“Draft a standard reminder to the dwarves in Angosta. The production levels specified in our contract are not being met. Tell them that if they continue to produce such meager amounts of gold, the contract will be forfeit, and they will no longer have my protection from the goblins.”

Kirill paused in the center of the mine, ignoring the noise of pickaxes and huffing dwarves as he mentally tallied the amount of gold he’d received from Angosta in the past three months. Black dust billowed in clouds around him, coating his white-blond hair until it appeared grey as he held the numbers in his head, comparing them with the most recent delivery. “Tell them I expect an increase of at least eleven percent for next month or they can consider the contract void. Have a cancellation document ready to be sent out the day after the gold delivery and tell the messenger to wait for my word.”

The small kurdush at his side scribbled furiously, claws carefully curled in so as not to shred the parchment. A shovel-full of dirt rained down on its bald head, tiny stones pinging off its small black horns, and it let out a high-pitched squeak and scrambled to brush the debris from its notes. Kirill slid his attention to the source of the mess, keen eyesight easily picking out the dwarf viciously digging his shovel into the side of the mine, burrowing for a particularly large chunk of diamond.

“Sasha, do be careful where you’re flinging that. Anisim’s notes must still be legible upon our return to the castle.”

The dwarf holding the offending shovel paused, the newly freed diamond gripped in his grubby, thick-fingered hand. His brown eyes widened as he realized Kirill was addressing him by name, and he scuttled back a few steps. He nudged at his dirty red cap with the back of the hand clutching the diamond and offered an awkward bow. “Y-y-yes, of course, Your Highness.”

“Kirill, my husband, if a bit of dirt is so disconcerting to you, then might I suggest you take Anisim back to the castle and conduct your business there instead of standing in the middle of the mine, impeding Sasha’s work?”

Irina’s sweet voice slid over Kirill like a silken sheet, soothing him even as she once again contradicted him in front of his subordinates. He fixed a tolerant smile on his face as he faced his wife, careful as always not to flash his fangs at her.

Irina stood in the middle of the cave, a vision in her deep crimson cloak lined with pale grey fox fur. The black velvet of her gown where it showed between the part of the cloak was caked in dirt, as was the bottom of the cloak. He idly wondered how long Irina had been strolling through the mines talking with the dwarves this time. She did have the oddest fondness for the small-statured workers.

“It is nearly the end of the month, my wife. You know as well as I do that the accounting must be done, not merely for this month, but for the entire year. Production levels have dropped around this time in the past, and it’s important to make certain that this year does not see the same failing. I am trying to arrange an alliance with a dragonlord, and the dragons, as you well know, care for nothing but gold and precious jewels. If I am to manage this alliance, I must be here to make certain production remains where it should be.” He slanted a glance at Sasha, who squeaked and immediately resumed digging another diamond from the rock. “For some reason, they work faster in my presence.”

Irina crossed her arms underneath her heavy cloak. Her raven-black hair slid across her shoulders as she fixed disapproving brown eyes on him. “It’s the eve of the winter solstice, my love, tomorrow is Koliada.” She jutted her chin out. “Production levels be damned.”

“Production levels have been damned, that’s the problem.” Kirill scanned the carts holding the diamonds the dwarves had gathered tonight so far, doing a few quick calculations in his head. Still behind. He returned his gaze to his wife. “Frivolity has no place in the political world.”

“Politics have no place in the frivolous world,” Irina corrected him, dropping her arms to her sides and tilting her head at him. The hard edge faded from her eyes, and when she spoke again, her voice was softer, more like the tone she usually used with him. “And there is no day that should be more frivolous than Koliada. Which is precisely why you’re going to take tomorrow off. I want us to have dinner with our friends. After all we’ve been through, I think it’s time we all sat down and had a meal together. I want to get to know Loupe, Ivy, Marcela, and Aiyana without interjecting comments like ‘I need more arrows’ or ‘I’ll take the one on the right.’”

“You never should have been involved in that battle in the first place.”

The words flew from his mouth before Kirill could stop them. Irina’s body stilled, that instant tension that let him know he’d said something he was going to regret. He shoved away the sense of foreboding and straightened his spine. “The others felt the same way. None of us were willing to risk our wives. If we had wanted your help in that battle, we would have asked you.”

“That sounds very much like a conversation we will be having later—when it’s not the eve of the winter solstice,” Irina said softly. “But for now, I’ll leave you with this. There are two ways we can be parted—my death or your…destruction. You can prevent the first, since it seems to please you.” Her eyes flashed, the black orbs briefly swallowing the whites until her gaze consisted of two drowning black holes. “I will prevent the second.”

As quickly as the mood had struck Irina, it vanished. Her rusalka heritage faded from her vision, her eyes returning to their normal chocolate brown as she smiled at the dwarves around her. “And since you and I will be spending tomorrow entertaining our friends, there’s no reason our people shouldn’t enjoy the same holiday. Let Koliada be a day off for everyone.”

All activity in the mine ground to a halt. The dwarves froze, thick iron pickaxes buried in the black rock, heavy shovels spilling dirt as they sagged to the ground. Even the kurdush went still as a statue, beady black eyes popping out of his head, forked tail knotted behind him. Inch by painful inch, every gaze in the mine slid to the vampire prince, no one daring to breathe as his wife’s announcement hung in the air.

Switching mental gears from roiling thoughts of his wife endangering herself to admonishing her for facing off with him in public took a fair amount of concentration. Kirill took a moment to gather his patience, collect his thoughts. He had to remind himself that being short-tempered with his wife never ended well and was a complete waste of resources. Better to remain calm and practical—the only cure for a woman’s brashness.

“Irina, do you have any idea how beneficial an alliance with the dragons would be?”

“You have plenty of alliances as it is.” Irina’s voice remained even, a perfect match for her husband’s. “And the dragons will still be there in the new year. Tomorrow is Koliada. People should be celebrating with their families, not slaving away in your mines so that you can bribe another race to be your political comrades.”

Kirill stiffened, his temper sparking to life despite his best intentions. He stroked the dagger in his belt as he struggled to stay calm, the sleek perfection of the weapon a comfort to his fraying nerves. “I will not sacrifice our future for the sake of a meaningless holiday. Feast and be merry if you like, I will be here. Working.” He met the eyes of each dwarf until one by one they looked away. “As will all of them.”

Irina pursed her lips, eyes narrowing briefly. She took a deep breath and the tension melted away, her shoulders easing and the lines in her face smoothing into its usual soft perfection. She swayed toward him, her footsteps light over the uneven ground of the mine, and Kirill couldn’t help but appreciate the rhythmic back and forth motion of her hips. His blood heated as he anticipated the press of her body against his. It wasn’t until he felt himself leaning forward that he realized what he was doing and cursed himself for his weakness. His wife had rusalka blood in her veins, he of all people should know to beware of her seductive approach to negotiation.

“Kirill, I’m sorry. I know how hard you work to make sure our future is safe. I know that your strategizing and alliance contracts are all for our own benefit. I did not mean to dismiss them as unimportant. But in the same way that I understand how important alliances are for our future, you must understand how important our friends are. Etienne, Adonis, Patricio, Saamal… They are not merely your allies now, they are your friends. As are Loupe, Ivy, Marcela, and Aiyana. They care about us, and we care about them.”

Kirill steeled himself against the pleasing note in her voice, the vulnerability in her eyes. He would not be manipulated. “Irina—”

Irina pointed a finger at him. “Don’t try to tell me you don’t care. I’ve seen you working with Adonis, taking him under your wing. I know he’s your protégé. And don’t think I didn’t notice that you had your tailor draw up special designs for Patricio for clothing that would fit around his wings so that he could wear something other than robes. You care.”

She stepped even closer until he could feel the heat radiating from her body. It would have been undignified to dodge her embrace, and yet Kirill knew it would have been smarter than letting his wife loop her arms around his neck. The scent of cinnamon and apple swamped his senses, a light perfume over the even more pleasant aroma of her blood under her skin.

He closed his eyes, resisting the urge to bury his face in her neck despite the ache in his fangs urging him to do so. She pressed against him, the cold silk of her gown seeping through the velvet of his tunic quickly overwhelmed by the heat of her lifeforce throbbing against him. Memories of what her body felt like, naked against his own, flooded his mind and he bit back a groan.

“It’s only one day,” Irina whispered, her lips a hair’s breadth from his own. “Spend it with me? With our friends?”

Kirill’s temper died a pitiful death. He slid his hand away from the dagger under his cloak, abandoning it in favor of curling his arms around Irina’s waist. A pleasant heat undulated through his veins, pulsing beneath his skin as if his body had a life of its own.

“You would use your rusalka charms to bend me to your will, my wife?” He’d meant the word to have more of an edge, to hold some of the accusation they had every right to hold. But they came out a whisper, a lover’s voice in a dark bedroom. Kirill opened his eyes. Irina’s eyes remained a warm brown, not the drowning black they would have been had she been using her otherworldly powers of seduction. Still, surely there must be some magical explanation for the desperate urge surging through his body to take her in his arms and ravish her where she stood—dwarves and dirt be damned.

“I need no rusalka charms for you.” Irina nuzzled his cheek, her skin sliding deliciously against his jaw. “You love me, and you wouldn’t dream of denying me one paltry day.”

Kirill pressed his forehead to Irina’s, ruefully doing something he so rarely did—capitulate. “They will be here all the earlier the next day,” he warned half-heartedly.

Irina pulled back and clapped her hands, her eyes sparkling like dancing pixie lights. “Excellent! I’ll need to do a bit of last minute shopping to make certain we have enough food. Loupe tells me Etienne’s appetite can be frightening, and ever since Patricio mysteriously grew in size, Marcela says he’s eating more to compensate for that as well.”

“It’ll be a wonder if there’s anything left in the larder,” Kirill agreed, resigned to his fate. He supposed it was the price he paid for having Irina as his wife. In that light, perhaps it wasn’t such a sacrifice.

The rustling of large leathery wings and a chilling breeze preceded a jovial voice. “Make sure you get lots of peppermint bark. Saturnalia isn’t Saturnalia without peppermint bark.”

Kirill cursed the entire kingdom of Nysa as Irina slipped from his arms to greet their guest with a warm smile on her beautiful red lips. If there was one thing he resented more than capitulating, it was being robbed of the reward his wife usually bestowed upon him after capitulating.

“Adonis, how wonderful to see you. It’s been too long already.” Irina glided over to envelop the prince of Nysa in a hug. “Saturnalia, that is what you celebrate on the winter solstice, yes? What we call Koliada?”

The demon’s wings wrapped around her as he happily reciprocated the gesture, the towering bone and leather of his wings almost swallowing Irina’s cloaked body in their folds. “Always a pleasure, Irina. And yes, Saturnalia is very similar to your Koliada. Plenty of reasons for us to celebrate together.”

“Adonis, you have exceptionally poor timing.” Kirill paused, the incubus’ words coming back to him as an afterthought. “What is peppermint bark?”

As Kirill repositioned himself to face his visitor, he noted with amusement that the dwarves were brandishing their mining equipment at Adonis. Small faces lined with wary distrust peered from the dusty atmosphere of the mine, the air stirred by the Nysan prince’s arrival. Pick axes and shovels hovered in the air before them, ready to fly at the intruder upon the slightest provocation. Kirill couldn’t help but wonder if the incubus prince had ever seduced one of the dwarf females in his wild days before he’d met his wife. Or perhaps dwarves just don’t trust demons.

The demon’s wings twitched as he settled them against his back, his usual smile undeterred by the bristling dwarves. “Peppermint bark is delectable white chocolate sprinkled with shards of mint-flavored candy canes.” He furrowed his eyebrows at Kirill. “Which, in retrospect, would be irrelevant for someone who doesn’t eat solid food.”

“It may behoove you to travel in more human form,” Kirill observed, gesturing for the dwarves to lower their pickaxes and get back to work. “Surely the wings are attention-grabbing enough, the horns are unnecessary?”

Adonis tilted his head, letting the firelight from the lanterns cast shadows on the large horns curling from his temples around the sides of his head before arching up into wicked points. “I spent years trapped in human form. If I choose to keep my own form now, then I don’t see how anyone could begrudge me that.” The demon slid his attention from Kirill back to Irina. “May I say, Irina, Ivy and I are both terribly excited about dinner tomorrow. It was such a pleasure to get your invitation.”

Kirill arched an eyebrow at his wife. “The invitations have already been sent out. Not exactly pining away as you waited for my answer, were you?” He shook his head. “I must have done something terribly wrong to imbue you with such confidence that you could get your way.”

Irina waved him off as she stepped back from Adonis. “I knew you would give me Koliada. You’re not nearly as frightening as you think you are.”

Kirill sketched a mental note to speak with Irina about brushing him off in front of his subjects. Bad enough he’d never been able to intimidate her, he did have a reputation he needed to keep up. He hadn’t had to kill anyone to maintain his reputation in ages, and it would be a shame if he had to start now.