Ivermere

Built by spellcasters who revered balance, Ivermere was often called the most beautiful of all kingdoms, but Kael misliked the sight of it. Despite the kingdom’s abundance and bounty, to him it seemed a cold and barren place, for he had never known life to be contained within symmetrical lines and perfect curves. Life as he knew it was coarse and unfinished, full of sharp edges and unexpected beauty, and so he could see little of it within this place.

But now he truly saw no life. Ahead lay the gate of the city. It was Midwinter’s Day, yet no one passed through it.

He dismounted and reached up for Anja, whose pale face and wide eyes were like knives across his heart. So much fear she’d known today. And it was not done yet.

Steam rose from the horse’s sweat-lathered coat. The warhorse’s sides bellowed, and he snorted great clouds of frozen air with each labored breath.

Kael gave the reins to Anja. “Stay here and walk with him until he cools. I will go ahead through the gate and look.”

She tore her frightened gaze from the city ahead. “You don’t see already?”

“I see that no one comes through the gate, and that it is oddly quiet,” he said.

Her breath trembled. “Then you don’t see the webs that stretch between the palace spires?”

Unease skittered down his neck. He saw nothing of the sort. Only stillness.

He shook his head.

Her lips quivered and her throat worked as she stared at him. In a strained voice, she said, “But…you do believe that I see it?”

Because no one else had. Instead they had ignored her warnings and sent her away.

“I believe in many things I cannot see, Anja. I believe anything you tell me.” And he had meant to make her stay outside the city gates, where she might be safe from whatever waited within, but clearly he needed her with him. “So let us go ahead.”

Drawing his sword, he waited until she’d drawn her own. Though he’d rather have held her against him, better to have both hands free. Quietly he approached the gate, Anja a silent shadow in wolfskin behind him.

“Careful,” she whispered and slashed her blade through the air. He could not see the strands of webbing that she cut, but felt the eerie brush against his tunic’s sleeve as they fell.

“Did it cling to your sword?”

She shook her head.

“I have heard that spiders make different silks. Some like glue. Some not. So take care and try not to touch them.” His eyes would not serve him as they should, so he listened at the gate for any movement within. There was nothing but the whisper of a breeze through Anja’s hair and ruffling the hem of his fur cloak.

He tossed it from his shoulders and continued through. Behind him, Anja softly gasped in horror at the scene ahead—though he could not be certain what she was seeing. To him, it was clear enough. Men lay motionless upon the ground, all of them strangely rigid with arms tightly against their sides and legs together.

“Is that Lord Eafen and the soldiers?”

It was. By reports from the village in Dryloch, Lord Eafen had been a day ahead of Kael and Anja. So yesterday they’d passed through Scalewood while the wards were still intact. But it appeared as if they had been almost immediately ambushed after entering the city gates.

Grimly Kael moved forward to examine the bodies—and found a soldier staring back at him, eyes wide open. The frightened depths pleaded with Kael for help.

Kael didn’t know how to help him. “Anja?”

She was bending over another. “They’re wrapped up in the webbing. Maybe I can—”

“Don’t touch it!” he said sharply when she reached for the soldier’s face, as if to tear the silk covering it away. “Not with bare skin.”

She jerked her fingers away, then drew a dagger with a shaking hand. “What do you think it is?”

“A spell,” he said grimly. “They are not simply wrapped in webbing. They are ensorcelled. This one cannot speak or fight against what binds him.”

And Anja was not impervious to spells. Kael, however—

He dragged his fingers down the soldier’s face, felt the resistance as the invisible webbing stretched, then ripped. When the man’s head was free, he looked for any other exposed skin, and ripped the webbing from the soldier’s hands.

A great shudder wracked the soldier’s body. He began to struggle, wriggling like a fish.

“He’s still wrapped in it,” Anja said. She was kneeling and still carefully cutting the webbing from the other soldier.

This would take too long to free them all. Kael grabbed the soldier’s shoulder to stop his flailing. “Be still!” he ordered. “And speak the words to replenish the Scalewood wards.”

One soldier’s magic would not create wards strong enough to hold even one creature, but the glow would return. The beasts of Scalewood would surely attempt to break free if they saw the runes were dark…but if even one magic-wielder powered the runes, they would have to test the boundary to know that it was so weak.

The soldier babbled a few words and Kael looked to Anja, whose relief shone from her eyes.

But this would not be enough. “We cannot free these others now. If everyone in the kingdom is bound in the same spell, it would take an eternity for the two of us to tear the webbing from each.” Because no one else could help do it. Anja was the only one to see the webbing. Anyone else who tried to walk through these streets and homes searching for others to free would surely only be caught and ensorcelled again. “But they will all be free if the spider is slain.”

Lips pressed tight, she nodded. She hated leaving these men here as much as Kael did. But the remedy here was clear, and the same purpose they’d had since the beginning—to kill the spider.

“We will return for you,” he vowed to the soldier, who was not much comforted by it, but that could not be helped. He stood from his crouch and looked to the others. Dread filled his chest. They were not all ensorcelled.

Lord Eafen was dead. A withered husk remained within his fine embroidered clothes, as if he’d been drained dry—and the puncture wounds in his torso could not have come from a spider the size of a cat.

“What is it?” Anja had stopped beside him, her gaze searching his face, then turning to look in the direction he was. “Do you hear something approach?”

She could not see the husk, he realized. The webbing wrapping the body concealed the damage from her eyes.

“It is Lord Eafen,” he said grimly. “He’s dead.”

Her lips parted in dismay, then firmed. “I will lead the way. It will not still be in my mother’s bedchamber, but we can start—”

She broke off, eyes widening and her gaze shooting higher. Muscles coiled, Kael spun to face the same direction…saw nothing.

“Anja?”

A wheezing breath left her, and she stepped back, her gaze still fixed ahead. “We need to run.”

“What?” Again he searched the empty city ahead. “Why?”

She made a low, moaning sound of sheer terror. “It is not the size of a cat. Or a horse. It is bigger than…”

Words failed her. But it didn’t matter.

“We can’t run,” he told her. “That soldier’s magic will not hold Scalewood. And it is eating them. Lord Eafen, already. Probably others. Perhaps children.”

Tears filling her eyes, she still didn’t look away from the horror that held her motionless. “You can’t be healed,” she whispered. “You are warded against spells, so if you are hurt—”

“I will heal slowly.” As he’d done before.

She shook her head. “I am the only one who can see it. I will find a way to kill it. And I can be healed. You should run.”

Run? Leave her to face this alone? Stifling a shout of laughter, Kael grabbed the edges of her wolfskin coat and pulled her close. Startled, she tore her gaze from the spider to meet his.

“We’re bound together,” he reminded her softly. “Now you will trust me.”

Though her breath shuddered through her pale lips, she nodded.

“How near is it?”

Her gaze darted past him. “Five hundred paces.”

Still a fair distance away. “On the ground or above?”

“The ground.” Her gaze flickered, and Kael saw the courage and cleverness he knew so well return like a light to her eyes, which narrowed. “I think it’s too big to easily crawl on the walls and roofs.”

Which didn’t mean that it couldn’t—but that it might prefer the ground, as it offered more stable footing. If retreating, it might flee upwards. But if defending against an attack, would likely remain in the environment where it had the advantage of familiarity.

That suited Kael. In a battle, he preferred the ground, too. “What weaknesses do you see?”

“The eyes. There are eight, and all at the front.”

So it could be approached from behind. He nodded and waited for more.

She shook her head. “That is all.”

That was never all. “What is the skin?”

“It looks as hard as armor.”

Even armor would split beneath the blade of an axe. “When you chased the wolf whose skin you wear, you had spelled arrows that never missed their mark. Do you still?”

Hope lit her face. “In the hunters’ armory. Its eyes—”

“You can blind it from a distance,” he agreed. “And I will finish it.”

She grinned and pulled him down for a quick, hard kiss before turning toward an alley. “Follow me.”

They moved swiftly across the city, keeping to the narrow alleys that the spider couldn’t follow them into, with unease scraping the back of his neck with every step. Frequently Anja’s sword swept through invisible strands in their path, and his unease dug deeper each time she did, until it wrapped around the length of his spine with a cold, clawed hand. If the spider didn’t move along the webs, why weave so many strands through the city? Why weren’t the strands covered in glue to trap them like flies until the spider arrived to eat them?

Sudden realization stopped him in his tracks. “Anja!”

At the opposite end of the alley, she glanced back—then up, but even before her cry of warning rang out, he swung about and hurled the axe upward, roaring with the effort. The sharp crack as his blade bit deep was like the sweetest music, the sight of his axe embedded in the air itself a triumphant one.

A substance warm and sticky splattered his face. Anja screamed and he whipped around to see her charge toward him with sword at ready—then falter slightly, her head tipping back. In the air above the alley, his axe floated toward her.

“Run for the nearest open square and wait at the center!” he bellowed at her. “I will be right behind.”

She hesitated, her frantic gaze moving over his face. “The web—”

“Was spelled.” And the spider probably believed him paralyzed now, no doubt intended to return to wrap him up after it did the same to Anja. “Run!”

She fled.

Grimly he watched his axe as the spider continued after her. She would be slicing through any web strands in her path…and that would lead the creature straight to her. But with the path already cleared, and with no strands to break, Kael could follow without alerting the spider to his presence.

His blood thundering, he started after her. His bride raced ahead, clever and strong, but unprotected, and his heart could hardly bear the moments she was out of his sight.

Never did he allow the axe to leave his sight. He still could not determine the size of the spider, but by the shiver of marble and the faint dusting of snow that fell from the roofs as it crawled along their tops, the span of its legs was at least fifty paces. The belly—where Kael assumed his axe was embedded—seemed to skim just above the roofs, and so would be low and well-protected on the ground. How tall the back was, Kael couldn’t know.

Ahead, the alley opened into a marble courtyard where Anja stood, her back against a stone statue at the center of a fountain, watching the monster’s approach with a terrified face almost as white as her hair. Kael wiped his hands down his cheeks, coating his palms in the sticky substance. Then he took a running start at the side of a building, and launched himself at the wall. His powerful grip assisted by the gluey strands covering his palms, he began climbing, hauling himself up the sheer face of the building.

At the top, he sprinted along the roof’s edge toward the square. His axe was skimming down the side of a building toward the ground. Kael drew his sword and adjusted the grip in his sticky hands. He would not be letting this blade go until this was done.

With a mighty roar, he sprang from the roof with sword raised high, gaze fixed on the axe below.

He didn’t fall far, only a body’s length before slamming into a hardened surface, his muscles absorbing the impact as he landed and dropped into a crouch. With all his strength, he drove the point of his blade straight downward, into the rounded back of the monster. The fragrance of cinnamon and cloves belched into his face. An unseen gush of warm, thick liquid coated his hands, but the glue on his palms prevented the sword from slipping in his grip. Gritting his teeth, he yanked the sword free and stabbed the creature again. But still the axe below him moved steadily toward the center of the courtyard.

The same direction that the head would be in.

Grunting with each thrust of his blade, he steadily made his way forward, a red haze of violence and rage dropping over his vision, until all he could see was Anja, still standing unharmed by the statue—and by the gods, he was going to make certain she stayed unharmed. The spider’s armor became slick with the viscous gore, his boots slipping, but soon he was not standing on the armor but was knee-deep in the carnage, his own sweat dripping onto the spider’s unseen body like rain falling on glass.

The haze lifted with Anja was shouting his name, and he glance up to see her pointing to a spot just ahead. He waded forward through the invisible pulpy mess he’d made, and when he saw her nod, drove his sword downward. Instantly the surface beneath him lurched, but he grimly held on, twisting the sword, digging it deeper.

Slowly, as if he were standing upon a leaf floating on the wind, the spider swayed and sank to the ground, carrying him down with it. When it came to a rest, he was still two body lengths above the courtyard’s marble pavers. He wrenched his sword free and looked to Anja, who stared at him wide eyes, her hands cupped over her mouth.

Chest heaving, he asked her, “Do you think it is defeated?”

Wordlessly she nodded.

But he shook his head. “But not yet dead. There is a spell that still disguises it. I need my axe.”

Dropping to the ground, he headed for the belly and wrenched the heavy weapon free. Then he returned to Anja and said, “Point me at the head.”

When she did, Kael strode forward and began hacking, working his way deeper with each powerful blow, and began to believe the spider was not the source of the disguising spell at all when abruptly he was surrounded by a cavern of dripping gore. With a triumphant shout, he gave the cursed thing one more whack, then emerged from the head and strode straight for Anja.

With a broad grin, he told her, “It is done.”

She nodded, her gaze sweeping the buildings around them. “The webs are gone.”

Because they were spells, not webs, and so they’d vanished with the spider’s death. Fortunate, because it meant they wouldn’t have to cut free each person in Ivermere. Even now, they should be stirring free of the magic that had bound them. So Anja’s and his work here was finished.

Gaze fixed on her lips, Kael stalked forward.

She backed up.

His grin widened. “Will you not kiss your king?”

A choking laugh burst from her. “I love you, but… No.”

Laughing, he strode to the fountain—where his reflection was a dripping red mask with white teeth. Without hesitation, he dove into the waist-high water. Shocking cold enveloped him, but it was a sweet agony on his overheated and sweating skin. He emerged and scraped his hair back from his eyes. For the first time, he saw the full size of the spider laid out before him.

What was left of it.

Sitting on the edge of the fountain, Anja observed, “You were thorough.”

So he had been. He stripped off his soaked tunic, his chainmail, and flung them to the marble pavers in a slop of wet fabric and the ring of metal. His fingers yanked at the laces holding his breeches up, and he had to thank the freezing water for dousing the hot steel he’d sported since Anja had pointed him toward the spider’s head. For already he heard the city stirring, heard the confused shouts and running steps, and they would not be alone for long.

He stripped the leather breeches down his legs, then saw the shy glance Anja gave his cock from beneath her lashes. Even freezing water could not overpower that innocently erotic look. Naked, he scrubbed the gore from his skin, and with his eyes invited her in.

Laughing, she shook her head. “If it were summer, perhaps.”

“In the Dead Lands, this is summer.”

She scoffed. “And you lived there only five years!”

“In the Dead Lands, five years is an eternity.” While she laughed again, he slid his hand beneath the surface of the water and leisurely began to stroke his cock. She fell silent, biting her lip, her gaze glued to the pumping of his fist. “Your cunt is hot enough to warm us both, my wife.”

Her face colored prettily. Unable to resist, he caught her chin and claimed a kiss, her lips like a fire beneath his. She leaned into him, bracing her hand against his chest, her fingers a burning brand upon his icy skin. With a lick, he tasted the sweetness of her mouth, and her soft moan in response lay her arousal as naked as his. Satisfied for the moment, he drew back. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks flushed.

Then, with a heavy sigh, she turned her head and cast her gaze up to the palace spires. “I suppose I should go and find out if my parents survived.”

“No.” His hard reply brought her gaze swinging back to his. “You are Anja, Queen of the Four Kingdoms. You do not go to them. They come to you.”

Her brows arched. She tilted her head, studying his face. Then she shrugged. “Very well. Though they probably won’t bother to come.”

If they did not, this spider would not be the last thing Kael destroyed today. Bracing his hand on the edge of the fountain, he surged from the pool in a cascade of bloodied water, then caught a glimpse of purple from the corner of his eye. At the edge of the courtyard, a tall man gaped at the massacred spider.

“You there!” Kael called. “Send word to the palace! It is Midwinter’s Day and the Scalewood wards have failed. The call throughout the city for the replenishing ritual must be made now.”

Now the man gaped at him.

“Also tell your king and queen that Queen Anja awaits them here, upon her throne.”

The man gaped at Anja.

“And I left a black horse and cloak near the city gate. See they are brought to me.”

The man gaped at Kael’s cock.

“Run!” Kael bellowed. “Or the next sword you see will be the blade that felled the Child-Eater!”

The man fled.

Bemused, Anja asked, “My throne?”

“Anywhere you sit will be your throne.” He swept up his bloodied sword and the wet tunic, began cleaning his blade. “I pray my cock will be your favorite.”

Her giggle left a smile that lasted only a few moments, and her gaze rose to the spires again. Kael forced himself to patience, for a king and queen just released from an ensorcellment that had taken over their realm could not immediately attend to anyone without first knowing what damage had been done. As there had been, judging by the grieving wails that found their way to the courtyard. Anja closed her eyes at each one, as if she felt that grief, too. But there was more than grief that he saw rising beneath her skin. Rage. It filled her as rage had once filled him, and he thought that the king and queen of Ivermere would be very smart to come before the fire of it built too much higher in their daughter.

The courtyard had filled with gawkers. Some ventured close to Anja and Kael, and he gladly shared the tale of how Anja had demanded Kael the Conqueror’s help at the point of her sword and insisted upon returning to Ivermere to slay the spider. How Anja had fought and defeated the bandit who’d tried to stop her from her quest. How Anja had boldly won the Butcherer’s heart and had been named Queen of the Four Kingdoms upon Midwinter’s Eve. How Anja had bravely guided him through the wardless forest. How Anja had been the only person with clear eyes to see the horror that had lain waste to Ivermere, how she had pointed him toward the killing blow. By the time he had told it several times over, the tall man in purple finally returned with his horse, his cloak, and a blanket.

Kael tied the blanket around his waist, though he was still too overheated for a cloak. He looked to Anja and decided they had waited long enough. He reached for his sword and axe.

A clatter of hooves drew his gaze. A procession of riders wearing gray wolfskin coats followed a golden carriage.

At his side, Anja gracefully rose to her feet. Blood streaked her cheek. Her braids had come partially undone, strands falling in a loose array around her face. The grime of two weeks of travel had collected on her boots and the hem of her coat. From the first time he’d seen her to now, there had been a hardening within her, like steel heated and cooled and tested. Yet she also burned brighter, so much brighter.

Her mother alighted from the carriage in golden crown and sleek gown. She wrinkled a delicately thin nose at the spider, then turned rounded eyes on Anja. The smile she had pasted onto her spell-reddened lips faltered.

Because she could not help but see what Kael did. What anyone with eyes must see. Even disheveled and dirty, wearing only her white hair as a crown, Anja was many times greater the queen that her mother was.

And this only her first day.

Her father emerged from the carriage after the queen. With features similar to his wife’s, he looked nothing like Anja. Neither of them did. He turned a broad smile on Kael, gaze flickering only briefly to his bare chest. “We heard the King of the Four Kingdoms had arrived and slayed a monster in our midst. That is a fine introduction. Welcome to Ivermere, your majesty.”

Still holding his axe, Kael commanded flatly, “Welcome my queen, first. It was she who demanded we travel here to kill this spider—and in doing so, saved all of our kingdoms.”

The queen’s smile returned in full and she looked in wonder at Anja. “This is the spider you spoke of before? I wonder how it passed through the wards—”

“It didn’t, Mother,” Anja said tightly. “It didn’t come from Scalewood. You created it when you made the kissing potion.”

Genuine disbelief crossed the queen’s face. “That can’t be—”

“It is. The spell you used to create the potion scaled, and it did this to a common spider. The potion was intended to make my body helpless in sleep. The spider’s webs did the same but kept everyone in a nightmare of unmoving wakefulness. You tailored the potion to me, the magic was intended for me. And the spider’s concealment was intended for everyone but me.” Her voice hardened. “You have done this. Ivermere helpless. The wards gone. All the world at risk from the creatures in Scalewood. Because of your potion.”

“I…” Her mother swallowed. “I only meant well. And you and your husband”—her gaze flickered to Kael’s glowering face; she paled with fear and looked away—“seem to be getting on well. The spider is dead, and the wards are replenished. All is well again. There is no need for this anger or this unguarded speech.”

“All is well?” Openly seething, Anja stalked closer to the queen. “People are dead, Mother. Your potion killed them. Your decision not to believe me when I said a spider lurked in your bedchamber killed them. Drugging me with the potion and sending me away killed them. All of these choices you made, you killed them, simply because you wanted to cast me out in the manner most convenient for you and for Father. Do you not see this?”

Bewildered, hurt, angry, the queen’s cheeks stained with color as she looked to her husband, who was sighing and shaking his head. She looked back at Anja. “The scaling corrupted the spider, Anja—and it killed them. Do you not see that?”

Her mouth in a flat line, Anja simply regarded her for a long moment. Then she quietly turned to Kael and said, “Nothing I say will make a difference. Let us go.”

He lifted her into the saddle, swung up behind her. A courtyard full of round-eyed, thin-nosed spellcasters stared back at them—some looking uncomfortable, others outraged, others ashamed.

His gaze settled on the king and queen, and he thought that only kindness could have brought Anja here, braving the Butcherer and bandits and Scalewood, simply in hopes of saving her mother. It must have been kindness, because surely there was nothing here to love. “I will tell you what else has been affected by the scaling of that spell. You have lost a daughter, whose worth you were blind to. I have won a wife, whose value is all I see. She wields powerful magic, pure magic, though she is only just beginning to know the extent of her power. You would do well to send some of your people to Grimhold to learn with her, and learn from her.”

Her parents exchanged a weary glance. Her father said, “Forgive me, your majesty. Anja has an unguarded tongue. If she has lied to you and said—”

“Do not disparage my queen!” His thundering roar echoed through the courtyard. “I have told you what she is. And if I ever hear word that you do not speak of Anja with the respect she deserves, then all of Ivermere will soon afterward discover exactly why I am called Kael the Conqueror.”

And that was all that needed to be said. Kael touched his heels to the warhorse’s sides and pushed him into a quick pace out of the courtyard and onto one of the main streets, ready to see no more of Ivermere.

Just beyond the city gate, a rumble of hoof beats came up behind them. The hunters, in their gray wolfskins. A tall, wiry woman with gray-streaked hair drew up beside Kael’s horse—though careful to remain at a position lower than his.

“Princess Anja,” she said.

Kael growled, and the hunter hastily amended it.

“Queen Anja.”

Her gaze wary, Anja leaned forward to regard the other woman. “Mistress.”

“We are riding ahead to make certain that no monsters breached the wards, so you will have safe passage through Scalewood.” The Mistress of the Hunt’s steady gaze didn’t waver as she added, “Would you like to ride with us again?”

Anja’s lips trembled before firming. “Not this day. Perhaps in the spring, however, you can journey to Grimhold, and we can speak about training hunters there. Scalewood does not hold the only dangers to our peoples, and the Four Kingdoms might need a Mistress of the Hunt.”

“I think it already has a fine candidate.” The woman grinned. “Queen Anja, who passed through the Scalewood unharmed. You will be a legend.” She glanced at Kael, tipped her chin. “Your majesty.”

He nodded in return, and taking the gesture for the dismissal it was, she whistled and the hunters rode forward, cheering for Anja the Unharmed as they galloped past.

Though she hadn’t been completely unharmed. She had raged at her parents, but also been disappointed in their utter unwillingness to listen to her.

“You are well?” he asked her softly.

“Yes.” There was a hitch in her breath, but he recognized her happy tears. “It is just…there is truly a place for me. Here with you. And in our kingdoms.”

Emotion tightened his throat. “There is.”

Reaching back, she angled her head for his kiss—then huffed out a laugh. “My coat is bunched between us.”

“That is not your coat,” he said against her neck.

Her giggle shook her sweetly against him. “Yes, it is. Lift me up. I will show you how a queen rides double.”

The gentle demand shot fire through his blood. With his hands spanning her waist, he raised her straight up. Her coat fell between them, curtaining her from his sight.

“Now turn me to face you,” she said huskily.

Slowly he lowered her back to his lap, her legs spreading wide to straddle him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled in close.

“The blanket.” It was a breathless command. “Untie it.”

He ripped open the knot at his hip and his cock sprang up between them. With a soft groan, Anja reached down and gripped his length, fitting him to her sultry entrance. Kael gritted his teeth against a shout as she pushed down, her luscious hot sheath clasping his shaft in the sweetest embrace.

“Now,” she panted against his lips. “I’ve claimed my favorite throne. Now ride.”

He would always obey his queen. So after a kiss, Kael the Conqueror claimed his bride.