by Autumn Dawn
“I have a knife,” Raziel offered, reaching for his as if she would really use it.
“No thanks,” she answered, warding him off with one hand. The last thing that she needed was the mess a blade would make of her hair. “What I really need is a sharp pair of scissors, but since we don’t—” she broke off, staring at the symbiont on her right forearm as it slithered down into her hand, coalescing into pair of scissors joined to her wrist by a thin loop of liquid metal. “Hey,” she whispered in astonishment. “Maybe this little guy is good for something after all.”
Mathin rolled his eyes. “Just like a woman. Save her life, and she snubs you. Provide her with grooming aides, and you’re her friend for life.”
The symbiont turned out to be handier than a Swiss army knife. All Jasmine had to do was think of what she wanted, and the symbiont became that thing. Any manner of utensil or hand tool was suddenly available to Jasmine at a thought, including cups and needles. It even formed into a string for cat’s cradle.
“There might be some defensive capabilities to this creature,” Raziel observed. Isfael, who remained almost constantly in Haunt, signed something back, and Raziel raised a brow. “I agree. A knife or a garrote might prove invaluable against an unsuspecting foe, provided you knew what you were doing. What do you think, my lady, would you like to test your new friend’s capabilities?”
Jasmine, who’d caught some of what Isfael had been saying, grimaced. The idea of using the symbiont for disemboweling or stabbing was not appealing, but considering what they might yet face, maybe she’d better get over her aversion. Her life might just depend on it.
So Jasmine learned to kill. Whenever they had time to stop during the nights, her warrior escort taught her new ways to maim and butcher, silence and scavenge, or made her practice what she did know. She soon discovered that Keilor had been right. Compared to his tutelage, her new instructors were merciless, inflexible, and exacting. They never deliberately hurt her, and physically they were more careful with her hide then they were with each other, but she did accumulate her share of bruises nonetheless, mostly from learning to fall and roll over uneven ground. None of them cared if she got angry, swore at them, or came to tears. As far as they were concerned, she was now a warrior in training, and she could just get over it.
Wonder of wonders, she did.
The symbiont was a big help. Not only did it thrive by absorbing the damage to her person, it lent her a never before known speed and agility. It did nothing for her strength, but her stamina almost matched that of the Haunt, and that was not a small thing.
No amount of grueling exercise could take her mind off of her husband for long, though. With every day that went by her longing grew, until she came to the point where she dared not think of him while riding lest her seat on the saddle—usually with either Mathin or Raziel—become an aching torture. Oddly enough, none of her companions seemed to be affected by the increased levels of pheromone that she knew she emitted at those times. Wondering if her marriage had something to do with it, she finally asked Mathin about it.
He snorted with ill humor. “Isfael merely remains in Haunt, where one never feels the desire to mate, and he can still scent danger. As for Raziel and I—” he scowled. “We’ve been taking a sinus blocker since we reached you. We can’t smell or taste a blasted thing while using it.”
Jasmine’s eyes widened. “Is that why you’ve been such a jackass?”
Raziel roared with laughter. “I don’t know what that is...?”
“A male beast of burden, known for it’s stubborn refusal to cooperate and its nasty temper,” Jasmine supplied.
Raziel grinned wickedly at the glowering Mathin. “A jackass,” he repeated, smirking. “I’ll have to remember that. However, I’m afraid our Mathin can’t blame the sinus blockers for his disposition. You ought to know by now that he’s just naturally a foul tempered beast.”
Mathin curled his lip at him.
Almost two months to the day that Jasmine had been taken, they finally came within a days’ ride of Jayems’ citadel. Instead of growing relaxed as they entered the forest of fern and towering redwoods, however, her escort increased in vigilance. All traces of levity ceased, as did superfluous chatter. Everyone was on the alert for a last minute betrayal.
They needn’t have worried.
Within minutes of entering the forest, volti joined them, running just inside the forest beside the bridle path. Jasmine felt a strong sense of deja vu, but instead of fear, this time she felt exhilaration and a sense of homecoming. Only one thing worried her. “Do you think Keilor will be happy to see me?” she whispered.
Three heads, two in Haunt, whipped around to stare at her. “I can’t believe you just asked that,” Mathin finally got out. Giving her one last suspicious look, as if wondering if she’d left her wits somewhere in the swamps, he went back to scanning the trees for assassins. Shaking their heads, Raziel and Isfael did the same.
Well. That would teach her to ever ask a man to boost her confidence.
Her tension increased the closer they got to home, and she kept forcing herself to relax her legs from around the barrel of the stag to make it run. Still damp from her recent bath, her hair flowed loose down her shoulders, beginning to wave from the wind of their passage. ”Do you think we could go a little faster?” she asked. The men ignored her, and she slouched, sulking. “I could almost get off and run and get there faster,” she muttered, but nobody listened.
Two hours from the citadel, Isfael and Raziel signaled that they heard riders, coming fast. Excited, Jasmine leaned to the side, watching the road. Would Keilor be with them?
He was.
“Keilor!” she shouted happily as he thundered into view on a sweating stag, levering herself up on Raziel’s shoulders and kneeling on his halted stag’s back to get a better look in a way that must have been very annoying for Raziel. Grinning like a fool, she waved to her husband, almost losing her seat in the process but for Raziel reaching back to steady her.
Keilor snatched her from Raziel’s stag at a trot and seated her so that she straddled him and proceeded to kiss her as if about to ravish her there and then. With eager lips and hungry hands, she told him that she wouldn’t mind.
“I missed you,” she gasped, snatching some air before the dizziness he caused overwhelmed her.
He moaned, pulled her head back and told her with his volcanic kiss that he’d missed her too.
Wrapping her arms around him in a fierce hug, she sobbed against his neck, “I’d thought you were dead.”
“Never,” he assured her fervently, holding her close as he stroked her hair. “I’m right here, Dragonfly.”
At his use of her nickname, the tears came in earnest, and it was some minutes before she even noticed that they were heading for the citadel at fast clip. By then Keilor had switched her position so that she sat curled in his lap, supported by his arms. “I missed you,” she said again, giving him a hug.
His arms tightened around her. “Good,” he answered with fierce satisfaction. “I was beginning to wonder if you were ever coming home when the news came that you had entered the forest.” His jaw tightened, and he shot a glare of pending retribution at Mathin over her head.
Mathin inclined his head coolly but said nothing.
“How is your arm? We had heard it was broken,” he asked with concern. There was no telling what she had suffered on her journey, and the first thing he intended to do was to have her examined by a medic. If Mathin had let anything happen to her....
“Oh!” Jasmine squirmed upright, unwittingly bumping against his groin, and forcing a grunt from him. “Sorry,” she said, but she couldn’t help looking down with a smile. Keilor was as eager to be with her as she was to be with him. The first chance she got....
Forcing her attention away from the target of her desire, she held up her wrists so that he could see the silver twined around her forearms. “Mathin got me a symbiont that fixed it. See?”
Hi
s reaction was not what she’d expected.
Eyes widening, Keilor bared his teeth in rage and snarled at Mathin, “As if we did not have enough problems! By what right did you do this to her? How dare you use my wife to cause trouble?”
Mathin’s rough voice was glacial. “She was dying, maggot brain. Had I not ‘caused trouble’ you would not be holding her now.”
Worried, Jasmine’s gaze swung between the two men. “What’s wrong? It didn’t hurt me, Keilor.”
“You’ve done nothing, love. Be still,” Keilor told her and said to Mathin with barely restrained violence, “She would not have been in that condition if you hadn’t botched your job in the first place. What kind of savage—”
Mathin’s eyes ignited gold and he leaned towards Keilor with a curl to his lip. “I am not invincible, any more than you are,” he said in warning. “Could you have fought off Yesande’s garrison and guaranteed that you could have brought a sick woman through unscathed? I think not. I traded a small hurt for her life, and a complication for the same. You could not be there to see to her, so do not judge me.”
Before Keilor could say more, Jasmine clamped a hand over his mouth. “It was my arm, Keilor, and I forgive him. Maybe there was another way, but I wouldn’t have gotten out of there on my own. I’m just glad—” she choked up, fighting to beat back the remembered terror. “The drugs were making me....” She closed her eyes, feeling again the nightmare images. “I wanted only you, and I kept saying that, and making them go away, but I was losing my mind, and beginning to see you, and if he hadn’t—” A tremor wracked her body, and he pulled her close, stroking her back soothingly. “Please don’t fight. Just take me home. I just want to go home.”
Out of respect for Jasmine’s feelings, Keilor and Mathin ignored each other for the rest of the journey. They would resolve matters between themselves at another time, where Jasmine couldn’t see it. In the meantime, Keilor wanted to know everything that had happened to Jasmine while she was away.
Tucking a stray bit of her hair behind her ear, he asked, “So what did you think of the swamps?” He surveyed her ragged tunic and badly patched pants. “They don’t seem to have agreed with you.”
Rolling her eyes, she nevertheless sat up, glad to share her adventures with him. “What’s not to like? Eating mystery creatures—I swear, if anyone ever says the word escargot to me, ever again....” She grimaced. “These guys might be handy with a sword, Keilor, but the next time, could you send someone who can cook?”
He grinned. There would never be a next time, but he wouldn’t interrupt his wife while she was being entertaining.
Looking stoic, she said without enthusiasm, “I now know about twenty-five different edible plants that grow in the swamp and how to find and prepare them, but not a one of them tastes worth a darn. It doesn’t matter anyway, though, because after Mathin gets a hold of them, they all come out tasting like salt.”
Disgusted, she went on, “Finding clean water is a chore in itself, and you can almost forget about taking a bath—not that I could, with three guys constantly under foot, and none of them willing to leave me alone for even five minutes.”
“We turned our backs,” Raziel, who’d shifted back to normal, protested vehemently what was obviously a sore subject. “Your woman has a bizarre fixation with modesty, Keilor. Even in the middle of nowhere, without a stranger in sight, she insists that all present turn their backs just so she can wash! I’ve never seen anything so peculiar.”
“Aye,” Mathin chimed in, forgetting for a moment his truce of silence. “And the one time that she saw poor Raziel washing in the morning she screamed and threw a tantrum like to bring all of Yesande’s hunters down on our heads.” He glowered. “We had to ride hard that day to avoid them.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jasmine countered, deciding to air her own grievances. “At least I wasn’t the one that nearly got us eaten by that water snake.” Eyes huge, she told Keilor, “It was as big around as a barrel, and he insisted after it swam by that it wouldn’t come back for some time and that it was safe to cross.” Disgusted, she said, “Well, he was right, it didn’t, but he hadn’t counted on the one that was following it, just two minutes behind. I’ve never been so scared in my life!”
By the time they had reached the citadel, Jasmine had managed to paint her companions as heroes and friends using unflattering words and grumbled complaints.
Keilor was starting to feel a little jealous. Maybe taking his wife to the medics would be the second thing he’d do.
As they approached the busy stables with a jingle of bits and the huffing of hard working stags, Jasmine finally remembered to ask, “How is Rihlia?”
“Pregnant,” he answered succinctly, leaping off and lifting her down. Suddenly boneless, she stared at him, and he grinned. “Don’t look so surprised. Jayems has been working hard on that particular project since the moment they mated.”
Jasmine blushed and allowed him to take her hand and tow her towards the citadel. Rihlia was pregnant? With a baby? She was going to be an aunt! So caught up in wonder was she that she barely noticed where they were going in such a rush. Keilor opened the door to her room just as she asked, “When? How—”
Slamming the door closed with one booted foot and locking it, Keilor shut off the flow of words with his hungry kiss. His loving was fast and needy, but then so was hers. He, however, was quicker at stripping her. Her hands kept getting distracted by the sight and intoxicating feel of his bare arms and naked chest.
They didn’t make it to the bed.
Jasmine was slick and ready, but she cried out and stiffened as her husband began to slide in fast. Instantly he stopped. “What’s wrong?”
Relaxing a little, she said a shyly, tracing his chest, “Um, it’s been a while.”
Keilor cocked his head and moved a fraction in experiment. His eyes flared. “You’re a little tight.” A shimmer obscured his vision, and he eased off his wife, untangling his pants from his ankles to hide his reaction.
A dark part of him had writhed with fear that while she’d been away from him, she’d learn to scorn him for his failure to protect her and turn to another as more worthy. This physical evidence of her loyalty both humbled and shamed him. She deserved so much more—a man who wouldn’t shame her.
Since he could never tell her his thoughts, he showed her instead. With infinite tenderness he kissed her and carried her to the bed, showing her with his body how much he cherished her and the gift of her fidelity. Hearts and souls communed through hands and lips, speaking of a connection that was more than surface gloss. It was a beautiful moment, and when he finally took her body, they truly became one.
A long while and much loving later, Jasmine snuggled with sleepy satisfaction against her husband, reveling in the feeling of being held again. Her languidly stroking hand encountered her dragonfly pendant, and she smiled, fingering it. Sighing with pleasure, she told him, “You sure know how to spoil a girl, honey.”
Keilor chuckled and hugged her in response. “I’ve thought the same about you.” Remembering the agony of the last few months, he felt the need to reassure her, “It will not happen again.”
Jasmine raised up and looked at him, frowning. “My abduction? I wouldn’t worry about that, hon. It’s not likely to happen twice in a lifetime.”
He sat up, spilling her off his chest and leaving her bewildered. “It should not have happened once.”
“How could we have known what was going to happen?” she protested, watching him pull on his pants, arming himself. “It’s not your fault.”
Pulling on his vest and answering her with a carefully neutral tone, he asked, “Then whose was it?” Before she could defend him further, he went on, “I am not only your husband, but Master of the Hunt. Your theft was my responsibility.” He went to her wardrobe and collected a clean pair of pants and a shirt for her and told her, offering the clothes, “Come, I want the medic to examine you.” He glanced at her forearms. “We will see if he can re
move the symbiont while we are there.”
Troubled by his attitude, Jasmine pulled the covers closer around her sitting body and asked with deceptive quietness, “What if I don’t want it removed?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “That is not an option, and you are seeing the medic regardless. I want to be certain of your health. Come.” Again he held out her clothes, and this time she reluctantly took them, responding to the note of genuine concern in his voice. They could fight about the symbiont latter.
“She’s in perfect health,” the medic pronounced, looking at his clipboard. “In fact, she’s better than ever. Her blood contains more oxygen, her lungs no longer function below average, her circulation has improved, and....” He looked at Keilor significantly. “Pivotal changes have occurred in her reproductive organs.”
A muscle ticked in Keilor’s jaw. “How pivotal?”
“Crucial,” The medic answered just as cryptically.
Keilor’s face darkened. “Can you remove the symbiont?”
There was a pause. “Well, if—” the medic began, but Jasmine cut him off.
“What are you saying?” Jasmine demanded. Had the symbiont somehow made her fertile? Hope surged within her. Maybe.... “Can we have children now?”
“No,” Keilor answered, and turned to exit the medic’s office.
Alarmed, Jasmine hopped off the examining table and bolted through the door after him. What was the matter? “Keilor! Wait.” He slowed a bit, but he didn’t look at her. “Don’t you want to have kids?” she asked anxiously. If so, why would he be angry about it, unless....
“There will be no children,” he told her flatly, and she pulled up for a moment, her face paling as she absorbed the shock and his rejection hit her. Feeling wooden, she followed him, holding in the hurt, and a tiny piece of her spirit walled itself away from him.
“There are political repercussions to your producing a child that I am not willing risk at this time,” he explained, his eyes facing front.
