by Bonnie Dee
Svartan reached out a hand as if he would touch Brea’s wildly waving arm, but he pulled it back without touching her.
He stood watching for several more moments while Gwyneth’s skin flushed pink. “She’s very small,” he finally said.
“Yes. She’s a baby.”
“I haven’t been around them much. I didn’t realize she would be so small.”
Just then Brea’s attention was finally dragged away from her prime objective—drinking as much as she could possibly hold—by the intrusion of Svartan’s deep voice. She broke free of Gwyneth’s nipple and stared at him, unblinking. What Gwyneth called her “wise owl” stare.
“Hello,” the demon said.
Brea snorted and turned her attention back to eating.
“How often does she need to eat?”
“When she was first born, about every two hours. Less now.” Gwyneth wondered if he even knew how old Brea was. He’d let five months slip by after her birth before sending an anonymous note announcing the date he would come to claim her. For that matter, how had he learned she even had a child? It was general knowledge throughout the kingdom, of course, but how did he get his information in his underground lair?
“Can you leave her long enough to take a tour of the house and grounds? Agnet would watch her.” He paused then added, “Or we could take her with us.”
“I would prefer to keep her with me. I’m not fond of nannies or nursemaids looking after my own daughter.”
He dipped his head. “Very well. We shall go down to breakfast before beginning our tour. Perhaps later I could show you around the city as well.”
Gwyneth boldly stripped her other breast bare and moved Brea to it, quite aware that Svartan was having a hard time keeping his gaze from her chest. Good. She would prepare him for round two throughout the day, teasing and taunting and flaunting her body at every opportunity. He would not best her again tonight.
She lifted her gaze to him again, one eyebrow lifted. “Would you kindly give me a moment to dress? I’m not prepared to go down to a meal.”
“Of course. I’ll, uh, wait for you outside.” Was that a slight falter she heard in his arrogant voice? He bowed and turned sharply to stride from the room, the militaristic precision of his turn somewhat ruined by his boot heel skidding on the floor.
Gwyneth smiled as the door closed behind him and she looked down at Brea. “This contest of wills is not over yet.”
Breakfast was as delicious a meal as dinner had been, although the spices and combination of foods was foreign to Gwyneth’s palate. She considered the ingenuity it must take to feed an entire population of people living underground and was quite impressed that they managed at all.
She regarded a strawberry as red as any she’d ever eaten. “What did your people eat before you started growing vegetables and fruit?”
“Fish, grubs and various kinds of lichens. Our diet was simple.” He sipped a glass of water but ate nothing. “We are not the same species as you. Our physiology is a little different and doesn’t require much sustenance, so we don’t eat nearly as often as topsiders do. But we do enjoy the flavors of more varied fare. I’ll admit I’m quite fond of peaches, myself. They taste like I imagine sunshine would feel.”
He smiled and Gwyneth’s heart beat faster at the harsh beauty of his face.
“So, you’ve never felt sunlight? What happens if you’re exposed to it?”
“The rays burn and blind, which is why Elohimese only go to the upper world at night.” Svartan regarded his own pale hand. “Being a hybrid, I can lurk in shadowy woods at midday. I’ve seen the sun, but I certainly can’t stand in an open field beneath it.”
She looked at his long-fingered hand and a frisson of pleasure tickled her belly at the thought of what pleasure those fingers had given her last night. How odd to be sitting across from him now, chatting as if none of that had happened. And how strange to imagine a life lived in shadow and darkness, fearing the sun’s rays.
She looked around the room, which was lit exactly as it had been the night before—no morning light streaming in the window to mark a new day. Only the presence of eggs to tell her this was breakfast and not dinner again. Did they have underground fowl, too?
Brea stirred on her lap, whimpering and flailing her arms. Gwyneth set aside her fork and shifted the baby to her shoulder, rubbing her back.
“Are you certain you won’t have Agnet care for the child?”
“No, thank you. I can manage.” She’d been through this before, Midas having made it clear to her how unqueenly it was for Gwyneth to go around the castle carrying the child in a sling that bound Brea to her.
Svartan nodded acknowledgment. “She is precious. I can understand why you don’t wish to let her out of your sight.”
Here was her opportunity. “And precious to you, too, evidently. You say you need an heir, but why my child? Why not any other baby in your kingdom? There must be thousands of your subjects who would be happy to give their child a better life by surrendering it into your care. Or orphans? Aren’t there orphans you could adopt as your own?”
He didn’t answer. His gaze dropped from hers as he rose from the table. “Come. We will walk now.”
And with his refusal to answer, breakfast was over.
The tour of the house was brief. It was spacious and large, but no palace fit for a king. The furnishings were crafted of metal: iron, copper, gold or silver, and inlaid with gems that would’ve made Midas salivate with desire. But Gwyneth understood that down here the value of these polished metals and rocks was no greater than wood, marble or granite was in the world above. The silken cushions and carpets were probably worth more because the element from which they were crafted was rarer.
Without the sling to support her weight, Brea’s sleeping body grew quite heavy. After a while, Gwyneth shifted the infant to her other arm.
Svartan stopped walking. Cocking his head, he studied them for a moment. “I will carry the child now.” He didn’t ask, didn’t request. He announced.
Irritation swelled in Gwyneth at his confident tone. She stared at him challengingly, and he stared back.
He reached out his hands. “I will be careful. You must trust me.”
Reluctantly, she handed Brea over. “Support her neck and her bottom. Hold her close, and for heaven’s sake, don’t drop her.”
Svartan took the baby in his strong hands. “I can’t decide whether you think of me as a bear or an imbecile.”
Gwyneth glanced at him uncertainly. Though he didn’t smile, she had the impression he was making a joke. Had there been jokes in those hot, mysterious nights of spinning? Sort of… She’d rather liked his deadpan humor before she’d discovered his callous trickery.
She opened her mouth to retort, but she realized he wasn’t paying her any attention. His words had been distracted, almost without any thought at all. He was gazing down at Brea, who sighed and stirred, as if sensing the change of protective arms. Though he held her slightly awkwardly like any man unused to dealing with tiny infants, his grasp was sure yet gentle, his expression both wondering and curious. Like a scientist who’d discovered a particularly unusual specimen.
Without warning, his lips curved into a smile that lightened his eyes and his whole face. “I didn’t realize a baby could be beautiful,” he observed. “How can she be so tiny and yet look so much like you?”
Gwyneth blinked. “Was that a compliment?”
The smile disappeared. His dark lashes dropped like a protective veil. “To Brea,” he said, and walked across the hall to the front door. A servant bowed them out of the house and closed the door behind them. “This way. I’ll show you the new tribunal building first, since I have to go there anyway.”
At first, he strode along too fast and she had to run to keep up with him. She wouldn’t have bothered if he hadn’t been carrying Brea. But as she trotted after him like some puppy, dodging among the pale, busy people to keep him in sight, indignation rose up like a tide
. He was doing it deliberately to humiliate her, perhaps even to separate her from Brea.
He halted so unexpectedly that she ran into him. “Sorry,” he said abruptly. “I’m used to walking alone.” Thus depriving her of both anger and the perverse satisfaction of expressing it. She marched along beside him in silence, feeling grim and helpless. But at least at this slightly slower pace, she had the chance to take in her surroundings, the loose, cool garb of the pale city-dwellers who didn’t as a rule wear the elaborate, layered clothing fashionable in her own world, even among the poor. Gwyneth supposed it was too hot down here. She began to feel her own gown, presumably designed to Svartan’s specifications, made her stand out like a sore thumb. Certainly she was receiving plenty of stares, mostly curious, some downright stunned.
Of course, she was walking with their king, however unceremonious he appeared by Midas’s standards. And that king was carrying her child in his arms.
“Do they know?” she blurted.
“Pardon?”
“Your people. Are they aware of your plans for my daughter?”
He hesitated. “Mostly no,” he said at last. “I’ve discussed it with one or two of my closest advisers, of course—Karnak, for one, whom you met. But the majority of my people know nothing about you or Brea. I plan to introduce them to her formally one day. Perhaps on her first birthday, perhaps before.”
He glanced at her. “We could discuss that. You’ll know better than I when she can bear the noise and stress of cheering crowds.”
Again, Gwyneth found herself catching her jaw in mid-dive. He seemed to have that effect on her. “You worry about cheering crowds when you’ve deprived her of fresh air?”
He frowned. “The air is perfectly fresh. In fact, it smells a lot sweeter than your city centre.”
Reluctantly, Gwyneth was forced to concede that point. The air was a little over-warm, perhaps, but there was plenty of it and she could detect none of the unpleasant odors common in the crowded streets she was used to.
“How do you do that?” she asked curiously.
He shrugged. “Good ventilation. We have a system of ducts behind the rock that admits fresh air from above and filters out the old.”
“That must have taken some work,” she said, wonderingly, staring around her. It was a weird place, she thought, all irregular shapes and bizarre paths leading up and over buildings as well as around them. But it was ingenious in its own way, and oddly beautiful with the sparkling of precious minerals in among the hard granite. A tremendous feat of aesthetics as well as engineering.
“No,” he said unexpectedly. “The planning was the hard part, but once we began it, the work was done really quickly. Everyone, from engineers to laborers, was eager to complete it.”
She glanced at him. “You are responsible for this?” she asked, carefully neutral.
“I’m stubborn,” said Svartan, adjusting his grip on the baby as she wriggled unexpectedly in his arm. “I insisted it could be done, and we found the way. Do you carry her with you like this all the time? Do you not have some sort of baby carriage?”
“Yes, for outdoors,” Gwyneth answered, slightly thrown by the abrupt subject change. “She likes the motion. It soothes her when she’s fractious.”
He nodded. “I’ll send someone to you this afternoon who will make one to your requirements. This is our daily market.”
Distracted from her instinctive determination to decline his offer, Gwyneth found herself gazing around the colorful stalls which sold everything from jewelry to fish. Trinket boxes made of solid gold, studded with emeralds and sapphires, umpteen varieties of mushroom, bales of cloth of every conceivable color, working boots and sandals with one narrow strap to keep them on, belts and work bags, bright ribbons, jars and pots, glasses, vases, crockery of fantastic shapes and unusual sizes, tools, fruits Gwyneth had never seen before and some that she had.
“Most of the stuff you see is made here,” he said, so casually that she knew he wanted her to notice. “Apart from the stall at the end which sells goods traded from topside. When I first became king, it was the other way ’round. One stall of our goods, twelve of theirs. Now we’re learning what riches we have here.”
He’d made a difference, she allowed with reluctance. He’d made life better for his people. “How long have you been king?” she asked.
He smiled faintly. “In name since I was sixteen. In practice, since I was twenty.”
“You had some kind of regent until you came of age?”
“Not exactly. Bizarrely enough, although the kingdom is traditionally ruled by a harsh autocracy, the people may vote in the autocrat they prefer.”
“An elective kingship?”
“Exactly. With the king chosen from one of the families within the royal blood line. I won when my grandfather died, but narrowly, since I had so much going against me—I’m a hybrid and I was only sixteen, and so people feared I would be controlled by unscrupulous men. I had to fight to keep my throne and to pacify rivals. And then I had to fight to keep down those aforementioned unscrupulous men who wanted to control me.”
He spoke lightly and with wry humor, and yet Gwyneth glimpsed the grit and pain of those years before he’d won by sheer, steely determination, she suspected as much as by the brilliance which must even then have shone from him.
Shocked by the admiring direction of her thoughts, she let her gaze slide away from his and saw a lady tripping across from the market toward them. She was smiling, beautifully dressed in a midnight blue, loose robe that sparkled with diamonds. Gold rings flashed in her ears, on her wrists and ankles. Even her teeth sparkled. And from the fact that several servants followed her with arms full of purchases, Gwyneth suspected she was a noblewoman.
“Well met, Highness!” she said gaily, with a playful curtsey right in front of them. Svartan chose to halt. “Is that really a child you’re clutching in your strong arms?”
“Yes,” said Svartan, casting a quick glance at Brea which instantly softened his impatient face. “It does appear to be a child.”
The woman, clearly oblivious to his sarcasm, said, “Goodness! Is it yours?”
Svartan’s gaze fixed on her. Gwyneth held her breath. Don’t dare. Don’t dare claim her…
Yet why did she care what he said here? He’d already claimed her daughter as his heir. What difference did it make if this beautiful hell dweller believed that he was the father of Gwyneth’s child?
But to her surprise, the woman began to blush and a look that was almost fear surged into her large, pale eyes. Of course. Everyone must know that hybrids couldn’t breed, and the woman had just drawn his failing to his attention. No wonder she looked petrified. But at least Gwyneth was safe from her insult.
Insult? You are his mistress. He’s done things to you your husband never came close to.
God, what did that make her?
It makes me a mother fighting for my child.
The woman gave an awkward laugh, but Svartan, as if he noticed nothing, said merely, “Lady Candara, Lady Gwyneth and her daughter. You must excuse us for the moment, Candara, I have an appointment.”
Although Candara immediately stepped back with a smile, the glance she shot upward at Gwyneth was so piercing that it made her think. For some reason she didn’t like the thought, and that made her angry enough to say waspishly, “Do I sense that Candara is one of those obliging ladies who ensure you don’t degenerate into monkdom?”
Svartan didn’t glance at her as they walked on down the rocky path toward a major building work at the very end. But a faint smile twisted his full lips. “On the contrary, Candara would hold out for marriage.”
“Does she love you?” Gwyneth blurted. She tried to believe her tension was because this possibility could help her to freedom. But in this place, he was all she had, and her nature seemed to be perverse enough to turn it to jealousy.
“She’d love to be queen. Which is a pity since she never will be. What do you think of this building’s sha
pe? From this distance?”
Baffled by yet another change of subject, Gwyneth found herself regarding the new building at the end of the road. It was large, larger than Svartan’s house and more classical in shape. Although built into the rocks, and its lines were straighter, its impression was one of space and grandeur. Despite the men on ropes and ladders swarming all over it, she realized this one was built to impress.
She considered. “I like it. It’s different and yet still retains the distinctive quality of all your buildings.”
He smiled at her answer. Sensing it, she met his gaze and saw with surprise that her words had really mattered to him. He wanted her approval. Perhaps just because she was of the other world. And a queen to boot, God help her.
He walked on in silence. As they drew nearer to the building, a familiar figure bounded forward to greet them.
“We meet again,” beamed Karnak, in bright purple today. Now that she was in a better condition to notice such things, though, she realized his suit was of light silk, and that his trousers were loose and comfortable looking, in all far more suitable for down here than the tight breeches and heavy velvet coats of her own world.
In fact, it struck her that they were probably more suitable for a summer’s day above ground, too, but court etiquette would never stretch that far. In her own layered gown, despite the fine material, she’d begun to feel unappealingly sweaty.
Karnak was examining the baby in Svartan’s arms. “What a beautiful infant,” he exclaimed. “Look at his skin…”
“Her skin,” said Svartan and Gwyneth in unison. Karnak glanced quizzically from one to the other until Svartan cleared his throat and turned hastily to Gwyneth, offering Brea to her.
“Does she need to be changed?” Gwyneth asked in surprise.
“I’ve no idea,” Svartan confessed. “But I can’t take her into the building site. Wait here with Karnak. I won’t be long.”
Stunned by his thoughtfulness, Gwyneth took Brea and watched him stride across to the main building. Several men converged to meet him.
Realizing that Karnak’s perceptive, pale eyes were on her face, Gwyneth said brightly, “So this is his tribunal building? What’s it for?”