The Tides of Bára

by Jeffe Kennedy

  She lifted her head, eyeing him somberly—and sliding her hands from his shoulders to the back of his neck. The light caress of her fingers proved a fatal distraction, and he fought his darker nature that wanted to take her up on the implicit offer. “I told you I’m sorry for how I behaved. I was just…” She shook her head, sleek as a seal, the copper dark as the water that soaked it. “You wouldn’t understand, but I was afraid—and being naked was somehow part of that.”

  “I understand better than you think. I sometimes dream of riding into battle naked, carrying a feather instead of my battle-axe.”

  Her mouth quirked. “That makes sense, in a way.”

  Why had he told her that? He hadn’t told anyone of those particular nightmares. Natly, his former almost-fiancée, would have laughed at him outright and he wouldn’t have blamed her for it. In the light of day, he understood the meaning, how it reflected the eternal anxiety of being unprepared for a fight. And yet the vulnerability of those dreams bothered him on some deep level.

  “If you won’t help me, will you at least keep your promise to keep me from drowning while I undress myself?” She quirked a brow at him, her tone going acerbic, some accusation in it. Had he just thought to himself that he began to understand her? Not for the first time he wished for the ability to see into her mind.

  “I’ll help you,” he replied mildly. “But I’m not having sex with you, so you can forget that idea.”

  She was quiet, hanging onto his shoulders again, as he loosened the ties of her robes. The knots had tightened from soaking in the water, so it took slow, steady attention. He ignored the gleam of her fair skin in the moonlight as he peeled back the layers, the wet crimson silk nearly black in contrast.

  “The chemise, too,” she said, when he pulled away the last of the robes, draping the sodden mass over his arm so they wouldn’t sink or float away.

  He didn’t bother to argue. The cursed garment showed every detail of her body anyway. He pulled it off over her head and she shook out her hair, dipping again to sleek it back out of her face. So she was naked. He’d seen her naked before. He could ignore that.

  “It’s amazing, being in water so deep,” she said. “I get what you mean about floating. Here, I can hold my clothes while you undress and wash off.”

  Handing them over, he kept an eye on her, though she showed no sign of going under. He’d be able to catch her quickly enough if she did. Toeing off first one boot, then the other, happy to get the Arill-benighted things off his feet. He threw them to shore, in the vicinity of the cheerful campfire that blazed, Chuffta’s dark silhouette of half-spread wings beside it. He ducked his head, scrubbing at his own scalp with considerable relief. The chill of the water helped cool his feverish brain, too. “Can you walk to shore, or should I carry you?” he asked, hoping that she’d be able to walk, so he wouldn’t face the test of carrying her naked body against him.

  “Do you realize those are the first words you’ve spoken to me since you delivered your no-sex verdict?”

  He hadn’t noticed—but he wasn’t surprised, given how tightly he’d reined in his tongue and all reactions to her. “It’s not a verdict.”

  “What is it then? And you still have your clothes on.”

  “They’re clean enough from being on me in the water.”

  “Lonen. Don’t be ridiculous. Take them off and rinse them so we can let them dry by the fire.”

  He was being ridiculous—and he was a warrior, for Arill’s sake. He could control himself, clothed or naked. Working quickly, he stripped out of his shirt and the water-shrunk leathers. His turgid cock sprang free of the confining pants with a surge of blood that nearly emptied his head. What little had remained up there.

  In case Oria got ideas, he took a few judicious steps back, using the excuse of swishing the clothes to rinse them. Then he slung them over his shoulder and turned back to face Oria—who’d snuck up on him and stood far too close. Under the water, her slim hand fastened around his erect cock, choking the breath out of him.

  He fisted his hands to keep from seizing her in turn. This was the sorceress who’d haunted his dreams, her beautiful face a play of light and shadow, those copper eyes reflecting the firelight, full of erotic knowledge.

  Knowledge she did not possess. Her confidence was an illusion—one that could kill her if he believed in it.

  Desperate, he knocked her hand aside.

  ~ 9 ~

  Shocked—and pushed off balance by the unexpected blow, gentle though it was—Oria staggered in the water. Lonen caught her, of course, strong hands bracketing her waist and holding her head easily above water. His face had gone stern and remote, his jaw tight, eyes flinty.

  All determined Destrye warrior now.

  But for a moment, when she’d grasped his cock, he’d reacted to her as he once had—expression lighting with lust, his member moving in her hand in heated welcome. At least that part of him still wanted her. She might be hideously underweight, her lips cracking painfully if she moved her mouth too quickly, but at least she was clean. Of course, she probably resembled a Trom, all scaled skin over bones. Still, she couldn’t be that revolting if his body reacted to her.

  Trying one more time, she moved into the embrace he didn’t offer, sleeking her naked body against his and gasping at the startling sensation of skin on skin. He echoed the sound, hands flexing on her waist, heart drumming under her ear as she wrapped her arms around him. This. This was what she’d missed all her life. She wanted to burrow into him, take him inside her and wrap herself all around his masculine strength and vitality.

  “Lonen.” She breathed his name instead of the plea. Tipping back her head, she found him staring at her, a contorted expression on his face. His emotions simmered behind that cursed lake image, a turbulent mix of desire and alarm, all encased in resolute steel. If she could, she would’ve plundered his thoughts for clues. Why wouldn’t he take her as he’d said he longed to?

  “Kiss me,” she coaxed. Okay, begged, but she had no pride anymore.

  As if he struggled against a fierce wind, he slowly lowered his mouth to hers, pausing before reaching her. He hesitated so long that she opened up some of the portals, just a hair more, but enough poured in through that slim breach that his roiling emotions slammed through her. Too much to sort, except that dread and regret rode the crest.

  She struggled to slam the lid back on, just as he pulled back again, eyes fastened still to her mouth. “Your lips are cracked,” he said, and released his hold on her.

  Bereft of the stunning contact, she lifted a hand to her mouth. Scaled, cracked lips, indeed—and a tang of blood where a split reopened with her prodding. Lonen watched her, his face stony again. “Am I that revolting?” she whispered through her fingers, and his expression softened.

  “No, love. You are beyond beautiful. But you’re so fragile I think I could crush you with one hand. I am not making love to you. Not tonight. No matter how much I might want to.”

  Might want to. Not did want to. “I don’t want to be a virgin anymore.” The words came out pitiful and pleading, but there it was.

  “You’re not, remember? Our wedding night.”

  “That was an… implement. Not you. I want you inside me. I want to at least taste that pleasure before I die.”

  That did it. His jaw firmed and he looked past her, remote as granite. “Then you’re in luck because you’re not going to die anytime soon—and certainly not at my hands. Now, walk or be carried?”

  “I’ll walk.” Apparently she did have pride left. She began wading through the water toward the campfire on the shore, helping herself along by pulling her arms through the water, the robes she held swishing with them, creating drag. The round stones rose smooth against her feet, but also made her footing difficult. She staggered here and there, slipping. And as she made it to the shallows, losing the support of the water, her legs trembled, threatening to give way as they had before.

  Lonen put his arms around her waist,
but she pushed him away. “Don’t. I can do it.”

  “Pride again, Oria?” His voice came grimly mocking from behind her. “I thought we were past this.”

  That had been before he rejected her. Rationally, she knew he was right, but she’d hoped that passion would override such considerations. Perhaps if she knew more about seducing a man…

  “Come to the fire and rest, Oria. You’re tired and need to eat.” Chuffta’s mind-voice sounded unusually gentle and solicitous. He should be chiding her, which meant he thought she couldn’t take it. She stood in the waist-deep water, trembling with fatigue. It seemed that no matter how far she came, she always faced this point of being too delicate to even be alive. She trembled with vicious anger at herself for being so pitifully weak.

  “Oria.” Lonen put a hand on her shoulder, stroking her arm. “Let me help you.”

  “Fine. Carry me.” She sounded dull to herself. He picked her up as if she weighed nothing, which she probably did, even after drinking all that water, and had her to the fire in several quick strides that put all her floundering to shame. Setting her on his furred cloak, he took her wet silks, and handed her something else. One of his shirts, quite worse for wear.

  “Dry yourself with that, then wrap up in the cloak so you don’t get cold.” Naked buttocks flexing, he moved to the ring of trees nearby, hanging her clothes and his from the branches.

  She wanted to ask him how he could stand her when she couldn’t stand herself—but obviously he couldn’t. Numbly, she did as he told her, using the shirt to dry her skin, then wringing out her hair and mopping at it. She combed her fingers through it, spreading it to the warm fire. The heat and light relaxed her weeping muscles.

  Chuffta slid another log onto the fire, quite proficient at it. Satisfied, he picked his way over to her, sliding up her arm and snaking his tail around her waist, his scaled body warm and soft against her skin.

  “You’re doing amazingly well,” he said in her mind, with great gentleness. “I know it’s hard feeling weak and powerless, but only hours ago you couldn’t sit up by yourself. Pay attention to how far you’ve progressed, rather than how far you have to go.”

  “I thought I was supposed to put my attention on the result I want,” she replied aloud, too tired to try to form the thoughts that would let her to speak to him mind-to-mind.

  “What’s that?” Lonen asked, returning to the fire with knife in hand, his cock no longer erect. He poked at something in the shadows, grunted, then began wedging a couple of forked branches into the sand on either side of the fire. As if nothing had occurred between them. Okay, she could do that, too. Politely pretend.

  “I was talking to Chuffta. It’s a teaching of the temple. That we’re supposed to focus our intentions on the results we want so the magic goes that direction. Probably nonsense.”

  He looked thoughtful. “Makes sense, actually. Arill teaches something similar—be hopeful for what you want. Don’t dwell on what you dread.”

  Like all that dread she’d sensed in him. She nearly called him on his own dwelling, but what did it matter? She stroked Chuffta’s breast where he had a hard time scratching and he purred in her mind. Lonen picked up something furry and limp, with long ears. Her stomach rolled in piteous empathy.

  “What is that—is it dead?”

  “I’m not sure what it is—a rodent something, but dead, yes.”

  “Are you going to bury it?

  He slanted her a look she couldn’t read. “No. I’m going to skin it and cook it over the fire so we can eat it.”

  Not a joke. “I’m not eating another living being.”

  “Then you’re in luck with this also because it’s not living—it’s dead.”

  “You know what I mean. Bárans don’t eat flesh. I never have. It’s unclean and wrong.”

  Lonen’s expression became all too easy to interpret. “Oria. You are going to eat this if I have to sit on you and force each bite down your throat.”

  “I’ll just throw it up again!”

  “Then I’ll make you eat that, too,” he retorted, voice and face implacable.

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Test me and find out.” He picked up the poor animal and carried it into the shadows. At least she wouldn’t have to witness this “skinning.”

  “I caught it for you.” Chuffta sounded apologetic. “And for Lonen, too, because he’s so hungry that he didn’t think he had the strength to hunt. I looked for fruit, but didn’t see any. And there are no grains or things like that. I’m not sure if the leaves here make good salad.”

  “It’s all right.” She stroked the arch of his wing, more to assuage the stab of guilt than to please her Familiar. Lonen always seemed so strong. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might be hungry and tired, too. “How did you know how Lonen felt?”

  “He talked to me,” Lonen said out of the darkness. Not so far away. “In my head.”

  “He did?” She looked at Chuffta who returned her surprised stare, green eyes wide and mind radiating innocence. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I just did.” Lonen returned to the fire, setting a stick spitted with several small bodies over the brackets. “Chuffta, man—I left the guts in a pile over there for you if you want them.”

  “Tell him thank you for me.”

  “Tell him yourself.” But Chuffta had already gone for his gory feast. “He says to say thank you.”

  It shouldn’t bother her that her Familiar had talked mind-to-mind with Lonen. Even though he’d only ever done so with her before. She’d always known he could hear the thoughts of others than her—though, true, she’d thought it was only other magic bearers—but she’d somehow gotten the idea that they shared a special bond that allowed him to talk only to her.

  Lonen glanced at her through the hair falling over his eyes. He hadn’t tied it back again. Hopefully he hadn’t lost his favorite leather tie. An irrelevant concern, given all they faced. She didn’t know why she thought of it. “I didn’t tell you when it happened because I wasn’t sure how you’d take it. I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “And now you don’t care if you upset me?” She said it lightly, but looked into the fire instead of at him, pulling her hair over the other shoulder and angling to dry it, too.

  He didn’t reply immediately, adjusting the roasting of the dead animals. The smell made her think of the funeral pyres after the Destrye army left, as the bodies that had been pulped by the Trom and not burned by their dragons had been dealt with. He’d no doubt follow through on his threat to force her to eat, but she didn’t understand how anyone could stomach it.

  “I think,” he finally said, slowly as if he were thinking as he spoke, “that as much as we sometimes miscommunicate, it’s still better to speak honestly with each other than withhold information.”

  She snapped her gaze up to find him watching her intently. “I’m not withholding information.”

  “Aren’t you?” He held her gaze. “You hadn’t told me your mother explained how to manage the wild magic.”

  “We haven’t exactly had time for conversation.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. Turned the spit. Juices dripped into the fire, making it hiss, and she had to look away. “Fair enough. Then explain to me what’s going on with you. The portals of magic and so forth.”

  “I’m too tired.” Indeed, she was inexpressively weary.

  “It will keep you awake until it’s time to eat. Then you can sleep all you like.”

  Her gorge rose at the thought of eating that meat. If her stomach hadn’t been hollow as a dried gourd, she might have emptied it.

  “Oria.” He sighed and raked his hands through his hair. “If I’m going to keep you alive long enough to get you to Dru, I need to know how to help you.”

  Of course. The man never forgot his mission. Get her back to Dru to stop the Trom from their depredations and save his people. She couldn’t blame him for caring about that above all things. Even when he’d been her enemy
she’d found that attractive in him, his devotion to leading wisely, standing up to his responsibilities. Once she’d felt the same way. Only days ago, when sgath filled her with magic, making her feel powerful even when she hadn’t known how to channel it. Maybe what she experienced now was how ordinary magicless people felt all the time. What a grim existence that would be. And yet Lonen seemed filled with vitality, even having struggled with the same privations as she.

  “Remember that we promised to be partners?” He asked, more quietly. “We’re married, which means we need to trust each other. When you won’t talk to me, it makes me think that you don’t trust me.”

  Annoying, when he didn’t trust her, either. At least, not enough to believe that she wanted him to touch her. She nearly said that, but the look in his eyes, softer gray now with earnest feeling, changed her mind. They were exhausted and starving. Maybe people didn’t always get along so well under these circumstances. She certainly wasn’t holding up so well to the challenge. And what would it hurt to confide in him? The temple had banished her from its ranks. She owed their secrets no allegiance. She did owe Lonen, much as she hated admitting how dependent she was on him. But he’d confided in her, hadn’t he? Telling her about that dream of riding naked into battle, a hint of embarrassment shadowing the words, though he’d kept his tone light and joking.

  “I don’t understand it myself,” she told him, acutely aware she was telling him something she’d never spoken of to anyone but her Familiar. “It’s kind of funny. When I was younger, all those years in my tower—well, even right up until you and the Destrye arrived—I thought that if I could just master hwil, everything would fall into place. If only I could quiet my mind, learn to meditate properly, then I wouldn’t be such a mess. I could go out in public for as long as I wanted to, without having to run back to my tower before whatever event I attended was even over. If I could master hwil, I’d get my mask, I’d manage my sgath and be a priestess, and…”

  “And everything would be perfect,” he finished for her, when she didn’t, eyes glinting with shared understanding.