Queen of the Earth: Book V in the Elementals Series

by Marisol Logan

  “This is all they do to me, every time they visit, my good for nothing former apprentices,” Strelzar muttered facetiously. “They make fun of me ruthlessly, and laugh at my expense like I'm a court jester.”

  Veria laughed into her tea cup.

  “Oh, you too now?” he scoffed. “Of course you would, you were always the worst,” he teased. “My most insolent and unappreciative pupil ever.”

  “Oh, shush,” Veria chuckled. “I am your favorite and you know it.”

  “You are my favorite for those reasons,” he grinned. “And I will remind everyone that without Andon here, and since I have let myself be seduced by this raven-haired ice queen, I have now had relations with a solid two-thirds of this group.”

  “We've got to stop having all of our meals here so he can't keep saying that,” Cadit groaned, and everyone laughed.

  “Jealous,” Strelzar said with a smirk. “You're all just jealous.”

  -XIV-

  The morning after the ceremony, Veria and Pascha returned to the castle, their goodbyes to Strelzar tearful and solemn.

  “I'm not dead yet, ladies, get ahold of yourselves,” he had joked when they had broken into tears. “Unfortunately for you, you could be stuck with me for decades to come. Now that is something to cry about.”

  They had laughed through their sniffles and sobs, and exchanged a final round of hugs before the captain of the ship insisted they needed to board and prepare for departure.

  On the trip home, Veria played over the ceremony in her head—how surreal and wrong it felt. She was somewhat ashamed to admit to herself that she had always figured it would be her on the High Council if the Consortium wer reinstated. Strelzar had leaned over to her as the four young, innocent looking Magers she had found were taking their oath and reaffirmed her thought, though.

  “It should have been you,” he had whispered. “Both of you,” he had added to Pascha, who stood on his other side. “And someday it will be.”

  On the ship back to the mainland, they mostly napped, but in the carriage, Pascha tried her hand at small talk. “How were your children when you visited the other day?”

  “Too big,” Veria sighed. “I know they'll never stop growing, but I wish they would. At least until...this is all over.”

  “I understand that feeling too well,” Pascha muttered.

  “How is your little one?” Veria asked, realizing she had never really spoken with Pascha about her child.

  “Well, Pahli lives with my father at our family's estate,” Pascha explained, her eyes looking wistfully out the carriage window. “It's a six hour round trip, but the King allows me to visit one day a month. Raken hasn't been in several months. Not even for her second birthday last month.”

  “I am sorry,” Veria whispered.

  “Don't apologize,” Pascha said. “He hasn't been the same since he became Commander. You didn't do that. Browan did. Power did.”

  “Trust me, I know exactly how corrupting those two things can be,” Veria groaned.

  “You're a good person, Veria,” Pascha said, looking her in the eyes, her sparkling blue ones covered in a thin sheen of possible tears. “Good people always find their way out of corruption. He won't. I didn't marry a good man. I just have to come to terms with that. And with the fact that one of you is going to kill him. I don't love him anymore but I've spent years of my life with him and he's the father of my daughter and he's going to die when this war starts. Andon, Tanisca, Turqa, Strelzar...you. It could be anyone. And it has to be done, or he'll kill a lot of people.”

  Veria watched her quietly and carefully as a silent tear rolled down her pale cheek. She had no words to say, there was no argument to be made because Pascha was right—Raken had to die if they were to be successful, and there was quite a list of capable Magers who wanted to do it. In lieu of words, Veria reached out and took her hand and squeezed it comfortingly. Pascha closed her eyes tightly, squeezing the remainder of the moisture from the confines of her eyelids. It trickled down her perfectly smooth cheek.

  “I am going to lose him, too,” she whispered, her voice shaky from emotion. “After this, I will have no one.”

  Veria's throat went tight. Now she meant Strelzar. “You don't know that,” she whispered.

  “There's a war coming, Veria,” Pascha rebutted, wiping the tears from her face with the side of her hand. “If he were going to survive it and live for another hundred years, do you really think that Ellory would have said anything?”

  “Yes, Pascha, I do,” Veria stated plainly. “Ellory was a spiteful lunatic who hated Strelzar and would have said anything to get in his head.”

  “I hope you are right,” Pascha muttered through sniffles.

  “You love him,” Veria said softly, partly questioning, but knowing the answer enough to not make it sound like one.

  Pascha nodded subtly.

  “Does he...?” Veria started, but trailed off when Pascha met her gaze.

  “It feels like he does, when we're together,” she answered, her voice quiet and strained. “But sometimes I feel like you're the only woman he'll ever love.”

  Veria looked away from her as her stomach flipped nervously and heat filled her throat.

  “I'm sure that's not true,” she finally said after clearing her throat nervously.

  “Well, maybe you should ask him some time,” Pascha suggested facetiously. “No one can lie to the incredible Veria. Not even the Master of Deception himself.”

  That was not a conversation Veria felt like having with him at all. Nor did she want to continue having the conversation about him with Pascha. The rest of the carriage ride was taken in tense silence, and they parted with terse goodbyes once back at the castle.

  The strange turn of conversation in the carriage stuck with Veria for weeks to come, especially once Pascha was instructed to stay with her at all times after Browan left for the Peace Council in Govaland. It had been a month since the trip to Tarddiad, but Veria knew there was still an awkward tension between them—which made it even more shocking when Veria was given a note from Pascha with her dinner plate.

  Meet me at the carriage house after dark.

  Pascha

  Veria folded the note and slipped it into a small pocket on the side of her flowing caftan, her heart pounding wildly. What could she want? she thought. The last time someone had wanted to meet with her in person, it was to tell her that someone was dead.

  She remained nervous and anxious about the meeting until the sun had completely disappeared behind the horizon, and all the leftover shafts of gray light had washed away from the wisp of clouds in the sky, leaving it a darkened canvas tinged with silver moonlight. Her hands trembled as she approached her destination and saw Pascha waiting for her near a readied carriage.

  “Pascha, what is going on?” Veria whispered.

  “Just get in,” she demanded.

  With quite a bit of effort on her own part, and helping hand from Pascha on her lower back, Veria hauled her expansive frame into the carriage and situated herself on the bench, her back aching from the extra weight she carried each day.

  Once on the road to the unknown destination, Pascha took a deep breath and spoke: “I have felt terrible about how I spoke to you on the way back from Tarddiad. I want to make it up to you.”

  “I assure you that's not necessary,” Veria said. “You had every right to speak your mind, Pascha.”

  “I was so caught up in my own problems I didn't even stop to think about what you are going through, and how similar it is to my situation,” Pascha continued. “Married to a horrible man you can't leave or he'll punish you and your family...hardly getting to see the man you love, or your children.”

  Veria swallowed against the sadness that flooded her chest and bubbled up into her throat.

  “We are on similar journeys, Veria,” she muttered. “And I have been thinking a lot about how I would feel if we went into all of this—this war, this battle we know we have to fight—and I did
n't spend as much time as possible with Strelzar beforehand.”

  Veria took a sharp inhale as the meaning of Pascha's words fully struck her.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “It is the least I could do,” Pascha said. “I know we have had a rocky past but—”

  “Pascha, you have more than made it up to me,” Veria said. “And we are on the same side. You and I, I think...I think we needed each other to get through all of this.”

  Pascha nodded and a slight grin pulled at her pale but full lips. “I think you are right.”

  The carriage stopped and Veria's heart flipped. She knew where they were without having to look or ask.

  The stone quarry. Pascha had arranged for her to have a secret meeting with Andon.

  When she stepped out, Pascha pointed to a small cottage at the edge of the quarry and smiled. “I'll wait here,” she said. “We need to be back before sunrise.”

  “Thank you again,” Veria said and gave her a brief hug, which was about all her belly would allow of late.

  Pascha waved her off toward the foreman's cottage, and Veria walked as quickly toward it as her confined, burdened waddle would allow. She knocked on the door with a chest full of fire.

  When he answered, his hair wet and freshly combed, resting on his broad, glistening bared shoulders, covered only by a linen around his waist, looking as if he had just finished a bath, his face contorted into one of shock and surprise. After a few moments of both of them being frozen in place, he pulled her into the cottage quickly and shut the door.

  “What—how are you here?” he uttered.

  “Browan left for Govaland two weeks ago,” Veria explained with a smile. “Pascha arranged it.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I received a message from Virro instructing me to be home by dark tonight. I just figured it would be for business and not...pleasure.”

  He pulled her in as close as he could by her waist, then caressed the round swell of her abdomen.

  “I don't know how I've made it all this time without you,” she whispered.

  “Because, you don't need me,” he replied, starting to untie the front of her caftan. “You are strong, that's how. And you know we will be together, finally, when all this is through.”

  “I don't know that, Andon,” she groaned, tears stinging her eyes with their salty heat.

  “Yes, you do,” he said as he pulled the front of her dress open enough to reveal her globe of a belly. He ran his rough hands over the tight skin, his dark eyes filled with profound affection.

  “How do I know that?” she asked, her lip trembling.

  “Because you know I will do whatever it takes to keep this family safe,” he murmured. “I told you, I promised you. I am fighting for us. I will never stop. We will be together. We will.”

  “That was not the tune you sang months and months ago when we found out about this baby, Andon,” Veria teased. “In fact, I believe I was the one saying those words to you.”

  Andon smirked and shrugged. “It's not the first time I've had to admit you were right and I was wrong, and it certainly won't be the last. I love you, Veria, and I am going to spend a long, happy life with you, admitting that you're always right, and I don't care what I have to do to make that happen.”

  Veria laughed and sobbed at the same time, tears running down her cheeks which had pulled up in a smile. “Lucky you, there's quite a bit more of me to love right now,” she joked through her tears.

  “Vina,” Andon purred, pulling her back toward his bed in the middle of the tiny, one-room foreman's cottage, “this is the most beautiful I've ever seen you look in all the years I've known you.”

  He bent forward and kissed the bare skin of her belly. The linen towel dropped to the floor and Veria's body turned into a pillar of flaming desire. Then he sat on the bed and pulled her into his lap—even with her added weight, it was an easy task for his arms that had been strong to begin with and had since spent the last half a year lifting and hauling heavy stone. The belly that held their child kept them at a bit of a distance, one that made it impossible for them to completely envelope each other and made it difficult to join their lips.

  But Veria's body was starving for him. The ache that burned inside her told her she didn't need his kiss to be ready for him, and she had noticed when his towel dropped that he didn't need hers either. They wasted no time, both knowing time was limited and they had over six months of desire for each other pent up inside their bodies. Frantic with need, they both worked to free her of the open caftan and remove the rest of her garments. Andon lifted her up slightly by her hips and brought her back down into his lap, joining their bodies. He threw his head back as a moan of approval hummed in his throat.

  She felt her body accept all of him readily and easily, as if she were more yielding and pliant, softer and hungrier than ever before. She had never made love while this far along with child, and wondered if that was the reason for the difference in how her body felt, and how he felt inside her.

  His movements were small and careful, but at the depth he had reached, each movement sent sparks through her core. She whimpered as the pleasure turned to tension, and the tension turned to heat, and the heat built and built inside her until even the tiniest shift or swivel threatened to be the last she could take.

  Andon took one of her tender, swollen breasts into his hand, his other hand supporting her by the small of her back. She cried out at the surge of pleasure that rushed through her at his touch against her sensitive skin. He growled in response and dropped his head against her shoulder.

  “I am not sure how much longer I will last, vina,” he purred, his low, carnal rasp causing vibrations across her skin. “You feel surpuosa.”

  She had no idea what he had said, but she had a pretty good idea what he meant—she felt different to him, too, in a good way. Slipping into a frenzy of passion, he bucked against her, driving himself deep inside her. She gasped and pressed herself down into his lap, arching wildly against him as they repeated their collisions of frantic need.

  They both lost all control in the final moments, their bodies taking over and moving them unpredictably, madly in a carnal dance that they instinctively knew but had not quiet experienced in this way before now. It was so different—the rush of release was more intense than it had ever felt for Veria, grabbing hold of her whole body. Her spine contorted and her head fell back as waves of of intense heat flooded her, and her entire middle convulsed.

  She gasped for air as the convulsions turned rapidly from flutters of ecstasy into strong clamping clenches across her entire abdomen. Andon, reveling in the throes of his finish, stopped immediately when she winced and grunted, dropping a hand to the hardened, tightened muscle on the side of her belly.

  “Veria, what is it?” he asked frantically, concern dripping from his voice.

  “I don't know,” she battled through the breathlessness of first pleasure, then pressure.

  He lifted her out of his lap and turned to set her carefully on the bed. “Are you in pain?” he asked, kneeling next to her.

  “Not really, it's just...everything is tightening,” she answered.

  His eyebrows furrowed in disapproval. “I don't like the sound of this,” he murmured.

  She winced and clutched her naked belly as the vice clamped down on either side her body again, so suddenly and strongly it stole her breath.

  “Veria!” Andon uttered in shock, placing his hands on either side of hers. “Tell me this is not what I think it is.”

  She knew exactly what it was. She had felt this before. She looked at him, her eyes full of terror and apology, and nodded slowly as she breathed through her lips against the waves of constriction and compression.

  “It is,” she said. “Go get Pascha.”

  -XV-

  “What?” Andon barked at Pascha, who eyed Veria with concern while she performed another scan, one of many in the hours that had passed since everything began. “What is the matter?
”

  Pascha sighed and turned back to him. “Everything is wrong, Andon,” she snapped. “It has been four hours—we have to be back by sunrise or Raken will realize Veria and I are gone! Do you really want him to be the first person to find us?”

  Four hours, Veria thought. Only four hours? It had felt like a whole day already to her. She lay on Andon's bed on her side, curled up as best she could, which eased the regular undulations of pain, but not much. Sweat glistened on her entire body, dampening her hair and the caftan that covered everything but her protruding abdomen. She was already exhausted, and everything hurt—and she knew that the worst pain had yet to even begin.

  “You said she's making progress, though,” Andon countered, his forehead covered in sweat and folded with worry. “Aleon came quickly, maybe—”

  “She is making progress, Andon, but the baby is...not in the right position,” Pascha said.

  The singeing pain that filled Veria's body was instantly replaced with the icy numbness of fear.

  “What?” she uttered, clutching her belly against another wave of tightness.

  “What does that mean?” Andon asked.

  “I am not a physician!” Pascha cried. “I don't know! I-I went to a few births with Turqa when I trained with him, but...this only happened one time and I don't know what it means, but I know it's not good.”

  Veria threw her head back on the pillow and sobbed. Andon rushed to her side and grabbed her hand.

  “Can something be done? What did Turqa do?” Andon asked urgently, squeezing Veria's hand as much for his own comfort as hers.

  “He...he said it was too hard to deliver the baby breech—the feet down instead of the head—so he repositioned the baby to the correct position by manipulating the fluid in the womb,” Pascha said.

  “Alright, can you do that?” Andon asked.

  Pascha's face contorted into a mix of anxiety and sympathy. She nodded slowly, her shoulder-length, raven black hair stuck to the sides of her face with sweat, as well. “I can...”