~ 1 ~
“If there is some fire-breathing dragon beneath Windroven, maybe we won’t need much wood for the fireplaces—natural heat!” Ami cast me a brilliant smile from the back of her horse. Probably hoping I’d be so dazzled by her playfulness, the mischief of her joke, that I wouldn’t notice she was bent on cozening me into being happy about going to Windroven. I’d agreed—I had no choice, as there would be no winning this argument with her—but I wouldn’t give in and let her charm me. This was a bad idea, and we all knew it.
I glanced back at the men-at-arms following in our compact procession, though Lieutenant Graves could no more change Ami’s mind than I could. Even the twins, with terrible timing, were docile for once, providing no distraction from Ami’s determined flirtation. I’d argued for a carriage for Ami and the toddlers to ride in for the journey from Castle Avonlidgh to Windroven, but Ami had dug in her heels. On that and everything else.
She might be my lover, but as the newly crowned Queen of Avonlidgh, she outranked me.
Stella rode in front of her mother in the saddle, the two of them wrapped in matching furred cloaks against the winter’s chill—though the little girl kept pushing the hood back impatiently—and Astar rode in front of me, doing his best to drive my horse crazy by pulling at his mane by the fistful. During my time in Annfwn, the magic-filled homeland of my late father, who’d been full Tala, I’d learned a little mind-magic. As a part-blood I wasn’t capable of much, but I had enough ability—I was strongest with animals—to keep a thread of soothing control on the horse’s mind, despite Astar’s worst efforts.
If only my internal beast could be so easily calmed. And if only I were better at steeling myself against Ami’s gift for persuasion. In truth, she did dazzle me—simply by existing—much as I worked to toughen my hide against her charms. When she put real effort into it, I was a lost man. Redundant, as I was a lost man regardless.
Lost and broken beyond repair, even before Ami danced her way from my fantasies into passionate reality.
The old tales warn of the dangers of a man obtaining his heart’s desire, how his fantasy should never come true lest he find his tragic fate in it. I’d thought I’d been careful, that I’d reminded myself enough times that Ami could never truly be mine, not for more than a brief while. But clearly my heart hadn’t absorbed the lesson of those cautionary tales.
The story of my fucked-up life—I seemed to be determined to take the hardest road despite all warnings and good sense, every time.
“Glorianna willing,” Ami continued doggedly, now pursing her rose-petal lips with sensuous intent, and sidling her steed closer to mine, “a dragon resident could melt all the snows and we’d have no winter at all! Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
I resolutely looked away from her and her fierce beauty. Ami possesses Tala blood, too, though the royal kind, and though she can’t shapeshift or perform sorcery, her magic manifests in her inhuman loveliness. She burns brighter than the sun, and if I allowed myself to fall into admiring her, my hapless brain tended to be seared of all rational thought.
“Good!” Ami chirped, an edge beneath the music. “I take it from your non-response that you’re in total agreement with my plan. I’m so glad to hear it.
The Three curse it, now she’d cornered me. I couldn’t leave it there.
“Going to Windroven is a terrible idea and you know it,” I replied, studying the road ahead. We’d had fair travel thus far, but with all the strange monsters appearing around the Thirteen Kingdoms, it paid to keep alert. “Adequate firewood and snowfall will be the least of our worries.”
She waved that off with a flick of her gloved fingers. “You only say that because you’ve never witnessed a Mornai storm at Windroven. They’re spectacular. They blow in off the ocean, full of sea moisture. When the cold winds of the Northern Wastes hit them, the clouds turn heavy-bellied as a nine-months-pregnant woman—and just like that poor woman, they dump out snow in a torrent of afterbirth, deeper than a man can stand.”
I swallowed the laugh that wanted to rise and gave her a stern look. She wasn’t going to draw me out that way. “That’s disgusting—and crude.”
She blinked at me in contrived innocence, that practiced flutter of rose-gold lashes over the deep twilight blue of eyes the poets never seemed to tire of describing. “This from the man who taught me every crude word I know.”
I sighed for the truth of that. “I’m well aware that I created a monster. But you’re not distracting me. There’s no reason we couldn’t have stayed at Castle Avonlidgh, spent the Feast of Moranu there. The whole winter, even.”
“Ugh. I hate that place. I’m glad to be free of its gloomy walls. I handled the governmental minutiae and now court is on hiatus. Everyone is going home to spend the Feast of Moranu with their families and that’s what I want, too. Andi is in Annfwn and Ursula is still off in the Nahanaun Islands, helping Dafne free her own dragon and whatever else all those letters are so carefully not saying. I might as well be in my own home.”
“Castle Avonlidgh is as much your home now as Windroven.”
“That’s just not true.” Ami’s voice had gone serious, steel in it that so belied her frivolous exterior. “I don’t expect you to understand, but from the first time Hugh brought me to Windroven, I felt at home there. He would have wanted the twins to winter at Windroven. It’s their family’s ancestral home and if all had been as it should, they would have spent their infancy there, taken their first steps on her stones, as all Avonlidgh’s heirs have.” Ami turned her smile on Stella, stroking the toddler’s wild, dark curls. “Hugh might be gone, but I owe it to his memory to raise his children as he would have, had he lived.”
Astar howled like a little wolf, then grinned, showing his few, decidedly unthreatening baby teeth. Ami smiled back at him, soft with maternal affection. It didn’t help that I felt irrational jealousy for the golden prince who’d been so much more the right man for Ami, along with guilt that I not only bedded his wife, but helped raise his children. The noble Prince Hugh would likely be appalled that a part-blood Tala ex-convict had taken his place, even temporarily.
“I understand that.” I did. I couldn’t imagine the onus Ami must feel to honor the man she’d loved. “But you had a ball last night at Castle Avonlidgh. You could do the same all season—stay up all night drinking wine and dancing. You enjoy that well enough.”
Ami shot me a dark look. “You’re just jealous of all those men I danced with, which you shouldn’t be.”
A deadly hit there, as I was. Black jealousy that corroded my thoughts and best intentions. Where Ami was concerned, I lacked all reason and emotional control. I became the half-savage beast I’d been when I first heard a minstrel sing about the youngest and most beautiful daughter of the High King. I reverted to that feral creature who longed to disembowel every man who laid hands on her satin skin and devoured her with their eyes as if they owned her.
“You could have danced with me,” Ami said, needling me, knowing exactly how to do it. “Then I wouldn’t have had to dance with anyone else.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that a man at arms didn’t dance with the Queen of Avonlidgh. Or that I couldn’t stay alert and protect her if we danced. Or that I’d never learned how. In Ami’s world, everyone learned to dance like they learned to walk. She forever forgot that we came from different worlds, whereas my burning shame forever reminded me of that unassailable fact.
I wouldn’t let her see that embarrassment, however. Better for her to think me uninterested in dancing than for her to glimpse the rough and desperate boy inside.
“Talk to me, Ash,” Ami commanded, all hint of flirtation vanished. “You know I hate it when you go all stoic White Monk on me.”
I swallowed a terse retort to that, searching for a diplomatic reply. “Wintering at Windroven is a romantic idea, but romance won’t last long if the volcano blows.” I cleared my throat of the choking fear of losing her in such a way. I lived with that fear daily, knowing full well I had no business thinking of her as mine in the first place. I’d lose her eventually—today, next month, or next year—but sooner rather than later. Making myself confront the eventuality of our parting had become a kind of daily, disciplined exercise for me. Like sword practice. I forced myself to exercise the muscles of loss, to contemplate that pain. I could survive it, I thought, as long as she was alive and happy.
That’s what I told myself. A constant mantra that did nothing to bring me peace.
As Queen of Avonlidgh, she’d have to marry for the good of the kingdom, and her future husband would hardly tolerate it if his beautiful new wife had a lover skulking in the shadows. Even if she didn’t marry any time soon, the quiet gossip regarding my unsavory background would eventually grow loud enough to make her advisers insist on action. Most likely of all, Ami would simply wise up and realize her fling with a coarse, scarred, and broken man had been a fun excursion—a bit of dabbling in the crude underbelly of sex might be freeing for a time—but she would go back to her own kind. Back to a noble prince like Hugh had been. The sort of man who truly deserved her.
I was prepared for any of those scenarios. I’d rehearsed them in my mind so often that I knew all my lines by heart, just waiting for her to give me the correct cue.
What I couldn’t bear was for her to be killed. Besides Annfwn, I’d found nothing and no one else that redeemed the cruelty and ugliness of the world. As long as Ami lived, so did my hope, fragile thing though it might be.
Ami was studying me now, her lovely blue eyes discerning too much. Since she’d given birth to the twins, she’d lost her ability to detect emotions—that gift belonged entirely to Stella, and the girl took it with her when she was born—but Ami retained some of that sensitivity by proximity. She also knew how to read and play me with Glorianna’s own ruthless mastery of women over men.
“Ash.” She spoke my name as she did during sex, and with that single scrape over my senses had my thoughts scattering on the cold winter winds.
“You like Windroven,” she purred, effortlessly bringing to mind the few short days we’d spent there. She’d been still recovering from childbirth, but had been determined to use the time to practice her oral skills. For all that she looked the image of Glorianna as maiden, she’d embraced the earthiest of the goddess’s personalities, exulting in the filthiest of sexual language, goading me into giving her more “cock-sucking lessons,” knowing in her vixen’s heart the hold she had on me.
I dispelled the images she evoked with a sharp shake of my head, resolutely staring at the road ahead. That’s where my focus needed to be. Protecting my charges. Not thinking about her lush mouth and—
“Stop that,” I said to myself as much as to her. “What I like doesn’t matter. It’s beyond foolish to plan to winter in a castle built into a waking volcano, whether you believe a hibernating dragon in the bowels of it is the cause or not. You’ve heard the stories from Nahanau—”
She cut me off with a toss of her glossy red-gold curls. When she’d worn her hair long, it had tumbled in waves around her slender dancer’s body, like silk made fire. Since she’d cut it to escape her Tala abductor—another scenario I revisited compulsively as continually checking a bad tooth—it bounced in perfect ringlets. Even knowing that it was her particular magic to be beautiful no matter what, I found myself continually astounded by it. She regularly reassured me that her hair would grow long again, remembering how I’d loved to fist my hands in the spectacular length and believing I missed it. She was right that I did miss it, but wrong that I minded. I loved her with hopeless and aching finality, no matter what the details. Even when she was being an obstinate idiot. As she was at the moment.
“Maybe Glorianna wants us to liberate the Windroven dragon, too.”
I ground my teeth, the old scar tissue in my jaw aching with it. Ami liked to pull out the goddess’s will to reinforce her arguments—a sometimes amusing, often annoying foible of hers. The problem was, the poetic description of Ami as Glorianna’s avatar might well be more than fancy. The goddess did seem to favor her, possibly to the point of speaking through her.
“You are playing games with Stella and Astar’s lives, too,” I finally said, my ultimate gambit to get her to listen to reason.
Her eyes flashed from twilight blue to cobalt. Even the goddess of love has her merciless aspect. “You don’t have to come if you’re afraid. Don’t let me keep you from important business elsewhere.”
And there we were. At one of many possible scenarios I’d imagined. Ami was finally dismissing me.
“Do you want me to go?” I asked carefully, keeping the frustrated rage and disappointment out of my voice. It still croaked badly, as it had ever since I burned away the brand that marked me a convict. I’d thought I’d braced myself against this eventuality, but judging by the sudden ache in my heart, I’d been sadly mistaken.
Ami bit her lip, fair face whiter than the snowflakes swirling around it. “Is that what you want?”
“What I want doesn’t matter, Your Highness. It’s up to you to keep or dismiss me.”
“Stop talking like that,” she snapped.
“Like what?” I returned, taking time to compose myself before meeting her gaze evenly.
“Oh!” She half-snarled, half-screeched it, her high cheekbones graced with a pink flush of emotion now. “Enough with that inscrutable White Monk attitude. You’d drive Glorianna Herself to slap you.”
“It’s not an attitude. I am one of the White Monks.” A fact I’d been sharply reminded of when the father of my order arrived at Ordnung to crown our new High Queen in the name of Glorianna. As with all monks of my order, he’d taken—and kept—a vow of silence, and yet made it clear that he wouldn’t censure me for breaking my own vow. Or rather, that I’d shattered it, completely unable to resist speaking to Ami. She is ever the one who makes me abandon all resolve.
The father had let me know I’d be welcome to return to the brotherhood and renew my vow at any time. I’d always nursed the idea in the back of my mind that when Ami tired of me, maybe I’d go back there. Knowing they would have me lit a feeble candle in the well of darkness that would be life without Ami. Perhaps I could once again find solace in silence. Not speaking had worked before, had helped me circumscribe the wanting, the endless yearning for things I didn’t deserve and could never have.
“Is that what this is about?” Ami asked, voice chill. “You’re wanting to return to the order. Or you want to go back to Annfwn. I know living there was your dream and you only left it because of me. I might point out that I never asked you to. You left because Andi asked it of you, and you obeyed because you’re loyal to her.”
“Andromeda is Queen of the Tala, my people.” My adopted people. The Tala hadn’t exactly embraced my presence in Annfwn, but at least there I wasn’t branded a criminal. “Of course I follow her commands. And good thing, too—was I supposed to let you die in childbirth?” Ami had nearly bled out before I reached her. Another set of nightmare images I’d never shake.
“I’m grateful, naturally.” She stared steadily ahead now, her jaw tight, pressing her lips together like she did when she tried not to weep. I steeled myself against offering comfort. She wouldn’t want it, not from the man who distressed her in the first place. “But I can see that it’s been unfair of me to keep you with me for so long. I know I’m selfish, and I forget to pay attention to what other people want and need, but I’ve been trying to be a better person.”
I groaned to myself and concentrated on prying Astar’s chubby fingers out of my horse’s mane. The little brat had all of his mother’s tenacity. “You’re not selfish, Ami. I came to you of my own free will. And then you needed me to get Stella back. I offered to help you.”
“I know.” Her usually musical voice sounded small, and she scrubbed tears off her cheeks, just like Stella during one of her rages. “But I should have released you before this. Once we got the twins back safely, I should have told you to go.”
She shouldn’t have needed to tell me. I should have left sooner. As soon as we recovered Stella. But I hadn’t been able to make myself go. Would it have been easier then? I’d been braced for it, but then one thing had led to the next, and she hadn’t sent me away. I’d maybe begun to nurse a spot of hope that she never would, despite practicing daily for this moment.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, though for my pain or her distress, I wasn’t sure. “I should have gone then.”
She nodded, sniffling. “It would have been better.” Her voice caught on a little sob and Stella caught a whiff of her misery—a miracle it had taken that long—looked up at her, wrinkling her face in a mirror of her mother’s, the toddler’s tears welling up, too.
“Don’t cry, Mommy!”
Astar looked over and his own face crumpled, not out of the same magically fueled empathy as Stella’s, but through the nearly as magical connection to his twin. He sent up a wail, reaching so suddenly for his mother that I barely caught him before he tumbled from the saddle. Fortunately, though I couldn’t shapeshift—far too late for me to learn, if I ever even could have—I possessed enough shapeshifter speed to match his. His cries turned furious, and he fought my grip, turning into a black bear cub, raking my wrists and hands with his claws. I hissed at the sting, red blood running as if from the wound in my heart.
Stella, not to be outdone, screeched like an owl. Driven by her mother’s emotions, which she felt but couldn’t understand, she became a golden-furred mountain lion cub and leapt from the saddle, bounding off into the snow. Astar tried to follow, growing ever more furious at being restrained.
“Let him go.” Ami threw up her hands. “We won’t get them settled again until they’ve blown off some steam.”
I did as commanded, letting Astar run off after his sister. Their Tala nurses, who’d been flying above in bird form, darted after them, keeping them in sight. Ami watched them go, her face determinedly averted.
“Let’s move off the road,” I said. “Might as well take a break.”
She nodded. “I’ll bind up your scratches for you.”
“Thank you,” I answered, knowing I sounded stiff. Better, though, than asking how she planned to bandage my mortally wounded heart.