by C. L. Wilson
“We’re not done yet. I understand Calberna is having trouble in the Olemas Ocean.”
Dilys scowled. “Even if we were—and I’m not saying we are—what bearing does that have on my going to see Gabriella?”
“It has whatever bearing I say it does.” Atrialan arched one arrogant white brow. “As I said, if you want to see Princess Summer, you will answer my questions. I did not put any restrictions on what those questions would be about.”
Dilys’s back teeth ground together. “There is a particular pirate making a nuisance of himself in the Olemas. It’s nothing we can’t handle.”
“That’s not the impression I got. The ambassadors from Verma and Cho were here not long before your arrival. He told me a large band of pirates have allied together and all but brought Calbernan trade to a halt in that part of the world. He said the Calbernans had—let me see, what were his exact words?—ah, yes, ‘gotten their stones handed to them.’”
“The ambassador from Verma and Cho was here to make another offer from Maak Korin beda Kahn for Myerialanna Autumn, was he not?” Dilys didn’t wait for a confirmation. Everyone knew about the Maak’s obsession with making Autumn his. “No doubt he knew of my trip here and the reasons for it and was doing his best to undermine me in your eyes.”
“He’s not the only source. Word from Seahaven is that anyone who wants their goods to pass safely through the Olemas these days has to pay a toll to the pirates and can’t use either Calbernan ships or Calbernan escorts—or even have a single Calbernan on board, lest they find themselves targeted and sunk. They also say the pirates have sunk more than one Calbernan ship.”
Dilys swore silently. He’d hoped the true depth of the problem hadn’t become common knowledge.
“All right, yes,” he acknowledged. “We have a problem there. We are addressing it.”
“Hmm.” Wynter leaned back against the wall. “How does one sink a Calbernan vessel anyway? I thought you folk controlled every wave on the ocean.”
“We do. Sinking one of our ships is next to impossible, which means these pirates are no ordinary renegades. They have powerful magic on their side.”
“And they seem to have it in for Calberna. Sinking the ships of the undisputed masters of the seas.” Wynter arched a white brow and drawled, “It’s got to be a huge embarrassment.”
“Embarrassment isn’t the word I would choose, Your Grace,” Dilys informed him coldly. “My cousin Fyerin—beloved by my mother and me—was murdered by these pirates, his ship and all hands aboard, lost to the sea.”
Every bit of smug amusement wiped from Wynter Atrialan’s face, leaving sober sincerity behind. “I didn’t know. Forgive me. Losing someone you love is no laughing matter.”
“Ono, it isn’t. As you may know, Calbernans breathe underwater. Drowning us is no easier a task than sinking our ships. Yet these pirates managed it.” He felt the scrape of his claws digging into the top of the dressing table and forced his hands to relax. The rest of him, however, remained stiff as a board.
“It has been suggested that perhaps one reason for your interest in wedding a Season has to do with using her weathergifts to aid your navy. Possibly even to help battle the pirates.”
“I fight my own wars, Your Grace. And I’m hired by others to fight their wars as well, because I’m damned good at it.” Dilys gave a grim smile. He wasn’t just a mercenary. He was leader of one of the world’s most feared fighting forces.
“So if you marry a Season—and I’m not saying you will—there’s no way you’ll use her magic to take on pirates? Because, if you were hoping to use Gabriella that way, you can get back aboard your ship and sail home to Calberna right now. There’s no way in Hel I’d let you marry her so you use her or put her life at risk fighting pirates.”
It was Dilys’s turn to narrow his eyes. “You insult me most gravely to suggest I would ever put my liana’s life at risk. And like so many of Mystral’s male population, you seem to suffer from the misconception that women are somehow in need of a man’s governance. They aren’t. My liana’s choices once we wed will be her own—not mine, and not yours either.”
“I think women are in need of—” Wynter broke off to give a bark of incredulous laughter. “Have you met my wife? Oh, wait. You have. On the farking battlefield!”
“Point taken, Your Grace. Wintermen do tend to value the contributions and capabilities of women more so than most others.”
As quickly as it had come, Wynter Atrialan’s laughter ended, and Dilys found himself staring once more into the frosty, ice-blue eyes of the Winter King. “My answer to your using any of my sisters—but especially Summer—to fight pirates is no. I haven’t said anything before now because your courtship of Autumn and Spring hadn’t progressed to a point where I considered it necessary. But since you seem to have settled on Summer, that has changed. All the Seasons were gently raised, but Summer especially is too innocent and too gentle to be put in such a position. So, I’m telling you right now, I will not allow you to put her or any of the Seasons in harm’s way. And that decision has nothing to do with valuing their abilities or believing they need governance, and everything to do with protecting my own. Which I assure you, Sealord, I fully intend to do.”
“Yet I stood beside your pregnant wife on a battlefield as we faced down the Ice King together,” Dilys reminded him gently. Wynter’s eyes started to swirl with white flurries. Dilys pushed away from the dresser and folded his arms. “I understand your concerns, Your Grace, and I appreciate your determination to protect the women in your family. But per my contract with your wife, I have the right to court the Seasons of Summerlea—all of the Seasons of Summerlea, which includes Gabriella. A contract, may I remind you, that I paid for with many Calbernan lives. Now I have patiently submitted to your inquisition, and I have answered all your questions. If you have any others, they can wait until later. Right now, I am going to see Gabriella. Then, I am going to court Gabriella. And when she consents to become my liana—which I assure you, Your Grace, she will—I’m going to marry Gabriella. As for what happens after that, she will choose her own battles and follow her own conscience. Whatever she chooses, I will give my life and the lives of every man under my command—every man in Calberna, if necessary—to keep her safe.”
“Well?” Scarcely two seconds after Wynter returned to his office on the other side of the palace, the door near his desk opened, and Khamsin swept in. “What do you think?”
He eyed his wife, noting the cobwebs clinging to her white-streaked black curls. “I think you’re in no condition to go snooping through dusty secret passages to spy on palace guests.”
“Oh, pooh. What’s the point of having secret passages if you can’t use them to snoop? I was very careful and perfectly safe. Don’t try to change the subject. What do you think of Dilys?”
“I think I still don’t like him.” He turned his chair and opened his arms to gather his wife on his lap.
She laughed and kissed him and ran her hands down his cheeks. “You will, once you get to know him better.”
“I doubt it. I think he’s planning to use Summer’s magic to fight his enemies, and I don’t like it.”
“I fought your enemies.”
“Not because I planned it that way. I would have stopped you if I could.”
“It’s a good thing for all of us that you didn’t. And Dilys Merimydion did everything he could to keep me safe. Including sacrificing far too many of his best men. He did what was right and he helped save all our lives. Which is a damn sight more than my brother or father or many of my own countrymen did.”
“Still not a fan. And Summer isn’t you. There isn’t a mean bone in her body.”
Khamsin pulled back to give him an offended look. “Did you just call me mean?”
“You know what I mean. You know how to win a fight. Summer doesn’t even know how to pick one.”
“Hmmm.” She reached for one of the plaits dangling from his temple and began twining it aroun
d her finger. “I think you may be underestimating her. She is a Season of Summerlea, after all. The blood of the Sun God runs through her veins, same as it does mine.”
“Maybe so, but there’s a reason everyone who meets her is so protective of her, and it’s not because she’s so strong and intimidating.”
“Now you’re saying I’m intimidating?”
“Absolutely. Halla knows, you keep me quaking in my boots.”
“Ha. I wish.” She had the end of his braid now and was idly brushing it back and forth against his cheek.
Wynter smiled and let her pet him to her heart’s content. She was wearing a pretty green frock that was quite fetching. His gaze snagged on the silky expanse of plump breast displayed by the gown’s square neckline. Pregnancy had filled more than his wife’s belly—much to his delight. He bent to kiss her plump bits—only the two soft ones on top, since he couldn’t bend far enough in the chair to reach the hard little mound of her belly.
Well, not so little anymore. He splayed his hands across it, measuring with a slight frown. “How much longer?”
“Another three weeks. Can you believe it?”
“Three more weeks? That can’t be right. They can’t be growing anymore in there. There isn’t any room!”
Khamsin laughed. “Tell the babies that!”
She squealed when he scooped her up out of his lap and lifted her so that he could press his mouth to her belly. “Time’s up, my lads. Come on out, now.”
His response was a tiny thump in the mouth as one of the babies either kicked or punched him.
He grinned at Khamsin and set her back down in his lap. “Did you see that? Not even born yet, and one of them is already giving their father a whack on the chin. He’s a fighter.”
“Or she is.”
His grin softened. “Or she is. Like her mother.”
Khamsin looped her arms around his neck and smiled at him, her gray eyes shining bright against the dark frame of her lashes and her Summerlander brown skin. “Dilys is right, you know. No matter what we think, in the end, Summer, like each of my sisters, will do what she believes is right—including using her weathergifts to help her husband fight pirates.”
“She’s not married to him yet.”
“And never will be if you keep standing in the way. I know you want to protect her—everyone does—but you have to let her live her life. You can’t protect her forever.”
“Watch me.” He smoothed the hair back off her face, loving the silky feel of it against his fingers and the streaks of white that shot through it like lightning in a night sky.
“Wynter.”
“Khamsin.” He kissed her, thoroughly, then smiled at the sight of her hazy, heavy-lidded eyes, pleased with the results of his kiss. “I wouldn’t sell Autumn to that Vermese griss for all the gold in Mystral, and I won’t sell Gabriella to this Sealord for him to use, either.”
“Nobody’s talking about selling my sister to Dilys Merimydion. And this is surprisingly righteous talk coming from the man who claimed a warprize wife and threatened to work his way through all four of my father’s daughters until one of us gave you an heir.”
“You showed me the error of my ways,” he declared piously.
“Ha. I think this is more a case of ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’”
It was. It totally was. But he sniffed and said, “I’m only looking out for Summer’s best interests.”
“I think marriage to a man who can love, respect and appreciate her is in her best interest, don’t you?”
“Not if that man intends to use her to fight pirates. He’s a Calbernan mercenary. He values money first and foremost, and the pirates are cutting into Calbernan profits.”
“Money isn’t all that matters to Calbernans and you know it. And he didn’t say he was planning to use her gifts to fight pirates.”
“He didn’t say he was not planning to either.”
She slipped a hand inside his tunic to stroke the smooth skin of his chest. His lashes lowered, and he all but purred. He loved the feel of her hands on him. She was always so warm, her storm gifts a literal fire burning away inside her flesh.
“Wyn,” she said in an equally warm murmur. “Give him a chance.” Her lips sought and found his throat, nibbling little kisses along his slowly increasing pulse.
“A chance?” Wyn smiled. He knew he was being managed, but as long as she kept kissing and petting him, he didn’t mind.
“Mmm. We owe him more than we can ever repay. Besides, he’s a good man, and he’d be a much better husband to Gabriella than most of the suitors who’ve come calling over the years. Calbernans are fiercely loyal and loving and protective of their women.”
“Sounds like a good dog.”
She drew back to glare at him. “Oh, really? Aren’t you fiercely loyal, loving, and protective, too?”
He grinned. “Woof.”
She smacked his chest with an open palm and snorted in amusement. “Frost brain.”
When she didn’t immediately go back to kissing and petting him, he frowned. “Aren’t you trying to seduce me into doing what you want? It hasn’t worked yet. I think you need to coax me with more sexual favors.”
“Oh, really?” One black brow arched expressively. “And will that work, do you think?”
“I don’t know. Let’s try it and see.” He leaned back in his chair and offered himself up to her. “I’m all yours, min ros. Seduce away.”
She got the most adorably determined look on her face, said, “All right,” and to his delight, hiked her skirts and straddled him.
“Mmm,” he approved. “So far, so good.”
“Hush.” She laid a finger across his lips, then replaced it a moment later with her lips and kissed him senseless.
Well, not entirely senseless. He still had a handful of thoughts floating around and colliding randomly in the blissful vacuum of his brain.
“Don’t stop,” he muttered when she lifted her head. “I think that’s working.”
“Good.” She dragged his hands around to the laces at the back of her gown, and as he fumbled blindly to work them loose, she went back to kissing his neck. “As I was saying,” she murmured against his skin, “Dilys Merimydion is a good man. I want all my sisters to be as happy in their marriages as I am, and I think he can make that happen.” Her tongue darted out to lick the same skin she’d just kissed. “I’ve never heard of an unhappy Calbernan wife. Ever.”
“She doesn’t like him. She’s made it clear she doesn’t like him.”
“That’s not what Autumn and Spring think. They think she likes him so much it scares her. That that’s why she’s been running away from him so hard. I think they may be right. Back in Summerlea, when the suitors came calling, Gabriella never made herself scarce around the objectionable ones. In fact, the more awful a suitor was, the more solicitous of him she would become. It was only the charming ones who showed an interest in her that she tended to avoid. And I’ve never seen her avoid anyone the way she’s been avoiding Dilys Merimydion.” She’d found his ear and did things with her breath and her tongue that made him shudder and nearly shred her laces in his haste to get them undone.
“You know what I think?” he growled as her bodice loosened, freeing her pregnancy-plumped breasts to his plundering mouth.
“What?” She gasped and arched her back to give him better access.
“I think I don’t want you talking or even thinking about other men at a time like this.” He pushed a hand up under her skirts, finding the soft warmth of her thigh. He stroked softly, working his way higher until he found a different soft warmth, then stroked that until her head fell back and her eyes took on that glazed, silvery cast he knew and loved.
“Other men?” she moaned. “What other men?”
He smiled. “Precisely.”
Chapter 10
“He’s asking to see you again, ma’am.”
Summer, who lay basking in the warm sunlight on the royal family’s private terr
ace, scowled. “Tell him I’m resting. I’ll be resting all afternoon, and I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll let him know.” The palace servant who’d brought the message curtsied and hurried away.
When she was gone, Summer flopped back down on the lounge. “Carry on, Lily,” she commanded the young Summerlander who had been practicing her reading at Gabriella’s bedside these last several days. As Lily resumed her halting reading of Roland Triumphant, Gabriella closed her eyes, flung a hand over her eyes, and tried to empty her mind.
Peace, however, remained elusive.
Dilys Merimydion was simply refusing to take a hint. In the two days since he’d regained consciousness, he’d made no less than ten requests a day to see her. She’d rebuffed each one, claiming she was still not up to visitors, but she wasn’t going to be able to hide behind that excuse much longer. Tildy’s healing skills, herb magic, and the blessings of the sun had already restored Summer to better health than she’d enjoyed before the attack. In fact, despite having just mended from injuries so severe they should have killed her, Gabriella felt better than she had in years. She was brimming over with energy and strength, and for the first time in a long while, she wasn’t having to constantly fight to keep her magic contained.
Not that she trusted her control to last, of course. The way she figured it, the explosion of magic that had ripped out of her and torn Lily’s evil brute of a father to shreds was the magical equivalent of the eruption of an active volcano. It relieved pressure that had been building up, but the reprieve was only temporary. Another eruption was inevitable.
Still, for now, she was no longer an immediate threat to her family or anyone else. And she was feeling so good that, if not for Dilys Merimydion, she would already be back at the school teaching classes. Instead, she was confined to her rooms and this terrace. Because the minute Gabriella stopped playing recovering invalid, she lost the one shield that kept Dilys Merimydion at bay.
