“Here!” she said and then quickly threw her hands up, blocking the demon that’d come to within breathing distance of her before his club smashed down on her head.
The demon shattered into a million slivers of harmless ice.
Alador was quick with his arrows. A centaur’s affinity for the bow was legendary, and Alador was no different. He was a graceful study in the deadly arts.
Luminesa could not afford to be distracted by him, though. The parapet was suddenly overrun by monsters. For every two she sprayed into oblivion, it seemed that ten more took their places.
The battle raged on through the night. At one point, she’d had to throw an ice shield over all the doorways to ensure none of the monsters entered the castle’s confines.
Luminesa regretted making her palace so large. The ice demons had come from all sides, thundering and swinging their ice clubs with deadly intent.
She’d been caught in the side of the head a time or two. Her ears rang, and her temple throbbed, but she and Alador were managing to keep them at bay. None of them had managed to enter the castle doors.
And by the time the first rays of sunlight crested the skies, the army of thousands had trickled down to less than a dozen.
Luminesa had turned herself into a tower of snow just to keep up with their rush…moving to and fro, from one spire to another, blasting out walls of ice to hammer them away.
By the time the sun had fully risen in the early morning sky, the attackers were all gone.
She and Alador sat huffing and puffing on the balcony floor, their backs pressed against each other as she looked around and shook her head.
“This wasn’t natural.” He said it slowly.
She nodded, having come to the same conclusion herself. “I know. They came at us from all sides. They could have easily overpowered us if they’d wanted to.”
Turning so that he could look at her, Luminesa realized she was vastly more comfortable in his presence than she’d been yesterday evening. Never would she have been able to sit in the presence of a male for that amount of time without feeling the need to get up and run far away.
Of course, it probably helped that she was so exhausted she could barely move.
His jaw jutted out, and she realized that his cheeks had a fine shadow of dark hair. Her heart squeezed painfully in her chest.
It was a wonder she even noticed him at all. Her body trembled from the adrenaline of battling all night. Even her bones ached, and yet…she’d never been more aware of another male in her life.
The way rivulets of sweat still ran down his powerful chest. The curls of fog that rose from off his withers, and the way his long, black hair clung to the sides of his chiseled profile.
She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, grateful that centaurs couldn’t read minds.
“The odds of this being a random occurrence are—”
“Nil,” she finished for him.
Clenching his jaw tightly so that the muscle in his cheek twitched, he nodded.
Her pulse raced. She really needed to get her emotions under control. It was ridiculous. She was exhausted, probably stank from all the sweating she’d done, she was sure she looked no better than a drowned rat, and yet she couldn’t stop wondering how a centaur’s lips might feel pressed against her own. Especially that centaur’s.
“This land is cursed,” he spat, “and I would not doubt if this wasn’t the last we’ve seen of those accursed monsters.”
When she shivered that time, it had absolutely nothing to do with her rising awareness of the male and everything to do with the niggling suspicion that he was absolutely right.
The Under Goblin had dropped them into an icy hell.
Alador
She’d looked so incredibly small and helpless sitting on that balcony next to him. Exhaustion had laced every inch of her body, but Alador had had to fight to keep his hands to himself and not crush her to him as he’d wanted to from the moment she’d caused the final ice demon to implode from her touch.
Luminesa had been a thing of majestic and deadly beauty. For such a little thing, she’d packed an enormous wallop. Her power had rolled around him like heated lava, and his skin had prickled whenever she’d thrown a wave of that power into the night.
Fighting beside her had been an honor. Not even a centauress could have done better. Haxion would have been impressed.
His nostrils flared, though, as he recalled the flicker of dread that’d rolled through her cornflower blue eyes when he’d mentioned the possibility of there being more attacks like last night’s.
But quickly, that dread had vanished, replaced by a cold, calculating determination that’d made his heart swell with pride. That unsettling feeling had so discombobulated him that he’d told her in a brusque voice it was time for her to get to bed and get whatever rest she could and that he would take first watch.
She’d looked taken aback by his command at first but then had given him a stiff nod. And when he’d tried to help her to her feet, she’d shaken him off and, holding her head high, had walked stiffly away from him.
Alador hadn’t meant to hurt her…or maybe he had.
Goddess, he didn’t know anything anymore.
Luminesa was nothing at all like he’d expected. She’d been magnificent last night, in a way he’d only ever thought a centauress capable.
She’d matched him kill for kill, never once crying out for help. There was no weak link in her. She was as brave and strong as any woman of his herd, maybe even more so.
He’d sat on that balcony for the next four hours, dead on his feet, watching the skyline with a hawk-like glare, even as his head was full of thoughts of her.
She’d come back out just a few minutes ago, changed into a different gown of ice that’d hugged her lush curves almost like second skin, and without glancing at him, had said, “Go. I’ll watch now.”
Alador had wanted to say more, but her falcon had come and landed on her shoulder, and he’d felt her icy shield flicker between them, and he’d known she’d not have appreciated it.
He’d done wrong. He knew that. He also knew he needed to apologize, to tell her that everything he was feeling had nothing at all to do with her and everything to do with him.
That she confused him. Even slightly terrified him. But his tongue had grown too thick to speak with, so he’d turned and made for his room.
There would be little time for sleeping. The children would surely rise in another hour or so. The first thing the Queen had done after the fight was to weave a mirror of ice that let them look into the children’s rooms. They were both there, safely tucked into their beds and fast asleep.
How they could have slept through the thunderous booms of the demons’ attacks, he knew not, but clearly, they had.
Alador felt too awake and wired to sleep. Nevertheless, if his gut feeling was right and the demons returned tomorrow night, he’d need to be fresh to meet that challenge. But when he got to his room and settled onto the pile of freshly cut hay, his thoughts wouldn’t stop turning.
Just as when he’d been marching through the woods, he could have sworn he’d heard a voice last night in the hall, a male voice. A deep and heavy chuckle that’d rumbled straight through Alador’s very core.
Instinct told him that it’d been the Under Goblin, which would explain the timing of the ice demons too.
Luminesa had looked as shocked to see them as he had been, and more and more, Alador was coming to think—astonishing as it was—that the Ice Queen, too, was a pawn in the Under Goblin’s game.
Closing his eyes, he decided to try and rest, even if only for a moment. So he was shocked when he opened his eyes later and knew he’d slept not just a little but several hours.
The shadows playing across the floor let him know at least three hours had passed, if not more. Shaking himself awake, Alador expected to be shivering, freezing from sleeping on ice and a little pile of hay, but he was warm and felt fine. Incredible, actually.
<
br /> And hungry. Desperately so. He’d not eaten a thing in close to three days, and he needed food.
He got up, took care of his morning necessaries, then followed the hall to the staircase and walked toward the kitchen, a massive room bursting with activity.
Ice maidens dressed in servants’ outfits bustled to and fro, stirring, chopping, and chatting loudly among themselves. Their words were like no words he’d ever heard before, nonsensical and yet lovely chatter that sounded almost like song.
Buzzing in the air above them were little clusters of snow bees feeding off ice flowers, tipped in splashes of crimson and magenta, which sat inside glass vases.
A maiden turned to him with a quizzical arch of her brow. “You want?” she asked in broken Kingdom.
Made entirely of ice, with blue hair, blue eyes, blue lips, and blue clothing, she was tall and lanky, with arms that hung nearly to her knees and a warm, ready smile on her face. She was a strange sight to behold, foreign and yet human enough not to be off-putting.
Glancing around, Alador spotted a bowl sitting on the counter, loaded with snowcapped berries and apples. Shaking his head, he reached for the bowl and brought it to his chest.
“I’m good, madam. I thank you.”
“S’okay.” She waved politely, turned, and resumed her task of peeling the pile of snow tubers in front of her.
Leaving the kitchen, he headed toward the dining hall, shaking his head at how very different and unusual the palace was from what he was used to back home.
He palmed a handful of snow berries, popped them into his mouth, and munched happily as their sweet juices flowed down his throat. The low ache in his stomach immediately eased a little with the first bite.
Alador was just about to pop another handful in when he stopped short in the doorway. Standing with her back to him and facing the floor-to-ceiling windows was the Queen.
She was dressed in a robe of silvery white that puddled at her feet, and her hair—which was a deep blue—was pinned high on her head. And though she was inside, a small cloud of snowflakes breezed around her.
Her pale skin almost glittered like diamond dust in the weak morning light. His heart jackhammered violently in his chest.
Then she turned, and it was as if he’d forgotten how to breathe. A halo of golden light washed around her head and shoulders. He’d seen her just a few hours ago, but it was like seeing her again for the first time.
That strange, unsettling feeling of standing on a precipice that dropped sharply on all sides came over him.
Setting the bowl on the table beside him, he then bowed deeply. It was not the centaur way to bow to those not of their ilk, but he didn’t bow to her because she was a queen; he bowed to her because he needed to, wanted to, though he couldn’t quite understand why he felt as he did, only that his heart was a beating drum in his chest.
When he stood back up, he’d expected her to perhaps leave or give him a dismissive nod. He’d deserved it after his treatment of her earlier. But she did neither.
Instead, she gifted him with the first smile he’d ever seen on her face. He swallowed hard.
“Mistress, what are you doing here?”
Her brows gathered. “If you’re worried about the ice demons, you shouldn’t worry. I’ve set a watchman out.”
What? No, that wasn’t at all what he’d meant. He shook his head. “I apologize. That wasn’t what I meant to imply. Rather…I thought maybe you’d be breaking your fast in your own room,” he ended lamely, cringing at how silly that had sounded. What was wrong with him? Since when had it become difficult for him to get his thoughts in order?
She walked toward him, gliding along a thin sheet of ice and stopping only once she’d gotten to within a few inches of him. The air around her smelled heavily of sweet fruit and frost.
“I am sorry for disturbing your quiet,” she said. “I’ll move along to—”
Not thinking, he reached out for her arm and gripped it in his large hand. “You should stay. This is, after all, your palace. I’ll find another place to—”
She glanced down at his hand on her arm, and he snatched it away quickly. What had he been thinking to grab her that way? He hadn’t been thinking at all.
But she looked so sad standing there all alone, staring out at the sun with a look of such longing on her face that he’d felt broken by it.
Nibbling on the corner of her lip, she shook her head. Her movements were shy, timid.
Why? Did she fear him? He sighed deeply, taking a few steps back to give her her space should she need it. But she frowned instead.
Rubbing her temple, she said, “No, you can stay. This room is large enough for the both of us, surely, and the children, too, when they come down for breakfast…” Her words trailed off, and she glanced away.
She was nervous.
Alador could smell it on her. That scent of anxiety that washed through her bones and leaked through her pores. The thought was astonishing. Maybe all he’d ever known were stories of her, but it was hard reconciling the woman he thought he’d known with the woman before him.
“Do I make you nervous, Queen?”
Her lips tugged into an even deeper frown. Her blue eyes as clear as cut sapphires blazed back at him. “No, you do not.”
Her words were sharp, but she hugged her arms to her chest, and he knew that she lied. She was nervous with him. But why?
“Yes, you are,” he pressed. “I can sense it.”
Her tiny nostrils flared with annoyance, and it was so unbelievably cute that for a moment, he felt the tug of a smile twitch at his cheeks. It was such a centauress mannerism that it had reminded him, oddly, of home.
“You can sense it,” she scoffed. “Is that so? How?”
Deciding to test her, he took a step closer, and she immediately backed up, her large eyes growing wide with nerves as he did.
He stopped moving. “Because I can smell it on you.”
Her rosebud-shaped lips pinched into a tight, thin line. “You can smell it on me? Well, that is perverse. What else can you smell, horse?”
Normally, if anyone called him a horse, his hackles would rise. He was no more a horse than a horse was a man. And yet his stomach didn’t tighten with anger but instead flopped almost painfully down to his knees.
She had teased him. Even after how he’d acted last night and that morning. Why?
The smile that’d only ghosted across his lips seconds ago suddenly blazed to life. “Horse, am I?”
And for just a second, laughter danced through her blue, blue eyes. But it was squelched only moments later.
Alador found himself oddly fascinated by her mercurial shifts in mood.
Clearing his throat at that strange and not wholly unwelcome thought, he shook his head. “Though I am part animal, I am a man. However, the animal side of me is much more sensitive to smell and scent than that of a human.”
Immediately, her features softened. She studied him then, her eyes roaming the contours of his body, as though mapping him in her mind, and he found himself oddly pleased by the thought. What did she think when she looked upon him?
Interbreed relations were rare. Most Kingdomners preferred to stick like with like, but on occasion, it did happen.
He had a cousin—Chester—who’d gone and hitched his hand to a mortal woman of Earth named Kym. Last he’d heard, they were still as deliriously happy as they’d ever been and were expecting their first foal sometime in the spring.
Shaking his head, he tried to twist that strange thought loose. But the hooks of that idea had already wormed themselves deep inside his head as, for a brief moment, he’d imagined the Queen heavy with his child.
He clamped down on the denial struggling to break free of his tongue. His flesh tingled when her gaze alighted and stayed on his chest for several long heartbeats. But then those fathomless blue eyes of hers, as deep as the very ocean, turned back to him.
“Why did your people enter into an agreement with me? Why n
ot the Under Goblin? Why choose me?”
He let her questions hang in the air for a while as he thought how best to answer them. Of all the questions she could have asked, he’d not expected that last one.
Alador tried to think of a time when he’d encountered another woman like her, one without artifice or trickery, and apart from his sister, he could think of none.
The Queen was unique; she simply was who she was. She did not flirt with him or bat her lashes at him to get her answers. She asked and waited, hoping he would answer truthfully. Her candor was refreshing.
A centauress would have flirted first, and if that hadn’t gotten her her way, she’d have resorted to violence next. The Queen merely stood before him, waiting patiently.
Very few creatures outside of his own kind knew that centaurs didn’t rely merely on the information they saw but also on information they felt—their natural instincts—to help them make an informed decision.
The Queen had always come across as cold and distant but honorable. In her own way.
“Because we knew you’d uphold your end of the treaty.”
“Has that never been in doubt?”
He shook his head. “Not with you. No.”
She blinked, and he could almost have sworn that his answer had startled her, though he wasn’t sure why it should have.
A long line of maidservants came bustling in then, carrying large platters overflowing with plates of food and drink.
None of them spared a glance for their queen or her guest. They simply set the foods down, lit several candles that sputtered with those same strange variegated flames, and marched right back out, leaving only the sounds of their melodic conversation in their wake.
Taking a deep breath, the Queen stepped to the side and spread her arm. “Join me for breakfast, centaur.”
She’d tried to frame it as a command, but he heard the telltale quiver of the question hidden inside it.
Looking at his bowl of mostly uneaten fruit, he knew there were only two choices to make. Politely decline, grab his food, and leave. Or…or he could choose to accept her invitation and possibly learn more of her motives and why he and the children had been brought there to begin with.
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