by Vela Roth
“What did you do today?” he asked her. “You are as pleased as the bear that got the honeycomb. Did you hatch a plot while I was sleeping, and does it have anything to do with this change from drugging your handmaiden to dismissing her for the night?”
“You are still too passionate to be a diplomat, but your perceptiveness may make up for it.”
He ran his fingers along the outside of her thigh. “I only regret I was not here to assist you.” He had been locked in the fortress. In those sunlit hours while he slept, she lived a whole, dangerous life. It had never irked him this much before.
But he was the one whose lap she curled up in at the end of the day to confess her secret plans. He was content with that. More than content. Only he wanted all the rest too.
How had gaining so much made him want so much more?
He listened with rapt attention as she told him of Perita and Callen. His heart went out to them in the way a Hesperine’s always did, which made such things difficult to hear. What engrossed his heart was how Cassia’s vision of herself progressed in the telling. She related nothing but facts, but what those facts meant to her was that she had set out to right an injustice for no other reason than a desire to help. She had broken her silence and tried to earn a friend. And she had succeeded.
Lio was the one who heard her speak of it and the one who understood how important it was in a world defined by the irrevocable sound of catapults in the night. One woman had listened, and another had been heard. One Cassia had managed to ensure one Perita’s safety and happiness and give one Callen back his life.
“She’s with him now,” Cassia finished. “Lord and Lady Hadrian have provided him with a safe place to recover in their servants’ quarters. Perita will have plenty of help while she cares for Callen through the night according to the healers’ instructions.”
“Congratulations, Cassia. That was well done indeed.”
She tensed in his embrace, looking away. “It was the least I could do.”
“No, it was not.”
The firelight set her hair and lashes agleam, but her gaze was shadowed, cast toward the hearth instead of him. “I,” she began. “When I saw Callen there in his cell, I thought…”
What was it she struggled to explain? “That must have been difficult.”
Cassia curled closer to Lio. All the most pleasing parts of her moved against him, and he tightened his arms around her.
“It just about killed Perita,” Cassia said, “to see the man she loved in that state. I thought how I would feel if I were her, and how I would do anything to keep him safe and by me.”
Lio didn’t breathe. He didn’t move. He just held Cassia, not daring to respond or remark on those words, for fear she would retreat if he called them what they were.
For fear his own wanting for those words would become too strong, and the knowledge he could not, must not want them would become far too painful to bear.
This was the nearest she might ever come to telling him she…
“Cassia.” He nuzzled her neck. He could only drink from her, make love to her. Pleasure was all he could give her in return for those almost-words.
She reached up and caressed his face, turning him to her as she turned in his lap to bring her throat closer. He kissed her there, a rough, thorough kiss that quickened her pulse under his lips.
“This chair…” he murmured against her throat.
“…is not nearly so sturdy as a pillar that has stood for centuries.”
“Precisely.”
She slid off his lap and stood before him. “There’s a reason I brought half my bedclothes to the fireside.”
That inviting pile under her feet was indeed a heap of blankets. Her bare feet. Moisture filled his mouth at the sight of her toes and their freckles peeping at him from under the hem of her gardening dress.
Her fingers went to the little hollow under her throat, luring his gaze upward. She watched his face as she unlaced her gown. She pulled the dress open slowly, inviting Lio to feast with his eyes. Her shoulders emerged. Then the top contours of her breasts.
Her hands were not clenched into fists. She did not shove her dress off in an anxious rush. She slid her arms out of the sleeves and let the fabric fall away to reveal her breasts to his gaze. Slowly, so slowly, she let her gown slide down over her body to fall at her feet. She stood before him wrapped in nothing but the long mantle of her hair. The powerful fragrance that reached out to lure him to her was not that of a woman who felt exposed.
She felt bold. Strong.
She saw herself.
He said her name. It was the only word he could find that was sufficient praise.
He knelt before her. Her hands came to his head, trailing sensations over his scalp as her fingers played through his hair. With his hands on her hips, he placed a slow kiss on her belly and felt her muscles twitch with anticipation under his tongue. He let himself devour her, feasting only on the taste of her skin from one hipbone to the other, from the crown of hair at the vee of her thighs, to her navel and upward to the crescents under her breasts.
Her hands descended to his shoulders, and she began to work his veil hours robe off of him at the same seductive pace as she had disrobed. Halfway down his chest, she knelt in front of him to let her fingers wander further still. When she reached his waist, he caught her hands, pulling her arms around him. She held him tightly as he swept her hair back away from her neck.
When his teeth pierced her, she gave a sigh and melted into him. Her welcome made him moan. The taste of her, again, struck him as powerfully as the first time. He wrapped his hand around her bare buttock and held her close against him as he feasted, his other hand tangled in the length of her hair.
He drank his fill in long, fast draughts. He reveled in her. If her words had not hinted at it, if the way she held him did not make it clear, he would have known from this new taste in her blood. He could actually taste it, this powerful thing flowing in both their veins, which they dare not name.
After he was sated, he kept drinking for the sheer joy of her. She kept holding him, now spreading her knees and clutching him between her legs, nearly climbing on his lap where they knelt with his robe tangled between them. He traced one finger between her buttocks and felt her flinch with pleasure at his caress. He slid his hand farther and dipped his fingertips in the moisture between her legs. She arched her back, tilting her backside to let his hand reach deeper into her krana.
The arousal in her blood became a more powerful drug than blood itself. He lifted his head with a gasp. He licked and kissed the wound just enough to close it, drawing new shudders from her.
There was no deciding who would state their wishes tonight. Without speaking, he leaned back, and she pressed forward, and he let her push him down onto his back on their blankets. A thrill went through him at her straddling him, as much his excitement as hers.
She pulled his robe away, laying him bare to her. Firelight played across her umbrous skin, casting her freckles in light, then darkness as she lowered herself over him.
He took her hips in both his hands, steadying her as she found her way. She was beautiful, her small breasts swinging slightly as she fitted herself over him for the first time. Then hot moisture touched the head of his rhabdos, and she was pressing down, covering him in her.
Lio snapped his teeth shut. His feast had made him painfully thick and ready, her fiercely tight with need. She made it halfway down his shaft before she had to retreat and advance again. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, thrusting her hips down as he thrust up, and this time she took him completely.
He could not hold back a groan. She let out a rough sigh. Almost a moan, but not quite. For all her bold words, she was otherwise so quiet through their pleasures.
But her body spoke. She began to move on him, slowly at first. A pleasure to watch and to endure. As she found the way she moved under him worked well in reverse, her gentle exploration intensified to a reckless rhythm. Wi
th his hands and his thrusts, he told her yes. Don’t stop. You are beautiful when you lose control.
She rocked harder, swifter on him. She bit down harder on her lip. He reached up and pulled her closer until he could take that lip between his. The kiss turned into a mime of their lovemaking. He thrust his tongue in her mouth.
She feasted on him. He tasted her blood where his teeth nicked her, felt her teeth on his tongue. The flavor of her full pleasure bloomed in his mouth an instant before she came apart utterly. She bucked and shuddered on his rhabdos, her body rubbing over his. He held her to him, wanting to hold every instant of this, of her.
She was incredible. She was everything he wanted.
He wanted this feast on each other never to end.
A cry wrenched out of him as he spilled inside her. His whole body arched, lifting them both off the blankets. For a handful of moments, all he felt was their perfect, simultaneous pleasure pumping together in a single beat.
He fell back under her, taking great gulps of air that filled him with her scent. He listened to her panting, felt the wild flutter of her heartbeat against him. Happiness broke out of her like a second climax, and he shivered under her.
But that rush of emotion faded as quickly as it had come, and he knew they were thinking the same thing.
The Equinox was barely a fortnight away. A mere fortnight. The blink of an eye.
She did not speak for a long time, just allowed them this. Cassia, who allowed herself nothing, let them lay in silent, blissful denial.
That lured Lio to allow himself something. For a moment, just one moment, he imagined waking to this. To Cassia. Her blood, her body, her passion that had been trapped inside her for so long and was only just beginning to emerge.
Cassia. Night after night. No end in sight.
That was a future they could never have.
One Fortnight
Lio had never felt such sickening certainty. He had spent his life looking forward to his future. He had seldom dreaded anything. Now he held Cassia and knew he must let her go.
He had never felt anything so crushing as the knowledge that he could not look forward to her.
Why was he thinking like this? He was not looking for his Grace. He had learned his lesson with Xandra. There was no comparison between her and Cassia, but he knew better than to see his Grace in every person with whom he shared. He no longer expected to discover his partner for eternity so early in life.
He wasn’t thinking of Grace. He wasn’t asking for eternity. Just time.
He wanted what he and Cassia had, that was all. Something this good deserved time. It might last a very long time indeed.
They would never have a chance to find out.
The idea of Cassia running away with him to Orthros was sheer fantasy. Such a thing was not possible in the world where she lived.
She was throwing off the king’s shackles as never before, declaring her freedom night after night. But when dawn came, she must be where Lucis expected to find her, just as Lio must return to the fortress so the guards could lock him in.
Lio had the power to free Cassia from Tenebra. He could do it, as surely as he could walk into the sleeping king’s bedchamber and put an end to Lucis’s tyranny once and for all. But the initiate ambassador knew all too well that taking the king’s daughter home with him would create a disaster no less catastrophic than would assassinating Lucis himself.
Seducer. Violator. Kidnapper. In one stroke, Lio could do the right thing by Cassia and make himself a monster in the eyes of her people. He would give the humans here every reason to believe he was exactly what he labored so hard to convince them he was not.
He had come here to prevent a war upon his people, not give Tenebra a reason to start it.
Cassia had said a great deal about how she only served herself. That had been before frost fever. Before Perita and Callen. Lio knew Cassia was no more willing than he to pay for happiness with the blood of their people.
He would be a fool to think she would accept his offer of freedom, even if he made it. She was the greatest living expert on how Lucis made many pay for one subject’s disobedience.
Cassia slid off of Lio, as if in echo of his thoughts. Even the Blood Union did not feel like enough to keep her close to him. She lay right next to him on the blankets, skin to skin, but she already felt so far away.
“The negotiations tonight…” Her tone was conversational, as if no great doom loomed ahead. “…what an utter waste. Imagine Lord Otho blaming Hesperines for his grave-robbing problem to cover up his inability to control the bandits in his domain. Just when I think I have seen all the free lords’ idiocy, they descend to new depths.”
“A disaster,” Lio agreed.
“At this rate, it will be forever before they agree on anything. Fortnights. Months, perhaps.”
Lio shut his eyes. His most immediate dread, he found, was this conversation. He had escaped it upon their last tryst. Not so tonight.
“That’s the thing about diplomacy,” she said. “It often proves to be a surprisingly slow and lengthy process.”
Lio rolled onto his side and lay face-to-face with her. He took her cheek in his hand. “Cassia.”
She met his gaze. Brave Cassia.
“The Queens will recall us at Equinox, Oath or no Oath.”
Her face betrayed nothing, but her real reaction was a blow.
“You must understand,” he said, “the embassy cannot remain in Tenebra when the rest of our people leave Orthros Boreou. The night after Spring Equinox is Migration Night. When the hours of darkness shorten in the north, all Hesperines journey to our home in the south, Orthros Notou. There the darkness grows longer, and the Empire is near. When summer arrives here, it will be winter there.”
“Winter out of season? It sounds like a different world.”
Lio struggled to find words that would make that distant place seem closer to her. But he found none. It felt impossibly far away from her to him, too.
“But you’ll return?” she asked.
“Yes. At the Autumn Equinox, we come north to Orthros Boreou again.”
They gazed at each other in silence. He would come back to Orthros Boreou, but not to Tenebra. They both knew the first Summit in centuries would also be the last, perhaps for centuries more.
“Goddess knows I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t apologize. I am used to such things. Good things don’t last long in Tenebra.”
“Goddess,” he said again. A prayer. A protest. Goddess, he asked her in silence. Why?
“I expected nothing, Lio. And yet we will have one more fortnight. A whole fortnight of…what I never imagined for myself. That’s more than I ever asked for.”
All her life she had survived on crumbs. A fortnight was not enough of a feast to make up for that.
A fortnight out of the countless years that lay ahead of him was not. Enough.
“It may be…not quite that long.” At last he twisted the knife. But she deserved to know.
For the first time, he saw it in her eyes. As if she wanted to shake her fist at someone. But she had no gods she trusted enough to ask why.
“What?” Her voice sounded thick.
“The negotiations are…a catastrophe. The king seems pleased to watch the free lords destroy peace before his very eyes. My uncle fears that all along, the king has had a malicious purpose for convening the Summit.”
“Of course he has.” She sounded hollow now.
Lio fitted his hand to the dip above Cassia’s hipbone. As if he could hold her. “If Uncle Argyros is right, we will not stay. When the Queens sent us, they commanded us to put our safety first and return immediately if we suspected danger. My elders will not disobey.”
Cassia’s expression steeled. “If the king is planning something, we must discover what it is.”
Lio slid his arm around her waist. “That’s what I wanted to ask you tonight. Would you be willing to undertake another plot with me? The stakes
will be even higher than the lives threatened by frost fever. As hard as that is to imagine. A war between the Mage Orders and Hesperines errant on Tenebran soil…”
“You are the stakes, Lio. War or no war, I will help you.”
He pulled her close and buried his nose in her hair. “Thank you.”
“We will do whatever we must.”
“If we uncover the king’s plot and I warn the others in time, we may be able to protect ourselves and mitigate the diplomatic damage. Or, if we can determine he has no ulterior motive…”
“Then it will be safe for you to stay until the Equinox.”
His throat tightened. “I want my fortnight, Cassia.”
Without saying another word, she pulled him down to her, and he tucked her beneath him in silent agreement. They would make the most of every night they had.
14
Days Until
SPRING EQUINOX
What Dead Men See
In the servants’ quarters of Lord and Lady Hadrian’s residence within the palace, everyone went about according to their wont, as if the world were not coming to an end. For their world wasn’t. It was only her own Cassia fought to rescue. It was only she who felt so keenly aware that every day, every moment counted.
Even if she could discover Lucis’s plan in time, it would win her no more than a fortnight with Lio.
There must be something she had yet to discover that would be the leverage she and Lio needed. There had to be an opening somewhere, however slight, evidence of a strategy they could undertake. She would go everywhere she could today, listen to everything within reach of her ears. She had begun at dawn rites and would begin again after dusk rites, when the maneuvers on the greensward would continue.
The peace of Callen’s room stemmed the furious tide of her day. His quiet, even breathing. The sun streaming in the window over his bed. The sleepy calm on Perita’s face. Cassia had not a moment to spare, but spare it she would for Perita. This endeavor of growing trust was unfamiliar. Cassia didn’t know how often one must tend the seedling for it to thrive. When a gardener was unsure of such things, she kept a close eye on her plant, didn’t she?
