He returned to her mouth, covering it hungrily as his hand traced a light path up her leg, along the inside of her thighs—and stopped at the gate to that throbbing need.
She moved slightly, the motion unplanned—and
then his fingers were touching that moist warmth, exploring carefully as he lifted his mouth from hers and stared at her. She knew what he saw—and made no attempt to hide it. The need had become uncontrollable, a wild thing inside her, struggling to be free.
It seemed to her that all the times their eyes had met over these months had now merged into this moment, when no question need be asked because the answer was there.
He was slow and careful even when she wanted him to be fast and reckless, to match her own wild abandon. The pain was brief—gone and forgotten as her body accepted him and made him welcome.
The rhythm built within them, ancient and timeless and all-encompassing. His hardness drove against her softness again and again as a new urgency began to assert itself, a reaching beyond themselves for something unique and powerful.
And then they found it. From one moment to the next, that pounding rhythm became a long, shuddering crescendo that filled their world and then ebbed away slowly, leaving small aftershocks that trembled through them both.
Sated, still enveloped in the soft afterglow, they lay curved about each other, arms and legs entwined haphazardly, as though neither one was quite sure yet which limb belonged to whom. They didn't speak for a long time, since both of them found words to be superfluous.
Jocelyn reached for thoughts, grasped at them, and found them to be elusive. How could so many women have been so wrong? Was it he—this man she’d believed she already loved, although she knew now that she hadn't understood what the word meant?
Or was it magic—Kassid magic? Could there be more that he hadn't told her? A small ripple of uneasiness ran through her, disconnecting her from him for a moment and making her aware of his very different body.
It was magic, she decided, but not Kassid magic. It was the unique magic of love, of becoming one with someone after struggling toward that oneness in words and thought.
She thought she should be saying all this to him, but instead remained silent, listening to his quiet breathing. Was he asleep? The question had barely been asked in her mind before she too fell away into oblivion.
Daken resisted awakening, fought it because the dream was too pleasant. He drifted as long as possible in that strange place between sleep and consciousness, feeling her beside him, an arm resting lightly on his chest, long hair spilling feather-light against his shoulder, a slim leg resting atop his.
But no matter how hard he tried, it was a place be could not remain—and so he awoke and opened bis eyes.
For one brief moment, he felt a surge of icy fear. Dreams, no matter how pleasant, had no place in the waking world—yet she was still there.
He moved slowly, carefully shifting onto his side to stare at her. She made a sleepy, contented sound and accommodated herself to his movement.
The memories began to flood through him. He smiled as he let them surge forth. He felt them with a sense of wonder. Not ever—not even in the beginning—had it been this good with Erina. And yet he’d loved her. But if that had been love—and he was sure it must have been—then what was this, this sense of wholeness?
He continued to stare at her, seeing the woman but thinking now of the empress. What had the gods done to him, giving him this woman he could not keep? And why, as he lay here with her, did he believe that he could?
There were those among them who claimed from time to time to hear the whispers of the gods, but Daken had never been one of them. In fact, he believed that the gods paid them little attention, apart from a distant sort of benevolence. But now it seemed he did hear something—words he strained to hear but couldn’t quite understand.
The whispers of the gods, said those who believed in them, always spoke of good things.
Her dark lashes began to flutter against her fair skin, and then, before he was prepared for it, her emerald eyes were staring at him in shock.
He leaned over to kiss her, then kept his mouth close to hers. "We are real, Jocelyn. This is no dream."
She nodded, unable yet to speak. In that brief, waking moment, she had been certain it was only a dream. Then the memories that had inundated him flowed through her as well. He seemed to understand that, because he remained silent and unmoving.
Then, after a time, he kissed her again and his hand began to trail lightly over her body, raising a pleasant, tingling awareness. She turned on her side and pressed herself against him and felt his arousal with a quickening of her pulse.
This time, it seemed that they moved in slow motion, capturing and holding each sensation. He was more careful still, certain that she must be bruised and sore. She was bolder, both letting him know what she wanted and exploring the still strange terrain of his body with curiosity.
But if the prelude was different, the mind-shattering conclusion was the same—that increasingly rapid and desperate climb to the peak and then the dazzling fall into ecstasy.
They slept again and awoke to sunlight stealing around the edges of the draperies. This awakening was different. Already, they had grown comfortable in each other’s arms. It seemed to them both that they had known no other way—that there could be no other way.
As they shifted arms, legs and bodies, seeking still greater closeness, they heard muted sounds beyond the door—Tassa and Rina. Jocelyn raised her head in sudden alarm, but he drew it down again, claiming her mouth with a lingering kiss.
"They know," he said in a low, husky voice. "We left the dance early, and the door to your bedchamber is open. Our feelings have not been hidden, beloved. If they are surprised, it is only that we’ve waited so long.”
"But what will Rina think?” Jocelyn was putting herself in the girl's place, wondering how she would have felt if she’d discovered that her father had put another woman in her mother's place. Perhaps he had from time to time, but Rina would have had no knowledge of it.
"Rina is very fond of you,” he said without concern, then proceeded to drive all thought from her mind.
It was mid-morning before they left his chamber, and both Rina and Tassa were gone. Daken left, too—and Jocelyn was alone with her thoughts.
For a time, she thought of nothing but that glorious awareness of herself, an awareness given to her by Daken, who had shown her again and again during the night the pleasures her body could provide. Small pieces of that night would fill her mind, leaving her with a voluptuous certainty that this body she lived in had undergone a dramatic transformation.
Still, as that feeling began to subside, all the thoughts she had suppressed rushed in to fill the void. Her worst fears about the Kassid—about Daken himself—had been confirmed. A wolf lived inside the man she loved.
Daken began to emerge in her mind as two men—the gentle lover and the dark Kassid sorcerer. She loved him and knew that the price of that love was acceptance of his differentness. It seemed to her to be not too high a price, and when she was being totally honest with herself, she would admit that his differentness was a part of his attraction— the thrill of the unknown and unknowable.
Tassa returned to the suite as Jocelyn was about to leave, and she discovered to her very great relief that the older woman treated her no differently. She let herself hope now that Rina too would accept what had happened.
But when she returned to the suite late in the day, she found Rina and Daken there, talking quietly. His arm was draped around her shoulder, and the girl had obviously been crying. That rush of heat Jocelyn felt at the sight of Daken cooled quickly as Rina looked up and saw her.
Rina, however, leapt up and ran to Jocelyn, then hugged her tightly. "Don't leave us, Jocelyn. I want you to stay. Father loves you and needs you—and so do I."
Jocelyn held Rina and stared beyond her to Daken, her own pain now growing to meet the girl’s. All through t
he day, she’d thought only of the time when they could return to his bed. Not once had she thought about the future they didn’t have.
"I have explained to her that we love each other, but cannot stay together," Daken said, the pain reflected in his eyes as well. "She will understand in time."
Struggling to keep the anguish from her voice, Jocelyn kissed Rina’s smooth brow. "I love you too, Rina, and I’m glad you want me to stay. But I cannot. Remember that I am the leader of my people as your father is the leader here. You would not want him to give that up—and neither can I."
Rina nodded finally and hugged Jocelyn again, then left them alone. And as the days passed, she seemed to understand—or at least she said nothing more.
Daken’s bedchamber became a place of enchantment, a refuge from the dark future. There, they brought pleasure to each other and to themselves— and lived from one passionate moment to the next.
But there were times—though both tried to hide it—when they stared at each other with haunted expressions. A single word, a sentence left incomplete, a casual reference to the future—any and all these things tormented them by pulling them, however briefly, out of their passion for each other.
The days and weeks passed. After a brief hiatus during the festival, the snows came again. Soon, the hills of snow piled up in the courtyard became so high that men began to shovel it into carts and carry it to the bridge, where they then dumped it into the ravine. But even when the courtyard had been cleared, the bitter cold kept nearly everyone indoors. Even the Kassid had limits to their tolerance for frigid weather.
Jocelyn had assumed that the men who had volunteered to go to the garrison were being delayed by the resumption of bad weather, and so she was surprised when two young men appeared one day in Daken’s suite to say that they had news of the garrison.
As Jocelyn looked into their pale blue eyes, she suddenly realized how it was that they’d survived the trip—and why Daken had said that she could not “travel the way they would take.” Only as wolves could they have made such a journey.
The garrison remained secure, they reported, and Balek spies had discovered that the Menoan force that had captured the Western Road had either
been decimated by the winter weather or had retreated. Only a single squadron remained.
They told her that the garrison commander had received the news of the alliance with great pleasure and had quickly dispatched some Balek volunteers to the city to report the news to Hammad.
Word had also come from the city by a circuitous route that the Ertrians were faring well enough. The storehouses had been well-filled with coal before the Menoans cut off the Western Road, and the winter in Ertria had thus far been milder than usual.
The garrison commander had given them a letter for her from Hammad, but when she asked for it, they hesitated, shooting beseeching glances at Da- ken.
Then she understood even as Daken explained to her that as wolves, they could not carry letters. Hiding her discomfort at being forced to face this dark aspect of the Kassid, she merely nodded as Daken hurried on to explain that they had approached and left the garrison as men.
She wondered silently what the men at the garrison thought when they saw two men walk out of the mountains in the midst of winter—and then return again. Undoubtedly, new legends would be added to the old.
One of the men had read the letter and now repeated it to Jocelyn. Her uncle had assumed the title of regent in her absence. The nobles were behaving no worse than usual—and in a few cases, better, since they feared the war to come.
The court was still in mourning for her father,
who Hammad said had died peacefully with family members and himself in attendance. Near the end, Hammad had written, he had awakened briefly to say that the Kassid would be returning to Ertria.
Jocelyn was glad that he'd died secure in his belief that her mission would be successful, but she wondered if it had been merely a dying man’s hope—or some strange foreknowledge.
The confinement forced upon her by the weather gave Jocelyn far too much time to worry about the future. Daken was increasingly busy, and the council meetings she’d attended were far fewer as he spent more time with his newly appointed military commanders.
So one day, when the snow had given way to brilliant sunshine and deep blue skies, if not to warmer weather, she asked Daken if they could visit the mirror-tower again. He too seemed to want to escape, so they set off late one morning, with Daken carrying a basket containing bread, wine and cheese for their lunch.
Unlike their previous trip, this time Jocelyn found others walking the hallways of the unused portion of the fortress. Daken commented that one could always tell how late in the winter it was by the number of people taking their exercise up here in these remote reaches of the vast fortress.
At one point, Jocelyn heard thundering footsteps approaching from an intersecting hallway and looked at Daken questioningly. But he simply stopped and drew her back against the wall as a large group of young men came running past.
When they had gone, he explained that it was
part of their military training, and what had been a pleasant outing became, for Jocelyn at least, considerably less so. She knew that the men were practicing their swordsmanship and archery in the Great Hall or in the courtyard, but she had avoided watching them just as she avoided anything connected to the future.
Still, it took only something like the sudden appearance of the future warriors to remind her that she could not deny that future completely.
They climbed the final staircase in silence, then entered the circular room. Daken lit the fire and they went out onto the balcony to find two men working on the tower. One of them explained that it had sustained some damage from the winds that had howled around the fortress the previous night, although the great mirror was intact.
Their work was finished by midday, and they all stood in the windy cold peering off at the distant mountains for the daily signals. Before long, they all saw the one long flash of light from the closer fortress: the "all’s well” signal. Then, a few minutes later, the distant mirror at the other fortress began to blink on and off irregularly. This went on for many minutes as the men watched intently. Jocelyn peered at Daken to see if the news were bad, but his expression was impassive. One of the other men grunted unhappily at one point, however.
When the light blinked out for the last time, Daken told her that there’d been a zhakazh—a snow- slide—near their fortress. It was bad enough to delay the arrival of the warriors from that fortress by a week or so in the spring.
"The rest of it was a personal message,” he told her. "Normally, we do not permit those, since there would be too many. But an exception was made in this case. The grandmother of a woman at that fortress is close to death here, and her granddaughter wanted her to know that she has given birth to her first child. That happy news will ease her final days, though I know that she had hoped to live to see her first great-grandchild.
"How does she fare, Sattar?” Daken asked, turning to one of the men.
"Very poorly, Daken. I think this good news will arrive barely in time."
Jocelyn watched as the other man began to pull on the ropes to tilt the mirror and send a signal to the other fortresses. She was thinking again about the wonder of such a device. A sketch of it had already been drawn for her, showing in detail how it was constructed.
Someday, she vowed silently, when we have peace again, I will see that these towers stretch all the way across Ertria—and then even to Balek. Perhaps even into the Dark Mountains themselves.
But then that pain that was never far away these days seized her once again. What good would it do to be able to communicate in such a manner with Daken? It might only make the pain worse.
She had a sharp, sad vision of herself standing on the outer wall of the palace, alone, watching for such a signal to be relayed by the towers that marked the great distance between them.
But she'd becom
e good at hiding this pain from
Daken, as she assumed he was hiding it from her. They talked often about the war to come—but never about its aftermath.
Still, she wasn't quite as adept as usual about hiding it this day, and when the two men had left, Daken drew her into his arms, parting both their heavy cloaks so that the warmth of their bodies could intermingle. No words were exchanged between them. There was no need.
Then she broke away from him, but held onto his hand as she walked over to the edge where she’d had that frightening episode before. When she stopped at the low wall, Daken circled her waist tightly.
“You were right," she exclaimed. “I don’t have that feeling of falling this time.”
They stood there for a time, staring off at the magnificent vista of mountains and deep ravines. Then, as the icy wind picked up, they went back into the circular room where the fire had heated it to a cozy warmth.
They ate their lunch in silence. Jocelyn knew what she was thinking about, but after a time, she began to wonder at his silence. He was better than she was at concealing his pain, though she saw it occasionally in his eyes.
Finally, he raised those eyes to meet hers. When he spoke, his voice was low and uncertain—very unusual for him. She felt herself stiffen involuntarily.
"I was not going to tell you about this, and I know that I may be raising false hopes. But the pain I see in you cuts me to the bone, Jocelyn.” He paused, then went on more quickly.
“There have always been those among us who claim to hear what we call the 'whispers of the gods'. I had never heard such things myself, and I admit that I doubted their existence. I’ve always thought that the gods pay no attention to us as individuals.
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