She let go of our joined hands to crawl back onto my lap, straddling my outstretched legs and framing my face in her hands. The summer sun set her hair on fire and her eyes shone as clear and bright as Danu’s sword. “I will never send you away, Harlan. You might wish to go, but it would break me to lose you, too.”
“I’ll never leave you willingly,” I breathed, her lips coming tantalizingly close.
“Don’t make that promise just yet,” she urged, “but would you make me forget, for a while? I want to be only us, if only for another hour.”
I didn’t ask what she meant, for I knew we had yet to get to the second issue she’d closeted us to discuss. Instead I did as my queen commanded, taking her fierce mouth with mine, savoring her heat and flavor, relishing how she surrendered to my touch. My Essla, who melted only for me. Her lips parted, bringing me in, her hands working to unlace my shirt, caressing my chest. She’d long ago discovered how her calluses aroused me and she used them to good effect, with urgency and skill.
I groaned, loosing the chains I’d kept on the desire evoked by the healing, the need flooding me. For her and only her. My warrior queen. With a growl, I tumbled her onto her back, catching her wrists and pinning them. She glared at me in defiance. “Do your worst,” she hissed, using her lithe strength to attempt to squirm out of my grip. Not quite shapeshifting, but slithery and as difficult to contain.
I bared my teeth at her. “You awakened the dragon, little hawk, and I plan to eat you alive.”
~ 11 ~
She fought me. Never an easy conquest, my warrior queen, but I had ahold of her and wouldn’t let her go. The struggle roused us both to panting, the fire burning hot between us. I’d first seduced her by enticing her into a fight, earning first her respect, then her heated surrender.
It had been the end of a long and subtle siege. A brilliant stroke of strategy on my part, one I had no qualms in congratulating myself on, figuring out I’d have to batter down those walls she’d built so long ago to keep anyone from hurting her again. Sometimes she came to me easily, with the soft kisses and sweet yielding of long familiarity.
Other times she insisted I fight my way through, proving to us both the intensity of our need—mine to have her, and hers to admit me to the inner circle of her trust.
With teeth and hands, I tore away her clothing and her reserve, driving her wild as I did, until I had her naked, all long-limbed, lean woman. My Essla doesn’t think she’s beautiful, but only because she can’t see herself as I do. Her long, elegant legs, her slim, rangy body, very nearly delicate, if not for the wiry muscles and the scars of many battles, like a tiger’s stripes, evidence of her ferocity. Pinning her, I took the prominent nipple of one of her small breasts into my mouth, locking it against my palate with my tongue and allowing my upper teeth to scrape her tender flesh.
She threw back her head, swanlike throat exposed, and arched her spine, crying out in her pleasure. The sound might carry through the open windows, but we’d both passed the point of caring. I slid down her body, tracing the lines of her rib cage, the narrow waist I could span with my hands, and lingering over the quivering muscles of her abdomen, still too hollow.
The scars there had faded extensively with the magical healing, but remained pinker than the older ones. Obviously not the work of a blade, the scars knotted like an exotic blossom, petals curling from where the High Priestess of Deyrr’s clawed fingers had plunged through Ursula’s flesh like melted butter.
“Harlan,” Ursula said, her fingers stroking through my short hair, all soothing and sweetness, battle fire forgotten. “I’m alive. I’m fine. They’re scars only.”
I looked up her long body, to where she’d raised herself up on one elbow to look at me when I’d paused so long. She regarded me with concern.
“I know,” I told her. “I tell myself that. All the time.”
She sat up, drawing me with her, stroking her hands over my chest and shoulders. Not to arouse this time, but in comfort. “I understand better now what it meant to you to be held helpless by the High Priestess’s magic, not to be able to act to protect me.”
My breath caught hard and agonizing in my chest, my heart straining with it.
“But it wasn’t your fault,” she insisted, remorseless and intent, ducking her head to catch my gaze and hold it.
I shook my head slowly. “It feels like it was.”
“I get that, but it’s not real.”
“I swore to protect you when I swore the Elskastholrr. I swore to myself that I’d never stand by and fail to act when someone was being wrongfully hurt.” The cries and broken weeping of my sisters echoed in my mind. They hadn’t begged—nor had they ever looked at me—but they had eventually wept. The whipping master knew his job too well.
Ursula’s mouth, hot and avid on mine, broke through the agonizing reverie. “None of us is invincible,” she murmured against my lips. “All we can do is our best. And your best, my mighty one, is astonishing. We’ve made it through fights no one should have lived through.” She pushed me onto my back, divesting me of my clothes and following with mouth and hands, conquering me. Making me forget. “We did it by fighting together. You at my back and me at yours.”
Her hands found my rigid cock, gripping firmly, teasing in their feminine roughness. I caught my breath again, but in shock at the sheer rush of pleasure, my heart hammering now with lust. She straddled me, glorious in the pour of afternoon sunlight, Danu’s chosen, and lowered herself slowly onto my cock, eyes erotically silver. So fierce and beautiful. Mine. I gave myself over to it, the sense of coming home, of her slick heat enclosing me, internal muscles clasping me.
“I don’t care about your vows,” she said, fully seated on me, unmoving. “Any of them. It’s not your job to protect me. We protect each other. Take care of each other. Don’t leave me.”
“I never have. Never will,” I promised, my brain fogging, my control fraying. “What else do I have to promise for you to move already?”
She laughed, delighted, throwing her head back in utter ease. So far she’d come from the rigid and scarred woman she’d been, so afraid to touch and be touched. People did heal. They did survive to live. To live good lives, despite everything.
Ursula rocked herself on me, a mischievous smile quirking her lips. Playful and pleased with herself. “You feel so good inside me, maybe I’ll just stay here.” She leaned to run her hands over my chest and shoulders. “Keep you here like this forever, for me to feast on.”
I’d let her, too. There was nothing I wouldn’t give her. “I love you, my hawk.”
“And I love you. I’m grateful every day that you found me, that your hlyti guided you to me.” Undulating her hips, her smile turned sensual, her internal muscles rippling along my shaft to shattering effect.
“Luta!” I growled, all control lost. Grasping her hips, I held her as I thrust up into her. Startled, she dug her fingers into my forearms as she convulsed, clinging to me for balance, as an anchor. I thrust again and she cried out, a soft mewl of helpless pleasure she never made at any other time. A sign that she’d dropped the last of her walls and admitted me to the most private, vulnerable part of herself.
Shifting to cup her head and brace my weight, I rolled her onto her back, savoring the way she wound her long legs around me, capturing me in place even as she gave over the rhythm to me. Languid with her surrender, she draped her arms around my neck, eyes half closed as she savored the slide of our bodies. She’d often told me she loved the press of my weight on her, the solidity of full skin-on-skin, so I gave her that—finding that sweet balance of being heavy without crushing her.
Watching her face, I adjusted the depth and drive, finding the ones that would unwind her, taking her apart bit by bit. Her nails bit into me as she climbed higher, legs grappling me, her body vibrating with tension. Silvery eyes glinting through lowered lashes, her face softened in need and love. If I ever doubted, I’d only have to watch her in these unguarded moments to see he
r heart and what it held for me.
My own climax gathering, I counted dynasties, an old habit to stall orgasm, accelerating my pace. She arched, convulsed, clinging to me as if she’d fall, crying out my name. Giving over, I followed her, driving myself into her sweet sheath, emptying everything I’d ever been, ever loved and suffered.
Giving it all to her.
Elskastholrr.
“And here I’d intended to distract you,” she said throatily, some time later.
I’d rolled onto my back again, as post-coital crushing is far less erotic, draping her over me. She lay in boneless abandon, her head nestled in the hollow of my shoulder, her favored spot. I traced the lines of her body, savoring this rare moment when she was utterly relaxed and without care.
If I could have her that way all the time, I would. But then she wouldn’t be the woman I’d fallen in love with—a kindred spirit. Both of us shouldered the burdens of caring for those we loved, of fighting for the just cause, preventing the power-mad from consuming everything in their unfeeling greed.
“You’re right,” I said quietly. “We protect each other. You are no soft and sheltered maiden. I’ve known that all along. I fell in love with you the first time I laid eyes on you because of that.”
She propped her chin on my chest, looking up at me. “Not because I reminded you of her, of what your eldest sister suffered—not even a little?”
I combed my fingers through the silky fringe of her fiery hair, admiring the sharp mind beneath. “I didn’t know that about you when I first met you,” I pointed out.
“You knew.” She regarded me solemnly. “You’ve always been able to see through me.”
Not always. It would be an excellent skill to have, however. “I think you would’ve liked each other, you and my sister.”
“I look forward to meeting her someday.”
“I think I have to face that she’s gone forever. That it won’t happen.” When Ursula opened her mouth, I headed off the argument. “But you would’ve liked each other. Though you’re very different, you share the same sweetness, the same purity of a truly good heart.”
“I’m not sweet, Harlan,” she said, and her voice held a hint of hardness, the first of her defenses going into place again.
She started to move and I held her there. Not fighting my grip, she subsided easily, her expression holding a question. “Don’t go yet,” I said, not sure what else I could say. Don’t say the words that will end this forever.
“I’m not.” She glanced out the window. “But we have formal dinner this evening, with our guests—including your brother, unless you’ve changed your mind about killing him?” She raised her brows at the question, humor in her eyes.
I laughed, loving her all the more, impossible as that seemed. “No.” With a sigh, I released her and sat up. The idyll couldn’t last. “I lost my head this morning. It won’t happen again.”
“I think you get a pass on that one,” she replied, strolling naked to the washbasin, her tightly muscled buttocks flexing with her warrior’s stride, the subtle flare of her hips swaying slightly. She tossed me a wet cloth, and I caught it as I stood, using it to clean myself and watching her dress again in the outfit she’d had on before.
Not a good sign, that. She’d have to change to a more elaborate gown for formal dinner, but she’d chosen her court garb instead of a lounging robe for the interim, which meant she wanted to feel armored for this battle with me. Salena’s rubies glinted with a fiery gleam at her ears and on a bracelet she donned again, taking comfort in her mother’s jewels.
With a mental sigh for it, I donned my own clothes, including my boots, since she had. “All right, then,” I said, sitting again at the table and serving us both with more food. We’d barely eaten before. Knowing Ursula, she’d be too busy watching the political currents and guiding discussion to eat much at dinner. “Out with it. What is this terrible news?”
~ 12 ~
“I mentioned this morning that I’ve been receiving messages from Dasnaria,” she began in a neutral tone, gaze on her food, not me.
“That you believe might be from Inga. You didn’t say why, other than that they sound feminine in tone.”
She flicked me a glance, both of us recalling that conversation and how it had ended. “Jepp said that Inga indicated she would remain in communication if she could.”
I sat back, surprised. Jepp hadn’t told me that, though she’d relayed greetings and good wishes from Inga and Helva both. “Is there a reason you didn’t tell me that?” I inquired, as evenly as possible.
“Yes,” she replied in the same tone, “because I paid less attention to it than I should have. It didn’t occur to either Jepp or me that Inga meant she’d send coded information on the politics inside the Imperial Palace. I underestimated her.”
I nodded, accepting that. Inga had changed a great deal then, from the girl I’d known, if she’d indeed decided to betray the empire and had worked out a way to do it. “How is she getting messages out?”
“An excellent question and one I don’t have the answer to. The messages arrive with other ones from within the Thirteen, marked as personal correspondence, written in Common Tongue, and apparently full of gossip from a cousin by marriage.”
“You don’t have any cousins who aren’t Tala,” I mused.
“Exactly. So she knows enough about me to include that information to tip me off. She also regularly speaks of my consort’s continuing good health, she and her sister sending him love and the best of wishes.”
I closed my eyes briefly, the surge of old affection taking me unawares. Until that moment I hadn’t realized how much I missed them. Perhaps coming to terms with losing Jenna, letting her go after all this time, allowed me to remember the good parts of our lives, and how I’d loved my other sisters, too.
“She also warns me that my consort might face some sort of competition,” Ursula continued, her tone exceedingly neutral. “With the code she’s using, it hasn’t been clear to me what she meant—a threat against you or something else. That’s another reason I haven’t mentioned it to you.” Her eyes were clear and without guile when I looked at her.
I continued to play this her way. “What sorts of competition does she describe?”
Ursula gave an irritated shrug. “It’s couched in silly phrases; you likely to lose a tournament—when we know you don’t participate in such things—or being disqualified from some sort of gaming championship. Nonsense.”
I grunted noncommittally, beginning to form an idea of what might be coming.
“Now Kral has received a formal communication, delivered to the Hákyrling, from your brother, Emperor Hestar.”
Glad I’d had the wit not to be caught with food to choke on or wine to spit, I shoved my plate away and leaned my elbows on the table, cupping a fist in my hand and propping my chin on them. That way I’d be less likely to strangle her. “It’s taken you this long to mention that?”
Her eyes snapped sword-sharp with irritation. “If you’d controlled your temper—words I never thought I’d have to say to you—you would’ve been there to hear the news at the same time I did. Then you had to dash yourself brainless against a shapeshifter and we had a lot of old secrets to clear off the table, which was also your doing. Don’t second-guess me in this, Harlan.”
I took a breath and let it go. “Fine. What does this communication from my esteemed brother offer?” I knew what it would be, from Inga’s hints, in my bones—from knowing my family so well, perhaps—and only needed to hear the words.
“It contains an offer of alliance. A marriage of state, between me and your brother Ban.”
And there it was. It almost didn’t hurt, I’d been braced for that particular blow for so long. “Don’t accept Ban,” I told her. “He’s never been right in the head. Hold out for Mykal, or one of the twins.”
She gaped at me. I didn’t often catch Ursula flat-footed. Sadly I couldn’t enjoy it this time. Determinedly I bit into a leg of
meat, chewing, counting the beats of silence until the explosion.
“That’s your response.” She was entirely astonished—and quiet with it. I would’ve preferred the explosion.
“Yes—the best advice I can give. Ban was born wrong. He’s fine in body, but not all there in his mind. Though that might be useful for your purposes.” As soon as the words escaped my mouth, I regretted them. So much for keeping my cool.
“I don’t deserve that,” she said quietly.
“No.” I blew out a breath. “I apologize. Though offering you Ban is an insult. Mykal or one of the twins would be more fitting for you to marry.”
“Harlan. I’m not marrying any of them.”
“What did Hestar offer?”
“What?”
I wiped the grease from my hands, giving her a knowing look. “A marriage of alliance with Dasnaria gets what for the High Throne of the Thirteen Kingdoms?” I phrased it deliberately, if unfairly prodding her, emphasizing where we both knew her responsibilities lay.
“Independent ally of the empire,” she replied, eyeing me. “One hundred years of that status, with options to renegotiate. Protection from the Temple of Deyrr.”
“A good offer,” I acknowledged. “Better than I expected.”
“If Hestar doesn’t renege.”
“He won’t. Not on the letter of the agreement. Konyngrrs revere a good contract.” I smiled at her in reminder of the Vervaldr’s initial contract, how Ursula had pored over it, looking for loopholes, and how she hadn’t believed at first that I’d written it. But she didn’t smile at the old joke.
“And Deyrr?” she asked pointedly.
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