Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Strong Blood

Crow Awakened

A Matter of Trust

About Grace

Also by Grace

LOVER OF THORNS AND HOLY GODS

A TRILOGY OF SHORT STORIES

STRONG BLOOD – Copyright © 2015 by Grace Draven

CROW AWAKEND – Copyright © 2015 by Grace Draven

A MATTER OF TRUST – Copyright © 2016 by Grace Draven

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015, 2016 by Grace Draven

Sincerest thanks to the following people:

My ever-paitent editor, Lora Gasway, who always makes it right.

Dorothy Graves McEwan who wanted to see characters from my different books meet and interact. STRONG BLOOD was the result of that request.

All those who read my work. I hope the stories bring you hours of entertainment.

LOVER OF THORNS AND HOLY GODS is dedicated to my daughter, the bold Sophia.

STRONG BLOOD

“Are you certain this will work?” Louvaen addressed Ambrose but kept her gaze on the shimmering portal of coruscating light that hovered midair in the great hall.

The sorcerer cut her a hard glance. “No, but it’s the best I could do on short notice with the limited information gleaned from the books Cinnia brought from Monteblanco.”

Louvaen glowered at him before turning her attention to her silent husband beside her. “This is a terrible idea.”

Ballard’s mouth curved, and he captured a lock of her hair in his hand, letting the silky strands slide through his fingers. “Louvaen, it was your idea.”

“That’s why it’s terrible,” Ambrose snapped and returned Louvaen’s glare with one of his own.

Ballard continually wondered when his wife and his magician would finally end their fragile peace. He kept expecting to find them literally brawling with each other in one of the corridors. “If we don’t bring back this artifact, the blight will kill every bit of flax we’ve planted.”

Since the lands of Ketach Tor were no longer hidden from the rest of the world, trade in the demesne’s flax harvest was brisk and profitable. The blight that had descended on the crop this year ensured a heavy loss if they didn’t find a way to destroy it. Ballard’s coffers were far from empty, but he didn’t relish the idea of denting them with the wholesale loss of his best crop. Relinquishing a costly jewel as payment for a magical item that destroyed blight was worth it to him, as was the strange journey he was about to take in order to complete the transaction.

Louvaen gripped his arm, her strong features grim and pinched. “You’ll be careful? I expect you to return before morning, sound and in one piece, or I’m going through the portal after you.”

Ambrose nodded. “Yes, get back as soon as possible.” He clasped his hands behind his back and adopted an innocent look. “I’m sure these are respectable people undeserving of such cruelty.”

Ballard pulled Louvaen into his arms before she could wrap her hands around Ambrose’s throat. She stood stiff in his embrace, her mouth compressed into a sour line until the light kisses he feathered across her lips coaxed her into relaxing and returning his caress.

Truth be told, he’d much rather spend the evening in her arms in their bed or by the fire in Magda’s kitchen where he could enjoy a warm ale and the companionship of his family.

“You fret for naught,” he told her, punctuating his reassurance with the slow stroke of his hand along the length of her back. “His message was straightforward, and he has what we need. He seems an agreeable, reasonable man.”

Ambrose huffed. “Agreeable and reasonable? Considering the bloodline and he the progenitor, I doubt it.”

“Ambrose,” Ballard warned and frowned when the sorcerer shrugged.

The feel of Louvaen’s tall form pressed against his body distracted him, and he promptly forgot Ambrose’s presence when she nuzzled her face into his neck and kissed the sensitive spot just below his earlobe.

“I won’t leave the hall until you return. Promise me you’ll return,” she whispered into his hair.

He leaned back enough to look into her eyes—the gray of hot ash. “I give you my word.” He smiled. “And I expect a fine greeting from you. Preferably without clothes.”

Her pupils dilated, and her nostrils flared, highlighting the prominent blade of her nose. “I’m happy to oblige.”

“And don’t kill Ambrose while I’m gone.”

“That is asking too much of me.”

Ballard chortled, gave her a hard kiss before turning to face the portal. Its golden light pulsed, beckoning him to step through and discover the unknown on the other side. He glanced at Ambrose who now stood next to Louvaen. The two wore identical worried expressions. Ballard nodded. “Look for me in the morning,” he said and stepped through the portal.

The light was a living thing, like the tide of a sentient ocean. Waves of luminescence carried him from the world and time he knew to one he didn’t, depositing him in the sanctuary of a quiet forest glade. A cluster of thick evergreens sheltered the portal and hid his entrance.

Ballard stumbled as a sharp pain shot through his disfigured leg. He straightened and hobbled to a short outcropping of rock to sit and find his bearings. The message sent contained a clearly wrought map, and from his perch, he saw the smoke from the public house marked as the meeting place.

He invoked one of Ambrose’s spell to hide the portal from sight while he was gone and checked his appearance. It was anyone’s guess if what he wore might blend in with the people who lived here, but he had no intention of staying long enough for his presence to bring more than the most cursory notice. Simple tunic and breeches, sturdy shoes and a loosely laced doublet woven of rough wool. There was nothing on him to signal wealth or make him an obvious target to thieves. He limited the weapons he carried to knives tucked away from sight. He was as proficient with those as he was with a sword, and any bandit with a mind to attack would be in for an unpleasant surprise.

The public house was like any he might find in the villages within riding distance of Ketach Tor or in Louvaen’s town of Monteblanco. The ground around the structure was a muddied quagmire trenched by cart wheels and the hooves of horse and ox teams. Mud-encrusted boot scrapers were planted on either side of the entrance, iron flowers mulched in piles of filthy straw.

He entered the pub and blinked until his eyes adjusted to the tenebrous interior. Acrid smoke hung in a haze above the patron’s heads, swirling in ghostly dances with the more pleasant smelling smoke that swayed up in tendrils from pipe bowls. The place stank of mold, grease and too many unwashed bodies seated together in a too-warm enclosure.

The man for whom Ballard had crossed worlds to meet sat alone at a small table in one corner. If the crimson cloak was any indicator, he wasn’t in the least concerned about blending in with the crowd. Even in the semi-darkness, the bright splash of color stood out like a beacon, and Ballard limped toward it, map in hand.

“Silhara of Neith?” he asked when he reached the table.

The other man nodded and rose to clasp the arm Ballard offered. Tall and wiry with a hard face, equally hard black eyes and dark hair threaded through by a startling white streak, Silhara bore little resemblance to the bookish, sometimes scatter-minded mages Ballard had met in his lifetime. Even Ambrose, focused and highly skilled in the magical arts, paled in comparison. Power poured off this man. He might not always recognize a mage, but Ballard knew a fellow warrior when he met one and suspected this one’s magery had been used more than once in combat.

“You’re Ballard...” Silhara paused and cocked his head. “How do you pronounce your title?”

He had a raspy voice with a bite to the words, as if he snapped his teeth together when he spoke. Ballard noted the white ligature scar encircling Silhara’s throat. “Day-so-va-tare,” he said.

Silhara indicated the chair across from him and resumed his seat when Ballard sat. The two men eyed each other for a moment before Silhara spoke. “How long have you known the heft of a sword?”

Ballard stifled his burgeoning smile. It seemed the mage had the same instinct as he. “Since I could walk I think.”

A serving wench sashayed up to their table, loaded tray in her hand and a come-hither tilt to her hip. She gave both men a black-toothed smile. “What can I offer you this fine day?” The false smile melted away when neither Ballard nor Silhara rose to the bait. Silhara indicated two of the overflowing tankards of ale balanced precariously on the tray. She slapped them on the table, spilling foam over the rims and took the coin he offered without further comment.

Ballard tasted the ale, thick and yeasty, and tried not to stare too hard at the man across from him. It was difficult. He unconsciously searched for something familiar, even knowing that so many generations gone would have bred out any similarities. His lips twitched. Well, maybe not all of them. Some traits stubbornly remained generation after generation.

Silhara watched him just as closely. “Your sorcerer labored hard to create such an invocation as a portal pass, and you’ve come a long way to seek out what should be readily available in your land.”

“True, but the records we found mentioned no other spell worked as well as the one you created. I can afford the loss of the flax but would prefer not to, and as you’ve read in the message, my reasons are also personal.”

Language was a fluid thing, especially over a long span of time, but Ambrose’s skill with translation was unequalled, and he provided the means by which Ballard and Silhara could understand each other’s messages.

“Yet you came alone.” A frown knitted Silhara’s eyebrows together.

Ballard shrugged. “I am a cautious man. Who knew what I might walk into once I came through the portal? I see you’re also solitary.”

The other mimicked his gesture. “I can’t claim your cautious nature, but I’ve put my wife’s well-being at risk too often as it is. Hence, alone as well.” He downed some of his ale and shook his head, a half smile ghosting his mouth. “Who knew my name would survive for so long. Shall we do business?”

One enchanted rock in exchange for one priceless ruby and the bargain was set between them. Ballard didn’t miss the many gazes that flickered their way and lingered as satchels containing artifact and payment changed hands. “Will we need to fight our way out of here?”

Silhara shook his head. “They know to attack me would be their last idiotic act. And you’ve a look about you that would make even me stop to consider whether or not what you possess is worth the risk.” He caught the black-toothed maid’s attention and waved her over to their table. “Now that our business is concluded, you’ll stay a little longer? You haven’t tasted the elixir of life until you’ve tried Peleta’s Fire.”

A few minutes later, Ballard gasped out a breath and stared at his drinking companion with watery eyes. “Gods’ blood,” he said on a wheezy breath and peered into the small cup in front of him. “I see why they call it Dragon’s Piss. I think I just cooked my insides.” He drank ale from his refilled tankard to cool not only the scorch marks in the back of his throat but also the lake of fire bubbling in his belly.

Silhara’s reaction was similar to his—a gasp, tears, and a body shudder hard enough to rock the table between them. Like Ballard, he chased the fiery drink with a mouthful of cool ale. He held up the bottle. “Another?” he said in a voice rough as saw teeth dragged over gravel.

Ballard nodded. “Don’t be sparing.”

By the fourth round, his vision was fuzzy at the edges and his throat a volcanic pathway to the inferno that was his stomach. He waved away the bottle of liquid agony Silhara raised in offering. One more swallow of Peleta’s Fire would see him either immolated or passed out under the table. The sorcerer slid the nearly empty bottle to the side, and Ballard didn’t imagine the look of relief that crossed his face.

Silhara turned to survey the room. “How good are you in a fight while drunk?”

Ballard’s fuzzy vision instantly sharpened, and he straightened from his slouched position. “Better than when I’m sober. Why?”

“Just curious.” Silhara leaned back in his chair and rested his tankard on his midriff. “How did you get your limp?”

Still suspicious of the mage’s first question, Ballard slowly dragged his gaze from the other occupants in the room. “My wife shot me.”

Silhara’s chuff of laughter fanned a pattern of crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes. “Is that so? From how you step and the way you favor your leg, the wound was high on the thigh. Was she aiming for your balls?”

“My head.”

“Which one?”

Ballard snorted, amused. “The one attached to my neck.”

“Fortunate for you she had bad aim.”

“Indeed.”

Silhara’s austere features turned pensive. “What’s her name?”

A hazy image of black hair and a face too strong to ever be beautiful rose in Ballard’s mind. “Lovely,” he said. He blinked. “Louvaen,” he amended. “Her name is Louvaen.”

A different maid approached them with a pitcher and topped off their ale. Silhara continued with his line of questioning. “A spirited woman?”

“Very, though my magician would be less complimentary if you asked him. He calls her shrew and harpy. Rightfully so sometimes.” Ballard drank the ale, still hoping to reduce his inflamed insides to a smoking ruin. “I’d have no other.” The spark in Silhara’s dark eyes was either one of approval or simply the gloss of inebriation; he wasn’t sure which.

“And your wife?” he asked. “The records mention her by name. Martise?”

Silhara raised his tankard in salute. “A quiet creature of profound dignity. That is when she isn’t trying to mule-kick my balls into my mouth or bash my head in with a skillet.” He grinned as Ballard sputtered into his tankard, splattering foam across his nose and cheeks. “I’ll tell her of Louvaen. I think she would approve.”

Ballard wiped the ale foam from his face with his sleeve. “There isn’t much said of her, mostly of you.”

The other man sighed. “She’d prefer it that way. And what do these tomes say of me?”

“That you were a heretic and an outcast, redeemed only by your defeat of a deity.”

“They got most of it right, except for the redemption part.” Silhara rolled his eyes. “Redemption implies I regret those appellations or apologize for them. I assure you I don’t.”

From what he could glean of Silhara’s character in the short time they kept company, Ballard would have been far more surprised if he did. The man given the insulting title of Master of Crows didn’t strike him as one who felt apologetic over much of anything.

They finished off another three pitchers of ale between them as Silhara asked questions about Ballard’s life with Louvaen and offered a few stories of his own about him and Martise and the ramshackle estate they called home. Ballard prayed he’d remember the details so he could pass them on to Louvaen when he returned to Ketach Tor.

Louvaen. He stood abruptly and gripped the table’s edge to stop the room’s slow rotation around him. The worst of his inebriation had faded, but he was still cupshot to his hairline. His wife might not kill him for overindulging, but she’d have his head mounted on their bedroom wall for being late. “I must return,” he told his companion.

Silhara rose, and by the look of him, was none too steady on his feet either. “I’ll accompany you to the gate.”

They wove a path to the door, Ballard’s back prickling with the weight of a dozen stares as they passed. He hadn’t exaggerated when he told Silhara he fought as well drunk as he did sober. He could fight in his sleep if he had too, and it looked as if he might have to do so now with a barrel of ale and a bottle of Dragon’s Piss coursing through his veins. His hands rested casually against his body, his hidden knives within easy reach.

As Silhara assured him earlier, he didn’t have to worry. The mage paused at the threshold, sketched a complicated pattern in the air, and every patron in the room froze mid-action. Ballard gaped at the sight, certain he’d never seen the like. This was powerful sorcery. Ambrose would give his right arm and possibly a leg too for the ability to cast such a spell with similar ease.

Silhara smirked and nudged him through the door. “A black spell. Outlawed by Conclave, therefore, one of my favorites. It’ll fade by the time we reach your portal, and by then we won’t care.”

Afternoon had given way to evening. The forest interior rustled with the rise of nocturnal hunters as the sky listed above them, spackled in stars and silvered by a full moon. Ballard recited the spell Ambrose had given him, and the portal grew from a firefly speck to the illuminated doorway that had carried him here and would return him home.

Silhara eyed it with interest, circling slowly to view both sides as it floated just above the ground. He returned to Ballard, the shadows thrown by the portal’s light hollowing out his thin face. His mouth drew down in severe lines. “When you return, make sure your magician not only closes this portal but destroys it. I’ve learned from bitter experience that such things might start benign but turn malignant faster than you can imagine.”

Ballard inclined his head in acknowledgement. Ambrose had said much the same when he first created the portal. He clasped Silhara’s offered arm. “I thank you for the help and for the ale.”

“And the Dragon’s Piss?” Silhara’s question held a thread of mocking amusement.

“That remains to be seen.” If the contents in Ballard’s stomach didn’t stay down, he’d be cursing the sorcerer instead of thanking him.

Silhara bowed. “Safe journey, and tell your wife...” He hesitated. “Tell Louvaen I will think of her. Often. As will Martise.”

Ballard returned the bow. “Likewise.”

He stepped into the portal and had hardly found his footing in his hall before a weight slammed into his chest, almost knocking him off his feet. His queasy stomach cartwheeled against his ribs in protest.

“You’re late!” Louvaen snarled and proceeded to wrap her arms and legs around him in fine imitation of a strangler ivy.

He managed to stay upright and not pitch them both into the nearby hearth. His stomach refused to calm down, and panic made sweat break out on his forehead. Louvaen took one whiff and saved him the trouble of peeling her off his body.

She stepped back and eyed him with a narrow gaze. “Are you cupshot?”

Ambrose emerged from the kitchens to stand beside her. “Who cares?” He echoed Louvaen’s accusation. “You’re late. It’s nearly noon. Did you get the artifact?”

Ballard concentrated on staying upright and keeping his stomach out of his throat. He fished the bag containing the ensorcelled stone out of his doublet and presented it with a flourish. “As you requested.”

He wished he didn’t feel on the verge of turning himself inside out. He’d far more enjoy the spectacular moment when his recalcitrant magician and his termagant of a wife were in perfect accord in their disappointment.

“It’s a rock,” they said in unison.

Ballard sighed. “I know it’s a rock, but it’s still the artifact we need.” The warning burn of bile crept up his throat. “If I have to talk anymore or remain standing, I’m going to vomit.”

They both leapt away as if he’d lobbed fireballs at them. Ambrose snatched the rock out of Ballard’s hand with promises to destroy the portal once he squirreled away the enchanted artifact for later use before abandoning Ballard to his wife’s tender mercies. Wary but determined, Louvaen helped him up the stairs, issuing numerous, particularly gruesome death threats if he so much as hiccupped. They managed to make it to their bedchamber without mishap.

Ballard collapsed across the bed and rolled to his side. He closed his eyes, hoping the darkness might slow the room’s spinning. Something cold and hard nudged his cheek, and he opened his eyes once more to find a bowl next to his face.

Louvaen offered him a sympathetic half smile. “In case you can’t hold it down.” She stroked his damp brow and carded his hair, her hand cool on his skin.

His eyelids fell to half-mast. He reached out and traced her pale features with one finger, outlining the high curve of her cheekbones and the arched bridge of her nose—a memorable face framed by black hair

Ballard ran the tip of his tongue over his lips and risked a few words. “I think he admired you. He was a strong man of strong blood.” He smiled at Louvaen’s puzzled look. “Countless generations might pass but some traits never fade. Strong blood—and noses—wills out.”

He fell asleep to his wife’s warning of “if I hear one more remark from you about my nose, I will break yours a second time.”

Ah, how he adored this woman.

~END~

CROW AWAKENED

Silhara drew hard on the huqqah’s hose and held in the smoke and the panic until he thought his lungs might burst.  His wife was dying; he was sure of it.

He stood at the window and stared at the fledgling orange grove growing from the ashes of the one destroyed by the god called Corruption. Winter held a firm grip on Neith and all the surrounding plains. The saplings, shrouded in a layer of snow, stood sentinel in regimented lines to the far stone wall that surrounded them. Unlike Silhara, they shivered in the brittle wind that whipped snow flurries into small whirlwinds.

The Master of Crows ignored the cold bite of winter as it swirled into the open window and battled with the meager heat put out by the lit hearth in his study. The wind whispered and teased, keeping time with the burbling dance of water in the huqqah’s water jar each time Silhara drew in smoke from the mouthpiece, shredding his exhalations to ghostly wisps.

For now, he was an exile in his own home, sent off to a chamber far from his bedroom where a beautiful prostitute named Anya tended Martise, and a silent Gurn guarded the door against him. He refused to leave at first, lightning sizzling in threatening arcs across his fingertips when a scowling Anya pointed to the door and ordered him to get out. He’d been a hair’s breath away from turning Gurn’s favorite bed partner into a scorch mark on the floor, stopped only by Martise’s gentler request.

Ashen and hollow-eyed, she huddled in their bed and gave him a wan smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Please, Silhara,” she said in a soft voice. “Pacing and snarling at everyone isn’t helping. Just give me a few moments alone with Anya. You called her here for a reason. Surely you trust her?”

Silhara had capitulated without further argument. He knelt at their bedside and clasped her hand. Her fingers were icicles in his grip. In the weeks since their return to Neith from a half-life world populated by a demon king and a captive woman, she had faded. It was the most accurate description.

He kissed her cold palm and twitched the blankets more snuggly around her shoulders before standing to glare at Anya who returned the glare with one of her own. “Why did I even summon you?” he snapped.

A delicate black eyebrow arched, and Anya’s challenging expression softened. “Because you trust me. And as you said so yourself in your note, a woman would understand the health of another woman far more than a man ever could. Give me a little time. I’m no healer, and if I can’t determine why she’s sick—though I have my suspicions—I’ll tell you to summon one. Until then, go away. You’re doing neither of us any good hovering over her bed like a storm cloud waiting to burst.”

 He’d stomped down the rickety stairs to the first floor and the chilly isolation of his study. Throwing open the window’s shutters and letting in a blast of frigid air had cleared his head a little from the suffocating fear clogging his thoughts. The arcane knowledge in the books and scrolls scattered about the study offered no succor, and he doubted he could focus long enough to remember whatever they might reveal if he read them. He turned, instead, to the familiar comfort of a slow smoke.

While the scent of matal in his nose blunted the sharp edges of terror, it did nothing to slow his racing thoughts. Whatever sickness was turning Martise into a wraith of a woman, he was powerless to stop it. Spells had no effect, nor did the potions he brewed for her—if she managed to hold them down for more than a second.

Her own Gift, more a curse than a blessing in his opinion, had deserted her. Normally responsive to his coaxing, it had withdrawn deep inside her, an unyielding knot that refused to answer him now.

“What is this foul thing that sickens you?” he muttered amidst an exhalation of gauzy smoke. “Why can I not break its grip on you, love?” He balled one hand into a fist and slammed it against one of the shutters. Wooden slats splintered under the blow and clattered to his feet. He hated this sense of helplessness!

He mentally catalogued the initial signs of its manifestation. Exhaustion first. Not just a bad night’s sleep or a day of yawns but bone-deep torpor, as if some invisible parasite slowly sucked the life out of her. Normally a cheery dawn riser, Martise had staggered out of bed each morning, listless and yawning. Both Silhara and Gurn had caught her asleep on her feet numerous times, asleep as she leaned against the bailey wall with the snow drifting around her and the goat she was milking chewing enthusiastically on her skirt hem, asleep at the table while she waited for Gurn to brew tea or serve supper—it didn’t matter where she was or what she did, if she stopped moving, she slept. She even fell asleep on him during a bout of lovemaking, an event he’d at first found crushingly humiliating.

Sickness followed on the heels of exhaustion. Martise vomited up everything that passed her lips, from buttered bread to warm tea. The sounds of retching grew commonplace, provoked not only by eating food but also smelling it. Pale as milk and growing thinner by the day, the only colors that touched her face were the dark circles under her eyes and the sickly greenish tinge that signaled a frantic scrabble for the bowl Gurn now made sure always remained close by to catch what little she managed to heave up from her shrunken stomach.

Anya didn’t tell him anything he hadn’t already known. She wasn’t a healer, but she possessed something no healer did: his trust. He’d sent her a note, one he hoped she might be able to read despite the frantic scrawl across parchment punctured by a jabbing quill and splattered with ink. She’d arrived so quickly, he suspected she was still reading his message as she hitched the pony to the small cart she owned.

Neith’s quiet, a thing he usually treasured and vigilantly guarded against outsiders, pressed down on him now, a heavy yoke that bowed his shoulders. “You cannot die, Martise,” he growled under his breath. “I forbid it.”

Those gossamer-thin threads of compassion or honor he possessed were strengthened by his soft-spoken, scholarly wife. She made him remember his humanity, seek that better part of himself always vulnerable to the ruthless darkness inherent to his nature. If he lost her...

A hard shudder rattled every bone in his body, and his teeth chattered until he clenched his jaw tight enough to make his ears ache. He wouldn’t lose her. He had vanquished a god and challenged a demon king. He would defeat whatever tried to take Martise from him now.

He spun when the study door creaked open. Gurn’s guarded expression didn’t offer any clue as to what Anya might have discovered. He simply motioned to Silhara and stepped out of the way as the mage bolted through the door toward the stairs.

Anya greeted him at the door with a knowing smirk and kohl-lined eyes filled with laughter. That brought him up short, and he scowled at her, perplexed. “What sickens her?” he said.

Her smirk intensified as she eased passed him toward the threshold. “In a way, you do.” His eyebrows arched, and Anya laughed. “I’ll let her explain. I’ll return soon with tea.” She closed the door behind her, leaving him and Martise alone in the chamber.

His wife offered him a beatific smile with lips bled of all color. Silhara’s heart lurched into his throat. She looked as ill now as when he left her to Anya’s care. His face must have revealed some of his thoughts, because she scooted across the bed and patted the space next to her in invitation for him to sit. “I’m not dying, Silhara.”

The surety in her voice eased his fear a little and only for a moment. He sat on the bed and stretched across her, bracing an arm on either side of her head. Martise’s lips were parchment-dry against his, and he dampened them with a stroke of his tongue. “Of course you aren’t,” he murmured. “I won’t allow it.”

Her mouth curved into another smile. She pressed a cold hand to his chest, and he straightened away from her. He followed her orders to lift so she could slide the bedcovers down. He protested at first. “What are you doing? Even with the fire going, it’s colder than a crypt in here.”

Martise hushed him and shoved the covers to her knees, revealing the shift she wore. She captured one of his hands and pressed it to her belly, once flat and now concave from lack of nourishment. “I’m pregnant,” she said.

The simple statement, uttered in a matter-of-fact tone might as well been the edict of a god bellowed from a mountain top. Silhara snatched his hand away and leapt to his feet as if Martise had suddenly burst into flame.

She chortled as he stood there gawking at her and then at the spot where his hand had rested. “I told Anya you’d react this way.”

Silhara opened his mouth to reply and closed it again when no words hit his tongue. No thoughts crowded his mind either, only the two words she’d spoken that bounced inside his skull like stones skipped across a lake’s surface. He glanced at her belly, then back to her face.

The fear bubbling just under the surface transformed into unmitigated terror, unlike any he had known since his childhood when an executioner wrapped a silk scarf around his neck in a lethal embrace and pulled tight.

“How did this happen?” he asked in a voice hardly above a whisper and forced out between lips pressed so hard against his teeth they tingled.

Her soft laughter died, replaced by shock and uncertainty. “The way such things usually happen,” she said in a voice reminiscent of someone cautiously approaching a wounded animal and hoping to avoid an attack.

All the strength bled out of his legs, and his knees wobbled. He shook his head, his gaze frozen on her slight form supine on the bed. It didn’t seem possible, but she’d grown even paler. Her copper eyes were bright with tears. He’d hurt her, cut her to the bone with his response.

He wanted to apologize, to fall to his knees and beg her forgiveness, but the words were frozen on his tongue. One thought circled endlessly in his mind: this shouldn’t have happened.

The blessing of magic bestowed on the Gifted didn’t come without a price. Most mages, male and female, did not sire or conceive children. The Gift didn’t run in a bloodline, a natural precautionary measure that seemed to insure no one family bred for power and hoarded it to themselves. The Gift was an arbitrary thing, manifesting in generations where no Gifted had ever been born or in generations where several were. Silhara and his maternal uncle possessed it; his mother had not, nor had his Kurman father. Martise was Gifted, but to her knowledge, none of her siblings and neither of parents had the Gift.

A child born of a Gifted father or mother was unique. One born to parents who were both Gifted was exceedingly rare. Such knowledge made the brewing of potions that killed a man’s seed or closed a woman’s womb to it an unnecessary thing for him and his wife, or so he’d thought. He’d been wrong, horribly, frightfully wrong. 

Everything he’d done to protect her from corrupt gods to meddlesome priests and imprisoned demon kings had been for naught. He had become the thing most deadly to her.

He spoke past the invisible scarf tightening around his throat. “Women die in childbirth.” His voice, already a damaged rasp, scraped the words across the space between them. “Often.”

While the tears still shimmered in her eyes, Martise’s forlorn expression cleared. She held out her hand. “Come back to me,” she said. He grasped her fingers and let her pull him down to the bed once more. He dragged the blankets over her body, shielding her from the cold. She laid the back of his hand against her cool cheek. “Silhara, people die from many things. Often. And many more women live through childbirth than die from it. Ours would be a sparsely peopled world were that not so.” She offered him a reassuring smile. “You’ve seen yourself the many large families that abound. Those women bore several children without mishap.”

“You aren’t just some nameless woman. You’re Martise; you’re my wife.” You are the reason I greet the day. He held that last behind his teeth and tried, for her sake, to choke back his fear.

“And I will be the healthy, doting mother of your child.” Her eyes lightened from copper to amber, and she grinned. “I will be happy for both of us until you adjust to the idea and rid yourself of the certainty of my untimely end.”

Silhara scowled. “This isn’t funny, Martise.” He glanced at the place where the blankets covered her torso. Behind her smooth skin and delicate navel lurked not a child created from the passionate devotion between a man and his wife but a threat.

Martise squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry to tease, but I cannot fear what I consider wonderful news.”

She didn’t say it, but Silhara heard the unspoken plea in her voice. Be happy with me. He couldn’t, not yet, not while gripped in the throes of dread over a possible future without her.

The door opened and Anya swanned in, bearing a tray with a teapot and single cup. The scent of mint filled the room. Gurn followed behind her, carrying a bottle of Dragon’s Piss. He hadn’t bothered with the niceties of a goblet.

The houri placed the tray on a nearby table and poured tea into the cup. She passed it to Martise. “This should calm your stomach. As Silhara knows, mint is good for belly sickness.” She turned her gaze to Silhara. “Gurn knows you well. He said you’d need something a lot stronger than tea when Martise gave you the news. By the look of you at this moment, he was right.”

Silhara gratefully accepted the bottle Gurn handed to him, uncorked it and took a healthy swig. The drink smoked its way down his throat to settle in his gut, a pool of liquid fire. It did a fine job of clearing his head of the fear threatening to choke him.

“Are you certain she’s with child?”

Anya nodded. “Absolutely. Had you another woman in the house, one who had borne a child herself, you would have known sooner. She bears all the signs of increasing, except for that wasted belly. You can remedy that with bland food she can keep down. And make sure she drinks enough. Tea, water. Always with mint until the sickness fades.”

Part of him understood and was grateful that what plagued Martise plagued all women. It could have been worse, infinitely so. There were wasting illnesses with no name and no cure. She didn’t suffer one of those at least. He just had to hope and pray (now there was a thought that brought him up short) she would survive childbirth.

A large hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed. Gurn’s blue eyes sparked with both sympathy and gladness. He understood Silhara’s concerns but rejoiced with Martise in the news of another addition to their family.

Anyah ran an affectionate hand down the servant’s arm. “Come, Gurn. We’ll leave them to it. I suspect your master might need another bottle of Peleta’s Fire before his nerves calm.” She laughed when Silhara glared at her. “Congratulations, Até,” she trilled, using the Kurman word for “papa.”

When they were alone again, Martise captured a lock of Silhara’s hair and twined it through her fingers. “Até. I like that. I would be Amé, yes?”

He nodded. Almost of his own volition, his hand slid across the blankets to rest over her abdomen. Martise stilled, waiting. Her Gift, both volatile and protective, had deserted Martise when the demon king Megiddo abducted her. Or so he thought at the time. But it had never left, never faded, only retreated to guard something weaker and more vulnerable than Martise herself—this new spark of life sheltered inside her.

Despite himself, his curiosity grew. He concentrated, murmuring a spell he hadn’t used before to lure Martise’s Gift into responding to him. It hadn’t done so in previous attempts. Silhara focused, eyes closed, offering up a silent reassurance that he meant no harm, that this being he helped create was part of the woman he valued most and therefore under his protection.

Her Gift, different from his, almost sentient and independent, reached out. He sensed its touch, like a ghostly fingertip that slid across his spirit in a tentative caress. It was different this time, its amber light edged in glowing silver. He saw it in its mind’s eye. Within those colors, a bright spark danced and capered before rushing toward him.

Silhara inhaled sharply, inundated by the sensation of newness, of fragility, of...recognition. The feeling worked like both blade and torch, lancing the boil of his fear and cauterizing the wound left behind. He laughed low in his throat, eyes still closed, lost in the connection between him and this child he had sired on the woman for whom he’d sacrifice all.

“Hello, small crow,” he said softly.

~END~

A MATTER OF TRUST

Ildiko eyed the solar’s closed door longingly, wondering how many of Serovek Pangion’s other guests she might offend if she leapt out of her chair and bolted for freedom.  Her escape route, however, was blocked by the wives or sisters of thanes loyal to the Margrave of High Salure, and she was surrounded on either side by more.

The pleasant, shallow chit-chat she expected and engaged in when the women first entered the solar had quickly devolved into lewd gossip and speculation regarding their host and his carnal talents.

“Oh, I remember a fine night three summers ago.  I rode him all night long and into the next morning.”

“With or without a saddle?”

The women around Ildiko laughed.  A few exchanged knowing smirks, as if they shared a common knowledge of the “morning ride.”  Others wore blushes or displayed narrow-eyed stares of envy.

Ildiko was among those who blushed.  She didn’t suffer from false modesty, only a desire not to learn the details of Lord Pangion’s prowess in the bedchamber.  Or the well room.  Or the stables.  Or the pastures.  Holy gods, was it any wonder Serovek of High Salure had earned the title of Beladine Stallion?

“All night?” another woman chimed in.  “That should have made you good and bow-legged.”

More tittering laughter that abruptly changed to gasps when a third woman said “Plenty of men can sustain a good gallop over a long ride.  His lordship’s weakness isn’t what’s between a woman’s thighs but between her teeth.”

“Nooo,” someone else said.  “I heard he’s far too big—”

“Oh, he’s a mouthful all right.”

More admiring laughter followed, and Ildiko did her best to maintain a bland expression and hide behind her wine goblet.  She would never be able to look at Serovek the same way again after this conversation.

Beladine noblewomen were no different from Gauri noblewomen when it came to gossip, and they were just as quick to swap stories of bedroom conquests as their male counterparts.  Much of Ildiko’s education about what went on between the sheets had come not only from overhearing servants’ gossip but from such talk in the solars.  She hadn’t been a complete innocent when she married Brishen, but her first lover had been as untried as she.  Most of what she knew had been gleaned from gatherings like these where the talk was forthcoming, competitive and often lurid.

She waited for the inevitable and tried not to cringe when one of the women turned to her with an inquisitive gleam in her eye.  “Do the Kai—”

Ildiko offered a tight smile and cut her off mid-sentence.  “I’m reticent by nature, Lady Bladuza, and not at ease discussing such matters.  I must beg your understanding if I remain silent on the subject.”

Lady Bladuza’s expression soured, and she put her back to Ildiko in an obvious show of affront.  The others didn’t follow suit.  Their scrutiny, by contrast, only sharpened.  Ildiko gripped her chair arm with one hand in an effort not to squirm in her seat.

“I don’t see how it’s even possible for a Kai to suck a prick without bloodshed,” one woman said.  She shrugged when all gazes turned to her.  “Think about it.  In order not to scrape skin, you have to curve your lips over the tops of your teeth.  Like this.”  She demonstrated, and Ildiko was reminded of an old crone who had lost most of her teeth.  Not an attractive look.

“Ooh, you’re right,” said Lady Bladuza.  “With those fangs, you couldn’t do that without slicing your own mouth, not to mention the man’s bits.”  She shuddered and tossed Ildiko a pitying look.  “What a shame.  I enjoy the act.”

Ildiko’s mouth tightened but she remained silent.  She refused to be baited into countering an assumption and revealing private matters.  Unfortunately, the group hadn’t yet finished conjecturing on the subject.

“But a Kai man wouldn’t have to worry about such a thing if he’s the one doing the pleasuring.”

“Would you trust someone with a mouthful of teeth like that worshipping at your nethers?”

Again, the full weight of a dozen gazes hurtled down on Ildiko.  She stared back, silent, her cheeks and scalp so hot, she thought her head might burst into flames at any moment.

Lady Ganamei, wife of one of Serovek’s principle thanes, reached over and patted Ildiko’s hand.  “Good to know you’re not robbed of one of life’s finer pleasures, Hercegesé.”  She winked.

Ildiko groaned inwardly, and the other women chuckled.  Surely, there was something else they’d find more interesting to discuss.  And soon.

When a servant arrived to announce dinner was served, she sent up a silent prayer to whatever god listened.  Instead of racing for the corridor, she patiently waited until she was almost the last the leave, pairing up with Lady Ganamei who mercifully didn’t expound on her earlier remark.

Dinnertime was no less of a challenge.  As guests of honor, Brishen and Ildiko shared the high table with their host, Serovek.  After the conversation in the solar, Ildiko had a difficult time meeting the lord’s eyes each time he addressed her.  And her gaze seemed to have a will of its own, sliding inevitably toward the subject of the earlier discussion.  She wasn’t alone, nor was Serovek the only target of such focused attention.

As the only Kai in a gathering of humans, Brishen fell under the unwavering regard of every guest.  This was the second dinner he and Ildiko had attended together at High Salure, and the first since Serovek helped rescue him from a band of raiders who had tortured and blinded him.

“How obvious can you be?” she muttered behind the shield of her wine goblet.

Brishen titled his head toward her, a puzzled line knitting his brow.  “What’s wrong?”

She took a sip of wine before answering.  “Are people so unaware of how rude it is to stare?”

His sensual mouth curved into a close-lipped smile for a moment.  “You should be used to it by now, Ildiko.  Serovek’s folk aren’t doing anything different to me that mine do to you at Saggara.”

“I don’t think they’re trying to strip me naked with their eyes,” she whispered, her indignation unpacified by his remark, despite its truth.

His casual posture vanished in an instant, as did the half smile.  He snapped straight in his seat, his eyes narrowed.  “Who at Saggara looks at you that way?”

“Stop grimacing.  You’re scaring people.”  She patted his forearm, feeling the tense muscles ripple under her palm.  “No one.  The same can’t be said here.”  His wine goblet thumped down hard on the table, and she gripped his elbow in warning when he made to rise from his seat.  “It’s you they’re undressing, Brishen.  Not me.”

The harsh lines in his face eased, and he relaxed back in his chair.  It was Ildiko’s turn to frown.  Obviously, he wasn’t much bothered by the idea of someone visually stripping him as he was at someone doing the same to her.  She was prevented from saying more by an inquiry from their host.

“You look troubled, Hercegesé.  The food not to your liking?”  Serovek sat on the other side of Brishen, twirling his eating knife between nimble fingers.  Torch and candlelight emphasized the fine set of his features.  He was a handsome man, and according to gossip and reputation, a passionate one.

Ildiko raised her goblet in salute and tried not to blush at the images in her mind’s eye, conjured by the earlier gossip shared in the solar.  “I’m well, my lord, and the food is superb.”

Assured of his hospitality and the talents of his kitchen staff, Serovek turned his attention to Brishen.  “How fares the brave sha-Anhuset?”  His eyes gleamed in the torchlight, avid and intense.

The Beladine lord had never disguised his fascination for Brishen’s prickly cousin, a fascination only strengthened after his rescue of her and Ildiko from mercenaries bent on a murder and a pair of blood-thirsty mage-hounds.  Anhuset’s thinly disguised hostility toward him any time they met seemed only to inflame him.

Brishen shrugged.  “If her foul mood is any indication, she’s quite well.  My debt to you continues to mount.  You saved me, my wife and my second.”  He tapped his cup against Serovek’s.  “I’ll have to do something epic to repay you in kind.”

Serovek laughed.  “The world is full of heroes in waiting.  Bring a scarpatine pie on your next visit to High Salure instead, and I’ll consider the debt forgiven.”

Brishen raised a doubtful eyebrow.  “That’s poor payment for saving three lives, friend.”

“Not if you’re a man with a craving for the dish and a cook who would spatchcock you in your own bed with her best butcher knife if you commanded her to make you one.”

Ildiko’s lips clamped tightly together, caught between laughter at his remark and revulsion at the thought of eating scarpatine pie.  She’d done so—thrice so far since her marriage to Brishen—and survived the ordeal.  That someone other than a Kai actually liked the loathsome pie amazed her.  Even some of the Kai found it vile and refused to eat it.

“I still consider the debt unpaid, but we can satisfy your taste for scarpatine,” Brishen said.  “I’ll send my cook to prepare it in your kitchens.”

Ildiko’s lip curled.  She hoped they weren’t invited to that particular dinner.

They spent the remainder of the evening in pleasant banter with their host and the other guests as they were entertained by musicians tucked away into a corner of the hall.  While the women had been embarrassingly candid in the solar, they were far more circumspect in mixed company, though Ildiko caught more than a few curious gazes flit between her and Brishen.

You’ll get nothing from me on that score, she thought.  No doubt she and Brishen would be the subject of a great deal of idle gossip once they left High Salure for Saggara.  And gossip it would remain.  Still, she couldn’t help but recall a few of the comments made by Lady Bladuza and her companions.

“With those fangs, you couldn’t do it without slicing your own mouth, not to mention the man’s bits.”

The “it” she referred to was obvious.  Ildiko had no experience in performing fellatio, either on her first lover or Brishen, and she admitted to herself she was curious.  A lover with a mouthful of sharp teeth likely dissuaded any Kai male from wanting to experiment.

She wasn’t Kai and didn’t possess the pointed ivories.  Could she do for Brishen what he did for her?  Send him careening into the stars on a breathless moan and a litany of prayers to the gods?  The thought sent a tingle down her spine.

Her face heated at the memory of seeing Brishen’s dark head between her legs more than a few times.  His mouth and teeth had been quite close to her nethers, his tongue both an instrument of torture and mind-shattering pleasure.  His teeth were never an issue.

“You’re turning a fine shade of amaranthine, wife.  Are you well?”

Startled, Ildiko caught Brishen watching her, his yellow eye, without pupil or sclera, glowing bright as a harvest moon.  He still had trouble discerning some of her expressions.  A human’s emotions were often revealed in their eyes, and to a Kai, human eyes were disconcerting and strange.

A soft chuckle sounded beside her.  Ildiko caught Serovek’s smirk.  Fellow humans, on the other hand, could be maddeningly discerning with each other.

“I’m fine, Brishen,” she assured her husband, ignoring Serovek’s knowing gaze.  “It’s just a little warm in the room.”

She managed to push the memory of the women’s earlier conversation to the back of her mind, along with her curiosity, until they were mounted on their horses and exchanging farewells with Serovek.  The moon had dropped lower in the sky, riding the crest of spruce trees and solaris oaks that marched down the slopes from their host’s mountain fortress.

They were still within sight of the main gate when a whistle pierced the chilly air.  The entire Kai party turned at the sound.  Ildiko spotted Serovek standing on one of the walls overlooking the path that led to High Salure.  He leaned casually over the parapet, his hair fluttering in the wind like a dark flag.  She couldn’t see his features clearly from where she stopped in the road, but she didn’t imagine the grin in his voice.

“Make it a female scarpatine, Herceges,” he shouted down to them.  “I like a challenge.”

Brishen laughed and offered a Kai salute.  “You dance too blithely with death, Lord Pangion, but if that’s your wish...”

The other man returned the salute and disappeared from the parapet.  Ildiko shook her head.  “Sometimes I don’t know which he is more; brave or reckless.”

Brishen nudged his mount closer to hers.  “Equally both, I think.  He’s a man who seizes life by the ruff and gives it a good shake, even when it tries to bite him.”

Ildiko frowned.  Reckless then, and a trait of which she wasn’t fond.  “I’m glad you’re not like that.”

He smiled, teeth sharp and bright in the silver-gilt darkness.  “I grew up among those only too willing to bite and devour even without a good shaking.  Caution has many fine points to it, wife.  Good to know you appreciate it as much as I do.”

His words lingered in her mind as they rode back to Saggara.  Brishen was indeed a cautious man.  He made quick decisions when necessary and followed through with them but preferred a slower, more thoughtful approach in everything he did.  But when did caution become reticence, and could she convince him to abandon that natural inclination in the privacy of their bedchamber?

The clop of horse hooves on the mountain trail mingled with the voices of the Kai escort that had accompanied them to High Salure.  After his abduction and torture, and the attempts made on Ildiko’s life as well, Brishen had been reluctant to let her leave the safety of Saggara without half his garrison surrounding her.  That she felt the same about him hadn’t stopped him from joining patrol the moment he felt confident enough to sit a horse and wield a sword half-blind.

Ildiko understood his protectiveness, but trapped behind Saggara’s walls had driven her mad after a few weeks.  She missed the rides across the grasslands or the visits to the dye houses.  People didn’t mind when she appeared with a small contingent of six or so soldiers.  Three dozen or more, and it began to look less like a visit and more like an invasion.

Ever observant and caring of her well-being, Brishen had reluctantly accepted the invitation to dine with Serovek in High Salure.  Ildiko had jumped into his arms and rained kisses across his face, gentling her enthusiasm when her lips glided over the collapsed eyelid covering the scarred eye socket where his right eye had once been.

He was a loving man, a brave and noble one who did his best to make her happy.  Ildiko wished with all her heart to render onto him every joy and pleasure she could, including the more carnal ones.  Would he agree to try something any male of his culture would recoil from if offered?  Would he trust her not to hurt him, even inadvertently? 

“You’re deep in thought, Ildiko.  Any secrets you care to reveal?”

With a troop of sharp-eyed and sharp-eared soldiers surrounding them, Ildiko had no intention of sharing her thoughts until they were alone.  She shrugged.  “Just wondering something.  I promise to tell you when we reach Saggara.”

Brishen reclined across his wife’s bed and watched her brush her hair.  The maid, Sinhue, had helped her undress before leaving.  Garbed only in a thin shift, Ildiko perched on a stool near the bed, drawing her long red locks through the bristles until they cascaded over her shoulders like a river of fire.

She gave him a sleepy look.  “You’re staring.”

He rolled to his stomach and stole one of her pillows to tuck under his chin.  “Why wouldn’t I?  You’re beautiful.”  He chuckled inwardly.  His compliment would have garnered nods of agreement from humans and incredulous expressions from the Kai.

Ildiko’s pale skin rosied at his praise, even as a frown line furrowed her forehead.  “I’m glad you think so.”

Alerted by an odd tone in her voice, he flipped onto his back and sat up.  Ildiko abandoned her hair-brushing as her gaze dropped to his lap.  Unlike her, he wore nothing, and the moments spent admiring his wife as she readied for bed had aroused him.

“You’re very handsome,” she said, a small smile playing about her mouth.  “And...endowed.”     He dragged part of a blanket across his thighs.  “Eyes up here, Ildiko,” he said, crooking a finger and motioning to his face.  He enjoyed the attention, but he wanted her focused on something other than his passion for her.

Her gaze followed the gesture.  She gave an unapologetic shrug.  “Who can blame me?  You’re handsome all over.  I like to look at you, and you sitting there naked on my bed is a distraction.”

Brishen recalled the first time he revealed his face to her in the royal gardens at Pricid and her response.  “Had you crawled out from under my bed when I was a child, I would have bludgeoned you to death with my father’s mace.”  How things had changed since their first meeting.

Ildiko set the brush on her dressing table and rose from the stool to stand in front of him.  He grunted softly when she climbed into his lap and seated herself astride him.  He braced his hands on her lower back to hold her in place, the weight of her body pressing into him the finest of sensations. 

Her hands were cool on his skin as they journeyed across his shoulders, and up his neck before finally coming to rest on either side of his jaw.  He lifted his chin at her silent coaxing.  “You’ve the look of a man with a question as well as an erection,” she teased.

The sheer folds of her linen shift glided over his thighs to tease his cock, and her scent filled his nostrils.  He breathed deep, nearly forgetting his own question.  “And you’ve the look of a woman with a dilemma,” he replied.  “What had you so put out at dinner?  And so pensive on the journey home?”

Her features took on that same faraway expression she wore as they rode home from High Salure.  Brishen bit back a pleasured sigh as her fingers slid into his hair to massage his scalp.  His own hands didn’t remain idle.  Her skin radiated warmth through her shift, and he traced the sleek lines of her legs and flanks before sliding down to cup her buttocks. 

His claws, ripped out by his torturers three months earlier, were growing back.  While Brishen missed the fighting edge long claws gave every Kai, he liked the fact he could caress his wife without worrying about accidentally slicing through her thin garment and laying a bloody scratch into her flesh.

His touch brought her back to him, and her strange, human eyes met his.  “There are many differences between our peoples I hadn’t considered until now.”

Her comment caught him by surprise, and a knot of unease settled under his breastbone.  As the human wife of a Kai and the only human living in a military garrison populated by Kai, she had numerous opportunities to observe and experience how their two races differed from each other. 

The list was long and went far beyond the obvious physicalities.  Ildiko had dealt with them all in her customary pragmatic way.  Her strength lay not in battle prowess but in flexibility.  Brishen suspected his wife lived by the philosophy of adapt and conquer.  What discovery had she made among the guests of High Salure that troubled her during supper and on the return ride to Saggara?

“Fewer differences than some might assume,” he argued.  “Where is this leading, wife?”

She twined a lock of his hair around one finger.  “You may not realize it, but when the women gather, they don’t always discuss needlework or child-rearing.”

He snorted, still puzzled but also amused.  “I’m Kai raised among Kai, Ildiko.  If human women gathered in groups are anything like Kai women gathered in groups, then there are stories exchanged, comparisons made and bragging rights earned.  Who tupped whom, who lasted longest, who hangs lower or stands prouder and who failed at any of those things on the list.”

Her eyes widened with each item he named.  “Well...”

“Trust me; nothing you tell me about talk in the solar will surprise me.  When I first visited High Salure to dine with Serovek, he told me the guests spent a full hour after I left gossiping between them as to whether or not my cock was barbed and if I had a tail tucked away in my trews.

She jerked in his embrace, and her mouth fell open.  “Oh my gods.”

He grinned at her obvious shock.  “Sometimes the differences actually there aren’t nearly as interesting as the ones imagined.”

Ildiko leaned back.  Her gaze dropped once more to his strategically covered groin.  Her grin mimicked his as his erection swelled even more to press against her linen-covered belly.  “I don’t remember seeing a barb,” she said, tapping a finger against her chin.  “Or feeling one for that matter.”

Brishen laughed.  “I’d think something like a barb would be memorable for both of us.”

She wiggled her eyebrows at him and raised one hand with thumb and forefinger pinched together.  “Maybe it’s just a tiny barb; too small to notice.”

He yanked her close to bury his face in her cleavage and growl into her shift.  The perfumes of soap and the incense that burned in High Salure’s hall fanned the lustful fire smoldering inside him for the woman he fondly called his “pretty hag.”

She giggled and gripped his shoulders as he continued to growl and snuffle his face into the curves of her breasts.  He finally pulled away to stare into her smiling face.  “If I possessed a barb, it wouldn’t be tiny or unnoticeable.”  He leered at her.  “But you’re welcome to take a closer look.  Feel around just to make sure.”

Ildiko returned the leer.  “I think I will, thank you very much.” She scrambled off his lap before he could protest and whipped away the concealing bit of bed linen.  Hands on her hips, she scrutinized him as if his cock were a puzzle she was still trying to decipher.  Her lips twitched.  “No barb,” she finally declared.  “Not even a tiny one, but still very impressive.”

He smirked and settled back on the bed, propped on his elbows to give her an even better view.  “So you like what you see then?”

She bent to him, her hands pale against his gray skin as she caressed him from knees to thighs, her palm brushing teasingly over the head of his cock before gliding across his belly.  Every muscle there clenched, and he inhaled a sharp breath.

“What I see,” she agreed and sank to her knees between his legs.  “And touch.”  Her hand wrapped around him, sliding up his shaft with a firm, practiced stroke.  Brishen arched his back and groaned.   “And taste.”  He gasped and made to sit up when she ran her tongue along his length from base to tip.  The shock of that intimate caress--the intensity of pleasure--sent bolts of sensation firing through every part of his body.  Never had he felt the like.  Not with an affectionate lover or paid companion.

“Ildiko,” he said between strangled breaths.

She paused to lift her head, and he swallowed back a frustrated moan.  Her eyes shone lustrous in the semi-darkness, and the rose tint had returned to her face.  Her lips were full, red and damp.  “Do you trust me, Brishen?” she said in a soft voice.

She asked him such a question now?  He scowled.  “Of course I do.  You feel the need to ask?”

Her fingers traced spirals around his navel before journeying up his torso to tease his nipple while her other hand encircled the base of his cock.  “In this matter, I think I do,” she said.

“Lover of thorns,” he said between clenched teeth, the words guttural and deep as his hips lifted to thrust against her grip.  “Yes, I trust you.  Implicitly.”

“Good, because I want only to please you.”  Once more she stroked him, this time her grip firmer, the caress faster.

His heartbeat hammered in his ears, and he wondered at his ability to remain coherent.  “You do that every day.”

“Not like this, my silver-tongued lover,” she said and emphasized her point by sliding her tongue along the same path as her hand, ending at the tip, where she sucked the head of his cock gently into her mouth.

Pleasure, shock, and sheer, unmitigated terror exploded inside him.  Brishen froze in place, even as his arm and leg muscles twitched and sweat trickled in rivulets down his chest and dripped from his temples.  It was so hot in the room, so hot between Ildiko’s mouth with those lush, soft lips and the teeth hidden behind them.

She could bite him, make him bleed, maim him beyond repair if she wanted.  He was more vulnerable in that moment than he’d ever been in his life.  No Kai lover ever did this to him, nor would he allow it.  Not with the teeth his people possessed.  But Ildiko was human, without the pointed spikes that made even mouth kissing a dangerous thing to indulge in if one wasn’t careful.  She was also his beloved wife, the keeper of his heart, the one person in whose presence he felt safest.

The terror subsided, leaving only the blissfulness of her caress.  He relaxed his elbows and lay back fully on the bed.  Ildiko’s hands silently coaxed his hips closer to the bed’s edge and he complied.

Her caresses grew bolder as she drew him ever deeper into her mouth.  Her tongue seemed to wrap serpentine around his sensitive flesh, and he shivered at the faintest scrape of her back teeth on him.  The contours of her mouth shaped around him as she sucked harder, moving slowly up and down his length.  He uttered her name amidst a long groan and buried his hands in her hair to cup her head.

This was ecstasy beyond description, unlike anything he’d ever known, unequaled except when he buried his cock between Ildiko’s thighs, claiming her as his while offering himself to her.

His hips rose to match the rhythm she set, as did his moans of encouragement.  “Ah gods, Ildiko.  It’s...it’s.”  He couldn’t finish the stuttered sentence, lost to his wife’s lovemaking that was quickly turning him into a mindless creation of blood, bone and sheer sensation.  The tingling heat coursing under his skin and pooling in his lower belly and groin, rippled outward until it suffused his limbs, his torso and chest where his heart pounded beneath his ribs at treble pace.  As if sensing the fire rising within him, Ildiko increased her pace, drawing ever harder on him, sucking him in deeper until he cried out a wordless plea.  Whether to stop or continue, he couldn’t say.  Both, neither.  It didn’t matter.  He clung to the threads of his shredded control to keep from thrusting harder into her mouth.  Her hair slid through his fingers when he let her go to claw the sheets with his hands.

“Stop,” he commanded.  I’m going to come in your mouth if you don’t stop.”

Don’t stop.  Don’t stop.  Don’t stop.

Ildiko ignored him, as if the only voice she heard was the one inside his head that begged her to continue.

All of Saggara likely heard his bellow as his climax slammed into him.  Ildiko’s fingers dug into his hips as he heaved on the bed and did his best not to injure her with his thrashing.  The flex and pull of her mouth as she swallowed his seed sent another, lesser orgasm through him.  Colors exploded behind his closed eyelid, and he inhaled a shallow draw of air into his starved lungs.

Brishen shivered under her hands as she slowly drew back and released him with a gentle kiss.  A draft of cool air swirled across his softening cock.  The bed creaked under her additional weight, and he opened his eye to discover her leaning over him, cheeks pink, an uncertain smile curving her mouth.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Hurt him?  She’d tried to kill him, and he enjoyed every single, ecstatic moment of it.  The smile faded at his prolonged silence.  Brishen clasped her to him and rolled them both to their sides.  Her breasts were soft against his chest, her legs entwined with his, a seductive clasp.  He kissed her forehead, her eyes, the bridge of her nose, the curves of her cheekbones and finally her mouth.

She tasted a little of salt, and he deepened the kiss until she moaned into his mouth and wrapped her hands in his hair.  When they broke apart to breathe, her smile had returned.

“You slew me,” he said.  “But you didn’t hurt me.”  A self-satisfied expression settled over her features.  “Is this what you women talked about before dinner at High Salure?”  The pink tingeing her cheeks gave her away.

She offered a tiny shrug.  “Among other things.  So count yourself lucky Serovek’s guests from that first dinner waited until you left to discuss what you’re hiding between your legs.”  A small frown marred her forehead.  “Those women were worse than the king’s interrogators.  For a moment I feared they’d put thumbscrews to me if I didn’t answer their questions about our intimacies.”

“But they made you curious.”

Another shrug, followed by a sigh.  “Aye, they did.”  Ildiko traced the contours of shoulder and bicep with a fingertip, traveling lower to outline his collarbone and the hollow of his throat.  I very much wanted to try.  After all, you do something similar to me, and it’s glorious.

Her praise heated his blood a second time, and he grinned.  She tapped him on the arm.  “Don’t preen so much.  Even though my teeth aren’t those of a Kai, I feared you would refuse.”

That gave him pause, and he pulled back to peer at her.  Surely by now she knew he’d give her Night with its moon and stars if she asked for it.  “Hardly,” he said.  “If it’s in my power, I’ll give you whatever you wish.”

She mimicked his earlier actions, mapping his face with her fingers before kissing him.  “Prince of night,” she whispered against his lips.  “I do love you.”

“And I you, woman of day.”

They traded several kisses and caresses after that, each one more heated than the last.  Brishen halted in pushing Ildiko’s shift up to her hips when she spoke.

“I’ll want to pleasure you this way again.”

“Thank the gods,” he said.  “Saves me the trouble of groveling on my knees before you asking if you’d consider a second time.”  They exchanged grins.

He resumed his task of baring her body to his gaze and hands.  “I can never remember who is wife or daughter to whom among Serovek’s guests,” he said, admiring the curve of her hip, the way it dipped gently into her waist.  “What are the names of these women?”

She stretched beneath his hand.  “Why do you ask?”

He leaned down to drop a kiss on her shoulder.  “So I may send them gifts and notes of undying gratitude for their gossiping and prying.  Gods be thanked for chatter in the solar.”

~END~

About Grace

Grace Draven is a Louisiana native living in Texas with her husband, kids and a big, doofus dog.  She has loved storytelling since forever and is a fan of the fictional bad boy. She is the winner of the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice for Best Fantasy Romance of 2015 and a USA Today Bestselling author.

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Titles by Grace Draven

THE WRAITH KINGS

Radiance

Eidolon

The Ippos King (2017)

FROM THE MASTER OF CROWS WORLD

Master of Crows

The Brush of Black Wings

The Lightning God’s Wife

The Light Within

OTHER STORIES

Entreat Me

All the Stars Look Down

Beneath a Waning Moon

For Crown and Kingdom

Connect with me:

website: gracedraven.com

Facebook: facebook.com/grace.draven