Kingsbane

“I wanted to sleep.”

He laughed quietly. “You wanted me.”

She bit down on her tongue, refusing to look at him. He wasn’t wrong—since resurrecting Genoveve, she’d been desperate for his voice, his touch, his reassurance—but she refused to acknowledge this aloud.

“I haven’t been able to sleep,” she said instead. “Not since I brought her back.” The heat of tears rose up her cheeks, but her eyes remained dry. “Garver’s given me medicine to help me sleep. But it doesn’t work. Nothing works.”

He crouched before her, and still she stared past him at the wintry landscape of her mind.

“You would sleep beautifully,” he told her, “if you would stop fighting the truth.”

“And what truth is that?”

“That staying there with them, with him, will ruin you.”

She licked her dry lips. “Audric told me Genoveve isn’t sleeping either. She screams and screams. She has terrible nightmares, even worse than before. Sometimes I hear her. Sometimes I ride Atheria to the mountains so I won’t hear her.”

“You tell me this as if I don’t already know it.”

Finally Rielle glanced up at him, her breath catching at the beauty of him in the pale, cold light.

“What did I do to her?” she whispered. “Why can’t she sleep? Why can’t I sleep?”

“I’ve already answered your second question. As to your first…” He shrugged off his cloak and settled it around her shoulders. “Some minds are too weak to bear the glory of resurrection.”

“You’ve infected her. That’s what it is. You’re driving her mad.” She wrapped herself tightly in the cloak, too grateful for its warmth to discard it. It smelled of him—a sharp, spiced perfume, the tang of smoke, the bite of winter.

“I speak the truth of our suffering,” he said, watching her without blinking. “The suffering inflicted upon my people by her own. If she cannot bear to hear it, then that is her failing, and not mine.”

Rielle glared at him. “Leave her be.”

“No,” he answered simply. “She must be punished, as they all must be. She is not the first, and she won’t be the last.”

Rielle pushed herself up from the ground, discarded the cloak, her teeth chattering, and turned away from him, hurrying toward the horizon.

He walked alongside her. “You’re shivering.”

“An astute observation.”

“I’ll take us somewhere warmer. Somewhere more comfortable.”

And then the world rearranged itself. The frozen landscape disappeared, replaced by a warm, dark room. A roaring fire in an enormous black hearth. A four-poster bed, a long, elegant divan. Furs and tasseled blankets, a table laden with food and drink.

Outside a wall of broad square windows loomed an arctic tableau—snow-capped mountains, an icy valley, the distant glimmer of a frozen sea.

“I’ve been here before,” she murmured. “In a dream. You brought me here before.”

He joined her at the window, still and cold at her side. “And I will again—in reality, if you’ll allow it.”

She scanned the mountains quickly, noting the neat grid of roads carved through the snow, the half-built ships in an ice-scattered harbor. Broad doors cut out of the mountains, deep square pits carved into the earth, all of them glowing orange with firelight.

She tucked the information away into a corner of her mind, feeling clumsy and frantic as she did so, and unsteady on her feet. He would notice her spying efforts. He would know what information she would bring home to Audric.

To distract him, she touched his hand, and he flinched a little, and then drew her fingers through his own.

Their palms met, hers scorching and his icy cold, and suddenly an image flashed through her mind—herself and Corien, arms entwined, his lips pressed against her neck, her hands tangled in his hair.

She tried to control the image, shove it away even as her body responded, her skin prickling, but it was too late.

The world shifted once more, and they were no longer standing beside the window.

They were in his bed, that massive bed in the corner of the room, draped with silk and furs, and he was pressing her into the pillows, his hips pinning her in place, his mouth sucking hungrily at her neck. And it was as if they had been kissing for hours. Her body hummed, supple and slick. Her legs had hooked around his, though she hadn’t moved them herself. Her nightgown had ridden up to expose her belly; his hands gripped her naked thighs.

“No,” she gasped against his mouth.

“This is what you want,” he murmured, his face pressed against her throat. “I know it is. Rielle, I saw it in your mind.”

“It was a thought, not an invitation,” she hissed, and then shoved him away so hard that he flew across the room, his head cracking against the wall. She forced herself to regard him dispassionately, though her head still spun from his kisses, and her body ached at the loss of him.

“You don’t know what I want,” she said, her voice rough. “And if you force yourself on me again, I will destroy you.”

Then, as he stared at her, dazed, a dark trickle of blood sliding down his temple, the door to his rooms flew open.

Ludivine entered—pale eyes blazing, hair loose and golden, sparking as if made of flame. She wore a square-shouldered gray gown, its brocaded fabric resembling armor, and she carried a gleaming sword.

“Rielle, get behind me,” she instructed, her voice tight and hard. “Don’t look at him. Don’t speak to him.”

Corien, slumped against the wall, began to laugh—a rough, gurgling sound that soon cleared. The blood on his face vanished. He stood, drawing a sword that had appeared suddenly at his side.

“How charming,” he said. “Is this how you see yourself, rat? Some vengeful savior?”

Ludivine did not answer, glaring at him. “Rielle, behind me.”

Rielle, shaking, rose from the bed.

Corien’s eyes cut to her, pale and furious. “Really? You’re going to obey her? She beckons and you run to her, like a dog to its master.”

“You’ve a funny way of trying to win my heart,” Rielle said, catching her breath against one of the bedposts. “You force yourself on me. You call me a dog.”

“I’m trying to save you from them.” His voice cut thin as a blade. “Why can’t you see that? She could, if she wanted to, wake you from this dream. She’s closer to you than I am. She’s at your bedside, in fact. She could do it, if she tried. But she wants you to see her like this. She wants to impress you.”