“No.”
“No? That wasn’t the bet.”
Seron wrapped his own hand around Aurek’s cock. “No.” He started stroking me a little faster and he pumped his hand along Aurek’s cock as well.
“Seron—what—why?” Aurek looked agonized in a rather alluring way. I had to watch his surprise even as my eyes were glazing with the sensations rolling through me.
“Well, I’m your champion. And I took an oath of chastity…except to serve at the king and queen’s pleasure. Besides that, I heard what Ezeru’s tail’s been up to and I thought you might decide you like him better than me.”
“You were jealous?”
“No. No. Just—well—this time I really chose it, okay? I voted for you and you won, and I’m glad.”
“This wasn’t such a bad bet after all.”
“Not that I’m doing this every time.”
“Seron.” Aurek’s voice shifted, now serious yet gentle. “Never. You never have to. Unless you want to.”
Seron’s jaw clenched, and he nodded, and I saw emotions there that he had never been very good at admitting. He wasn’t even very good at admitting he loved me, after all.
“It’s not so bad, after all,” he said. “Having the two of you uppity royals be putty in my big strong hands at once. Ez, go as fast as you want now.”
Seron’s hand kept stroking me and Aurek both, and oh, they certainly were big strong hands and we were definitely helpless to them.
Himika
Six Years Later
“It’s a girl, my lady. A healthy little human girl.”
“I did it…” I looked at Oszin. “Our family is complete.”
“Our family was already complete. But…she’s perfect.”
“Remia…” I traced her little fingers. “It’s been so long since we had a little one around. I forgot how tiny they are. Oh, you were so much easier.”
“There was only one of her,” Seron said.
My mates were all gathered close, relief and joy on all of our faces.
Aurek carefully touched her with his clawed hand and she grabbed his scaled finger and made a weird face. We all laughed.
“I think this occasion calls for human hands,” I said.
“I won’t tell,” the midwife said.
The scales melted away and Remia clutched his finger. “She’s big,” he said.
“Well, she had the full nine months and one extra week. I had to coax you out, my love.”
“Mammma!” Ora screamed outside.
Seron looked at me. The other kids were supposed to be with Rima. “It’s fine. Let them in. Luckily this wasn’t like the last time.”
It had taken this many years before I dared to try again. I made an earnest study of magical herbs and flowers that strengthened a woman’s health for pregnancy, and then progressed to direct healing magic. I was nowhere near as strong at it as a proper healer, but since it was my own body, I was very attuned to this pregnancy and was braced to induce a miscarriage if I sensed something was going wrong. To my relief, Remia gave me almost no trouble, although the labor still took twenty hours. Gods, but I envied Phoebe and her priestess magic. By now she’d had four girls and each of them was born with no trouble at all.
Anyway, I was happy with how things had gone. I had never wanted to pop out a slew of royal babies, as Aurek realized from the start, and I’d had some years to keep fighting and traveling without any trouble and devote plenty of time to the children I already had. Now, I was more than ready to welcome the third.
I didn’t want to frighten the kids in case things did go wrong, so they were left with the nurse, but knowing Ora she had broken free.
Ezeru opened the door.
“Come see your sister,” Ezeru said.
“Sister?” Ora was carrying Aki in her arms. Nuru’s daughter was smaller than Ora and so agreeable that Ora and Vorja had been playing house and making her be the baby.
“Yes, a sister,” I said.
“Why is she so ugly and red?” Sorek asked.
“Human babies turn red,” Seron said. “The way your mother does when she’s embarrassed.”
I glowered at him.
“She can’t turn into a dragon?” Sorek asked.
“No, just like your mother and Touta.”
“Hmm. We’ll see, I guess.” Sorek was too young for tact, but he also sounded just like Seron.
“Ora, don’t carry Aki around like that, it can’t be comfortable for her.”
“She my pet.”
“She is my pet,” Aurek said.
“Aurek, that was…not the part of that sentence we most need to correct.” I sighed. “I need a nap. Or maybe to sleep for a thousand years.”
“She’s our baby,” Vorja said.
“Baby,” Aki said, grinning.
Oszin rubbed my forehead as I fell back onto the pillow. When I woke up, I had a crystal dragon, a mist dragon, a rock dragon, three winged cats and a mysterious spatula in bed with me, all sleeping, except for the spatula as far as I know.
“How did you and daddies have a baby?” Ora asked at dinner some weeks later.
Ezeru and I exchanged a look as we noted that this was the first time she had asked a question that reached that far outside of her own existence.
“When I met your mother, I went into heat,” Ezeru said. “And I had to make a baby with her, and that baby was you.”
“Oh—we’re going that far already,” I said.
“Heat?”
“When you grow up, you might know who to be with, because you’ll feel very strongly about them,” Ezeru said.
She chewed her lip. “Can I be in heat for Vorja?”
“We’re going far,” Seron said with a smirk.
“When you’re little, you always think you’ll marry your brothers and sisters and cousins,” I said. “But when you grow up, you might meet someone else because you’ll be around other people more often.”
“Although, let us say, he isn’t really your brother,” Aurek said.
“He isn’t?”
“No, that’s why Vorja doesn’t call everyone ‘Mama’ or ‘Daddy’ like we do,” Sorek said.
I looked at Vorja and wondered if we should have included him. It had sort of been a gradual accident that we ended up raising him. First, he was just with the kids during the day and having an hour of tutoring every day with Aurek, and then he got his own room near our children for convenience sake, and then Aurek heard him having a nightmare one time and brought him into our bed, and at this point it was clear that Aurek had just plain adopted him, but by then it seemed strange to have him call us ‘Mama’, ‘Papa’ (Seron), ‘Daddy’ (Ezeru) and ‘Touta’. Aurekdel, being the king, got stuck with the loftiest title of ‘Father’ and Vorja called him that, and sometimes Aki called Ezeru ‘Daddy’. Ezeru seemed perfectly happy to let that stand.
I guess we were used to things being confusing, but Ora had never wondered about it much before and none of the kids really knew much about what had gone on before they were born.
“Vorja is Father’s son,” Sorek said. “Me and Papa are crystal dragons and you and Daddy are rock dragons and Vorja and Father are blind dragons.”
“Hey!” Vorja said, but then he didn’t seem to know what to say after that.
“Why isn’t Vorja my brother?” Ora sounded furious. “Yes, he is!”
“Actually, he’s about as far from your blood brother as you can get,” Aurek said. “And someday you might be very glad about that. But Vorja is a mist dragon, and when he gets a little older, we’ll take him to the mist caverns to learn his magic.”
“Ohh,” Ora said. “Can I go?”
“Probably.”
Vorja was just poking at his fish now. I always wondered if I should try to talk to him about what had happened, but six seemed way too young to address one’s parents being killed and Dvaro and Izeria maiming him to use as a pawn. In fact, there was no mention of when you should bring that sort of thing up
in parenting manuals.
“Erida said that Mama came here when she didn’t want to because of a prophecy,” Sorek said carefully.
“Who is Erida?” I asked.
“A girl at play time. A big gold dragon girl who’s always saying stuff.”
“That kind of girl,” I said. “Well, it’s true. I had to marry the king because of a prophecy. We were supposed to bring peace to the world, and I suppose it came true.”
“Which king?”
“All three of them, I think. Prophecies are funny that way.”
“Yeah,” Sorek said.
“Do you know what a prophecy actually is?” Seron asked.
“I do but you should probably tell Ora,” he said.
“Nice move,” Oszin said.
Ora, however, had lost interest in the conversation, as she always did once big words and more abstract concepts entered the picture. As expected, Ora was behind her brother in everything scholarly. When I tried to teach her to read she was soon in tears.
She was looking at Vorja, though, and patted his hand. “Let’s play evil parents after dinner,” she whispered.
“What on earth is ‘evil parents’?” I asked.
“Oh, Mama, it’s when we pretend to be bad,” Ora said. “But it’s just pretend. We won’t be real life bad. Sorek can play too.” She sensed that Sorek was slightly more trusted.
“It’s a fun game,” Sorek agreed.
“I think that’s how they work things out,” Seron said. “Aurek and I didn’t get to play very much when we got back, but when we did—”
“We always played about murders and hiding from an evil king or something,” Aurek said.
“Just don’t put Aki inside of a box again,” Ezeru said in a tone that made all of three of them look terrified.
“What’s the rule?” Aurek asked.
“Nothing alive goes in a box,” Vorja said.
After we had tucked the children into their beds, Seron reading them a story while Oszin sang Kamiri songs to Remi in the rocking chair, I went down to the baths for the first time in far too long, washing my hair and scenting my skin, and before long Ezeru came downstairs.
“Oh…do I have company?” I asked, giving him a flirtatious glance over my shoulder.
“If you want it, I’m always here,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if it was too soon.”
“No. I healed so quickly this time.”
He picked up a comb and ran it through my hair. All of my men loved to play with my hair, I’d noticed. They could have been my handmaidens myself, except my handmaidens didn’t usually wrap my hair around their wrist and capture me in their grasp for a kiss that made me sigh.
“I got a letter,” he said. “From her today.”
My half-closed eyes snapped open again. “Her? Do you mean Izeria? After all this time?”
Once defeated, Izeria had never shown much heart for aiding with negotiations. But she had never caused trouble again either. She joined a religious order of female dragons who watched over a sacred cavern. I wondered if she’d found some sort of peace there, but mostly…I didn’t care. I was glad she stayed out of our way.
“It hardly said a word,” he said. “Except to tell me what she did to me. All the mists she used and where she found them. She said if I wanted to make Oranu smarter and stronger, that’s how I would do it.” He let my hair uncoil from his hand, and he shut his eyes and pressed his forehead against mine.
“You don’t…want to do that to her, do you?”
I heard him exhale, his hand dropping to my full breast and then to the curve of my hip. “No. I would never change a thing about my daughter.”
“Me neither.” My fingers traced along his brow and cheeks, as we held each other closer and closer. “Not a thing. The children are so different, just like us, but they love each other and I think they understand each other too.” I giggled. “Evil parents. We might have to play that now.” I smacked his behind and he lifted his tail with surprise. I actually blushed just feeling the muscles flex at the base.
I shuddered with pleasure as he spread my legs and slipped the tip of his tail into my entrance and gave it a shake inside me. “Ohh…Ez…”
I wrapped my hands around the muscles of his upper arms, digging into his skin and holding on tight as he drove me to a release that came so fast and hard I could hardly bear it, my neck craned back, my spine arching, my toes spreading as Ezeru flicked my sweet spot over and over.
“That was fast…”
“That was for smacking me. Of course, I’m hardly done with you. You’ve really asked for it,” he said. “What a red, embarrassed little human…”
“Ohhh.”
He nipped my ear. “You’re not evil, but you can be…cruel.”
“When have I ever been cruel to you?”
“Every day. Just by existing.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Himika
Fifteen More Years Later
The moment we heard the horns that indicated an approaching guest, we all fled the lunch table. From the balcony, I saw the imperial banners so far in the distance that they were just little red flutters.
“They’ll barely be here for lunch,” Remi said.
“I think I’m going to ride out to meet Rin this time,” I said.
“I’ll go with you,” Oszin said.
“Me too?” Remi asked.
“Of course,” I said. “Sorek, do you want to go?”
He immediately looked disinterested. “Nice try, Mom. No. I’ll enjoy the quiet while I’ve got it, before all those annoying girls invade.”
“Nice try about what?”
“I know you’re trying to set me up.”
Damn right I was going to play dumb. It was hard not to be a little bit disappointed that we hadn’t been able to matchmake among any of our children and Phoebe’s, thus sealing our alliances for good. In any past era we would have arranged a marriage, but I couldn’t bring myself to choose Sorek’s bride for him.
He narrowed his eyes at me and went back to the table, grabbing a book he’d left by his plate, and the remaining half a loaf of bread.
“You know, you weren’t the most charming company the last time you saw those ‘annoying’ girls either,” Seron said, as he went for the stairs.
“Oh, never mind him,” I said. “Let’s go.”
This was the very first time the entire Imperial family had made it to Irandal all at once. Usually someone was always busy and had to stay behind, but the wedding of Ora and Vorja happened to coincide with a particularly prosperous and easygoing summer in the sky lands, and Rin said they were all coming, including all the daughters.
Had Phoebe ever had daughters. We kept thinking that Remi would be a perfect match because unlike Sorek, who could be difficult, Remi adored all of her cousins. But from Rina’s birth onward, Phoebe had gotten pregnant five times in seven years. The first four were daughters. Finally, the fifth was a boy—and Rin’s child. Which meant that he was actually Remi’s true blood first cousin, and first cousins didn’t marry in Gaermon, so that was the end of our hopes for Remi to marry into the Imperial family, though I had no doubt she would find a good match somewhere when the time was right.
Now it was all on Sorek, and that meant there was no way he would consider any of them. He had a real stubborn streak that way.
Well, as Seron kept reminding me, I just had to let it go. They were young yet and they would all find their own way. Blah blah reasonable blah blah. I knew if I was twenty again, I’d feel the same way.
“Himika!” Rin shouted as soon as we were within shouting distance, and I could see they were getting held up by friendly dragon villagers. Before long, we were off our horses and embracing each other. We saw each other most years, and twice we had managed to all meet for a spring retreat in Gaermon, but it was never often enough.
“This is so exciting!” Phoebe said. “The first wedding! Hopefully we’ll be next. Rina has a boy she’s very serious about.
”
“Somewhat serious,” Rina said, her eyes hooding. “I wouldn’t order the flowers yet.”
“Who is it?”
“He’s the heir to a shipping family! They’re sooo rich!”
“Stop saying it like that. You’re the empress,” Niko said.
“We have a huge feast planned, but we thought you wouldn’t get here until tomorrow!” I said.
“The roads are so well maintained these days,” Abel said, with a hint of pride.
“Remi’s gotten big,” Forrest said.
“She really shot up this year.”
“I’m almost as tall as Touta.” She held her hand up to his head. “It’s all the eyeballs I’ve eaten.”
Oszin looked pained. That was a familiar joke with those two but Gilbert looked like he wasn’t so sure about the feasts here.
“We should probably talk and ride,” Oszin said. “The rest of the family is eager to see you. Well, Sorek is hiding in his room, but…”
“We know all about that,” Phoebe said. “I don’t know how people have five teenagers when they don’t live in a palace…”
I hadn’t seen all the kids in a year and a half; they were at the age where they changed a lot, especially the younger ones. Rina had grown rather mature. She wore her hair in long black braids and didn’t talk much, but she seemed observant. You’d have to be careful of her if she wasn’t your friend, I thought.
Kit was Forrest’s daughter and she took the most after Phoebe. She was good with a sword and kept her hair short. She reminded me of Raia a bit, except she didn’t seem as flighty. Forrest had a serious side and so did she; a perfect blend of her parents. When she was younger, Phoebe used to write me how Forrest really didn’t want his daughter to learn to fight, and I wrote back and said the more he tried to keep her from doing it, the more she’d want to, so I felt a little like I had a hand in the fact that he backed off.
The last time I saw Abel’s daughter Sura, she was fifteen and very sulky. I’m not sure she said one word to me on that entire trip. But she had obviously gotten past that and was strikingly beautiful now. She had Abel’s rather mannered way of speaking and carrying herself but she didn’t seem quite as cold. I saw her laughing and talking to Rina.
The Kingdoms of Sky and Shadow Box Set: A Fantasy Romance Page 83