They sagged against the door, Ildiko boneless in Brishen’s grasp. He rested his forehead on her shoulder, breath hot as it gusted across her breasts. He finally straightened and staggered to the bed, careful not to trip or lose his hold on her.
Their clothes landed in a heap on the floor, and it was only moments before she welcomed him once more into the sanctuary of her body as well as her heart. Afterwards, they lay together, pressed skin to skin from shoulder to ankle.
Brishen picked a broken strand of beads out of her hair and tossed them to the floor. “Your hair—”
“Is a mess,” she finished for him.
“A spectacular mess,” he said. “Your maid has her work cut out for her later.”
Ildiko took no offense. If being loved like this by her husband meant a ruined coif, well, there were some things worth sacrificing. She pulled the edge of one of the sheets toward her and paused at the sight of the jagged rents. She frowned. “You have to stop destroying the bed linens.”
He shrugged, blithely unremorseful. “Only when you stop destroying me.”
They exchanged slow kisses while sunlight seeped through the partially open shutters and bathed their bed. Brishen started to untangle himself from Ildiko to rise and close the shutters.
She stopped him with a hand on his hip. “Wait. I’d like to see you in the sunlight.” He’d had the advantage of twilight’s gloom and the full dark of night to see her—naked, vulnerable, undeniably human. It was only fair that she see him. Naked, never vulnerable, undeniably Kai.
Brishen paused to stare at her for a moment before relaxing into the mattress and rolling on his back. He covered his eyes with his forearm. “As you wish, wife.”
Ildiko peeled the sheets away from where they gathered at his shins. He was completely bare to her, painted in daytime’s golden light.
Beautifully made, lithe and powerful, he reminded her a little of a cat—all sleek muscle beneath skin gray and smooth as the dolphins that rode the bow wave of the Gauri merchant ships sailing into harbor.
“I am no friend to the sun, Ildiko.” His voice was tense, his body as well as he stretched out on the bed.
“That’s unfortunate,” she said softly. “It’s certainly a friend to you.” She traced a line of muscle from his knee to his inner thigh and felt him shiver under her palm. Sunlight filled the room. Ildiko took mercy on him, leaving the bed long enough to close the shutters and pitch the chamber into its usual candlelit-shadows.
Brishen enfolded her in his arms as soon as she returned and rolled her beneath him. Even with most of his weight on his elbows, he pressed her into the mattress, heavy on her. “And what do you think of your dead eel in the daylight?”
Ildiko brushed a feathery strand of his hair away from his eyes. “He pleases me greatly. The handsomest of eels.” His high cheekbones angled sharply under her palms. “So says this hag.”
“Who is most beautiful in the darkness.” Brishen kissed her then, lingering on her mouth for several moments before bestowing more of the fluttering caresses along the edge of her hairline and over the bridge of her nose. He murmured something else against her cheek.
Caught up in the languorous sensations, Ildiko almost missed what he said. She blinked. “Pardon?”
Brishen tucked his head down to nuzzle her cleavage before answering. “If you’re up to it, we will journey from here to Halmatus township tonight. Remember the jeweler I told you about?” She nodded. “He will repair your necklace, and you can see more of my lands than just Saggara and the lake. Some of Serovek’s as well. High Salure is the fortress, but his territory runs a fair length alongside mine.”
Excitement took hold. She’d been at Saggara for months now, consumed with her duties as its new mistress and the all the adjustments living in a Kai household entailed. The short visit to the dye houses on the lake shore had only whetted her curiosity regarding the Kai kingdom and its people. She was eager to learn more. “Is it far?”
“Two hours by horseback through hilly terrain.”
Not far at all. She almost said yes but hesitated, remembering all that Brishen had told her of his conversation with Serovek when they returned from High Salure. “Is it safe?”
His brow stitched into a frown. “You have my shield and protection, Ildiko.”
She smoothed away the lines marring his skin with her thumb. “I’m not just thinking of me.”
He turned his face into her hand and kissed her palm. “I know. You’ve witnessed the Kai in battle. We’re formidable enough, and we protect ourselves and our own.”
That was an understatement. Hard, heavy bones, fangs, claws, and a superior agility, the Kai were uniquely suited for battle.
“You don’t have to go if that is your wish,” he continued at her prolonged silence.
She started. “No! I want to go.” Ildiko had left all that was familiar to her to accompany a stranger who wasn’t even human into an alien kingdom where she became the outsider, the stranger. She had learned, thrived and found both love and friendship. No filthy pack of lawless mercenaries would make her a prisoner in her new home.
Brishen glided a hand down her arm before trekking a path over her collarbones and down to cup a breast. His hips rocked gently on hers, and she spread her thighs so he settled more firmly into the cradle of her body. “It will still be a long journey with the return trip. You should sleep.”
Ildiko looped her arms around his neck and caressed the rope of hair hanging down his back. She gave Brishen a mock scowl. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Now kiss me. We’re wasting good daylight.”
Their laughter soon changed to sighs and whispered encouragements spoken against skin sheened in perspiration. Ildiko embraced her lover, her husband, her best friend and counted herself a most blessed wife.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Brishen hoped he might one day take Ildiko somewhere without a quarter of his regiment accompanying them. Caution, however, dictated that they have an escort. The attack made on their company on the great trade road as they traveled from Pricid to Haradis combined with Serovek’s earlier warnings meant he and Ildiko went nowhere alone outside Saggara.
He had reduced their escort to twenty of his more experienced fighters. Unlike the journey to High Salure, they traveled at night. An unfriendly time for any group of raiders who might think of attacking. While they’d come near Beladine borders, those lands belonged to Serovek whose troops vigilantly patrolled and protected them. An unfriendly place for any who wanted to cause trouble.
Brishen glanced at his wife as she rode beside him. She held a confident seat in the saddle, even with the challenge of navigating the hilly paths that led to Halmatus township in the dark. She wore her heavier cloak for the cold nights, but her head was bare. The red hair, which he at first thought garish but now beautiful, shimmered multiple shades of gray under the moonlight. She’d kept her hood down at his insistence.
“You don’t need this,” he told her earlier as they readied to mount and ride out of Saggara. He pushed back the hood, exposing her braided hair and pale features. He’d spent the last hour before sundown studying her face as she slept next to him. Had he truly ever thought her ugly?
Ildiko tucked a few strands of hair that had come loose from her braid behind her ears. “There will be a lot of stares and talk.”
Brishen took her hand to lightly trace the lines of her palm with one nail. “Let them talk; let them stare. It matters not. Besides, you are the hercegesé, wife of Saggara’s herceges. You hide from no one.”
They crossed a bridge spanning a narrow ravine. Far below, a lazy river wound like a black ribbon to disappear around a bend of sheer rockface. A waterfall’s dull roar sounded nearby, background resonance to the creak of wood under horse hooves as their party rode single file over the bridge.
They arrived in Halmatus shortly before midnight. Built in a sheltered dale, the town glimmered like a nest of fireflies under a tree canopy. Pleased to discover that he’d inadvertent
ly chosen the weekly market night to visit the town, Brishen escorted Ildiko through the narrow streets lined with temporary stalls filled with various wares and food offered by Kai farmers and merchants.
Their presence drew a curious crowd, and the stares and talk Ildiko predicted rested heavy on his shoulders and thick in his ears. Ildiko paid no attention, and instead engaged the various vendors in nearly flawless bast-Kai.
Only once did she hint of her awareness of the town’s singular focus on her. She stepped away from the protection of Brishen’s silhouette so that she was in full view of the crowd. Her closed-lip smile gave away her intent.
“Ildiko,” Brishen warned and blocked the crowd’s view just as her eyes slid toward each other and met on either side of her nose. They slid back in place just as quickly, making Brishen twitch and the Kai soldiers closest to them exclaim under their breaths.
Ildiko sighed. “You’ve ruined a perfectly good opportunity to provide gossip for years to come.”
“And saved a few people from being trampled by those trying to get away from you.” He nudged her toward the next stall. “Try not to start a panic, wife.”
The low sound of her laughter teased his ears and recalled a moment hours earlier when she’d laughed the same way while torturing him with soft kisses planted down the center of his back. His nostrils flared, and he shoved the memory away before his breeches grew uncomfortable and he began searching for a secluded spot where he might swive his wife. Her sorcery shredded his ability to think sensibly.
They found the jeweler’s shop at the end of one of the lanes. Unlike his fellow townsmen, the merchant never revealed shock or surprise at Ildiko’s appearance. He inspected the necklace and broken clasp she presented to him and promised the repair was simple enough. A price and delivery date was agreed upon. A shrewd business man, he offered to show her more of his work. Brishen fled outside to wait by the door.
When Ildiko emerged from the shop, he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “Am I a pauper now?”
She gave him an arch look. “I doubt it. I bought one thing.”
He surveyed her person, noting neither bauble on her neck nor package in her hand. “What is it?”
Ildiko lifted her chin. “You’ll see it when they deliver it with my necklace.”
Word of the herceges’s visit traveled fast through Halmatus, and the town’s mayor was quick to issue an invitation to dine. Anhuset abandoned Brishen and Ildiko to their fate with a salute and a grin. “You’ll find the rest of us at the Crooked Shank tavern where the ale is thick and the company better.”
Her words proved prophetic. The food at the mayor’s home was fair; the company tiresome and ridiculous. Brishen liked the man well enough. The mayor’s wife was another matter. Despite Ildiko’s best efforts to put her at ease, the woman couldn’t stop staring round-eyed at her. Too busy gawking to mind what she was doing, she nearly poured wine into Ildiko’s lap twice.
Brishen breathed a sigh of relief when it was over and they made their escape. Ildiko looked no worse the wear for their trouble. “They didn’t serve scarpatine,” she said. “I consider it a successful meal.”
“Do you want to visit the tavern? I think Anhuset is right about the food and company.”
Ildiko shook her head. “No. I’ll cause too much of a stir. Let our escort enjoy themselves. You can give me a tour of the town, and I’ll have you to myself for once.”
He happily acquiesced to her wishes. Halmatus was small, surrounded by thick woodland. At its outskirts, Brishen paused and took advantage of the brief privacy afforded them. He tilted Ildiko’s face up to his with a gentle thumb under her chin. Her skin glowed lustrous as a pearl in the moonlight.
“Kiss me,” he commanded softly. “I’ve craved the touch of your mouth ever since we left Saggara.”
It didn’t matter to him if all of Halmatus heard his satisfied groans as she made love to him with her lips and the fine caress of her hands. They couldn’t quit this place or get home soon enough to satisfy him. His human wife had become a fire in his blood and spirit, as hot and bright as her red hair.
“We leave them alone for what? Two hours? And now we’re chasing after them like nannies after toddlers.” Anhuset’s waspish tones carried over the whispering lullaby of trees rustling in the breeze.
Ildiko’s mouth drifted over his in a fading kiss. “I think we’re in trouble,” she murmured.
“Fan out and find them,” Anhuset ordered. “Knock on every door if you have to.”
Brishen growled, annoyed and yet pleased by his cousin’s vigilance. He set Ildiko from him and took her hand. “Come. We’ll need to reveal ourselves before she puts the entire town in an uproar.”
Anhuset’s scowl forewarned Brishen he was in for a tongue-lashing. He halted whatever admonishment hovered on her lips. “Thought is often wiser than speech, sha-Anhuset,” he said in his coldest, loftiest tones. “Lest we forget who rules here and who does not.”
Her lips thinned to a tight line, but she bowed, along with the rest of their escort. “Are you ready to depart, Herceges?” she asked in an equally frigid voice. He nodded, and she sent the soldiers off to gather the horses and meet in the town square.
When it was just he, Ildiko and Anhuset, his cousin rounded on him. “Are you trying to worry me into an early death?” she snapped.
“Stop henpecking me,” he snapped back. “I have a wife for that, and even she doesn’t do it.”
Muffled laughter sounded next to him. Ildiko stared at them both with watery eyes and a hand clapped over her mouth. She lowered her hand and compressed her lips in an obvious effort to contain her mirth. “Sorry,” she managed to gasp out between giggles.
Anhuset didn’t share in her amusement. Her expression darkened before she bowed a second time. “I will see you both in the town square.”
Brishen remained unsure if that was a promise or a threat.
“You can trust us to be there, Anhuset,” Ildiko called to her.
“We’ll see,” the other woman said shortly. She strode away, back stiff with outrage.
“She loves you, you know.” Ildiko glanced at Brishen. “She would do anything you asked of her.”
Brishen nodded. Ildiko told him nothing he didn’t already know. “We’re bound to each other by blood and secrets. She’s the child of my father’s sister and the only true sibling I’ve ever had.” He met Ildiko’s gentle gaze and sighed. “She’s also older than me with an unfortunate tendency to either mother me or order me about if I allow it.”
The mayor, his goggle-eyed wife and a bevy of councilmen were in the square to see them off. Brishen and Ildiko bid polite goodbyes and promised another visit soon. The moon had begun her journey toward the horizon by the time they rode the paths that led them back to Saggara.
The ravine and its bridge came into view. Their party had started out from Halmatus in high spirits with much small talk and joking exchanged. The atmosphere slowly changed, their group growing quieter, tenser. The trickle of unease that made the spot between Brishen’s shoulder blades tingle became an icy stream that froze the length of his spine. He edged his horse closer to Ildiko. Anhuset did the same on Ildiko’s other side.
Brishen caught his cousin’s eye and spoke softly, using a pidgin Kai spoken by the lakeside dyers and understood by very few who weren’t Kai. “Do you feel that?”
Anhuset nodded. “We’re being watched.”
They all felt it, a distinct scrutiny edged with malice. All around him, hands eased toward sword pommels and shifted shields into protective position. The horses picked up on their riders’ unease, snorting and prancing their agitation as they rode toward the bridge.
Ildiko’s eyes flicked first to Anhuset, then to Brishen. “What’s wrong?” she asked softly.
Brishen signaled behind her, and two of his men closed the space behind her horse, creating a shield wall of man, metal and steed. It was likely too late to disguise her now. She stood out among them like
a beacon, but better late than not at all.
“Ildiko,” he said in his most casual tone. “Raise your hood as if you’re just keeping the wind off your hair and do exactly as I tell you when I tell you.”
What little color flowed under her pale skin, leached away to a pallor grayed by fear. She did as he instructed, making a show of fussing with her braids before pulling the hood up until her features were hidden.
Brishen loosened the leather guard covering the blade of the hand axe he wore at his hip. The air around them hung thick with tension—an unnatural silence broken only by the steady clop of horse hooves.
A battle cry shattered the stillness, followed by a bright flash of light. Brishen bellowed a curse at the sudden light blindness and turned his face into his hood. His mount slammed into Ildiko’s mare.
“Down, Ildiko!” he bellowed at her, shoving her face toward the mare’s withers, just as a thin ripple of cold air shot a breath away from his face. A thunk sounded, followed by a heavy groan and the creak of a saddle.
They were easy targets for arrows while mounted, and Ildiko cried out when Brishen dragged her off the saddle with him to hit the ground amidst the chaos of soldiers struggling to control panicked horses. They were partially shielded by equine bodies from the pulsing flare of light that left him and his fellow Kai virtually sightless.
Anhuset barreled into him, sword drawn. Her lips were drawn back from her fangs in a grimace. “Beladine!” she shouted just as a volley of arrows rained over them from the trees. “The fletching is Beladine.”
A chorus of howls rang from the shadows. Brishen clutched Ildiko to him, crouched low among the milling horses. Magefinders. The scum had brought mage hounds.
He pried Ildiko off of him and thrust her toward Anhuset. “Take her and get across the bridge. Now!” The arrow volleys were simply the first phase. If he didn’t get her out of here now, she’d die.
Ildiko clutched at him, her strange eyes huge and dark with terror. “No, Brishen!”
Anhuset didn’t hesitate. She wrapped her arm around Ildiko and slung her over her shoulder. Her own expression was as fearful as Ildiko’s and full of rage. “Stay alive,” she ordered before sprinting away with a struggling Ildiko.