by Wyatt, Dani
“Near to the ruins of the palace, in a dip between the trees. It was lucky she was wearing her red cloak, or we might have missed her.”
“Were there white flowers nearby?”
He nods. “What is it, Angelica?”
“St. Leonard’s Lily, I think.” She shakes her head. “No, I’m certain. It all fits. She must have eaten some to cause this reaction.”
“Can it be cured?” Angie looks desperate, her eyes wet with unshed tears. My heart shoots into my throat in the mere moments it takes Angelica to nod.
“Yes. I think we’ve caught it in time.” She turns to me. “Sara, have the kitchens send us plenty of water and vinegar, please. We’ll also need a bucket for vomit and some clean towels.”
“Is there no antidote?” Bors asks, his face dark with concern.
Angelica nods. “That’s where you come in. I need someone to go up to the old palace and search the ruins for a very specific plant. You’re looking for yellow flowers growing down from branches like grapes on a vine. You’ll find it in the darkest of places. Berberis tenebris. Dark Berry.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” I say absently.
Angelica shakes her head. “It’s rare, but it’s said to grow near to where you’ll find St. Leonard’s Lily. It prefers shelter and quiet, where the sunlight never reaches, so old ruins would be perfect.”
“And this… Dark Berry,” Angie says, her eyes hopeful. “It will cure her?”
“It will set her heart rate back to normal and help her to awaken. After that, we need to make her sick.”
“I’ll find it. I’ll bring it back to you.” Bors turns towards the door, stomping from the room. When he passes through the doorway, I hear Seamus’s voice.
“I’ll come with you, your grace.”
* * *
Bors
After half an hour we’re both breathing heavy. The ruins of the old palace are in a bad state. It’s not unusual for the townspeople and nearby villagers to come up here to raid the place for building materials, and I’ve always turned a blind eye to such activities. Some of the people are poor enough already, despite the changes I’ve made to how taxes are taken and used, and so I hardly care if they borrow old stones that are no longer needed.
Even so, it’s left the ruins precarious in places, and Seamus and I have been forced to scale crumbling walls, jump from one wall to another and now to pick a path across a very rotten floor in order to reach the next room. The scent of mold and mildew lingers heavy on the air here, and I’m sure the damp is going to get into both our lungs.
Some would say I’m getting too old for such things, and it’s true I’ll feel it in the morning, but right now I don’t give a shit if it kills me, so long as I find those flowers for Angelica and save Gwen’s life.
“Your grace, please let me go first. If I make it across, we’ll know it’s safe for you.”
I turn and glare at Seamus, who’s holding a burning torch to give me light to see by. “How long have we known each other?”
“Well…”
“How long, Seamus?”
A floorboard creaks beneath me and I move my foot quickly away from it, planting it on another that looks stronger.
“Forty years, or there abouts.”
“Don’t you think after forty years, you have earned the right to call me Bors? I seem to remember at the battle of the Firth, you were the commander and I was nothing but a lowly soldier.” I raise an eyebrow. “I don’t recall you calling me your grace back then, though perhaps it’s best not to try to remember too hard, eh? And how, after forty years, do you still think I’d let you go first when it’s my granddaughter’s life at stake?”
“It’s disrespectful not to use your title.”
“No, it fucking isn’t. You don’t hear Angelica standing on ceremony with me, do you?”
“No, but—”
“If you call me your grace one more time, I swear to every god I believe in, I’ll lay a fist under your jaw. I fucking order you to call me Bors from now on, you hear?”
I meet his eyes, and I hope for his sake he can see how serious I am about this. I’ve never been happy with titles and ceremony and bowing and scraping, it embarrassed me when I was a knight in the court of King Rowan, and it’s fucking torture now that I’m king myself after Sara’s father passed away three years ago. I count few people as my friends, but Seamus is one of them.
“Yes, okay. Bors it is.” He nods.
“Thank fuck for that,” I say as I turn back to the task at hand. I step forward onto a board that looks strong enough, test it with my weight until I’m satisfied, then move my whole weight onto it. There’s a groan of protest, but the board holds.
For a moment.
I hardly get a chance to react when I hear the crick of snapping wood, and it gives way all at once, crumbling beneath me like it’s made of sand. I feel my body go weightless for a moment as there’s nothing holding me up, then I’m plunging down through the floor. Seamus’ shout of “Bors!” makes me satisfied in a surreal, incongruous way as I reach out, trying to grasp hold of the nearest board, but it’s no good. The wood is too rotten and it just crumbles beneath my fingertips as I fall.
Bracing for a broken leg—or worse—I’m surprised when I only fall a handful of feet before I land on a hard surface. My legs crumple on instinct, and I roll to the floor to save any serious wounds, but I scramble to my feet quickly enough, uninjured except for a little muscle strain.
A moment later, Seamus’s face appears at the hole I just fell through.
“Your gra—” He clears his throat. “Bors, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I reply, clapping my hands together to clear them of dirt, groaning a little with the strain of it, like the return of an old friend after all these years of opulence instead of fighting.
It’s then that the torchlight catches a glimpse of something yellow against the wall of whatever crawlspace I’ve found myself in. I peer into the gloom, but it’s impossible to see properly. My heart is in my throat, hoping beyond hope…
“Hand me down that torch,” I tell Seamus, reaching up to grab it from him. “I think we might be in luck.”
* * *
Sara
When little Gwen opens her eyes, it feels like I’m taking a breath for the first time in my life. Such relief I haven’t felt since Bors rescued me from the clutches of Queen Beatrice’s guards twenty years ago.
I look at him now, knowing that he’s saved our granddaughter just as he saved me then, just as he’ll always protect his family from any danger that might beset us. I know that while he’s here, none of us need fear the worst.
Gwen coughs, blinking against the light and fresh air streaming in through the window. Then I see a look of panic come over her face. “Mommy!”
“I’m right here, sweetheart.” Angie has her hands on her daughter in an instant, clutching her still-cold fingers and feeling her forehead. “You gave us all a scare.”
“My belly hurts.”
Angelica tuts. “That, young lady, is to teach you not to eat things when you don’t know what they are.”
She sounds stern, but when she looks my way I see the love in her eyes too. Our children and grandchildren have become her own as much as any child could be, and when we named our own daughter after her, she couldn’t have been prouder.
“Mommy, I’m hungry.”
“Porridge, eggs or chicken, sweetheart?” Angie replies.
“Ewww. I don’t like porridge, eggs or chicken. Isn’t there any leftover pie from last night?”
I can’t stifle my laugh in time, it just feels so good to have everything back to normal again. Gwen doesn’t know it, but she’s been out for two days. The leftover pie she’s referring to would have been finished off by the servants yesterday.
After Bors and Seamus got back with the Dark Berry plant, Angelica was able to get Gwen’s heart rate under control, then she regained enough consciousness to be forced to drink
the water and vinegar solution we gave her.
That wasn’t a pleasant sight.
But once it was over, and Gwen was sleeping soundly, all we could do was sit back and watch and wait. Angelica was as reassuring as possible, but we all knew the danger wasn’t over until the poor girl regained consciousness.
“It’s porridge, eggs or chicken,” I tell Gwen. “Those are the choices. You need to have plain food until you regain your strength.”
“I’m strong already!” she complains, and I smile at Angie.
“Your turn,” I tell her, then turn to Angelica and wave for her to follow me out of the room.
Once we’re outside, I wrap my arm around her shoulder and squeeze. “Thank you.”
“No need. I’m just glad I was able to help. It was lucky Bors found some Dark Berry, or it might have been a different story.”
“About that,” I start, meeting her eyes. “There’s a courtyard in the queen’s wing of the castle. I never use that end of the castle because the thought of being away from Bors, even for a night, isn’t one I’d like to entertain. But my mother—my real mother—apparently kept a herb garden there. I’d like to do that again, but plant it with healing herbs. That way if you or any other healer needs a particular ingredient, we’ll have it here.”
She smiles warmly. “That’s an excellent idea. Truly. You’ll need to make sure you have a good range of growing conditions, and I have some thoughts about which herbs you might like to grow to make the most of it.”
“Well, I thought that maybe you could help? I know you’re busy, so we’ll get other servants to assist, but if you could at least help with directing things, it would make all the difference.” I grasp her hands in mine, turning to her and giving her my most hopeful look. It’s the same one I use on Bors when I need him to do what I want.
Angelica nods enthusiastically. “Of course, I’d love to! I have so many ideas. As soon as I’m sure Gwen is back to her normal self, I’ll come take a look at the courtyard and we’ll start planning things out. Oh, perhaps we could also have a bench there so that courtiers can use the garden as a quiet place to go and sit?”
“Yes!” I nod, grinning. “I knew you were the right person to ask.”
Together we return to the room, and Gwen gives me a glare as she’s being told no, she can’t have sausages or bacon, if she wants something to eat it has to be something plain. I’m not sure why I’m the one being blamed for the situation, but I also don’t care. I’m just happy that we’re all safe again.
When her mother isn’t looking, I meet Gwen’s eyes, and stick out my tongue, pulling a funny face, and see her frown turn to a giggle.
One thing’s for certain, she won’t be allowed to slip away from her guards again, not if Angie has anything to do with it.
Probably until she’s at least as old as I am.
* * *
Bors
I take a deep breath as I sit back from the table, my plate cleared, and look around at the faces of my friends and family. Little Gwen has just eaten her first substantial meal since the poisoning, and she looks satisfied at least. There’s still a feast of leftovers remaining, but that’s always the way. What we don’t eat, the servants will enjoy, and that’s how things should be. I have little use for titles and ceremony, and even less for decadent privilege.
What we eat, they eat.
In the week since she first discussed it, Sara has made an excellent start on the new castle herb garden. The sheltered courtyard she picked has all the right conditions to allow her to grow virtually anything we might need all year round.
Of course, it will take a few months before we start to see any real results, but then I expect to have healers from all over the kingdom, and even beyond, coming here to replenish their stocks of the rare plants that would otherwise be hard to find.
My sons, both kings of their own kingdoms now, are even here tonight. They returned as soon as they heard of Gwen’s illness, but by the time they were here she was out of the woods. I suspect that Petra, daughter of our eldest son and his wife, has been slipping her cousin more exotic foods when nobody has been around, but as it hasn’t made her sick again I’ve turned a blind eye.
I reach under the table and run a hand along Sara’s thigh, hearing her sharp intake of breath as I do. “I need my wife,” I mutter under my breath.
“Bors, please,” she murmurs.
Shaking my head, I push her dress down between her legs and grip her pussy with my fingers. “Who am I?”
“My king,” she whispers in reply. “But—”
“No buts. Excuse us or I will.”
“No!” She replies, just a little too loudly. Everyone’s conversations stop at once as they turn our way. I see her cheeks turn red, but she won’t allow me to make our excuses. Tact isn’t one of my strong points. “Um… Bors and I are very tired,” she starts. “It’s so lovely to have all my children here at one table… and my grandchildren, of course. And my friends.” She glances over at Seamus and Angelica, who is grinning knowingly. “Please, eat what you like, spend the rest of the night however you like. We’ll see you all in the morning. Oh, god…” She sits bolt upright as my finger slides along her wet pussy lips. “...God, please grant us many more evenings, just like this one. Good night!”
Angie is snickering as we turn and leave the table. She’s seen this sort of display more often than anyone, having stayed here at the castle with us. I don’t care. My children need to know that their parents love each other, and no two people have ever loved or wanted each other more.
I can’t wait until I get her back to our bedroom. As soon as we’re outside the hall, beyond the eyes of our friends and family, I push her up against the wall and my hand is at her crotch. I lean in, stealing a kiss from her lips and leaving her gasping for air.
“Bors… My king. My lord.” She mutters the words, like they’re swimming in her head.
“I love you, my queen. My Sara.” I grip her ass with my free hand and lift her against the wall, feeling her legs wrap around my waist. “I couldn’t live without you, or without all of this. I’ve loved you from the very first moment I laid eyes on you, at the well in Weschail, standing next to Annie. I’ve never loved anyone else. Thank you for giving me this life.”
A little tear falls from her eye as she smiles, nodding. “Thank you,” she says. “I love you.”
And with that, she buries her face in mine, and we kiss long and hard, a kiss that contains every promise for the future, for a long life together, for the love of each other and that of our children.
But also for a night of passion ahead.
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About Dani
Dani Wyatt used to feel bad about having such dirty thoughts. Luckily, one day, she decided to start writing them down. Her ultra-obsessed, alpha heroes have a wicked possessive streak and an insatiable libido. Her heroines are intelligent, quirky, and worry about having too much muffin top. So, if you like your insta-love over the top, super-hot, with a little more plot and always a happily ever after, you’re in the right place.
She’s fighting middle age like a warrior and lives an average life battling gravity. When she's not writing, she is probably laughing about some irony (like the fact that A-1 Steak Sauce is vegan), reading, riding her horse, or looking cross-eyed at some piece of technology sent to ruin her day.
About Nikolai
Nikolai Andrew has been writing stories as far back as he can remember. His elementary school teachers used to have him stay after class to try to explain some of his more creative work but with a to-die-for smile and wisdom beyond his years, he always managed to charm his way out of trouble. Not much has changed, except he’s now found an outlet for his stories where he can show off a bit of his darkness, a dash of dominance and a sprig of hopeless romantic topped with a whole helping of hot.
When he’s not writing, he’s playing with his many aquariums, searching for rocks, enjoying cheap vodka and making waitresses blush. He’s got a penchant for vintage Playboy’s and Vargas girls and a weakness for giving out spankings and cookies. Drop him a line anytime. He loves to hear from readers. Especially their own ideas on what he should write next.
