“I have been waiting for you,” Ryn said.
Juliet licked her lips. He had been waiting for her, all this time. It was as frightening as the possibility of taking him into her completely, not only with her body but with her mind and soul.
He looked her in the eye as if he were waiting for her to change her mind.
She didn’t. Some primal part of her had taken over, at least for tonight, and she wanted Ryn more than she wanted her own freedom, her own life.
“You are sure?” he asked softly, giving her this one last chance to tell him to stop.
“Yes.”
His clothing was much easier to remove than hers had been. The kilt was laced up one side, and it was simple enough to untie the leather string and loosen it, then push the kilt down and away. She didn’t have to ask if Ryn was sure about what was to come. His skin was hot to the touch, and without the kilt to cover him, she could see that he was most definitely certain about what he wanted. She stared shamelessly, studying the length and breadth of his arousal, reaching down to stroke him to feel the heat and the hardness. He was like stone and velvet, long and hot and so hard she was amazed. Touching him, stroking him, she felt an answering call deep in her own body. A quiver. A clenching.
Ryn touched her, much as she touched him, his fingers finding the nub at her entrance and caressing it lightly, with little circles that incited a new and stronger fire in her belly. Her folds grew damp and ready for what was to come. Instinctively she swayed very slightly against his hand, her body taking charge and moving as it wished. A small moan escaped from her throat as a new and more powerful ribbon of pleasure shot through her.
He laid her on her back once again, and she spread her legs so he could fit himself between them. Her body quivered, with uncertainty and desire and anticipation. Ryn was so big, so strong and hard. And yet she felt as if the control in this moment was as much hers as his. There was one more thing she needed to make this moment perfect. While Ryn hovered above her, she took his face in her hands and drew it down.
Juliet pressed her lips to his for her first true kiss. Naked and trembling, she took her first kiss from the man who would soon be inside her. The kiss was soft at first, almost tentative, and then Ryn began to move his mouth over hers.
Maybe it was his first kiss, too. She didn’t know. It was very nice that she didn’t know. This kiss, this night, was of the body and the body alone.
She flicked the tip of her tongue against Ryn’s lips, and he answered in kind. Her hips rocked gently against his, and the tip of his erection barely brushed against her. That pressure was enough to make her shudder; it was enough to make her lower belly lurch and clench. She deepened the kiss, and threaded her fingers through his hair once again to hold on tight.
Juliet knew she was not the woman who had begun this journey; she was not the woman who had been taken against her will. She’d changed. Her shyness and her gentleness were gone. No, not gone, but faded. Put away, here in this land where such attributes were not called for. It was as if a savageness she had never known she possessed had been sleeping inside her, and it awakened with Ryn’s touch. With Ryn’s taste.
She was an animal, every bit as much as the man above her.
He guided himself into her, slowly, gradually. She held her breath while he became a part of her. There was pain and pleasure as her body accepted his, wonder and dread all wrapped into one moment she knew she would never forget. Her heart pounded, her breath caught in her chest while Ryn pushed and they became one.
Instinct told her she wanted more, while common sense told her more was impossible. For tonight, instinct ruled over common sense.
Ryn’s hips began to rock. He withdrew and then plunged deeper. Juliet gasped, not with pain, but with gratification and surprise. Every thrust took him deeper, and with each plunge her body shuddered and reached for his. They moved together in a silent rhythm, as if they danced without music. They generated a heat that belied the cold of a winter night. They moved toward something beautiful and powerful.
For tonight, Ryn was hers, as he had always claimed to be. And she was his. In body, they were mated. They were one being, searching for pleasure and perfection. This went beyond magic.
Ryn moved faster, deeper, and Juliet arched her back and lifted into him. She could not breathe; she could do nothing but meet Ryn’s body with her own in search of something not yet tasted. She began to sweat, and so did he. She could feel her heart hasten, beating faster and faster.
With a shift of her hips he pushed deeper than before, and ribbons of intense pleasure began to unfurl. Ryn plunged to the limit and she shattered, her body splintering in release and physical delight that made her clench and shudder around him. The release stole her breath and her heartbeat, shocking her with its force. Ryn shuddered, too, and in every way he shared this moment where everything Juliet had ever believed about physical love changed.
The act of love was wonderful; it was beautiful. How had she lived without this for so long? How had she lived without Ryn?
As he drifted down to cover her body with his, she expected the cold to return. It didn’t, not completely. She remained warm, covered by Ryn’s body and shaking with the power of her climax. No wonder Sophie had suggested that she take a lover.
“You will make a good wife,” Ryn said breathlessly.
Juliet laughed. “Let’s save that discussion for tomorrow.”
“If that is what you wish, it is done.”
“It is,” she whispered.
“Tonight I can deny you nothing,” Ryn whispered against her throat. He lifted his head and touched his mouth to hers, and again they kissed. Slow and intimate and powerful, they kissed. Juliet felt happy and strong and content with where life had taken her. She did not think of the events that had brought her to this place, the troubles she’d left behind, or where tomorrow might find her.
There was no tomorrow, not at this moment.
Last night Liane had dreamed of the baby’s cry drifting up from the dungeon of Level Thirteen, as she had so often in the past few months. When Sebestyen had thrown his fourth wife, Rikka, into that dark pit in the ground, Liane had been at his side—at his insistence. No one else, not Sebestyen or the prison guards or a drugged Rikka, had seemed to hear that cry that continued to haunt Liane. No matter how often or how strenuously she tried to tell herself that sound had been a product of her own imagination, the memory persisted.
The more real her own child became, the more real that cry became. She could no longer push the recollection aside as fantasy. Maybe it had been a figment of her imagination, but if it had not been...she had to know the truth.
Sebestyen’s infidelity and his nighttime visit confused her. They also made her angry. Just because she had been relegated to Level Five like the previous empresses did not mean she had to remain powerless. Did her husband care for her or not? Something had to be done, and she was sick of waiting around in this pretty prison for someone to save her. She had been to hell and back, and she did not wait for any man to rescue her.
She would rescue herself.
The priests might hate her and wish her ill, but they did not dare to hurt her while she carried the next emperor in her belly. That safety gave her some confidence that she could do as she wished, for now.
“Mahri,” she said brightly as the girl laid out a fancy gown of royal crimson, a gown befitting the mother of the next emperor. “I am going on an excursion today.”
The girl paled. “An excursion?”
“Yes. I’m leaving my rooms this morning. I’ll need my boots rather than my slippers.”
“But, my lady, that surely is not wise. Whatever you desire can be brought to you here.”
Liane spun on the girl. “Who do you serve, Mahri?”
Mahri’s face went even paler, turning almost entirely white. “You, my lady. Only you.”
“Then do as I say.” Liane looked the trembling girl up and down. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan to as
k you to accompany me.” Mahri was exceptionally skittish, and Liane would not dare to expose her to Level Thirteen, not even in the smallest way.
“You cannot wander the palace alone, my lady!”
“I will take a sentinel with me.” Ferghus, who was quiet and who could be trusted.
Liane dressed in the too-fancy gown, with Mahri’s help, then pulled on stockings and boots. Her hair was twisted into a tight knot. “I do have an assignment for you,” Liane said as she patted the crimson fabric that covered her increasing belly.
“Anything you wish, my lady.”
“I wish for you to redecorate my apartment.”
“What is it you wish changed?” Mahri asked sweetly.
“Everything,” Liane said beneath her breath. In a louder voice, she said, “I am tired of pink. Have the sitting room done in blue, the bedroom in green, the dining room in gold.”
“May I leave my room pink?” Mahri asked sheepishly. “It’s my favorite color.”
“Your bedchamber can be any color you wish,” Liane said sharply. “But I don’t want a scrap of pink fabric to remain in my living quarters.”
While Mahri wrung her hands like an old woman and nodded her head in assent, Liane opened the door to exit her bedchamber. The sentinels stood in the corridor, awaiting her orders. Liane ignored Tatsl and looked at Ferghus. “I wish to go to Level Seven to speak with Gadhra.”
“We will have her brought to you, my lady,” Ferghus offered.
“No,” Liane said strongly. “I wish to go to her. Now.” Since Tatsl was openly afraid of magic of any kind, and he remembered Sophie’s momentous visit too well, she knew he would offer to stay behind and guard the empress’ quarters, while the less senior Ferghus escorted Liane to Level Seven.
Ferghus nodded cordially and obediently, and followed as Liane led the way to the lift. When she reached past him and pressed the lever that would take them all the way down, he protested.
“I cannot allow you to leave the palace.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Then why—”
“You’re going to escort me to Level Thirteen.”
The sentinel paled and took a step back.
“Don’t worry,” Liane snapped. “I’m not planning to toss you down.” She would need his help, and so he had to know why she traveled to the pit of the palace. “I think I might’ve heard a baby down there,” she said softly. “Do you remember when we took Empress Rikka to Level Thirteen?” Months ago, before Sophie Fyne had arrived and changed everything.
“Yes, my lady,” he answered softly.
“You and Taneli waited in the stairwell, but I was with Sebestyen when the portal was opened. While I was standing over the opening to the pit, I heard a baby’s cry. At least, I think I did. I have tried to convince myself that the sound was my own imagination, but what if it wasn’t?”
“Surely it was your imagination, my lady. Even Emperor Sebestyen...” Ferghus choked on his words when Liane gave him a regal glare. “I’m sure the emperor would not be so cruel.”
“I need to be sure.”
They made their way to Level Ten, which was as far down as the lift would carry them. Narrow, winding stairs led from Level Ten to the noisy technological Level Eleven and then to the bleak prison on Level Twelve.
Beneath Level Twelve was the pit where Sebestyen sent his enemies and discarded empresses. Level Thirteen. It was a horrible place, worse than death.
Four guards stood in the hallway, near enough to the hatch in the ground to hear anything that went on once it was opened. Liane asked, in a lowered voice. “Who among them can you trust?”
Ferghus answered just as softly. “Only Gant, the sentinel with the dark beard. We come from the same village in the Northern Province.”
Liane nodded subtly. The guards noticed that their visitors were of the special sort, and their posture improved in an instant. Liane lifted her chin. “All but Gant are to leave us. Now. I will summon you when it’s time for you to return.”
“But, my lady...” one older guard began.
“Wait in the stairwell,” she ordered.
After a moment’s hesitation, they did as she commanded. Poor Gant. The young sentinel’s lips actually quivered. “Never fear,” Liane said softly. “I do not plan to banish you or anyone else into Level Thirteen today.”
It took both men to lift the hatch, and it would take both to raise the child out of there, if it turned out that she was right.
Ferghus and Gant lifted the heavy hatchway with a heave. Three or four men made the job easier, but two could manage. When the hatch had been tossed back, Gant held a torch over the opening and the three of them glanced down. The torch didn’t offer much illumination, but it was more than enough for Liane to see the gaunt faces that gathered below.
“Since no one has yet joined them, they think they will be fed,” Gant said softly.
The hapless souls, all of them addicted to the drug Panwyr, most of them starving and delusional, stared up at her with wide, desperate eyes. The light from the torch showed Liane those eyes too well. The prisoners murmured lowly, but loudly enough to drown out any sounds from beyond the opening.
“Quiet,” she ordered.
Her command only made some of the prisoners howl. A few clapped hands over their mouths, trying to force themselves to comply. One lifted his head and screamed.
“Be quiet, and I will have extra food tossed down when I am finished here.” Liane shouted to be heard over the din. Some of the men grew quiet; a few did not. “And more Panwyr,” she added.
The offer of food and drug silenced them, and Liane trained to listen. For a moment all was silent. There was a deep, dank silence in this place, something beyond a normal quietness. It was ominous. It was bad. She wasn’t afraid of much, but she was afraid of ending up in this place. The sounds and smells and sensations of death and suffering were powerful here.
All remained silent. She almost breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe the baby’s cry had been her imagination after all. If not then the child had died, which was surely a blessing. Still, she preferred to believe that she’d never heard a baby at all. She’d heard one of those pathetic men below howling or crying, and her fantasies had provided the rest.
Just as Liane was about to order the batch closed, a faint sound stopped her. A cry, soft and weak and very, very real. Ferghus heard it, too; she knew by the swearing beneath his breath.
Liane leaned closer to the opening in the floor. “Bring me the baby,” she shouted, hoping that whoever cared for the child was still sane enough to know that it needed to be rescued. The men beneath her scattered, as if expecting a monster to arrive along with the baby. “I don’t want to hurt the child,” she cried. “It doesn’t belong here. I want to help.”
She waited a moment, and then a few moments more. In frustration she knelt on the floor, took the torch from Gant, and thrust it into the hole as far as she could reach. What she saw illuminated beneath her almost made her retch into the opening in the earth. A few bodies lay in the dirt, pushed out of the way by the others, unceremoniously dumped against a muddy wall. The smell, as always, made her stomach roil, but she ignored the gut reaction and did not empty her breakfast onto those below. The living who had moved away from the light didn’t look much better than the dead. Gaunt and pale and ragged, they were barely living at all. A child did not belong down there.
A soft, female voice called from beyond the light. “Have you come to kill her? I swear by all that is holy, I will not let you murder my daughter."
That voice was vaguely familiar to Liane, but she couldn’t quite place it. “Come into the light.”
“I won’t let you—”
“I have come to save your child, not harm it.”
“Why?” the soft voice asked.
“Because no child belongs down there. I can’t save you, but I can take your daughter to a safe place.”
A woman wearing the ragged remains of a pale-colored dress
stepped into the edge of the light cast by Liane’s torch. Blond hair, tangled and dirty, covered the woman’s face. She held in her arms a child wrapped in rags. When the woman—the mother of the child—lifted her face, Liane’s heart skipped a beat.
“Ryona?”
Ryona could barely be called a woman. She was little more than a child herself. She’d spent a few months on Level Three, as a servant who would one day—when she was old enough—take training to become a concubine. When she’d disappeared, one of the crones told Liane she’d been sent home to her father, who’d apparently had a change of heart about selling his daughter.
Liane lifted her face to Ferghus. “We’re going to get them both out of there.”
He shook his head. “I can’t—”
“You will,” she snapped. Prisoners were never removed from Level Thirteen, but Liane knew to the depths of her soul that Ryona did not belong down there. “I command it.”
He swallowed hard and looked at his friend. “Is there a way to lift them up?”
“We can use the basket we employ to collect the dead bodies now and then, I suppose.”
Liane turned her attention to Gant. “Do it.”
He fetched the basket from a storage unit at the end of the hallway. Poor Ryona. Some of the gaunt men who had initially gathered at the opening had begun to paw at her ragged skirts, and she was rightfully frightened of them.
“Keep your hands off of her,” Liane ordered. “Or I will not throw down the food and Panwyr I promised.” They backed away, some of them sending desperate and hate-filled glances her way. Some of them were beyond emotion of any kind, and they simply did as they were told, like frightened animals.
The basket was attached to a pulley that extended from the wall, and then it was lowered with the turn of a crank. “Hurry,” Liane said as the basket reached the bottom of the pit. Ryona, clutching her baby to her chest, climbed into the basket. She had to push back a few bony hands of men who wanted to join her in her escape, but they were not strong enough to force their way past her resistance. As soon as she was in the basket, Ferghus and Gant turned the crank to lift Ryona and her child up.
The Moon Witch Page 15
