by Lisa Daniels
He seemed to be utterly consumed by scholarly interest, and Mordred just folded his arms, amused and baffled at the same time. Eventually, the Highborn were dragged away into the carriage, mostly urged by Essen, leaving Mordred and a glowing Kiara behind.
“I don’t know if you deliberately intend to antagonize everyone in the court,” Mordred eventually said, “or if you’re just too impulsive for your own good. Not all ideas are good, just because you feel the need to do them, you know.”
“Hmm.” Kiara let the weaving go, feeling chastised. “Do you think what I did was childish?”
“A little. We would have been best to keep going, I think. There’s no telling how they’ll take this. Perhaps make out that you assaulted them and persist in spreading the rumor around that we’re not doing the husband and wife thing as well as we want everyone to believe.”
Kiara tapped her boot on the softly glowing green, even as the carriage began to roll away. “Well, I can think of one way to dispel some of the rumors…” She gave him a grin, though a part of her lurched in fright, asking herself if she really intended to go through with this.
“Oh?” He shared her smile, stepping a little closer. “How’s that, then?”
Dark take us, Kiara thought, before rolling to the balls of her feet and reaching up to kiss him on the lips. She did have to make sure she suppressed her panic reflex, the one that accidentally blocked her from the moment last time. His arms folded around her, and they touched one another’s lips for the first time.
Such soft and pliable material. Such a kissable mouth. How had she waited so long to taste this? How had he waited so long to claim her, to make his mark?
“Let’s,” she whispered, withdrawing herself long enough from his mouth to breathe, slightly dazed, “take this someplace else, shall we?”
“Let’s,” he agreed, his voice slurred as if drunk. They stepped back to regard one another, before erupting into grins, holding hands, and dashing back to the palace.
She barely managed to get Mordred’s door closed before he went for her, pressing her back against the wood, eagerly consuming her lips, her heat. Kiara’s heart hammered at a breakneck pace, and she needed the support of the door to stop her legs from giving out under her.
She didn’t know that much about sex, but she did know a thing or two about going along with whatever impulse and feeling burned through her. And her impulse right now was to tear those clothes off, to feel the press of his warmth against her, to let them share everything together. He touched her neck, her cheek, her ear with those soft, searing lips, hands now taking the opportunity to explore over her clothes, the simple black dress she wore, perhaps seeking out bare skin.
He bent to reach the bottom of her dress and hitched it up, now running those hands over trembling skin. She let out a sharp exhale, before scrambling to take his clothes off, to get him moving towards the softly glowing bed, to do what they were overdue for.
By the time they did reach the bed, Mordred had lost his jacket and shirt, leaving his chest gloriously exposed. His necklace fell behind him onto the red sheets as she pushed him onto them and straddled him, just wanting to be near him, to keep the feeling going, and the bolts of energy crackling through her stomach.
“This—stupid—dress,” he growled, now trying to tug her out of it, “how are you supposed to take it off?”
She laughed, before starting to unbutton it from the side connection, until it slipped off in a puddle, leaving her in her shift, panties and stockings. He let out a soft growl when seeing the small points in her shift, protruding from her barely concealed breasts, and quickly yanked that off, too. He rolled them so that now he lay on top, his body between her legs, kissing her with a sense of urgency. His length pressed hard against her, and her next impulse surged through her. To get those pants off, to get him naked. To let everything happen at last.
He shared that same impatience, wriggling off the rest of her clothes, so that she lay there, completely exposed to him.
Mordred’s yellow eyes gleamed in the faint blue lights, giving a dark tint to him. She had the strange sensation that they were kissing underwater, reaching for one another as the liquid rippled around them, as he took off the last of his clothes, as he positioned his length at her entrance, and slowly made his way inside. Though she didn’t really know how to act, what should happen during this moment, she again went with her impulse, to let the moment overtake everything else.
After he began to move, it became very, very hard to think. All her thoughts tumbled down, focusing instead to a singular point, of what Mordred did to her, and what she did to him with the way she arched against him. His eyes glazed over, shutting as he moved inside her, and she grimaced, unsure what to make of the feeling inside her curling out, half afraid everything inside might explode, making her unable to function.
She was partially right, at least. The tension increased, and she expressed her feeling with gasps and moans, in urging him to go faster, because she wanted more, more, more…
The sensation roared through her, covering her nerves and pounding heart like her lightweaving, except it came with a sensation that somehow dragged down her limbs as if drowning, and made her float at the same time. Her mind, certainly, felt as if all the moorings inside it had detached, leaving her drifting in serene bliss.
It didn’t take him too long after that to reach his own personal bliss, and for them to share the reality of their act together. She smiled as he continued to kiss her, but this time with gentle touches of his lips, letting his hands softly glide over her skin. He removed himself from inside her, still exploring her body, and she let him do so, both unable to resist and unwilling to.
Finally, he settled to her left side, dragging the bedcovers around them by getting her to move as well.
“Mine,” he said then, voice cracking, resting one palm upon her cheek.
“Mine,” Kiara echoed, doing the same to his. They both gazed at one another, grinning.
Kiara then buried her face in the pillow, enjoying Mordred’s hot arm draping over her.
What an amazing thing, this sex. When done in the right way. She might have been a little clumsy, a little unsure at times, but their sheer confidence in one another managed to override the worst of it. Also, what they did should stop some of the rumors. Just as long as she kept up the act, made sure she did what was expected of her—
She shook her head. No. That wasn’t right. She didn’t do this because everyone expected it.
She did it because she liked Mordred. Plain and simple. Maybe she struggled to admit the truth to herself at times, but from everything that had happened, accidental or not, convenient or not—she’d grown attached to him. Hard not to. He made it easy to love. Then there was that rather heart-pulsing rescue. How soon he’d reached out to find her, along with that other werewolf. How he fought back the night hordes with a form that surpassed anything any human could muster.
Something wasn’t quite right about those night horde creatures, though. Kiara only heard that they were monstrous, savage things that would kill you the second they scented you in the dark. But to her, they seemed like an eerie form of human. One that evolved without eyes, yet still sensed light. Pathetic, scrabbling creatures that shouldn’t even be alive, yet there they were, chasing after Winifred’s illusions, seeming, well… not exactly threatening.
Far too much she didn’t know. About how the sun and moon disappeared in the first place, about how things and plants survived in a place where they shouldn’t. Everything outside the lightwoven human kingdoms should be dead, without the proper nutrients and heat to survive. Lakes and seas should be frozen, the ground slick with tundra.
What did people actually know? The world went dark a long time ago. Something—someone made the sun die. It took the moon from the sky, the stars. Something happened. But what?
Mordred turned over then, hugging her closer to him, tumbling the thoughts out of her mind in that usual way. She really did
overthink things. Instead, she focused on cuddling him, on breathing in his sweat-dried scent, on absorbing his warmth until it became too much to bear.
“What crazy thing do you plan to do tomorrow night?” he said, with a little grin in his words.
“Hmm…” Kiara tried shuffling herself in closer, though all it served to do was readjust their positions and not actually change the distance. “Well, if my sister comes tomorrow, you’ll have twice the crazy and half the fun. We Fjorns will turn your Highborn upside down.”
He chuckled, now stroking her long, dark hair. “You must be looking forward to seeing her.”
“Yes and no. She probably thinks she’s coming here to scoop me out of whatever political mess I’ll unwittingly bumble into. And she’s probably annoyed with father for sending me off with little to no training, so this is likely her revenge on him. I doubt her motivations are as pure as ‘wanting to visit little sis.’” Not that Kiara particularly minded. People’s reasons might be selfish or pure—or they might lie to themselves and pretend their reasons were pure, but often or not, people did things because they wanted. Because it suited them. She didn’t bother deluding herself for Bethany’s motives, even though she liked the idea that her older sister wanted to help.
“Well, I suppose it gets lonely having to talk to Kanthians. And dealing with the fact that you’re not as funny as you think you are.”
“Ha, ha,” Kiara said. “I’m funny. It’s you lot who don’t know how to be funny.”
She closed her eyes, hoping that maybe the nearness of him and the warm, floating feeling inside her would help lull her to sleep. Her brain, however, had other ideas. It started thinking about Bethany, about how the Highborn would treat her tomorrow, about whether she’d made a mistake in showing off her magic the way she did, whether Mordred actually loved her or just did everything out of the formal sense of duty instilled into him, like Violet with her husband and her father with her mother…
Mordred moved slightly, as if stretching for something. She went with the movement like a boat cresting water, not opening her eyes to see what he did. The familiar rustle of pages made her smile. He positioned himself to have one arm under her, so that her neck rested upon it, and with the other arm, he held up a book, preparing to read.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” He kissed her on her ear, and she strained her memory. It felt a little like wading through a pool of treacle.
“Something… about… Princess Hana getting kidnapped by the beast. Maybe? Oh, wait—I think it was when her horse bolted. Yes, that’s it. I was there.”
“That’s two chapters back,” Mordred said, now furiously rustling the paper. “That means you fell asleep in three pages last time.”
“It’s not my fault you enjoyed the book and kept reading.”
“Enjoy? You think I enjoy this? Reading about sexually deprived princesses putting themselves into stupid situations and getting heroically rescued by princes who just happen to conveniently be there just as the princess is about to be eaten?”
Kiara grinned into his arm. “Of course you do. Though I do think the princess is perfectly capable of rescuing herself as well.”
“Yes, yes, you’ve said that about a hundred times already…” He moved his legs into a more comfortable position and began to read. Instantly, his voice had a relaxing, melodic effect on her mind. The chaotic thoughts stilled. The tension she didn’t realize was there unraveled.
She barely managed past the first rustle of a page before sinking into blissful, dreamless sleep.
When she woke up, she was alone in the bed. But not quite alone in the room.
Winifred stood in front of her, holding a squirming orange ball of fur in her hands. The kitten made plaintive meows, and it tried bracing its back legs against Winifred’s arms to leap out. “I found a kitten by the way. It looked a little mangier than what you see now… I washed and fed him a bit. And he may not be well trained…”
The kitten continued meowing.
Kiara’s face split into a smile. She’d actually forgotten about her request to Winifred, with all the chaos that managed to insert itself. Kiara thanked Winifred and took the squirming kitten off her. Soon the kitten gave up trying to escape, instead batting at Kiara’s necklace.
She knew very little about looking after animals.
May as well start somewhere. And see if werewolves had issues with cats…
She grinned at the thought.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
An Uninspired Lesson and a Pleasant Surprise
Chapter 2
What a Guardian Knows
Chapter 3
A Somber Goodbye and a Moment of Schadenfreude
Chapter 4
A Different Kind of Lesson
Chapter 5
Fleeing Safety toward Certain Danger
Chapter 6
A Life’s Worth of Learning in a Few Hours
Chapter 7
Two Different Perspectives
Chapter 8
The Cold Light
Chapter 9
The Improvised Plan
Chapter 10
Finding the Balance