Even now, asleep, she could almost pass for fourteen years of age, as she had been on that night, though the transformation she had undergone had altered her inexorably in the eyes of the world. But in Ashe’s eyes, the simplicity of Emily’s sweet face wrung his heart even more tightly than the enchanting beauty of the woman he had fallen in love with as Rhapsody, the woman, queen, and Lady she was when awake.
The woman over whom, unlike him, Time seemed to have no dominion.
He gazed at his wife, backlit by the dancing flames of the fire, remembering each moment of that first night again, and each moment of every encounter since. Through a millennium of life and death, brutal war and a blessedly extended peacetime, the birth of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, the passings of old friends and beloved family members, they had clung to one another, sharing a soul, uniting and rebuilding an empire, an Alliance, and, above all else, a family that was the entirety of his world.
And all of it had begun on a warm summer-turning-to-autumn night, a night almost exactly like this one, with his first sight of the woman who stood before him now, looking at him with the same wonder he still saw in her gleaming eyes.
He blinked. All of the thoughts, and all of the memories, had occurred within a single beat of each of their hearts.
In the next heartbeat, they spoke simultaneously, their words tumbling over those of the other.
“I love you.” “Are you hungry?”
They laughed together, and then spoke once more, their words clashing again.
“Yes, but not for supper—yet.” “I love you, too.”
Rhapsody gave him the buttonhook and held up her hand. “Hold that thought a moment,” she said. She took the bouquet to the small kitchen area, put the flowers in water, then walked to the fireplace, where she stirred the pot hanging above it, releasing glorious, savory odors into the air of the small cabin and causing Ashe’s mouth to water. She diminished the fire to coals with a single word, then returned to where he stood near the door.
“I’m all yours,” she said, looking deeply into his eyes.
Ashe stepped forward, watching her intently. He came within a hairsbreadth of her, then raised his hand in the air before her.
“May I touch you?” he asked quietly. Like his first question, it was an old tradition, a promise made after one of her first extensions of forgiveness to him, long ago, on the banks of the Tar’afel River, before they had become lovers, when he had swept her off her feet against her will, and had received a surprisingly stunning blow that rocked his head back in return. At the time, it had served as proof that he understood their boundaries. Now that there were no boundaries between them, it was often the last thing he said before all talking became unnecessary.
“Yes. Please.” Rhapsody’s glittering smile resolved to something deeper. She turned around, away from him, to face the fire, pulling the hair away from the nape of her neck, around which a simple golden locket still hung.
The weariness of age disappeared along with the soreness in Ashe’s joints as Rhapsody’s innate music, so recently painfully absent from his life, enfolded him, wrapping him in bliss. He rested his hand just below her ear and traced a loose curl of her hair to her shoulder, feeling the fire in her skin respond with warmth beneath his touch. He inhaled happily, reveling in the sweet familiarity of her scent, then set briskly about employing the buttonhook, gently prying his wife free of the gown that still kept the dragon fascinated, until it fell away from her gleaming shoulders and back, all the way to her waist.
He followed the path his hand had traced with his lips, feeling his blood begin to hum with excitement as a deepening passion began to consume him.
Rhapsody looked back over her shoulder and smiled as the trail of his kisses swept up her spine to the base of her neck again. Ashe, lost already in her scent, her warmth, met the gleam in her eyes with his own and kissed her at last, taking her lips as gently as he could manage, then with more intensity, turning her to face him as the fire behind them grew, matching her breathing.
She reached up and entwined her arms around his neck, causing the gown to fall to the floor at her feet, and took a step back, pulling him down with her onto the rug that was bathed in the light splashing on the stone floor before the now-roaring fire.
All of Ashe’s restraint, his control of the dragon within his blood, abandoned him. The centuries of aging and damage to his body seemed to fall away, leaving him giddy, happily vulnerable, lost utterly in the woman beneath him. Time and space became suspended; it seemed like hours and at the same time only a few moments before he came back to awareness, naked, breathing heavily, bathed in sweat, spent, his arousal sated, his soul satisfied, his heart full, drowning in love.
His wife in his arms, clinging to him, her heart beating in time with his.
Finally, as their ardor cooled, their breathing slowed, Rhapsody sighed beneath him and stretched. She leaned up on her elbows, kissed him warmly, and rested her forehead against his.
“Now are you ready for supper?”
Ashe sighed comically.
“I suppose I could be forced—” He curled up, laughing, as she poked him under the arm and slid out from beneath him. She rolled gracefully to one side and stood, using training in the battlefield skill of a horseman’s rollout, kissed him on the top of the head, then started over to the fire.
She froze in her tracks, chilled by the sound of his gasp of horror.
He had seen the scratches that scored her back—in blood, blood that was also on his hands.
9
“What’s the matter?”
The look of devastation on Ashe’s face caused Rhapsody’s heart to sink suddenly. The draconic pupils in her husband’s eyes were expanding, even in the light of the fire. He could barely form the words.
“Your back—I’ve gouged you.”
Rhapsody’s forehead furrowed, and she looked over her shoulder. “You have?”
Ashe nodded, rising slowly from the floor of the turf hut. “Aria, I’m so sorry.”
In response, Rhapsody walked to the small closet that had always been part of the tiny house and opened the door. She examined her back in the looking glass hanging on the door, then chuckled.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Sam, that’s nothing. Be quiet a moment,” she said as he started to speak. She chanted a soft healing roundelay as she reached farther into the small closet and pulled out his bathrobe and her dressing gown, then looked back over her shoulder again. She came to him and handed him the robe.
“All better,” she said briskly. When her husband just stared at her, she turned her back to show him her newly healed skin, then pulled on her dressing gown. “If you’ll pour the wine, I’ll serve supper.”
“I can’t believe you are dismissing what just happened as if it were nothing,” Ashe said, cinching the belt of his robe and looking around for the bottle.
“It’s the red over on the windowsill,” Rhapsody said as she ladled the stew into two bowls. “And I can’t believe that you are worrying one more moment about it.”
“I—harmed you, Rhapsody, injured you; the dragon is overzealous again—”
The Lady Cymrian set the bowls in their places, then stood up and crossed her arms in front of her, looking at him with a mixture of fondness and disbelief.
“In a thousand years of spectacular lovemaking, there have been surprisingly few bumps and bruises, Sam, largely owing to your impressive agility, but there have been some,” she said humorously, her tone gentle. “We’ve both endured an occasional scratch or two, rug burns, insect bites, even a splinter, especially when utilizing the floor of a turf hut, rocks by the shoreline, or some other rough surface. If I recall correctly, on the two hundredth anniversary of our formal wedding, a collision of our foreheads during vigorous knobbing against a pillar in the Great Hall of Highmeadow after everyone else had left resulted in a rather impressive black eye for you—am I wrong?”
Ashe’s despair tempered and he
chuckled. “No. You are never wrong.”
“Well, now you’re just trying to gain points with sweet talk you don’t really mean,” she scolded playfully. Her teasing smile faded to a warmer one. “That collision also resulted in Elienne.”
Ashe’s smile matched hers. “Indeed. Well worth the black eye.”
“So stop fretting.” She returned to the sideboard and brought the rest of the food to the table while he poured the wine.
She touched the wicks of the candles as he pulled out her chair for her, snapping them to life, then sat as he pushed it back in and took his seat. The music grew slightly louder as they set about dining in relative silence, smiling at each other and discussing the state of the Alliance between courses.
“How was Tyrian?” Ashe asked as Rhapsody rose to bring forth the dessert.
“The realm is in splendid shape, prosperous, peaceful, anticipating a good growing season, a bountiful harvest, and fine weather for the most part. The healing centers are functioning well, and are being visited by healers from far corners of the world.” Rhapsody carefully sliced the torte and put a large piece on his plate. “Structurally, agriculturally, culturally, militarily, and spiritually, all seems right with the world there. Rial is still doing a magnificent job as viceroy, though I suspect he will want to step away and rest soon.”
“And the meeting of Namers?”
Rhapsody’s eyes sparkled.
“That was amazing,” she said, taking her fork to her own piece of cake. “I am so encouraged about the state of the lore, not only among Lirin Namers, but with those who preserve it in other races and cultures, too. The Repository is still ringing with some of the most glorious tales and songs; the Sea Mages were delighted with the new Maritime wing, where we did two whole days cataloguing and sharing sea chanteys. And you would have been incredibly proud of Meridion, Sam; his address and his work on the symposium were first-rate. Speaking objectively, he’s by far the most gifted Namer in the Known World.”
“I am always incredibly proud of him, and of all our children, and the Grands and Greats,” Ashe said, folding his napkin and laying it beside his plate. “You and God, the One, the All, have blessed me with a family I could never have even begun to imagine, given the one I came from. I thank Him each day for giving me the sense to have listened to you about having one of our own.”
Rhapsody laughed and rose to clear the dishes. “You had a bit of a hand in making that family what it is, too,” she said. “The best proof I can recall of the wisdom of deciding what you want the outcome of something to be, and then making it happen.”
“I’ve already admitted that you are never wrong,” Ashe said, gathering the dishes she left behind. “Shall I wash or dry?”
Rhapsody was already pumping water into the sink near the wall. “Why don’t you dry and put away tonight? I swear I am shrinking; I had trouble getting some of the serving pieces down from the top shelves this afternoon.”
A pounding hum behind Ashe’s eyes made him stop for a moment; the dragon, which had settled into dormancy after their lovemaking and had been abashed into silence at the sight of the scratches and her blood beneath his fingernails, was beginning to rise again. “Can we set them to soak for now, Aria? We need to talk more seriously.”
Rhapsody sighed, but did not turn to face him.
“Are we going to have the anniversary discussion now, then?”
Ashe swallowed, struggling to contain the draconic voice that was growing louder in his ears.
“Do you begrudge me?”
Rhapsody touched the cold soapy water, releasing her fire lore to raise its temperature to just short of boiling. Then she turned and gave him a reassuring smile that carried over into her tone.
“Not at all. I’m grateful you are willing to limit the discussion to once a year—I know it’s painful to have to wait so long.”
He put his load of plates into the water, wiped his hands, then took her into his arms and kissed her.
“If you would acquiesce, we could stop talking about it.”
Rhapsody smiled, but Ashe could almost see the lump that had formed in her throat.
“If I acquiesce, we will stop talking altogether.”
“I don’t believe that’s so,” he said lightly. “When my father undertook this transition, he was often in the ether nearby, and able to speak to me. He came to the Cymrian Council, witnessed our investiture and wedding—”
He stopped as her eyes filled with tears.
“I’m sorry, Aria,” he said as he drew her closer, a gesture meant to both comfort her and spare himself the sight of her crying. “I know it pains you to hear this.”
“It does,” she said to his shoulder, “but it also pains me to hear the suffering in your voice and to know that you are unhappy.”
He pulled back and took her face in his hands.
“I have never said that I am unhappy,” he said, looking deep into her eyes to assure her of the veracity of his words. “How can anyone as blessed as I have been be unhappy—be anything but grateful?”
She said nothing, but her eyes reflected an even deeper sorrow. Ashe sighed dispiritedly and pulled her close again, resting her head on his shoulder and caressing her recently healed back.
For the past twenty or so years this had been a hallmark of most of their secret-wedding anniversary celebrations in the tiny turf hut, an agonizing discussion that they had agreed to limit to once a year.
It had begun with a request he had made two decades before out of nowhere in the aftermath of an especially tender evening celebrating just such an anniversary. Faced with his own painful aging and approaching mortality, the persistent rise and increasing unpredictability of the dragon within him, and his unspoken fear that the beast in his blood would inadvertently harm her, their children, or the continent, he had casually suggested that he consider undertaking the same transition from wyrmkin to wyrm that Llauron, his father, had undergone.
Llauron had made the decision, just prior to meeting Rhapsody, to forswear his humanity in favor of entering an elemental state and become a pure dragon. He had manipulated Rhapsody, by means of a false death, into using Daystar Clarion, the elemental sword of starfire that she carried as the Iliachenva’ar, to light his funeral pyre with the sword, the action that made his transition to an elemental state possible. Llauron, forever after in elemental wyrm form, later had warned her at the Cymrian Council where she and Ashe announced the date of their public wedding of what would happen in the future.
Rhapsody, I must ask you to remember something.
Yes?
Whether you realize it now or not, for all that you hated our last interaction, you will be faced one day with the same situation again.
What does that mean?
It means that when you marry a man who is also a dragon, one day you will find that he is in need of becoming one or the other. If he chooses to let his human side win, you will eventually understand the pain of being widowed, as I have. And if he takes the path I chose, well, you have had a window into what both of you must do. I don’t mean to impinge on your happiness in any way, my dear, but these are the realities of the family you are about to marry into. I just don’t want you to wake up one day and feel you were misled.
Rhapsody, who had been tremendously traumatized to discover she had essentially burned Llauron alive, had greatly resented being so misled. She had struggled to keep her voice calm and as anger-free as possible.
Goodbye, Llauron, she had said. I’ll see you at the wedding, I expect, or at least feel your presence.
Now her father-in-law’s prediction was coming to pass.
That first night twenty years before, Rhapsody had listened while Ashe laid out his proposal with the same serene look on her face as was usually in place, though her eyes had kindled from emerald green to the color of spring grass. When he had finished explaining his idea, she had asked but one question of him: Is this an obscene joke?
At the shock on his face
that followed her question, she had risen from the bed, pulled on her dressing gown, and run from the turf hut. The sounds of her retching, followed by sobbing of a magnitude he had almost forgotten she was capable of, her despair filling the crabapple grove with a howling wind and causing the waterfall to roar in accusation, had appalled him so greatly that he had let the subject pass for the next three years.
Quite possibly that was because he knew even a thousand years’ time had not healed her from the nightmares, remembering the part she had been manipulated into playing in Llauron’s transition.
And his own complicity in it.
The avoidance of the discussion had resulted in the ability to sincerely wish her happy anniversary during those next three years, and a shattering frustration that the dragon within his blood exploited in his silence, nearly driving him insane. Finally the topic returned at his insistence, and her acceptance, of the need to at least ponder the possibility.
In his arms, Rhapsody inhaled deeply. “Do you have something new to add this year?”
Ashe swallowed the dragon’s ire and waited until his response could sound considered. “Not really—do you?”
His wife pulled gently out of his arms. “As a matter of fact, yes,” she said. “A few things. Can we sit?”
Ashe smiled and kissed her. “As my lady commands.”
Rhapsody’s face was thoughtful. “I do not command you, m’lord,” she said seriously. “I merely asked. The peril of misspeaking during these discussions, especially for me, is immense. Please forgive me if I err on the side of cautious speech; I am so terribly afraid.” Her eyes were mild, but Ashe could sense she was clenching her jaw to try to stop her chin from trembling, and he cursed himself silently.
She sat down on the bed.
“After Meridion and I took care of our responsibilities at the Tree, I went to see your great-grandmother.”