by Lilly Pink
“That is… both horrible and fascinating. But you know, in my world, we can treat snakebites from even the most deadly snakes using antivenin. People milk the venom from live snakes by tricking them into biting special foam balls. They squeeze the poison out, and I assume they do some chemistry stuff to it, and then when someone is bitten, they can get a shot that neutralizes the poison from the bite.”
“Really? You will have to tell Ameretat about it. She has always been interested in Earth medical techniques and believes we would benefit from such knowledge.” He sighed out a long, relieved breath. “Still, I was impressed by your bravery and quick thinking. Even a little shamed. After all, it is my job to keep a cool head in emergencies, and if it were not for you, I am sure I would have behaved much more embarrassingly.”
Zoe laughed, stroking his hair. “Everyone is afraid of something, Kian. It just so happens that I am not afraid of snakes. Needles on the other hand…” she shivered.
Kian smiled and looked into her eyes. “What I mean to say it that I am sorry that I, and everyone here, have underestimated your abilities. If I have learned anything on this trip, it is that you are a more than able partner for me. Courageous, intelligent, and full of compassion and wit. If possible, I love you even more than I did before.”
She kissed him in reply, sweet and lingering. “I love you too. I did tell you that I was going to try to do better, so I’m glad I seem to have succeeded.”
“As I knew you would,” he said, his amber eyes warm and bright. “I am sure there are all sorts of ceremonies and customs I am supposed to go through for this, but I find I care even less about that than usual.” He leaned back, taking his hand in hers, and she gave him a curious look, her mind already racing through the possibilities. The one that immediately occurred to her seemed the least likely. “Zoe, I am afraid I do not have a token prepared, but would you do me the honor of being my wife?”
“Oh,” she said, the only word that she could make come out in her surprise. Guess it wasn’t so unlikely after all.
Kian seemed to deflate at her hesitation. “I know it is sudden, and I did say I would be patient, but you were wonderful and I love you, more than anything, I swear I would….” She shushed him with a finger to his lips.
“Of course I will marry you,” she said, with as much sincerity as she had in her heart. “I love you, and I trust you, and I want us to be together. All of us,” she amended, laying one of their pairs of joined hands over the growing bump of her stomach. It was getting much harder to conceal, not that they were particularly trying. “I just… I didn’t expect it, that was all.”
A smiled bloomed across Kian’s face like a swift sunrise that burned the clouds away. “Jãné del-am. I cannot even begin to say how happy you have made me. I would very much like to sweep you from your feet, and carry you to the bed, with the intent of making love to you until the sun rises. However, I am now a bit leery of the bed, and in fact, of this entire room.”
Zoe laughed loudly and kissed him hard, before leaning back and looking at him, her eyes twinkling. “I think maybe we should call the guard, and possibly Ameretat, and then maybe we can find a different bed to sleep in tonight. Or not sleep in, as the case may be.”
“I think that is an excellent idea,” he replied, taking her by the hand as they, very cautiously, made their way out into the hallway to summon Zhubin and the other guards.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The guards took the snake threat very seriously, and soon found them a clean and quite safe room a few floors below. It was smaller than the suite they had shared, but that only made it more cozy. Ameretat checked them both over, and pronounced them healthy and unharmed, and they were finally able to get to bed.
Whatever they might have wanted to do, they were both exhausted from their long flight and life-threatening wildlife encounter, so there was no more than a few kisses before they fell asleep in a loving embrace.
However, the next morning was a different story. Ameretat had ordered that they were not to be disturbed, if at all possible, so even Kian slept late. Zoe woke first, which was unusual for them, and she smiled in adoration at her lover’s peaceful face. Fiancé now, she reminded herself, and the thought made her heart swell inside her chest. She pulled him close, with her arm around his back and her leg draped over his hip so their bodies were pressed flush.
He sighed in his sleep, lips parting slightly, but eyes remaining steadfastly closed. So, she kissed him, a gentle, almost teasing caress of the lips, before drawing the tip of her tongue slowly over his upper lip.
She felt his sharp inhalation, almost stealing her breath in a literal sense, and his arms tightened around her as he returned the kiss in the same tender and lingering way. Already there was a growing hardness jabbing into her hip, and Zoe smiled as she rotated her hips against his.
“Zoe,” he gasped, kissing her again, harder and deeper, grinding back into her. “Would you like to try something different?” he asked, his voice hoarse and his eyes smoldering.
She raised her eyebrows. “What do you have in mind?”
A few minutes later, she sat on her knees, gripping one of the bedposts for support, while Kian knelt behind her. His hands wandered, cupping her breasts before sliding down her rounded stomach and slipping between her knees. He pressed into the mound of her sex with the palm of his hand, moving in a slow circle, and she moaned, leaning back into his chest. His lips brushed her neck, feather soft kisses making her shiver, and then he nudged her to lean forward, guiding himself inside her, suckling at the curve of her shoulder as he seated himself deep within her slick core.
It was good, so good, the first thrust at such a perfect angle that she moaned as much from surprise as from pleasure. Kian seemed to agree, she could feel his fingers flexing against her breastbone while his other hand paused in its ministrations between her legs, and he panted against her neck for a moment before moving again, this time bit more slowly.
His finger found the throbbing center of her ecstasy even as he drove himself within her. Somehow he always knew what amount of pressure would drive her highest, and this gentle caress left her shuddering, his name bursting from her lips in a hoarse whisper laced with need.
And he liked that, hearing her calling for him. She could tell by the way his slow, sensual thrusting suddenly became their hips crashing together and the lips upon her neck were sharp with teeth, a growling groan reaching her ear.
He managed to calm himself , but Zoe realized that she had no intention of letting him. She pushed back, gyrating her hips in a languorous circle that made him moan, and then pulling herself up, controlling the rhythm with her arms and thighs. He followed after her and she rolled her hips back again, impaling herself deeply upon him, gasping as it hit home. It only took a few moments for Kian to give in, driving himself into her with rough abandon. His fingers never ceased playing her bud like an instrument, and it was almost too much, to feel him filling her from behind while his hand pleasured her from the front. Bliss spiked within her, vibrating through every muscle, and she was holding onto to the bedpost for dear life, moaning in ecstasy while he thrust into her, relentless.
He didn’t stop, switching hands now, and though his touches against her oversensitive nerves started out gentle, they grew more insistent as Zoe felt the spiral of pleasure building again. She couldn’t believe he had kept going so long, she could feel his whole body trembling with need, and now he groaned every time he moved inside her.
This time the orgasm came slowly, a whisper of heat that seemed to travel through her veins and bloom along every nerve until it was almost unbearable. Tension broke with a shuddering moan, releasing a flood of bliss that never seemed to end, she rode the crest of pleasure until it drowned her. Her head fell back in a wordless, gasping, scream, and Kian cried out against her neck, hips moving in sharp, stuttering lurches as he spent himself inside her.
Their bodies shuddered together as blissful waves of aftershocks moved through th
e both of them. Zoe let go of the bedpost, stretching her fingers before leaning back against Kian’s chest, and grabbing his hands to wrap his arms around her more tightly. He sighed, unable to speak for the moment, and Zoe was content with that. Eventually, he rearranged himself, withdrawing from her with a shiver and then sliding himself to lean against the bed while cradling her in his lap.
“I think that was a successful experiment, don’t you?” she said, her grin somewhat smug.
Kian cleared his throat, his cheeks actually turning a bit pink. “That was… I cannot even find words. I certainly enjoyed it. As I believe you did,” he added with a raised eyebrow and a knowing smile.
“I was hoping you’d notice,” she replied in a somewhat teasing tone. She reached up to stroke his cheek and he turned into her palm, placing a kiss upon it. “I suppose now we’ll have to tell everyone we plan to get married, so they can make a big fuss over us,” she said with a sigh.
“Of course,” Kian replied, his eyes sparkling with mirth. Normally, he was the one who became exasperated most quickly by all the pomp and circumstance that being royalty entailed, but for this, he was too happy to care. “We can rein in their more elaborate wishes somewhat by insisting on a time limit. My understanding is that royal weddings can take years to plan, so I suspect if we insist the marriage occurs before the baby is born, the ceremony will have to be small out of necessity.”
“You can be a little devious, when you want to,” Zoe said, smiling up at him fondly. “I say three months from now. That way I hopefully won’t be too uncomfortable, and we won’t have to worry that I might go into labor any minute.”
“I think that is an entirely reasonable request.”
***
No one else seemed to believe it was at all reasonable. Faizel was fuming about the lack of respect to tradition, and from what Ameretat said, the kitchen staff was having the vapors. Even Shahin moaned about it a little. “You realize it will be the middle of winter? Providing a feast for so many will be no easy task, and since nothing will be growing, that burden will fall mainly upon the hunters. December is not the best time for hunting either.”
“Don’t you guys have magic? Hunt now and freeze the meat,” Zoe said, frowning when everyone looked at her in confusion. “Seriously? None of you ever thought to preserve food with magic? It’s a wonder you haven’t all starved to death.”
And thus began the Kumari’s crash course in using magic to simulate technology. They already used magic to cook, sometimes, but as the kitchen staff explained, it was actually more difficult to expend energy making magical fire to heat a stove than it was just to chop the wood. Some people knew that putting cheese and meat in the basement made it last longer but no one knew why. Part of the problem was that since the war that had apparently caused more than half of the citizens to disappear, a lot of knowledge had been lost, and innovation had nearly come to a standstill.
Zoe taught them how preserving food really worked. Until now, they’d been using a combination of tradition and trial and error. They knew how to can food to keep fruit and vegetables over the winter, and to cure meat with salt, but nothing about using cold, or how certain methods of cooking could keep a food edible for long periods. Not that Zoe knew everything, but when she explained to Ameretat that it was germs that made food rot, the same thing that caused infections in humans, it was like a light bulb went off in her head.
Soon after, Kian and some of the other more scholarly Kumari enchanted a room to be permanently frozen, and the hunters began filling it with meat and fish. Zoe explained that it would last longer and taste better if each piece of meat was sealed to the air, and tried to describe the concept of plastic. Darya was the one who solved that problem, making a material that seemed to be a combination of fabric mesh, wax, and magic that worked as well as any Ziplock.
With that success, Zoe turned her attention to the gardeners, who despaired of having fresh flowers, herbs, and fruits and vegetables ready for the feast and the ceremony itself. She explained the concept of forcing. They did have greenhouses and cold-frames, knowing that these would protect young plants from frost, but it seemed no one had ever realized that by heating the greenhouses, and providing artificial light, you could simulate summer conditions, causing plants to bloom and ripen way out of season.
“There were always rumors that the gardeners of ancient days had fresh exotic blooms year round, but we always assumed the flowers were created from magic, illusions or conjurations. No one thought they might be real blossoms, tricked into maturity,” Kian said, prodding a colorful lily with a careful finger.
“It astounds me that your people have never thought to use magic for such mundane things. I assumed that if people had magic, the first thing they would use it for would be to make daily life easier. The Kumari seem to have skipped right over that stuff to focus on more esoteric or weaponized uses.”
“I have been thinking about that as well,” Kian said, linking his arm through hers as they made their way back to their rooms. “It seems to me that we are missing knowledge that should exist, but it is the kind of thing that is not written in books, but passed down by word of mouth. The sort of skills that would come easily to a common person but seem strange to a member of the nobility. I do not like where this train of thought leads me, but I cannot speculate further until my research bears fruit.”
Nearly a month had passed since he had asked her to marry him, and they had both been too busy to really notice the days speeding by. Zoe had been mostly concerned with the wedding preparations, but she was also continuing her magical studies, and beginning to delve into the other responsibilities she would be taking on as queen.
Faizel’s laundry list of duties aside, there weren’t that many that were needed these days. She was supposed to oversee the non-military staff, a task that had been mostly shared by Ameretat and Kian himself, but the staff required very little oversight. They didn’t even get paid anymore, except symbolically. All resources were shared, so no one went without food, clothing, or shelter, and with a population that hadn’t increased in a hundred years, no one felt the need to accumulate more things.
As Zoe had noted, the palace was full of treasures, and they went unnoticed. Every Kumari had a job that suited them and was required to support the whole, and in fact, most people had several overlapping occupations. They had lived and worked together so long that nearly all personal conflicts had exhausted themselves years ago.
It was, all-in-all, an easy group to manage. Besides eight cooks, there was a staff of ten gardeners, some of whom were also cooks. Four seamstresses, all of whom were also Healers, except one that assisted Faizel in the archives. There were two butlers who handled food storage, one was a gardener and one was a hunter. Three chambermaids did all the laundry, but they had figured out how to handle that with magic, and so they swept and dusted the public rooms of the palace, also with magic.
Everyone else cleaned up after themselves, except Kian, who was, apparently, not allowed. Sometimes he did the dishes anyway. Zoe had a feeling that he liked to be able to immerse himself in such a physical task when he needed to think. All Zoe had to do, as far as household management went, was receive reports, make sure everyone was getting enough rest, and handle any crises that occurred. It was rare that these could not be tackled more ably by the staff themselves.
The other things the queen had once managed, such as negotiating trade agreements and treaties, were no longer applicable, as there were no other kingdoms to trade or ally with. She had to arrange a once-monthly feast day, which had the feeling of rote memorization by the Kumari at this point, so very little work was required. Still, relieving Kian from even these simple duties gave him more free time, so much so that he admitted he didn’t always know what to do with it. After all, though he was in charge of the hunters and scouts, they required as little help as the rest of the staff. Zoe quickly realized that it was Faizel who made the most trouble. He insisted on doing things the same way they
had been done for hundreds of years, long past the point at which they were sensible, but lately the Archivist had been remarkably silent.
“I think he’s still stewing over our untraditional wedding,” Kian said with a chuckle, when Zoe remarked on Faizel’s lack of meddling. “Truthfully, I believe he is angry with me, as I ordered him to investigate where the missing records have gone.”
“You’d think he’d be thrilled. He loves old things, finding more of them ought to be like Christmas coming early.”
Kian laughed heartily at that before assuming a more serious expression. “I think he felt my assertion that the archives were incomplete was something of a personal attack. Or an accusation, perhaps. He is sulking.”
Sulking or not, Faizel’s scarcity gave Kian and Zoe more time to spend together, something they took full advantage of. They flew around the countryside as dragons, traveling to places Kian remembered from his childhood. They hunted, swam, and fished, and even spent a few nights sleeping under the stars, though it made Kian terribly nervous.
And when Zoe was not with Kian, she often spent her free time with Ameretat. Not only was the Healer instrumental in planning the wedding ceremony, but she was eager to learn anything about science that Zoe could remember, so she could figure out ways to put it into practice. Also, Zoe discovered that her friend was dreadfully nervous about delivering their child. “Obviously,” she said with a shamed expression, “no one here has ever seen a birth. My mother delivered children. She delivered Kian, even, and left extensive notes, but I have never done it myself. What if something goes wrong? If I cannot deliver your child safely, I will never be able to forgive myself.”
Zoe tried to soothe Ameretat’s fears without letting Kian know. Both of the women agreed that, about this particular subject, he was unlikely to be reasonable. Instead, Zoe asked Darya if she could show visions of things happening on Earth. The Seer said she was surprised that Zoe hadn’t asked before, but even more surprised about what she wanted to see.