by Erica Ridley
He looked absolutely daft, but he’d promised her a night of swiving, so she was determined to play along.
She finished the chocolate. “What mischief are you about now?”
“Let my people go!” he boomed dramatically, then swooped down to snatch the blanket back up when it slid off his hands. “Your people, actually. Not mine.”
“My people?”
His eyes grew serious. “We only have one more shot at this, right? There’s not enough time for both of us to get through the hole before it closes, and there’s no way in hell I’m leaving you behind. But knowing that one last lightsaber exists would eat away at both of us until we went axe-crazy on each other. The only solution is to use it up. Once there’s no more wondering, we can move on. By which I mean swiving.” He wriggled his eyebrows.
She frowned. “You’re going to waste the last flame sword on purpose?”
“Not ‘waste’ it. I got to thinking. That hole is just big enough—and open for just long enough—for one thing to get through. Like my quiver of arrows.”
“You wish to set your arrows free?”
“I wish to set them free.” He nodded his head toward the tree.
She broke out in a sweat. “You wish to toss my parents out in the cold?”
“They’re not your parents anymore,” he said quietly. “They’re ornaments.”
She pushed at him. “You don’t know that!”
“Neither do you. And if they still are your parents, do you really think they’re having a jolly Yuletide strung up on a tree?”
She glared at him. “I no longer wish to swive you.”
Surprise fluttered across his face. “You seriously wouldn’t want to put everyone outside of the curse’s boundary line, if it were in your power to do so?”
“Were they human, I would,” she retorted. “But they’re figurines, and they’re all I have left. Besides, you can’t touch them. You determined that much for yourself. My family will stay right where they are.”
Lance wiggled his fingers beneath the blanket. It promptly slipped off his hands. He snatched it back up before it hit the floor.
“Dragon-proof microfiber,” he said. “If it’s strong enough for a dragon, it might be strong enough for a Christmas tree.”
Marigold’s stomach dropped. He believed he could truly perform this horrible feat. And he meant to!
She dashed around him, blocking the tree with legs spread wide and arms held high, much the same way she’d blocked him from bludgeoning himself against the front door on the day they’d first met.
His face fell. “I thought it was a great plan. I thought you’d love the idea.”
“I abhor the idea.” Her entire body shook. “You cannot ask me to give up what’s left of my family. I have no other reminders of those who loved me. Nothing to call my own. I can’t do it. I won’t.”
His gaze turned calculating. “Would you say they’re the thing you love most in the whole world?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Without a doubt.”
“What about them?” He nodded toward the tree. “Would they say the same about you?”
Her voice hardened. “Papa breaks his word for no one. He’s a king. Yet he broke the oath he made to sell this castle because he loved me so much. And Mama? Mama would die for me. She wouldn’t put me out in the snow, even if I were no more than a painted figurine!”
He let the blanket fall and reached up to unfasten the necklet at his throat. “Remember this?”
She stared at the cord of strung bones. “You thought you knew what it bound you to, and you were wrong. I shan’t take any such risks with the people I love, even if they be nothing more than baubles. How do you think I should feel to espy them tumbled in the snow, their painted faces dripping away with the morning dew once the days grow warmer? Or when they are no longer there at all?”
“Horrible,” he admitted quietly. “But you would have set them free.”
“Mayhap I don’t wish them to be free,” she shouted, fully aware of how selfish that made her sound. Of how selfish she was. The possessiveness was wicked, but at least she spoke true. “They are everyone who has ever known me or loved me. Mayhap I wish to hold fast to their memory forever!”
The moment the words were out of her mouth, she realized what he had been trying to tell her. What he had wanted her to discover on her own. Her fingers slowly unclenched.
“I can’t hold fast forever, can I?” She was certain she could hear her heart breaking. The figurines were all she had left of her former life. Stalwart, she reminded herself over the churning in her belly. A warrior must stay strong. She dipped her head in understanding. “Perchance ’tis time to let them go.”
His gaze was tender. “Only if you wish.”
“’Tis the last thing I wish.” But she knelt to retrieve the blanket.
If this event were to transpire, she must be the one to set them free.
She arranged the blanket over her hands and circled the tree until she found the most recent of the figurines. Tentatively, she reached out her hand. When her blanketed fingers touched the toes of the figurine, an acrid zzzt rent the air—but she suffered nary a spark. She closed her hand around the figurine and eased it from the bough.
“Chaz of New Brunswick,” she said around the lump in her throat. “You were the politest explorer I had the privilege to meet. ’Tis sorry I am to have kept you from your home.”
She carefully placed the figurine in the bottom of Lance’s quiver. Then she turned back to the tree.
“Jimmy the Kid of South Chicago. You danced a mean Charleston and you let me try your machine gun. ’Tis sorry I am that your flight from the Feds met with such disaster.”
She placed him as gently as she could alongside Chaz of New Brunswick in the bottom of the quiver, then crossed o’er to Baron Westinghouse of East Surrey.
By a quarter to midnight, all the figurines were packed away.
All but two.
“I can’t do it,” she whispered brokenly. “They’re my parents. They belong with me.”
Lance kept his silence.
“’Tis Yuletide,” she insisted, ignoring the un-warriorlike break in her voice. “You said yourself. Yule is to be spent with your loved ones.”
Still he said nothing.
“What if they break when they land on the other side? What if they’re all conscious, and they’re watching me throw them away as if they were as worthless as offal? What if I can’t tell them apart once the paint wears away?”
“What if they come back to life?” he asked softly.
Panic rattled through her. “What if they do and then can’t get back in? What if the true curse is watching them walk away, watching them grow old and die, and having to go on living without them?”
He reached for her.
She jerked away before he could touch her.
“Death is a part of life, Princess. Everyone loses someone they love. The only family member I have left is my grandmother, and she no longer recognizes my face.”
But he did still have his grandmother. Terror engulfed Marigold at the thought of relinquishing the last link to her family. “Are you saying this is easy?”
He shook his head. “I’m saying it’s the worst thing that could happen.”
Her throat convulsed. “Your parents…?”
“Dead. I was nine. I’m still not over it.”
She shoved at him. “Then how can you expect me to throw mine away?”
He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Look at them. They’re ornaments on a tree. It’s too late, boo. You’ve already lost them.”
“I haven’t.” But his dagger had struck true. It was too late. She swallowed her pride and the last of her hope. Her parents were gone. She had lost them centuries before. It was time to finally let go.
She whirled away so he wouldn’t see the pain in her eyes. Her movements wooden, she forced herself to arrange the blanket over her hands. As gently as possible, as lovingly as pos
sible, she lifted the lifeless figurine of her mother from the evergreen boughs. The time had come.
“Mama…” Her voice cracked. How did one say good-bye to one’s parents? Her hands shook. She wouldn’t be able to survive this. It was too much to ask of anyone.
She clasped the figurine to her chest and wished her mother could feel her embrace. The tiny figure in her hands was weightless and hollow, a mere mockery of her mother’s memory. And yet placing it atop all the others was like losing her all over again.
Marigold’s body trembled with the need to keep her mother right here, next to her heart. Not in the mass grave overflowing from the quiver. She shuddered. What if this were her last chance to address her mother? Her throat clogged. There was too much to say and she had none of the right words. It was too important a moment to ruin it with the wrong ones, too terrible a loss to contemplate.
She took a deep breath.
“You were a Queen to me even before I knew you were royalty. You praised me when I pleased you, and you loved me even when I didn’t deserve it. ’Tis been my dream since a child to grow into a woman half as strong and good as you. I’d hoped you’d not be taken from me until I were much, much older. ’Tis sorry I am to have brought this curse upon us. I hope in heaven, you can forgive me.”
Her voice broke. She placed her mother atop the pile with trembling fingers.
Then she turned to the final figurine. After a long moment, she found the strength to lift him from the bough and cradle the lifeless doll in the palms of her hands.
“Papa…” But there were no words to say. She had loved him unconditionally. Their love had been the downfall of them all. “’Tis sorry I am, Papa. Sorrier than you could ever know. Forgive me.”
She placed him atop the pile.
The clock struck midnight.
She twined the necklet around her parents’ necks. If being freed from the castle restored them to life, mayhap the necklet would help keep them safe.
The second bell rang.
Lance handed her the last of the cylinders.
The third bell rang.
She hesitated. This was the final reckoning. If she aimed away from the wall, the explosive could never be used again. She could keep her family.
The fourth bell rang.
He made no move to stop her, no move to force her. No move at all. The choice had to be hers. But it was too difficult a path to choose.
The fifth bell rang.
Courage. She aimed the cylinder at the outer wall. Yet she could not bring herself to press the trigger.
The sixth bell rang.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the quiver of empty bodies, to the tree towering over them, to the entire castle. “None of you deserved this.”
The seventh bell rang.
She widened her stance and steadied her aim. She prayed for a miracle.
The eighth bell rang.
She pressed the button. Cannon fire echoed through the night as lightning filled the chamber.
The ninth bell rang.
A hole to the outer world had been blasted in the ice. Time was running out.
The tenth bell rang.
Lance handed her the quiver. Her heart twisted. The leather sleeve weighed far too little to contain the souls of everyone she had ever cared about.
The eleventh bell rang.
She dashed to the gaping ice and thrust the quiver through. When it fell to the ground, her parents slid free, landing sideways in the snow with their painted faces tied together.
The twelfth bell rang.
The figurines were still there. Unmoving. Lifeless. No magic remained. She turned and threw herself into Lance’s arms.
Her parents were truly gone.
Chapter 12
“Take me away,” Marigold whispered into Lance’s chest, her eyes shut tight. “I cannot bear to see them jumbled upon the snow like a pile of worthless dolls.”
Her knight scooped her into his arms and pressed his lips against her hair. He didn’t try to talk. He had lost his family, too. He knew there were no words to be said.
She held him tighter.
He did not carry her to her bedchamber, as she had expected, but rather back up to the observatory. She nodded at the rightness of his choice. It seemed fitting. They had begun the evening lying beneath the stars, and they would greet the morrow the same way.
The observatory was cold as ever, since it held no fireplace for light or heat, but the cushions were soft and she found warmth in Lance’s arms. He held her close, even though she was too numb to weep. Kept her close, even when she finally did. She burrowed her face in his chest. Eventually she calmed, and the only sound was the strong, steady beating of his heart.
“It gets better?” she asked quietly.
He laid his cheek against the top of her head. “So I’m told.”
She nodded. She understood what hadn’t been said. Of course, it didn’t get better. How could it? One simply continued living.
Snow began to fall, obscuring the view of the stars.
He brushed the tendrils of hair from her face. “If the snow keeps up, it’ll be pitch-black in no time. Should we go back down to the fire?”
“Nay.” Fire could not stave off the horrible emptiness at having lost her family. But mayhap love could. She wriggled upward until her face was aligned with his. “Let it snow.”
She could see little more than his profile in the waning moonlight, but her mouth found his on the first try. She kissed him hungrily, her mouth needy, her tongue demanding.
He responded in kind, showing her with his body everything she already suspected was in his heart.
She rolled atop him, arching away only far enough to rip the buttons from his tunic, to tear the fabric from his shoulders. When he didn’t immediately reach for her bodice, she loosened the ribbons herself. She pulled the bodice and the petticoat over her head and flung them toward the solid ice of the wall.
She was naked now, save for silk hose gartered above each knee and a pair of thin leather slippers. He, on the other hand, was swathed in far too much clothing. She yanked him into a seated position, her legs about his waist, and pulled the tunic off his person. She struggled at first with the strange closure of his trousers, but managed to undo those as well. She pushed him onto his back so she could slide them down his legs.
Tonight, she did not wish solely to receive. She had lost her family, but she hadn’t lost Lance. He was her family now. And she wished to be his completely.
She untied his shoes and sent them flying across the chamber, along with her own. His stockings, gone. His trousers, gone. His braies, gone. Now they were two naked bodies, tangled together beneath the waning moonlight. Two hearts about to be united.
He cradled the side of her face as if his thoughts mirrored hers. Words neither of them dared to speak aloud.
She climbed back atop him. It had been far too long since last they’d kissed.
His mouth was as hungry as hers, his hands as warm and insistent upon her body. He lowered his lips to her throat, and lifted her higher until he was suckling at her breast. Naked, there was no barrier between the long ridge of his shaft and the cleft between her legs. Already she could feel his hard length become slick with her wetness. She wished to join their bodies as one. Only then would she be holding him tightly enough. She wanted to stay in his arms for the rest of eternity.
She moved her hand between them and positioned him for entry. He gripped her hips as if to stop her from moving too quickly. She kissed his lips in protest. She was past ready. She couldn’t have him fast enough. She needed to feel him within her. Needed him to know without a doubt that she was his completely.
When the tip of his arousal nudged inside her, he loosened his hold on her hips and returned his attentions to pleasing her breasts. It was more than enough pleasure to distract her from the quick twinge of pain. She gasped at the dual sensation of his tongue laving her nipple as his shaft slowly impaled her below. With every inch,
he suckled her harder. And with every shudder of pleasure from his ministrations, she sank even lower onto his shaft, until their bodies locked tight together.
Her heart soared. She hadn’t been waiting for this. She had been waiting for him. This was more than mere swiving. This was a love that would last forever.
She began to rock against him, moving her hips tentatively. With the very first movement came a strange rush of pleasure at the fullness deep inside. She had him pinned beneath her, his hips trapped between her thighs. Captive. And yet her body rocked with the movement of his hips, with every thrust of his powerful thighs. His body was so strong, his touch so tender. Perhaps she was the captive. She could not help but surrender. Her heart belonged to him.
The faster she rode him, the more the pressure seemed to build. And yet when she slowed, when she lifted and fell in long, deliberate slides, her muscles clenched around him as if the bliss he’d shown her with his fingers was almost within reach. Her mouth gasped into the night air at his fingers cupping her rear, the rasp of his tongue across her nipples.
She wanted to give him everything. To hold no part of herself back. She leaned backward, briefly lifting her breast from the temptation of his mouth to drive him deeper within her, to gasp at the heady fullness. He was hers. Now and forever.
His fingers were on her hips, coaxing her, guiding her as she rode him. He slid his thumb to the wet heat where their bodies joined, stoking her ever hotter with each swirl of his finger against the sensitive spot just above where his body met hers. The pressure was back, building higher than before, stronger, faster. She gripped his arms and held on tight. The first time, he had given her pleasure. From now on, they would find it together.
He drove into her again and again, his thumb working its magic. Her hips rose and fell, grinding against him, seeking the thick strength of his shaft, the intoxicating pleasure radiating from his finger. She was his. Her body knew it as well as her heart.
