Queen's Gambit

by Karen Chance

  They got out, which I appreciated considering that he had never stopped his current occupation, or indeed so much as broken rhythm.

  “They’re definitely going to gossip about us now,” I told him, giggling.

  “They would have been disappointed otherwise,” was the blithe response.

  “And we wouldn’t . . . want to do . . . that,” I agreed, as his pace picked up, and my head encountered the bedpost a few too many times, and my butt threatened to freeze to the chilly stones on Hassani’s now waterlogged floor.

  I decided I’d live.

  And then, just in case the bastards were listening outside, I gave a few screams of appreciation. And then a few more. And then I was basically screaming all the time and I am not a screamer, particularly in bed. But that . . .

  Damned well deserved it.

  I stared upwards afterwards, panting and lightheaded, my body tingling and throbbing in places I had not known that it could tingle and throb. And watched a diligent little sprinkler overhead shower me with ice cold water. Too late, I told it, grinning sloppily.

  Much too late.

  * * *

  Round two was in a new room down the hall, which we’d found open and empty after a foray wrapped in a half-drenched fur. The servants had fled, so we weren’t caught in flagrante delicto with our bear skin, instead of on it. And the bed in our new digs was just as big as the old one and, soon, just as well used.

  Louis-Cesare sprawled on his stomach afterwards, boneless and effortlessly graceful. We hadn’t thought to bring a lamp, so he was lit only by moonlight. It was a good look on him.

  Silver limned his face, turning it dark blue in the hollows and bleaching the lashes almost white. It did the same with the tiny, soft hairs along his spine, running down to the sweet rise of his buttocks and thighs, before deepened into the nest of curls that showed briefly between his spread legs. I let my eyes wander down the smooth line of muscle running from hip to knee, and then again from knee to long, elegant foot. The bottoms of his feet were as smooth and uncalloused as a newborn’s, thanks to vampire healing abilities.

  He cracked an eye, feeling the weight of my gaze. “You wish to go again?”

  “Just looking.”

  He appeared vaguely relieved. I grinned. So much for vampire stamina.

  In reality, I wasn’t perving . . . much. I just couldn’t believe that this was real. Any of it: my marriage, my new status, the fact that I was an honored guest at a vampire court. But especially that I had someone to come home to. Someone to grieve with. Someone . . .

  Who gave a damn.

  That wasn’t supposed to happen and it kept freaking me out.

  A strong, long-fingered hand lay limply on the mattress. I picked it up and a faint roughness met my touch along the pads of the fingers and ball of the hand. It shouldn’t have been there. Fighting with a rapier doesn’t usually leave callouses, and his body should have erased any damage before it could build up anyway.

  But it existed, nonetheless.

  Relics of early sword practice, I thought, my fingers tracing the lines. I closed my eyes and could almost see him, from all those years ago. An earnest faced little boy, probably still redheaded at that point, holding a wooden practice sword. Running around a courtyard with his fencing masters and studying everything about them, from their stance to their finger positions to the direction their eyes darted before they struck, giving away the direction of their lunge.

  I bet he’d been a quick study, that he’d surprised them.

  He constantly surprised me.

  Like tonight. I’d been furious when I thought he was trying to keep me from pursuing my enemies, from avenging two of the only people who’d ever fought for me. But in fact, he just didn’t want me running off exhausted and vulnerable and alone. He wanted me to understand that this wasn’t my hunt; it was ours. That this wasn’t my family anymore; it was ours.

  And that I never had to hunt alone again.

  “Something pleases you?” Louis-Cesare asked. I opened my eyes to find that he’d turned on his side, watching me as I explored him.

  “You please me,” I said roughly, not knowing how to process this much emotion, all at once.

  I smoothed a hand up his arm, wanting to touch, wanting something to ground me. But it was caught before it got very far. Clasped and held and then examined, as I had been doing to him.

  I didn’t like that. My nails were short and utilitarian, and my skin bruised from some part of tonight’s adventures. There was nothing to admire there.

  But Louis-Cesare didn’t seem to agree.

  A kiss to the back of the hand, another to the wrist. Blue eyes looking at me with his lips still pressed against my flesh. “You please me, too.”

  My breath started coming a faster in my chest.

  I reached out with my other hand, desperate to feel all those little details: the chest, hard and lean and beautifully defined; the Adam’s apple that moved so temptingly under my fingers; the shoulder blades with their dusting of freckles that matched the ones on his back—another relic of a former life. The skin was different there, light golden brown instead of the cream of areas further down, speaking of long days spent shirtless under the French sun.

  I wondered if it would have a different texture under my tongue. If I could close my eyes and map his body as easily by taste and touch as by sight. I bet I could—

  But he wouldn’t let me.

  I’d closed my eyes again in preparation, but a second sense had me opening them again. And discovering that my lover had moved, in that so quiet way that vamps have, to the point that I hadn’t even noticed it. Of course, I’d been distracted, I told myself, staring directly up into blue, blue eyes.

  “What?” I asked, a little breathlessly.

  A faint tilt to the edge of the lip, and a glance that seemed to rake my body with an actual, physical touch, did not help my breathing.

  “What?” I said again, as he slowly gathered my hands, holding them together in one lazy, iron-fisted grip, above my head.

  “What?” I demanded, as he went back to that disturbing exploration.

  He kissed my forehead. “My turn,” he whispered, and my whole body shuddered.

  He took his time, examining every inch of me, refusing to stop when I squirmed. I supposed it was fair, but I couldn’t imagine what I looked like: beaten and bruised, bangs half gone, sweaty from two previous sessions . . . not too tempting. But he didn’t seem to see it that way.

  A big, elegant hand dragged those callouses from breast to thigh and back again. He seemed fascinated by the color difference between his hand, probably the darkest shade of gold on his body, and the milkiness of my skin. I’d seen the sun plenty in my lifetime, but dhampirs don’t tan. The same healing abilities that prevented me from wearing earrings or bleeding out after a battle also erased a tan in a day, often less.

  It was annoying, as dead white skin was a fashion no-no these days, but Louis-Cesare didn’t seem to mind. Or maybe it was the textural difference that intrigued him. The rough spots on his skin found no purchase on mine, sliding easily back and forth, back and forth, back and—

  “Stop it,” I growled. “I don’t like—”

  “To be admired? Why? You are exquisite.”

  I stared at him. “Yeah, that’s why most people run at the sight of me.”

  “They’re intimidated.” He kissed my stomach. “Do you know how many people I saw watching you tonight?”

  “Afraid I’d steal the silver. Or possibly stab them with it.”

  He looked up, and the dark eyes were serious. “They were admiring glances. Do you have any idea what you looked like then? What you look like now?”

  I started to make a joke, but the look in his eyes stopped me. “No.”

  “Then perhaps I should show you.”

  I’d thought he meant in a mirror, but apparently not, because a warm, wicked mouth captured a nipple. The talented tongue played with it for a moment, swirling a
round my softness, then playfully biting the little nub he’d teased up until I was aching with it. Before abruptly starting to suck.

  And, okay, I thought, that’s—that’s not fair.

  Louis-Cesare did not appear to care. In fact, he compounded the issue by slipping that talented hand between my thighs, where he found another little nub. And, for the record, callouses on certain things are . . . nice. Very nice. Exquisitely fucking nice and suddenly I was squirming constantly.

  I may have also started to vocalize, just slightly. I wasn’t screaming—I was not a screamer—but I might have been panting a little. Which was completely understandable considering the twin provocations. And then maybe a moan or two slipped out, and some Romanian curse words that I thought I’d forgotten but apparently not, and then a few things that might qualify as shrieks, only they were way softer than that and they should probably come up with another word but I couldn’t think of one right then, maybe because I was having problems remembering my damned name.

  And then the shrieks became louder, but I didn’t care, because you try to stop it when he’s—and then he—and oh, yeah, oh yeah, right there, right there.

  “No, go back! Go back!” I shrieked, when he deliberately strayed off target. And it was deliberate. The wicked little glint in his eye gave it away, as well as the fact that he went back to the exact spot as soon as I said something, finding it with no problem whatsoever, the bastard.

  And, all right, there might have been a little screaming going on at the end, but I can’t be sure because I think I black out for a second. When I came around, he had a self-satisfied look on his face and my body was quivering and shaking and moaning in a way that would have been embarrassing, but I was way past that. Way past.

  “In case you were wondering,” he breathed in my ear. “Darkly dangerous, seductive red lips, sleek dark hair, black stilettos and a thin, barely-there dress that flashed open now and then to reveal a stake. At a vampire ball.”

  I cleared my throat and tried to remember how to talk. “Well, I wasn’t going to go in unarmed—”

  He laughed suddenly, full throated and genuine, and his cheek came to rest on my stomach. His eyes met mine. “I do love you.”

  I’d been about to point out that he hadn’t been unarmed, either, but at that, I stopped. I found that I couldn’t speak, suddenly. My fingers found his hair, and I let them comb through it until his eyes closed and his breathing evened out, and the powerful limbs went slack. And then I kept on doing it anyway, just because I could.

  “I love you, too,” I whispered, and finally went to sleep.

  Chapter Six

  Dorina, Faerie

  “Augggghhhhh!”

  Somebody was screaming.

  I did not think that it was me. It was hard to tell over the sound of the portal roaring like a hurricane in my ears, and the violent green of all that swirling power searing my vision. I had many ways to see, but the raging energy of the line negated most of them.

  That was all right.

  I did not need to see my attackers to kill them.

  Their scent was strange in my nose, and their bodies showed up as cool spaces in my mind’s eye against all that pulsing power. They did not seem to have the same ease at detecting me, however. Several were turned in completely the wrong direction, while others were moving about with their arms out, trying to locate me after I tore away from them in the initial confusion.

  I helped them out with that, slitting the first creature’s throat before he knew I was there and then had two more jump me, zeroing in on his aborted cry. I whirled, dancing away from one and slashing another with my blade, where it stuck in the bone of his arm. I tried to cut through and then I tried to pull out, either of which would have worked easily with a human. But he wasn’t one, and my blade stayed trapped.

  We circled each other, him trying to get a knife in me while I tried to free myself. I finally cracked through the bone with sheer brute force. But instead of falling away into the electric tunnel we were traveling through, the severed arm began orbiting us, like a piece of clothing thumping about the laundry machine back home.

  There were other body parts tumbling around, too, one of which was still screaming. It was part of the small vampire that Dory liked. He must have been close enough when the portal opened to have been swept inside along with us.

  My eyes were adjusting now, to the point that I could see the fey as dark shadows silhouetted against all that leaping color. I still couldn’t make out any details, but the vampire . . . yes, I could see him. Because he is family, I thought, and smiled.

  I cut off a fey’s head and offered him the bleeding stump, but he only stared at me. Another fey jumped onto my back while a second grabbed my wrist—the one with the scimitar in it. I dropped the body of their compatriot, and snatched a tumbling arm as it fell past.

  “Is this yours?” I asked the vampire.

  “What?” He stared at me some more.

  “Does this belong to you?”

  “No?”

  “Good.” I used the jagged femur to stab the fey on my back through the eye. And when he let go, I slashed it across the other’s neck.

  I picked up the decapitated body and offered the vampire the stump again.

  He did not seem to understand.

  “Feed,” I urged him.

  “What? I can’t!”

  Of course, I thought. He has no arms. I dragged the body up to his mouth, to the point that the fey’s blood smeared his lips.

  “Gah! Gah! Gah!”

  I pulled it back. “Is there a problem?”

  “Is there a problem? Is there a problem?” Blue eyes blazed at me. “I get my limbs torn off, get kidnapped, and now you’re trying to poison me—”

  “It is not poison.”

  “—and you ask if there’s a problem?”

  I decided that he might be in shock. Just as well. There were four fey still on their feet, including the one with the missing arm, and they were coming.

  I broke off half of the scimitar’s blade in the first one’s neck and kicked a second far enough away that I should have had time to deal with the remaining two. But he only stumbled back a short distance before hitting and then splaying against something that I couldn’t see at all. Something that appeared to be rotating and was taking him along with it.

  Dodging a blow, I watched him circle against the primordial fury of the line. Ley lines were fascinating: huge rivers of magical power that flowed around the Earth and then beyond. It was said that their energy could dissolve a human in seconds, and a vampire even faster. No one traveled through them without a shield of some kind.

  Like the one gleaming all around us, I realized, as two of the remaining fey jumped me.

  I slammed their heads together, somersaulted over top of them, and then did it again from behind. They had thick skulls; they did not go down, and one even spun and swung at me. But I twisted away and pulled back out of reach, taking a second to think.

  Why did we need a shield inside a portal, which was already a shielded pathway through a line? That was the reason people made such things: to provide safe passage from one point to another. Why bother with a second layer of protection?

  Unless they were more interested in keeping something in than keeping something out, I realized.

  This wasn’t an assassination; it was a kidnapping.

  Fear and panic swept through me at the idea of being caged, so much so that I lost myself for a moment. I lashed out, beating my fists and feet against the sides of my prison, and then against the jailors who had stupidly locked themselves in here with me. The shield, which had already been spinning wildly from the tumult inside began rocking alarmingly, sliding and sloshing us around.

  The rocking motion became so violent that it brought me out of my fit. It was just in time to see us burst through, not the gate on the other end of the portal, but the side of the portal itself. And go spinning off into the fury of the ley line.

 
Suddenly, everything changed. It was like the difference between riding down some white-water rapids and surfing the crashing ferocity of an ocean in a major gale. We plummeted down what felt like a fifty-foot wave, then rode another back up, only to be spit out the top and do it all again. And again.

  I was overwhelmed for a moment, and I suppose the fey felt the same, because the attacks had stopped. Or perhaps there was another reason for that. A vortex of orbiting body parts beat on me as we spun about, as their owners could no longer do. But some bruises were less of a problem than the reason for the fleshly storm: we were tumbling out of control, and I did not know enough about shields to stop us.

  But someone else did.

  “Goddamnit!” The vampire yelled, his body, or what was left of it, thumping about the shielded circle. “Hold me up. Let me see!”

  “Let you see what?”

  “That!” He nodded vigorously at something. “The control!”

  “This?” I touched something about the size of a crystal ball. It was on a stick, protruding waist high from what was probably supposed to be the stationary middle of the shield, but which was now slinging all over the place.

  “Yes, hold me up, damn you!”

  I held him up.

  “Fuck,” was his verdict.

  “Is that bad?”

  “No. It’s peachy fucking keen, what the hell do you think?”

  He gave me a rapid-fire stream of directions that involved turning the ball this way and that, which did not appear to have any effect on the spinning. But the wild, leaping color around us slowly became softer and hazier, like veils across the horizon. Until we burst out of the line, into bright blue skies filled with puffy white clouds and startled birds.

  Who were less startled than us when we abruptly plummeted for the ground.

  “Augggggghhhhhhhh!” the vampire screamed. “Augggggghhhhhhhh!”

  The shield remained in place as we fell, which surprised me. I was under the impression that they did not work outside the lines. But then, this was a fey shield. Perhaps they were different.