by Dana Marton
“Most of the losses are among the city soldiers,” he said. “Your army fared better. They had been bloodied before and battle hardened.”
“And your people?” I moved some roasted duck over to my plate.
“My sailors performed as expected.” The prince served himself as well. I liked that about him. He must have grown used to taking care of himself while pretending to be a merchant.
We talked about what would come next. Lord Karnagh and his warriors would come with me to Dahru. As would Graho.
Our meal was pleasantly spent.
“The ships are ready to sail whenever you are,” Graho promised.
I thanked him.
“And that other matter?” he asked, taking my hands when we stood at the end of the meal.
He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles. Then he drew me closer.
I did not fear his touch. I cared for him. He had become a friend during the siege, and maybe even before that. When he lowered his lips to mine, I did not protest.
“Be mine,” he whispered against my lips. And then he kissed me. And then he kissed me more deeply.
It was a kiss to make maidens swoon, from a handsome prince. But I was no maiden. I was a healer, thought by some a sorceress, most certainly a woman who was not in love with the man kissing her.
Had it been Batumar’s arms tightening around my body and pulling me closer, my knees would have melted.
“I cannot,” I said as I pulled back a little.
“You have my heart,” he said without letting me go. “All I ask is that you try. My love will carry us through until you grow to return it.” And he kissed me again.
When I pulled back once more, he said. “Make your choice. To be a free woman, a queen someday in your own right. Rule instead of being locked away in a Pleasure Hall, inherited like an old suit of armor.”
I bristled at the words, yet in many ways, he was right.
He kissed me again, harder, deeper, holding me tight, tighter than I liked.
“Let me go.” I tried to move away, but he still held me.
He was not overly forceful but clearly thought I needed convincing, hoped that his own passion might awaken mine. I knew that was not possible.
I looked him square in the eye. “In life or death, my heart belongs to Batumar.”
Then I heard metal scraping metal and I knew that somewhere, much closer behind me than he had been earlier, Orz had removed his sword from his scabbard.
He growled a tiger’s warning first, but then spoke, his voice broken and rusty. “The Lady Tera said no.”
My heart quickened as I recognized that ruined voice. I whirled to him. My knees weakened as I saw him stand before me, his hood back at last, Batumar wearing Orz’s robes, his face nearly unrecognizable under a crisscross netting of scars, yet so very precious in my sight.
His gaze was on Graho’s hand that still held mine, murder in his obsidian eyes.
Graho let go.
And I flew forward.
I was caught against Batumar’s wide chest, my dust heart filling with blood and expanding until I thought it would burst, my throat impossibly tight. I clung to him like leaves to a branch in a storm.
If this was a dream, so be it. I wanted to waste no time questioning it, fearing that if I thought too much, I might yet wake. I wrapped my arms around him as tightly as he had when I was helping to hold up the wall and he was trying to make sure my spirit would not forever leave my body.
Sword in one hand, the other around my waist, he caught my lips in a searing, branding kiss that deleted all other thought from my mind and turned my knees to water.
Batumar.
I was laughing, and at the same time, I cried and was certain I was going mad.
When we broke apart, we were alone in the room. Graho had retreated.
Batumar let me go. Stepped back. He had not looked into my eyes all through our long journey from Ker, but he made up for it now, an overwhelming hunger burning in his gaze.
“The prince is right, my lady,” he said, his voice rough. “You have not had your choice.”
“I did,” I protested feebly as my mind still scrambled to catch up with his presence before me.
“I took you to Karamur. I put you in my Pleasure Hall.”
“I was not unhappy.”
He took another step back and sheathed his sword. “I choose you. Over all others. Forever as one pair. According to your people’s custom. No other concubines.” He paused, then said, “Make your choice freely now.”
He stood utterly still as he waited, a dark mirage with blazing eyes, battered and scarred.
“I choose you. Only you and no other.” I watched as the tension drained out of his shoulders.
He communicated with Marga in their growls and chuffs, then opened the door. The tiger walked out and lay down outside, on guard.
Batumar closed the door and pushed the monstrous oak table in front of it with little effort. He laid his sword on top of the table, at the ready.
He looked at me, dark fires burning in his gaze. “Any man tries to come through that door, dies.”
And then he swept me off my feet with the fierce look of a marauding barbarian.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
(Only You)
Batumar carried me straight to the bed. But instead of laying me down on the covers, he stood me on my feet, my knees barely holding. He crushed my mouth under his while his hands went to the neckline of my dress. And then he rent the satin from top to bottom.
I gasped even as he tugged the material off my shoulders; then once the satin pooled on the carpet, he lifted me up and out of the dress, kicking Graho’s gift away. The royal seal followed in short order.
He examined my shift with narrowed eyes as he set me down. “Is that too from the prince?” His voice was low and roughened.
I shook my head. “This came with the clothes the city merchants sent as gifts.”
“Do you wish to keep it?”
Since I did not have much in the way of clothes, I nodded.
He reached to my shoulders and brushed the straps down. He did not have to do more. The slip glided easily down my body. And then I stood before him naked.
He unpinned my hair, then his callused palm cupped my face. He would not take his eyes off me. He kissed me again, like a man once dead come back to life, receiving another chance. And then I was suddenly in the middle of the bed, being kissed senseless.
Then his robe was gone, then his leggings, but his long shirt remained. When I reached to tug the shirt off him, he ground out a fierce “No,” and grabbed my wrists to bring them over my head and hold them there. “The shirt remains.”
“Scars cannot scare me. I am a healer.”
But he would not let my hands go until I nodded.
Then he was ravishing my mouth again, then my breasts that ached for his touch alone, his mouth and hands all over my body. His fingers traveled the length of my legs. The fire burned so hot in his eyes, I felt enveloped in heat.
He did not take me in a slow seduction, but in as thorough a claiming as I had seen between Marga and Tigran, a feral, animal coupling that left me breathless and slick with sweat, aching for what only he could give me.
My back arched on the sheets, my body tightening around him. He moved hard and deep. I wanted harder and deeper and cried out my need, a wanton I barely recognized as me.
My very being pulsed with pleasure as my world shattered.
But Batumar growled, “More.”
His teeth scraped the sensitive skin of my neck, his palms covering my breasts. “Mine forever,” he growled the words.
I looked up into his fevered, possessive gaze. “Yes.”
When at last he emptied into me, the sound he made was half-human, half-tiger.
Afterward, as we lay together, my head on his chest, I slid my arm around him as his arms were around me, holding me tight, as if we were both scared of being separated again.
&nb
sp; “He kissed you,” Batumar said darkly, and his great chest expanded. “More than once.”
My pleasure-addled brain refused to work. I looked up at him. “Who?”
I must have said the right thing, because the corner of his mouth twitched. “Navy or not, Prince Graho came closer to dying in this room than he shall ever know.”
I kissed Batumar’s chest, wishing his shirt did not have to be between us. I longed to feel his naked skin against mine. “The prince is a good man,” I said carefully.
Batumar grunted.
And I asked the question foremost in my mind. “Why did you not reveal yourself earlier?”
He looked toward the tall ceiling. “I did not want to saddle you with something this broken. You deserve more.”
I buried my face in the crook of his neck. By the spirits, how I had missed this.
“If you had chosen him—” He fell silent.
And my reawakened heart twisted at the thought that he had watched the prince court me. If I had given in to Graho’s kisses, Batumar would have let me have my choice.
Would he someday simply have disappeared? I did not think he could have long continued as my bodyguard and watched me with the prince.
He held me tight. “I will never be High Lord again.”
I didn’t know what to say. The Kadar elected the strongest and most able warrior among them. With what he had suffered at the sorcerer’s hands, he was no longer that.
He looked back at me with questions in his eyes.
“I have made my choice,” I reminded him.
His face clouded. “I might not be able to protect you.”
I smiled. “I have my army.”
And he smiled back, the scars dancing on his face. “That is an odd thing to hear you say.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. I had thought I would never again see his smile. I ducked my head so he would not see me weep.
“I thought you were dead,” I whispered against his neck.
“Close enough so few would know the difference.” His arms tightened around me another bit.
“You sank into the ocean. What happened?”
He waited a moment or two. “I do not much remember.” His chest rose as he filled his lungs with air. “I remember being cut down, but I cannot recall hitting the water. Then I remember drowning, water in my mouth, everything hurting so much I did want to die. And then a voice, calling my name. Your voice.” He kissed the top of my head. “That voice drew me to the surface.”
“I could not see you.”
“The ship was moving,” he said. “Maybe I had surfaced on the other side. I have some vague memories of Pek dragging me out of the water with a harpoon.”
“And then?”
“Nothing. He must have talked the pirates into letting him keep me. I have a flash of him rolling me to shore in an empty barrel.”
“He must have sold you to the sorcerer.” If only I had known. I would have taken the red tower apart brick by brick with my own two hands to get to Batumar. “What did the sorcerer want?”
For a long while, Batumar said nothing. Then, “My pain to strengthen some spell.”
I thought of his broken gait, the web of scars that covered what I could see of his body. Almost as if every bone had been broken. As if then he’d been flayed. Then put back together again. Because healing hurt too, especially the knitting of bones. More pain for the sorcerer.
I felt sick.
“I thought you were a hollow without a spirit.” I blinked back tears.
“I was,” he said quietly. “There was nothing but darkness.”
“At the gate, in Ishaf, did you recognize me?” I blamed myself fiercely for not recognizing him.
“I do not even know that I was at the gate of Ishaf.”
So then I told him how I had found him.
He shook his head. “I knew nothing but darkness and pain. I wanted nothing but death. Could I have talked, I would have begged for a swift lance through the heart.”
He fell silent again. “Then, at the edge of that darkness, I saw the faintest of light, as if from a candle at a great distance. I had no hope of ever reaching that light, but like some reasonless animal, no, less than that, an insect, I moved toward it.”
My tears wet his shirt.
He said, “That light was all I had, so I followed it. I knew that if I turned away, I would forever be claimed by the darkness.” He trailed kisses over my brow. “Little by little, the light seemed to grow. And then little by little, some of it came inside me.”
“When did you recognize me?”
He shook his head. “I cannot say. But one day, you were there, and it was as if you had always been there. But I could not talk.”
“You could have shown yourself to me.”
“I feared I would scare you. I was not fit to be seen.” He swallowed. “I am barely fit to be seen now.”
I could not imagine what that journey must have been like for him. I looked up at him again. “Why did you say your name was Orz? I thought you were Ishaf’s vanished captain of the city guard.”
He kissed away my tears. “Not Orz. Yours.” He gave a lopsided smile. “You asked what I was.”
“Yours,” I whispered back as my heart filled with so much love it nearly burst. “I wish I had known.”
“I had nothing to offer you. The only thing I could think of was to keep following you. If you were set upon by brigands, I could at least jump on their swords and give you a moment or two to escape.”
I moved up to kiss him.
He kissed me back hungrily, but I pulled away after a short time to bury my face into his neck. “I lost our babe,” I whispered against his warm skin. I did not know of how aware he had been back then.
His heart thudded like funeral drums. I clung to him in silence.
“There will be other babes,” he whispered into my hair at long last, his tone soothing, but I caught a thread of grief in it. Then his voice roughened as he said, “You are here. You are well. We are together.”
And then we found each other’s bodies again.
* * *
We sailed out the next day, the Emperor’s diminished army nowhere in sight. They had withdrawn to the east to recover from their losses. We had to secure the Gate of the World before they could attack Dahru. All my instincts said that the Emperor’s sorcerer was even now working a plan for that.
Part of Graho’s navy stayed behind to protect Uramit, a larger force to protect Landria’s own islands. But we still had all the ships we needed to transport our army. And we had plenty of food, given to us as payment by the city for defending them. We had no shortage of weapons either, many taken from the fallen enemy.
While Batumar, Lord Karnagh, and Tomron trained the troops up on deck, I went to the captain’s cabin to thank Prince Graho.
“A prince keeps his word,” he said, sitting behind his desk.
It was the first I saw him brooding.
“You would have been better off with me,” he said.
I smiled. “Batumar told me the same thing.”
The prince frowned. “It is difficult to hate a wise man. And a hero. He came back from death for you. How is a prince to compete?”
“You will find your princess,” I promised.
“There will be ballads, in any case,” he said, his tone milder. “The crown prince leading the navy through the hardstorms and regaining the Gate of the World.”
“Maidens will swoon.”
He frowned. “They will not be you.”
“But there will be one you will love more than you ever loved me.”
He looked doubtful. But then he said, “Mayhap it is better this way. It is a dangerous business, loving a powerful sorceress. One little fight over dinner, and you could wilt my…sword.”
I grinned even as I rolled my eyes at him. He grinned back.
And then Batumar burst in.
* * *
“You know, my lord, you do not have to drag me off to be
d every time I talk to the prince,” I scolded Batumar, lying spent across his body in our cabin a while later.
Truly, with his healed fingers, he could peel me out of my dress as fast as a beggar boy peeled a sweet, juicy dindin.
“I want to make up for our lost days.” He caressed my rib cage, all the way up to my breast. “We will be entering the hardstorms tomorrow.”
Somehow, when we were together now, everything was different. We had spent so much time apart, yet I felt as if we were closer in spirit. Of course, we were different people now than when we left Karamur. Batumar was no longer High Lord. I was no longer the High Lord’s concubine.
Yet our bond was tighter than it had ever been.
He cupped my breast. And then he suddenly shifted me so I was under him, and he between my legs.
Again? But my body quickened with need. Yet I couldn’t help teasing him, making a face as if I was terribly put upon. “Oh, what now?”
He claimed my lips. Then he was inside me in one smooth thrust. “In Uramit, the prince kissed you,” he growled the words. “More than once.” He growled again. “Only when I am here…” He ground himself into me, filling my body with pleasure. “Can I bear that thought.”
He held my gaze. “I love you, Tera of my heart.”
And my spirit sang.
THE END
Titles in the Bestselling Hardstorm Saga Series:
RELUCTANT CONCUBINE, book 1
ACCIDENTAL SORCERESS, book 2
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