Himika

No one would teach me to ride a horse.

“We’ll give you a carriage, of course,” the master of the stables said.

“Surely you have a gentle horse I could ride,” I insisted. “I have all day to learn before we leave tomorrow. Remember, I don’t have glass bones anymore, so you don’t have to protect me.” As he looked uncertain, I took out my knife and did a few of the choreographed slashes and strikes Aurek had taught me on one of the posts in the stable.

“I’ll teach her.”

I turned. Niko and his mother Peri were walking into the stables behind me. I guess I wasn’t the only one who wanted to secure my own horse for the journey.

I wasn’t very happy about that. Niko’s conduct around me was not befitting a queen.

He had a few apples in his hand, and he fed one to a horse and then Peri, seeing that they were safe, took one and did the same. She chuckled at its big teeth and lips and made a hand gesture.

“They are funny looking,” Niko said.

“Do you understand her sign language already?”

“No. But I can guess.”

Peri shrugged. Ezeru was the only one who actually knew her signs. Whenever I saw her, I felt very nervous thinking that Oszin and Seron were in the hands of the people who cut her tongue out, but Peri was such a lively person that it was hard to feel too uncomfortable around her, and she helped to redeem Niko in my eyes. He treated her well, anyway.

Niko snapped his fingers at the master of the stables. “Let’s get these ladies the best horses around.”

Ugh. He really was bossy. I should be the one to order up my own horses.

It did the trick, though. The stablemaster gave up on arguing and found us two pretty horses and one handsome horse, as far as horses could be pretty or handsome, which was a surprising amount. Someone had groomed my horse recently and braided her tail. Niko was fairly patient in teaching us both to ride, and when he tried to get snarky with me, Peri didn’t let him get away with it.

At one point, she whipped a notepad out of her pocket and wrote in the dragon language, I’m sorry about my son. When I last saw him, he was a real sweetheart, so it’s not my fault.

I nodded, suppressing a laugh. “You might be able to whip him into shape yet.”

Niko turned sharply. “What are you saying over there?”

Peri shot him a look and shook her head.

“I shudder to think of when you meet Phoebe,” he said.

The next morning we set off, with fresh supplies and horse-drawn carts so we could carry proper food and tents. But we were still mostly on foot. I tried to get Aurek on a horse, to spare him the walk, but he refused.

“Maybe later. I like to be on my own two feet, in case we run into trouble. I can’t turn into a dragon while I’m on top of a horse. And I must say, there’s a lot of room to be a dragon here. I could spread my wings.”

The path was wooded and still mostly empty of other travelers, except for military patrols. I noticed a weird tingle in certain spots, as if I could sense magic in the plants. Maybe it was from working with my garden underground, but I couldn’t quite tell where it was coming from. I tried to explain that to the guys.

“Hm. Do you feel it now?”

“A little.”

“Where is it coming from?”

“Um…everywhere and nowhere. I can’t tell. I noticed it around these blue flowers a little while back, but then we passed other flowers that were just the same, and I didn’t feel it at all.”

“Magic?” Ezeru asked.

“Oh, yes. Definitely magic.”

“Is it a good feeling?”

“Yes. It’s a lot like my garden…but maybe even nicer. It feels like crystal magic and sunlight at the same time. I just wish I could tell what it was.”

“When we stop for dinner, you should try to concentrate until you figure it out,” Aurek said.

“Well, I don’t know if I can figure it out. Or if it matters.”

“Remember what I told you about sword practice?” he asked.

“Uhh…patience?” I said, annoyed.

“Magic isn’t just going to slap you in the face and tell you how to use it,” he said. “But if you sense a little of it, you might as well see where it leads.”

“I sense magic here, too,” Ezeru said. “Plenty of it. There’s rock everywhere. Sometimes it’s right under our feet. Past the dirt.”

That sparked something in me. “Maybe what I’m sensing is under the plants. Like over there.”

“Where? Let me see.”

The caravan slowly passed us, soldiers staring at their king pro tem with amusement while he patted the ground.

“You’re right. There are veins of crystal under the ground here and there,” Aurek said. “But it’s not nearly as powerful as I’m used to.”

“I feel like it’s more powerful,” I said. “I wonder if it’s because I’m human…” I gathered some of the plants growing over the vein of crystal. It would be a good way to keep working on magic even though I had to leave my garden behind. I bound different samples of flowers and leaves, although I didn’t recognize most of the plants. I couldn’t make tea out of them until I looked them up to make sure they weren’t toxic.

Anyway, it was good to have something to pass the time, because we were very slow. I thought it was a long journey in a horse-drawn carriage, but an entire army on foot was much longer still. We kept having to stop to get more supplies in different towns. People cheered us and fed us delicious feasts everywhere we went, but it was exhausting. I tried to take breaks by riding my horse and that was exhausting in a different way. But I refused to ride in the carriage, even if my feet fell off. I had already spent too much time as a weakling to go back to that. At the end of each day I collapsed into unconsciousness.

All the while, there was a count in my head of how many days it had been since I saw Oszin and Seron, and I never forgot that count. Beyond the count of days was a darker count, of how many nightmares I had of terrible things happening to them. But I forced myself not to brood. That was how I got through every day, shoving a smile onto my face, shoving my feet down the path, shoving myself into not giving up.

We had a bit of a break in the resort town of Pentia. I could relax my poor aching muscles and scrub off the travel grime in a warm bath, although it was not the big pool of hot water I was used to in the dragon realm. The square tub was made for one person. It stood in one corner of the room, on a platform of tiles, with a curtain around it.

“You can go first, Himika,” Ezeru said. “You must be aching.”

I definitely wanted to go first, but I also hated to act as if I was the weakest member of the group. “We can flip a coin or something. Aurek is probably as tired as I am and he stepped in horse dung a few times.”

“It’s all right,” Aurek said. “That’s what boots are for and I left them outside.” He was picking at a tray of fruit. “Your muscles are surely aching and your body is making two new people. You seem to be feeling well so far, but that must have having an effect.”

“Well, I’ve been drinking that tea the handmaidens gave me every single day. It’s the tea the priestess takes, and she doesn’t have time to get sick.”

“The priestess has special powers,” Aurek said.

“I want to have special powers, even if I have to invent them in my own head. I don’t want to be the only one who’s tired. I want to flip a coin!”

Aurek laughed. “You’re too stubborn for your own good.”

Ezeru looked at me with a gaze that made my skin tingle. He threw open the curtains around the bathtub. “I need you tonight, Himika. So you must rest.”

Now my skin was burning. My nipples peaked beneath my thin gown.

Ezeru saw the signs of my desire, and a faint smile crossed his face briefly. Emboldened, he untied my sash and threw it onto a nearby chair, and then plucked open the buttons of my dress and pulled it off my head. I didn’t stop him; didn’t want to stop him, even though I had been far too weary to think of sex the past few days. He yanked off my underwear.

“Get in the bath and relax,” he said, his voice low. “Spare your energy.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, sinking into the warm water. My hair floated in the water.

He took off his shirt and picked up the sponge. Unfortunately, he moved behind me before I got to really admire his muscular arms. He had a sturdiness, and a somewhat grayish hue to his skin, that matched his element. Ezeru reached in the water and lathered up my arms and breasts.

Aurekdel, surprisingly, stayed out of it, although he was obviously listening.

Ezeru washed my hair, toweled it off, and motioned for me to hand him my feet so he could scrub those off too. He didn’t say much. Aurek must have been bored. He was also so urgent, his cock rising in his pants, that I could tell he wasn’t really thinking about getting every last bit of travel grime out from between my toes. The whole bath took less than ten minutes.

I didn’t really care.

“Stand up,” he said.

When I did, he pulled me onto his lap and stroked me between the legs with the rough washcloth. I bucked against his strong grip as the cloth tickled my clit seemingly from every angle at once. He rinsed off the washrag and scraped it across me again, getting water all over his pants and the floor. Then he picked up my naked body and threw me down on the bed.

Gods, he was gorgeous and he had no idea just how gorgeous he was, that was obvious. He didn’t have the swaggering arrogance of other handsome men, but he would be justified in having it. There was a softness to his black, shoulder length hair, a refinement to the line of his jaw and mouth, a feral beauty to his eyes, a more brutish aspect to his brow. Even though the experiments Izeria subjected him to twisted his back a little, it just made me think of a dragon or a wolf, like he was about to walk on all fours. He was my beast even as he was as well-spoken as any of my other men.

My body was trembling, my sex wet with anticipation of what I knew would be a hard, animal claiming.

“This is interesting,” Aurek said.

“I need her,” Ezeru grunted, struggling with his own buttons. He stopped, breathing hard. “I thought the heat would pass once she was pregnant.”

“Well, it’s possible you’re not ‘in heat’ anymore,” Aurek said. “It’s possible this is just the way you’re going to feel whenever you see her or smell her or hear her voice, because you know she’s yours and such a thought is so unbearably wonderful that all you can think of is wanting to feel it again and again. And then we just call it ‘in love’…”

“In love. I expected that to feel more…lofty.”

“Nah. Not unless you’re already a lofty sort of person. It is, just as much, a torturous, violent sort of feeling…but enough talk. Don’t leave ripe fruit hanging on the vine.” Aurekdel’s hand drifted to my hungry sex and his fingers stroked me there, in a brief tease, before he went back to his own business, whatever that was.

“Love…” Ezeru looked at me. He unfastened his trousers buttons with a tad more patience.

Maybe I should have said something poetic about love back to him. But I was only thinking about how much I wanted to feel him, and I made a little pleading sound instead.

In another moment, I got what I wanted as he shoved my knees up and plunged deep into me. Ezeru certainly wasn’t the most patient of lovers. But I had Aurekdel to seduce me, and Oszin to treat me like a princess. I screamed with satisfaction as Ezeru took what he needed. His hands gripped me, his breath quick, and I would belong to him until he was sated. Once he succumbed to his desire there was nothing to do but ride his strength, my fingers digging into the covers, my breath coming fast. Warmth swept through my in waves, each one coming to settle on the shore of my desire as Ezeru clutched my legs, stroking me fast, every thrust pushing me higher, until the sensation felt like I was flying.

He shouted with pleasure and relief as he came hard inside me. I came at the same time, but in a soft, unsatisfied sort of way. I needed more. He slowed down, his breath ragged.

“Mm…” Aurek made a satisfied sound. “Sounds like you’re really taking to your role, King of the Rock Dragons.”

“My role…what’s that? We’ve already produced children.”

Aurek sat down beside me on the bed and leaned close enough to give me a brief, teasing kiss. “Keeping our queen in her place.” He tweaked my nipple, while I was still shuddering from the aftershocks of the orgasm. It was rippling through me slowly, even still, never quite catching somehow. I suppose it had been too many days of admiring Aurek and Ezeru without satisfaction.

“Have mercy on me…,” I breathed to Aurek, because I knew more was to come.

“Is that what you want?” He lifted my shoulders off the bed, supporting me. Ezeru was still inside me.

Aurek’s fingers brushed my chin, and he drew me into a slow, sensual kiss, his tongue exploring me gently. My core was blazing, blooming with wet heat, and I whimpered. Aurek’s arms were around me, supporting me, and Ezeru didn’t draw back. He slipped his hands around my waist, and when Aurek drew back, now he kissed me too.

“I could have you again,” he whispered.

“Again?” Aurek said. “How are you already ready to have her again? Did you ever really stop having her the first time? You really are some sort of otherworldly creation.”

“Don’t make him feel bad,” I said.

“Bad? I’m jealous.”

“I don’t feel bad about that,” Ezeru said. “I don’t think you’re really done yet, are you, Himika?”

“N—no…” Aurek was fondling my breasts gently now, driving me to distraction.

“Well, I want to finish what I started,” Ezeru said, with another one of his very quick smiles, as if he wanted to look happy but his face wasn’t used to the shape.

Meeting my eyes—Ezeru’s eyes were always so serious, hardly even blinking—he pushed deeper into me again. This time, he was slower. I could feel every single inch of his length pushing in, and drawing back. In and out, in and out, slowly, so slowly… My back pressed against Aurek’s bare chest.

“I still want you,” Aurek whispered, his fingers stroking my sweet spots. Now he pushed me more into Ezeru’s arms and nudged into my nether hole. Aurek had never claimed me there; he had the thickest shaft. His body promised intense sensation. I was ready. I was ready for them to fill me, to become a part of them. One never knows when it might be the last time, I thought, and now it can never be too much.

There were tears in my eyes. “More…”

“More? I think that’s all we’ve got,” Aurek said, with a soft chuckle. “Two isn’t enough now?”

“No…I guess not…” I shut my eyes, holding tight to Ezeru while they quickly found a rhythm with me. Before long, I was driven to a true climax, the one I hadn’t quite reached before, so intense that I was keening and begging, and when it was over I practically shoved them away. I couldn’t handle anymore. Maybe Ezeru couldn’t either, now, because after a few loud groans of pleasure he was breathing raggedly.

“It’s all right, don’t panic now,” Aurek said, giving Ezeru a little pat on the shoulder. “I hope we didn’t break him.”

“No, no,” Ezeru said. “Far from it. I feel cleansed after these moments with you.”

“Cleansed?”

“The mist kingdom felt like such a hateful place. I’ll need a lot of good moments to smother it.” But he tried out another brief smile, and his fingers brushed the spot where Aurek patted his shoulder. “It isn’t just this, my queen. It’s every moment I spend with you…and King Aurekdel and King Seron. You treated me fairly from the start. I can imagine a day where I might only ever think of Dvaro and Izeria in passing.”

“Dvaro,” Aurek said, “is dead. So that’s one you can banish from your mind.”

I collapsed onto the bed. but before I knew it, Ezeru was picking me up and pointing me toward the bath. “Wha?”

“We’ve made a mess of you,” he said. “One more scrub, unless you would like me to lick it up. That is what a rock dragon would do with his mate…”

“Not now! I would die!”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Just imagine if Seron and Oszin were here,” Aurek said.

“If they were here, they could do whatever they wanted to me,” I said. “I can say that…since they’re not…”

“Lucky them, eh.” Aurek walked to the window, and stood there with the sea air blowing at his hair. I knew what he was thinking. I would bet he had his own count of days, and his own count of nightmares.