her role as royal. She made a fine dictator yet Raymond thought she could never lead, not really.
When the last of them left the breakfast room Ada began, “Oh Raymond, tell them what it will be and they shall do it.” Her dark eyes, like so much obsidian fire, drilled him with their cool heat.
His gaze darkened. “This is still my kingdom, Ada, regardless of how you run things in your sphere, I will do as I choose-- here.”
Her small smile turned into a slow grin. “My subjects do exactly as I say.” Her eyes had been cast down at her bowl, empty of melon, then they swept up to meet his. “However, when our Wedded Joining has come to pass, it will be run by our sovereign union.” She leaned back. “Besides, I am compromising on this false pregnancy so that you might align and help with the Guardians.” She gave a faint giggle and Raymond's brow rose, failing to see any humor.
She let a thin shoulder lift then drop. “They mean nothing. They are but using us as pawns.” She leaned forward. “We have something they want and they have spared us but for a season, no more. Once they have what they wish,” she closed her bony hand into a fist that clenched so tightly it bled to white, “we will no longer be useful.” She rested her fork on the side of her bowl, the tines hanging over the rim and turned upside down. “Mark my words, Prince Raymond: I will be the lackey for this debauched plan of yours and the Guardians, I will bear this false child... but there will be concessions.”
“What?” Raymond asked, having been silent the entire time the viper carried on.
“What...? At the very least, I shall be allowed whatever dallia
nces I so desire.”
Good Guardian, she was an immoral strumpet. As Raymond regarded her, the greed and tyrannical dictatorship she coveted could be seen in its infancy even then. Raymond would forever regret his part in bringing her into his peaceful sphere, regardless of his noble intentions.
“I would also require a free trade agreement with your adjacent sphere.”
The Kingdom of Kentucky. Marvelous, Raymond thought, unimpressed with the rulership he had witnessed there from the young King Otto. Things were degrading even faster than Raymond could have speculated.
“You shall rut with the whore of the Savages and I will assist you in bringing up the spawn that will result from the unholy coupling. Then,” she tapped her fork on the edge of the crystal bowl. It rang as all glass that held flint in its composition is wont to do, “I shall enjoy myself while the grapes of the vine flow unabated into the vessels of this sphere.”
Raymond had had enough of this vile creature. He stood and she leaned back as calm as a breeze less day. “I will not allow my... wife,” his voice stumbled a bit over the future moniker, so unfitting for one such as she, “to have relations with whatever male is willing, while she drinks of the grape until her brains slip out of her ears.”
Ada stood, high color rushing to her cheekbones. “Oh, you of your high moral standing, my Prince,” she bit out, flinging a skinny arm about her. “I shall partake in whatever lust is driven my way and I will also consume as much wine as I like or... I will tell every one of your royal subjects that you run through the mythical Pathway to lay with a heathen Savage whore... my Prince,” she finished, her eyes raking over Raymond and he knew he should not but he was unable to help himself.
His hands landed on her person, biting through the deep grape velvet shoulders of her dress, her small bosom pushed into service very near her throat. Chest heaving Raymond snarled into her face, “She is anything but a whore, you ignorant drunken slut, and I shall not hear you refer to her as whore when you mate with anything which has a swinging appendage,” he seethed.
“Do not stop there, hit me, Prince, so that the kingdom may know of what ye are capable.” She laughed in his face and his rage knew no limits, the pressure of his position, his uncle's imminent death and his unlikely attraction to Rowenna washed over him and he had a quaking moment of uncertainty in which he thought he would wrap his fingers around that bird-like throat, pressing his hands together until Ada spoke no more.
Lived no more.
The knock saved him, shattering his thought processes and he lifted his hands off her shoulders, throwing them in the air and stepping back from her.
Those glittering eyes begged for him to take her in hand.
She would greatly fancy that, Raymond thought. For then he would be even more diminished by her.
I think not, Raymond decided, regaining his composure with more effort than he was comfortable with. “Enter,” Raymond said, though his eyes never left her's. She bore watching.
Billy the cook came through the threshold, all but wringing his hands and took one look at the royal pair, visibly paling. “My apologies, Sire... I did not realize...”
Raymond put his palm up to halt Billy's speech. “It matters not,” his disdainful gaze swept over Ada with thinly veiled disgust. “We were finished.”
He left Ada in the breakfast room, following Billy out.
“My Lord,” Billy began and Raymond clapped him on the back.
“Never you mind, your meal was excellent, as usual.” Raymond watched Billy visibly relax.
“Aye, I was hopeful that something had not gone awry, Sire.”
“Only my life,” Raymond muttered.
Billy's eyes sharpened. “I beg your pardon, Prince Raymond?”
Raymond gave a small shake of his head. “It is nothing.”
Yet everything.
Billy looked unconvinced, for he was more than a cook or a baker, but a smart man who was prone to thinking on his feet.
As he did now. Raymond caught Billy looking at the great closed doors of the breakfast chamber with a slight frown on his face. A scowl of concentration burrowed between his brows for a moment then lifted.
“All will be well, my Prince,” he said, looking decidedly odd without a rolling pin in his meaty hand.
He cocked his head and looked at Raymond. “Do ye fancy taking a break at the bread table, Sire?”
Raymond did. “Do you have the cheese bread...”
“Aye, I do.”
Raymond smiled, it came to be the only genuine one of the day. His stomach gave an appreciative growl at the suggestion of some of the fragrant cheese bread that Billy was so proficient at preparing in the domain of his kitchen.
Raymond found his appetite had returned with gusto when the company had changed.
Ada's presence would be sufficient to keep him svelte in the years to come. He found he never dined with vigor whenever she was about. Ada had that effect on many.
*
Rolland plunged through the thickest part of the wood, grabbing the nape and partial collar of the Fragment who had tried to escape him.
“Ah!” Rolland launched himself at the coward and swung him around against the trunk of the nearest tree, the impact shaking some early autumn leaves upon them like crisp rain.
Rolland's eyes narrowed. “Tell me heathen!”
The Fragment's frightened eyes rolled up into his skull. “I don't know! I've said that already!”
Rolland translated the rough and slurred speech of the Fragment easily. He had been on enough missions to get a feel for the cadence of the missing letters that seemed to exemplify their mixed speech.
Rolland shook him again in disgust, dumping him where he stood and the relieved Fragment slid down the rough bark of the tree. His smile was out of place with the dire circumstance he found himself in and Rolland frowned.
“Your amusement baffles, vermin,” Rolland announced, powerful fists resting on his hips.
“You will die, Band,” he said with unwavering certainty.
Rolland's eyes narrowed, his eyes scanning the immediate area as he pulled and knocked his arrow, stepping back from the lying male pooled at the base of the tree. He became still like a statue and when ten of the Fragment bled through the woods he was ready; unsurprised by their sudden appearance.
Rolland glanced at the one he had shaken like a bag of feathers and smirked. “Oh, I do see. You did not know where your comrades lie?” Rolland nodded sagely. “As if I would fall for a ruse as transparent as that.” His eyes narrowed on the Fragment even as he stood.
“Where there is one Fragment, there are more,” Rolland stated by rote and with the truth of historical precedence all the proof he had needed.
“That's right, you dumb lug,” the Fragment said, as emboldened by numbers, he took a brazen step toward Rolland, releasing his primitive dagger from its sheath.
“We will gut you like the pig you are...”
Rolland gave a shrill whistle. It sounded like a bird of prey giving a stout warning. Like a clear whistling bell it spoke to the wood, carrying very well beyond its border.
The Fragment looked about themselves uneasily as Rolland took the one who he had first encountered in the throat with his sprung arrow. It pierced him cleanly and he gave a gurgling gasp. Sinking to his knees, he tore the arrow out and Rolland smiled. It was the worst thing he could have done. There was no extension of life with that move, he had effectively ended his sooner.
“Excellent!” Rolland said loudly, gathering another arrow. However, he missed his nocking as the vision of who responded to his call made his smooth battle finesse utterly leave him.
Rowenna appeared as his first reinforcement and he wished to throttle her. Had it been a male of the Band, Rolland could have easily moved to flank the Fragment where they could have beheaded and gutted with glee, as was the usual protocol for a random group of Fragment.
Not now. Rowenna had halted that momentum neatly with her appearance.
/>
Every Fragment's eyes were on her. Their lust and greed as well.
Damn. Rolland hesitated for perhaps two seconds considering his options of protection for a female that refused it with customary disregard.
Then Rowenna made up his mind for him. With a banshee wail, Rowenna moved forward with a smooth gait of practiced battle ease. Yet these Fragment were not Bandmates who would check their swing.
They would incapacitate her for later. Killing her would be more merciful.
Rowenna swung at the first Fragment within arm's reach, his weapon was not at the ready as he made the grave mistake of seeing Rowenna's outward appearance only and dismissing her. He realized too late the threat that she really was as she sliced a gruesome second mouth beneath his chin. It opened like a white slit at first, as if his body was surprised at the cut, then it bled with ferocity. The Fragment staggered forward as two more fell to Rolland's blade.
“Rowenna!” Rolland yelled as she cut like a pinwheel of blades toward the approaching Fragment, who had become wiser to the seducer of war, beautiful to look upon, deadly to engage. “Do not get close!” he finished and bashed in the brains of one who would slay him from behind. There was always a tell, forward movement brought air that possessed a unique pressure. Rolland swung low and ducked as the blade passed over his head, that whistling a better sound than the meaty pause it might have had if he had been but a moment slower.
He swung backwards with his dagger in a thrusting punch and the blade landed and stabbed. Rolland tore it out of wherever it stuck and ran to Rowenna, with nary a backwards glance. She was clearly a distraction and hindrance: did she not understand that in battle a male of the Band would risk all to save her? That was not the case with other males of the Band. There was camaraderie to be certain but the males worked in sync to defend, not protect one another.
The hellion.
Said hellion had allowed a Fragment to circle too close and his thick palm wrapped the long plait at her back and she yelped mid-flight as he jerked her to him.
The Savage Principle Page 5