Children of the Sun

by Linda Winstead Jones

  “I have a better plan,” he said calmly.

  “You can’t expect me to sit back and—”

  He grasped his cousin’s shoulders firmly. “Empress Ariana, please listen to me.” He leaned in and repeated in a whisper, “I have a better plan.”

  ***

  Lyr’s family was decidedly odd, Rayne decided as she watched and listened. For most of the day she’d been sequestered in a tent which offered the comforts she had been without during her travels. Pillows to rest upon, clean water for bathing and for drinking, tasty food—even a sweet cake! She’d eaten little, been unable to rest, and had cared only for washing the grime from her face. Throughout it all there had been a heavy guard outside the tent.

  She’d been very much relieved when Lyr had arrived to collect her for supper, where he’d introduced her to his family. Ariana, leader of this army, healer, and empress. Queen Keelia, with her startling gold eyes and uncanny powers. Joryn, Keelia’s man. They ate at a roughly constructed table which was nearby a large tent. Ariana’s tent, Rayne assumed. When they were finished with the meal, they went inside the tent to resume a private conversation which Rayne did not entirely understand. Apparently there was a plan. Some of them thought it was a good one, others did not. None of them bothered to tell her what this plan entailed.

  She waited for Lyr to escort her back to her tent, where she’d be forced to spend the night alone, wondering if he would ever come, wondering if he was gone for good, but he did not. She remained silent as they argued about this plan, and after a while it seemed that they had all forgotten about her. She liked it that way. Forgotten, she could listen and learn.

  “It’s a fair enough scheme,” Ariana said, almost calm even though her husband had been kidnapped. “But really, Lyr, Tonlin? He’s been a soldier for about two weeks. He’s much too young.”

  “I need someone young and small,” Lyr insisted. “You’re exaggerating his inexperience. He tells me he’s been fighting with you since spring.”

  Rayne had heard only a small part of the plot, which somehow included Lyr riding off to face Ciro on his own, rather than this entire army marching on Arthes. Her heart did a dance at that very idea, even though she knew that it was his destiny to face Ciro.

  Ariana turned to her cousin Keelia, the Anwyn Queen, as she had often during the evening. “Is he all right?”

  They all knew she spoke of her husband. As before, Keelia’s answer was unsatisfactory. “Sian is alive. That’s all I see.”

  Ariana’s face turned red and her hands balled into fists. “You’re supposed to be able to see anything!”

  “But not everything, cousin. Never everything,” Keelia explained calmly. The queen’s man, Joryn, placed his arm around her in silent comfort.

  Lyr glanced Rayne’s way often, his hawk eyes hard and without emotion. He was riding off to face his destiny, a destiny not of his own choosing, and she didn’t know if he would come back. He wasn’t going to Arthes to face a normal enemy, but a monster. A demon.

  Unable to remain silent any longer, Rayne asked, “Can’t you just stop time and kill him while he’s unable to move? You speak of honor and fairness, but where demons are concerned, any advantage is fair.”

  Keelia shook her head. “The heart must be beating when the crystal dagger touches it. The body must be living and moving forward in time, otherwise it won’t work.”

  A chill walked down Rayne’s spine. “But—”

  “That’s as it must be,” Lyr said.

  Until now, he’d kept the dagger her mother had fashioned hidden against his thigh, but since coming to this camp, he’d moved the crystal dagger to a sheath at his waist. He gripped the handle and drew it, as all watched.

  “It is alive,” he said reverently as he held the dagger before him for all to see. “I cannot explain how, but this dagger lives.”

  The murky gray and white swirled within the crystal, moving slowly and with an unexpected beauty.

  “I know what Keelia says is true not because she is a powerful seer but because the dagger itself tells me it is so.”

  “It is a thing,” Rayne whispered. “It cannot speak.”

  “Your mother instilled this weapon with a powerful magic, Rayne, and it does speak to me.”

  At that moment, the gray and pink cast of the weapon disappeared, and Lyr held a crystal-clear dagger in his hand. The weapon was alive, as he’d said it was, and Rayne knew as she studied the crystal clear stone that it was connected to the Prince of Swords in the same way she was connected to the earth.

  Her mother had made it for him, no one else.

  The gray and pink danced in the crystal once again, and Lyr returned the dagger to its sheath. He took Rayne’s arm, and they left the others behind. As they exited the large tent, Ariana was still grumbling about using the young soldier in the attack, but he ignored her.

  He held her arm snuggly and walked toward the tent she had been assigned. His body was rigid, his jaw taut. By the light of the fires that illuminated this camp, Lyr looked much older than she knew him to be.

  He was scared.

  The entire army had been prepared to march, but something Lyr had said to his cousin had stopped them. What? Why did he think he could do what an army could not, especially if he could not use his magic and stop time in order to fight Ciro?

  “Let me help you,” Rayne argued as Lyr walked with her into the tent, where she’d spent most of the day. How much time did they have before he left? She held on to his hand, afraid he might vanish at any moment if she didn’t physically hold him here.

  “You will help,” he said.

  “Let me go to Ciro and—”

  He pulled her roughly against his body. “No. Not that, do you hear me? Never that.”

  “I would if it meant saving you.”

  His anger faded, and he caressed her face with one hand. “I know you would, but you were not built for war, Rayne. You were intended for better things. Nurturing, tending, growing, these are your gifts.”

  “What about love?” she asked. “Is love one of my gifts?”

  “I believe it is.”

  Rayne did what she’d been longing to do all day, she took Lyr’s face in her hands and drew it down. She kissed him, not with hunger or with desperation but with the love he confessed was one of her gifts. His keeper, her mother had said, and she felt the truth of that statement to her bones.

  When she took her mouth from his, she asked, “When do you leave?” She knew better than to cry or try to convince him that he didn’t have to do what needed to be done.

  “Before first light.”

  “Then we have time.”

  She would not tell Lyr how to fight, and she would not cry. Not for herself or for him. That’s not why she was here.

  She pushed Lyr’s purple vest off, allowing her fingers to trail against the muscles in his arms. She removed his sword from his belt, sheath and all, but when her hand moved near the crystal dagger, she hesitated. “May I?”

  He didn’t move. “Yes.”

  Rayne touched the crystal dagger, and when she did, she knew that Lyr had been right when he’d said it was alive. It did not speak to her as it did to him, but she felt a rush of energy as her fingers brushed against the grip. Faint firelight illuminated the tent, fighting through the fabric of the structure and through a small slit in the entrance. Though the amount of light was lesser even than moonlight on the night of the crescent moon, the crystal caught that light and held it for a moment.

  She set the extraordinary weapon aside. Tonight was not about war, not about death or a destiny of destruction. Tonight was just about the two of them and their destiny, whatever that might be.

  When his weapons were set aside, she unfastened Lyr’s trousers and slipped her hand inside to touch him. He shuddered in her grasp, this hard, hawk-eyed man who rarely shuddered. He reached for her, but she danced just out of his reach and directed him to lie upon the pillows she had been unable to rest upon that after
noon. He obeyed, and when he was stretched out upon the pillows, she removed his boots and then his trousers, leaving him completely bare. She knelt beside him, and her hands gently traced his warm, hard skin. Their first time together she hadn’t known entirely what to expect, and after that... after that, their encounters had been rushed or desperate.

  She wanted neither tonight. She wanted to pretend that they’d run away to a safe place and had all the time in the world for this. For love.

  Rayne lowered her head and kissed Lyr’s taut belly as her hand gently gripped his penis. She could feel the tension in his body, she could taste the quiver. With a shifting of her head, she laid her lips against the shaft, tasting him, flicking her tongue against him as he buried his hands in her hair.

  He liked it, so she continued. She licked him, she sucked gently, she teased until he grabbed her head and moved her away. She’d be concerned if he didn’t laugh gently.

  “Take off your clothes,” he ordered gruffly, his laugh coloring the edges of his demanding words.

  Rayne sat back and did as he asked. She pulled the peasant blouse Gwyneth had given her over her head, but left the blue stone and gold chain. Both were cool against her warm skin. She took off her boots and tossed them aside, then stood beside Lyr to unfasten and drop her colorful skirt.

  For a moment she stood there, watching him in the faint light. Her blood pounded at the thought of what was to come next, her heart swelled with love. When Lyr lifted his hand to her, she took it, and then she lay down beside him so they were skin to skin. Her breasts were pressed against him, one leg draped over his hip.

  “If I asked something of you now, would you give it?” she asked.

  “Anything,” he whispered.

  “Let me be the keeper of your heart.” She kissed his throat.

  “You have my body, you have my undying allegiance, I swear, you have my soul. Is that not enough?”

  “You said anything, and I want your heart.”

  His hand raked up her thigh and he touched her, much as she had touched him. His fingers aroused, they even slipped inside her so that she gasped and swayed against them. “I’m not sure I have one to give,” he said. “What we have is enough, is it not?”

  “No. I want all of you, Lyr Hern.” Her voice was unsteady, and she felt a tremble in her body, a tremble that was much like his own.

  “You have all that’s worth having,” he said. To make his point, he laid her against the pillows, spread her thighs farther, and took a nipple deep into his mouth while he caressed her. Her hips moved of their own volition, her breath was literally stolen away.

  Rayne’s eyes drifted closed. “This is so unfair,” she whispered.

  “What’s unfair?”

  “You have all of me, every shred of my heart and soul and body, and yet you will not allow me to keep that which I know is meant to be mine.”

  He moved above her, he lifted her legs so they were wrapped about his hips, and then he was there, inside her.

  She could not think of anything else but the physical sensations as Lyr made love to her. She could not think of anything but how he felt inside her, how he touched her, how he made her body do strange and wonderful things. He robbed her of demands, of speech, of the ability to think.

  Release came on waves, and she cried out as her body and his shuddered together. The pleasure was like none other and she wanted to scream, but the scream was caught in her throat. She felt Lyr’s release, not only in her body but in some place deeper, in some place she had never thought any man could find.

  She had taken his body, she had taken his soul. If necessary, she would steal his heart as well. He certainly had hers, so it was only fair.

  “I love you,” she said hoarsely. “I love you so much.”

  “You are unlike any woman I have ever known,” Lyr responded. Perhaps that was as close to “I love you” as he dared to go.

  Sleep was creeping upon her, but she did not dare to sleep until she had a promise from Lyr. “Do not leave without waking me.”

  “I won’t.”

  She believed him. After all, Lyr did not lie. Much. “I wish you would let me help you, my love.”

  He twisted one hand in her tangled hair and held on tight. “You will.” He leaned down and kissed her throat. “I promise, you will.”

  He did not seem to be called by sleep, as she was. He was growing hard again, so soon. She felt it, she moved against it. She smiled.

  There was no smile in his voice when he said, “I have only one instruction for you.” He raised his head, and she saw a fire in his eyes unlike any other she had ever seen. “If I don’t come back...”

  “Don’t say that.”

  He moved inside her gently, without haste but not without passion. “It’s important, Rayne, and more than a little possible. If I don’t come back, then I want you to run.”

  Run? That was not what she’d expected to hear. “Your family will protect me. You said they would.”

  “If my family knows what Ciro plans for you, and if they realize that he might win, then they will kill you. They won’t like it, but they will do what has to be done to ruin Ciro’s plans.”

  The baby. The child Ciro had promised her. The child that could not be allowed to come into this world. “You could’ve killed me yourself when you learned of Ciro’s plans.”

  “No, I could not.”

  It was then that she knew he loved her, whether he would say the words or not, and it was then that she knew the fear she saw in his eyes was not for what he was about to do, but for her.

  The tension in his body increased, and he moved a little bit faster. Harder. Before turning his attentions entirely to pleasures of the body, he said, “If I don’t return in four days, run.”

  ***

  Diella couldn’t sleep, which was odd since the damned baby made sure she was exhausted all the time. She often slept too many hours at night, and then she napped during the day. Some nights were like this one, restless and uncomfortable. She ate and ate and ate and still lost weight, getting skinny everywhere but for her distended belly. The sentinels no longer held any appeal for her. Sex had become too much trouble.

  Once the child was born and out of her hands, all that would change. It couldn’t happen soon enough to suit her.

  Agitated and impatient to have this pregnancy done with, Diella roamed the palace that she had been so anxious to call home again. Just as she was about to return to her chamber to attempt again to sleep, a bit of late night excitement chased away her boredom.

  The hallway should be deserted this time of night, but it was not. One soldier, one of Ciro’s Own, escorted a bloodied and bruised man in black. Even though the prisoner’s head was down, Diella recognized him. Instead of running away, she walked toward the prisoner, smiling at his obvious distress.

  “Sian, dear, you look a bit the worse for wear.”

  The enchanter lifted his odd purple eyes. At first glance, he did not recognize her. When he did his body jerked slightly, as he was startled by her appearance. Diella knew she looked haggard, but really, how bad mannered. She found the strength to draw back one foot and kick the rude man squarely in the shin. She did not have the power to aim any higher.

  Diella walked away from Ciro’s soldier and the unkind enchanter. “You’re good as dead,” she said casually. “Your woman is good as dead. Everything you love will soon be dead.” The thought made her smile as she walked toward her bedchamber to claim a good night’s sleep.

  ***

  Promise or not, Lyr would’ve slipped away without waking Rayne if he didn’t indeed need her help.

  It was hours still until sunrise, and yet he and his small party were ready to ride. Ariana was anxious, and he could not blame her. She loved her husband very much and would do anything to save him. That much was obvious.

  A part of him wanted to tell Rayne what she wished to hear, that he did indeed love her, that she did have his heart. How cruel that would be if he didn’t
return from his mission. What a burden that would be for her. If he didn’t survive and she ran as she should, then she’d be able to make a life for herself somewhere else, somewhere far away. She could find another man, one who would care for her, one who would love and protect her.

  It was best that she not know that he did believe he could love her.

  He had everything he needed. Though there were those among them who did not like his plan, no one had any better suggestions.

  Ariana shouted, “Let’s go!”

  “One minute,” Lyr called.

  “We do not have one minute to spare!” Ariana argued.

  He grabbed Rayne and pulled her against him, and then he waved his hand impatiently. He’d never before stopped time for a kiss.

  Rayne glanced about. “What happened?”

  “Don’t let go,” he said. “As long as you’re touching me, you’re where I am. As long as we’re touching, time stops for everyone but us.”

  He kissed her, not knowing how long time would be frozen for the others, not wanting to miss a moment of this stolen time. A minute, two, three...

  The kiss said goodbye, and it said much more. It said things he didn’t dare voice aloud.

  Rayne took her mouth from his, but she continued to hold on tight with one arm. With the other, she removed the blue gem that always lay against her chest. “Take this.”

  “I can’t.” After all, he couldn’t guarantee that he’d be coming back.

  “While I don’t yet completely understand what my mother was, I do know she possessed good magic. You need all the light you can carry in order to face Ciro.”

  He dipped his head and she placed the chain over it. It dropped heavily against his chest.

  He kissed her again, and when he took his mouth from hers, he said, “You’re still beautiful.”

  She snorted...

  Time restarted unbidden, and it seemed that no one knew what had happened.

  “Not even a minute!” Ariana said, thinking her tirade to be unbroken.

  Lyr stepped away from Rayne. “If you insist, your imperial highness.”