The Queen's Consorts (22 page)

“If it helps, know I’ll never betray you.”

“I know, Tary.” Calder leaned into Taryen at his proclamation. Their lips brushed, soft and featherlight, as if they suddenly needed the connection. Calder’s hand slid to the back of Taryen’s neck, pulling him closer, and Sari saw his tongue push into Taryen’s mouth before he pulled back and breathed against his lips. “I love you.”

Taryen just groaned in response and leaned in for another kiss, and Sari could see their tongues brushing before they practically crushed her between them. Not that she minded, especially when Calder pulled away from Taryen, only to look down at Sari with a gaze that was wild and completely unhinged from the usually in-control man she’d gotten used to.

He bent down and kissed her without warning, and she opened her mouth to the thrust of his tongue as a spiraling tidal wave of want started to destroy the last of her sanity. When Taryen’s arms fell slack, she pushed away from him, and her feet touched the ground without breaking the kiss, because it felt like a lifeline. She clasped Calder’s robes and stood on her toes to feel as much of him as possible against her. She was as aware of Taryen behind her, holding her up when she would have slipped out of Calder’s arms and fallen to her knees in front of him.

As it was, she was pulling more buttons undone and then running her hands over the flesh she revealed. She wanted to taste as much of him as possible. She wanted to feel the warm slide of his cock in her mouth, stretching her lips wide, because she knew how thick he was.

“I want to see that.” Taryen moaned behind her as he leaned down and bit at the curve of her neck, rougher than she expected, but it only fueled the fire as his hands slid up to cup her breasts.
“The idea of Calder in your mouth.
Gods.
You look amazing when you use your mouth on a male, did you know that, Sari?
Truly regal.”

Sari realized she’d been talking out loud between heated, breathless kisses, confessing all her darkest desires.

Then Calder wrapped an arm around Taryen, pulling the three of them tightly together, and whispered in her ear. “Just imagine what it’d look like sliding in your pussy instead of your mouth. That’s what I want to see.”

Sari started to slip between them, because she wanted to get to her knees. She’d gotten Calder’s robes down to the top ridges of his abdominal muscles. His cock was so close, and she needed to taste him. She pressed her face against the outline of it through the robes as her fingers fumbled with the damn buttons. She almost came without stimulation when Calder’s hand threaded into her hair, holding her to him rather than pushing her away.

“You three!
Halt.”

Sari nearly fell onto her back with how quickly Taryen spun around. Just as swiftly, Calder swooped down, picked her up, and tossed her over his shoulder like she was a bag of grain.

Sari heard the thump of bare feet against the ground as Taryen ran, and then the clink of picking up a sword.
Had they really just been about to strip down and make love under the moonlight right out there in the open?

“Who are you, brother? Why are you wearing servant robes? Show yourself!” the intruder demanded; then just as quickly he gasped.
“Taryen!
The entire Sacred City is looking for you. They say—”

“You chose a bad night to patrol the south side.” Taryen sighed, and then Sari heard a scream that made her cringe.

She couldn’t think about it more than that, because Calder was running, his free arm trailing along the moss-covered wall, his other one tight across her thighs. All the blood was rushing to Sari’s head. She thought she might be sick, but then there was a strange cracking sound and the bizarre
click, click, click
of a solid wall breaking apart from the other bricks. She turned her head, watching in amazement as it separated and started to slide to the side to reveal a dark, cavernous space behind it. She couldn’t even stop to think what sort of horrible crawly creatures would be in there before Calder dashed in away from the moonlight. The tunnel was so dark Sari felt as if she had just gone blind.

Then Taryen’s voice bounced off the stone behind them. “I didn’t kill him.”

“What?” Calder turned toward the sound of the voice.
“Why the hell not?
Your gifts aren’t supposed to affect your duties to her!”

“It wasn’t that.” Taryen sounded frantic.

“She said protect her at all costs!”

“She also said to let the soldiers live.”

“Fuck!”

“You really shouldn’t swear in her presence. She’s of the gods,” Taryen reminded him once more and then groaned. “I caught him in the shoulder, and then I knocked him unconscious. He didn’t see me open the tunnel.”

Calder was quiet for a long moment before he sighed in defeat and let Sari slide off his shoulder. Then he wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close. “Are you all right?”

Sari blinked, trying to see past the darkness. When she was with Calder and Taryen, touching them, things felt clear, but everything else was lost in her mind. “I feel confused. Where are we?”

“We know these tunnels. We spent lots of time in them when we were younger. Come on.” Calder wrapped an arm around her waist as if knowing she was shaky. “Do you want me to carry you again?”

She shook her head, even though he couldn’t see it. Words felt thick on her tongue, so she just followed, hanging on to Calder in fear of losing him in the darkness. Then Taryen came up behind her, wrapping an arm around her on the other side. “It’s not far.”

The journey they took was clearly downward, deeper and deeper under the city.
After a while in the darkness, Calder’s promise of not far was starting to feel like a lie.
Sari didn’t know how they were navigating, but then they’d talk among themselves, and Sari knew if she hadn’t been drugged, she might have figured out the riddle of the blackened tunnels because she was usually quite clever with problems like this.

“Three notches.
Turn left in six paces,” Calder called as his hand ran along the side wall.

“We could rest in the supply closest four turns down.”

“No. Where we stop is where we’ll stay, and you know it. We’re going to the queen’s chamber. We’re doing this right if it kills us.”

“It’s at the center of the city. We should have attempted to go through our rooms.”

“Trust me, if you’d have seen our rooms, you’d know how impossible that was.” Calder huffed. “This is the only way.
Two notches.
Turn left in four paces.”

Sari was silent, still remembering her solemn oath to Taryen. Though she’d broken her word a few times, she thought she’d done fairly well with keeping quiet. It took them forever to navigate through the tunnels. The air was cool. The smell was strange. Moss, mixed with something musty, almost sulphur like.

Then, unexpectedly, the air got clearer, less stifling, and it almost felt like a breeze was hitting her face. The ground had leveled out rather than taking that steady downward slope.

“We’re here.” Calder’s voice reverberated so intensely Sari turned around in bewilderment, realizing they had stepped out of the tunnels and were now in a huge, open space underneath the city. He pulled her along as he walked against the wall that now seemed to be curving outward, his fingers still tracing against the stone until he gave a grunt of triumph. “Found it.”

Again she heard the strange sound of a wall
separating,
the grate of pulleys opening the hidden door, but it was still so dark she could see nothing. Calder pulled her into the hidden room and then let her go. “Taryen, protect her. I’ll take care of light.”

Sari turned around, still fighting to get her bearings. There was a strange bubbling somewhere, but she couldn’t place the direction of the sound because of the echoing. It took Taryen a second to find her, making it obvious he was as blind as she was. Sari had honestly started wondering about it, since he and Calder navigated the sheer blackness so effortlessly. When Taryen wrapped his arms around her, she leaned into him and took a shuddering breath. It felt like they had been walking forever. Her head was starting to throb, and her legs were weak. She rested her cheek against his chest when the strike of a match and the flare of light made Sari wince after being sightless for so long.

She had to blink several times before she caught her first sight of the room, and it wasn’t like she was expecting. The light was still dim, but she looked in amazement at the millions of mosaic tiles that created images all over the walls. Then she tilted her head up, seeing that they covered the ceiling as well.

As Calder walked around the circular room, lighting the dozens of candles on the wall and on top of expensive dressers and cabinets, the flickering light slowly revealed more and more of this secret hiding place.
She saw a small door off to the left that obviously led to a washroom. In the center of the room was a large bed that looked clean and made, with linens in the queen’s colors of rich crimson and gold. Sari eyed it and then turned to look at Taryen longingly. She could see the yearning in his gaze, and without thought they both started walking toward the bed.

“Don’t do anything yet,” Calder told them warningly, as if reading both their minds. “Let me at least finish with the light so we won’t be bothered with it later. We only get one first time, and I’m not going to let Laysa ruin it.”

Sari took a shuddering breath, hearing in Calder’s tone how important it was to him that this strange bond the three of them shared be consummated in the right way. The idea of Laysa somehow cheapening it or forcing them to rush through what seemed very significant bothered her too, so she searched for her strength. Taryen tightened his arms around her, obviously doing the same.

“When we were young,
Darin
used to encourage us to play in the tunnels,” Taryen told Sari, clearly attempting to distract both of them and heed Calder’s words, and she went along with it because she loved the way his voice sounded. When she looked up at him expectantly, desperate for the distraction, he went on. “We keep it clean in here. We keep it stocked with supplies and food.
It’s
part of the duties Darin handed over to us when we came of age at seventeen. This room was built over eight hundred cycles ago, after the raid on Queen Gelenita when both of her consorts died protecting her. In her mourning, she created a hiding place, somewhere a queen could go instead of sacrificing the ones she loved for the sun. See. There they are, under the Tree of Good Fortune in the courtyard.”

Sari looked to where he was
pointing,
recognizing the dried-up tree in the courtyard of the Sacred City, only in this image the tree was healthy and full of life. “What happened to her after they died?”

“Don’t you know her story?” Taryen asked.

Sari didn’t have much history in her schooling, but rather than explain she just shook her head.

“She died of a broken heart,” Taryen said sadly. “She wilted without the ones who were meant to serve her by her side. She never even got to see the tunnels finished.”

“That’s a sad tale,” Sari whispered as she looked at the image of a young queen, sitting in the lap of one of her consorts. The other lay stretched out under the branches of the huge tree, his head resting on her knee as they enjoyed a beautiful, carefree spring day. Never before had the romance of their customs touched her like they did now. “That was a horrible way for her to die.”

“History has many tragic stories.” Taryen leaned down and pressed a kiss against the curve of her neck reassuringly. “We both know power will always make violent enemies. Sometimes they win the battles, but for some reason, they always lose the war. The sun is hope, and hope will always triumph over greed.”

Sari turned and looked up at him. “Do you believe that?”

“Taryen’s fanciful like that. I have no idea why.” Calder laughed as he walked through an arched doorway that led to another part of the chamber, his voice resonating over the strike of a match. “In my experience, wealth and power will always outweigh the strength of hope.”

All the candles made the light look alive as they danced over all the mosaic images of different queens and their consorts. The artistic style changed from picture to picture, making it obvious this area was a work in progress. Some of the scenes were beautiful, others were tragic, and seeing the contradiction, she asked Taryen, “Where are you and Calder?”

“Here.”

He pulled her out of the bedroom and through the tiled archway into the second part of the chamber. The flickering light revealed a large, rounded bath in the ground bubbling with a life of its own. Steam rose up out of it, swirling in the candlelight, giving a mystical, forbidden feel to an already bizarre night.

Taryen pointed to an image in the corner, next to a sectioned-off spot where the tile was only black, as if waiting for the next story to tell. “There we are.”

Sari stared at the image of Calder and Taryen under the dying tree, looking up to a stormy sky, and felt a pang in her chest. “You’re young.”

“Darin had it commissioned by the royal artists when we were fourteen.”

“A bad time for you,” Sari remembered.

“Indeed,” Taryen agreed. “I think this was his way of giving us hope.”

“Darin’s about as good at creating hope as I am,” Calder said cynically as he lit the last candle and then turned to them. His voice dropped, and his gaze ran over the two of them longingly. “I’ve got a better story to tell. Would you like to hear it?”

Sari recognized the jolt of passion, and it triggered the same thing in her. Alone and hidden from the world with only Taryen and Calder for company in this steamy, secret room, nothing else seemed to matter.

She nodded. “Yes, please.”

Taryen agreed by stepping behind Sari and pulling down her hood. He brushed her hair aside and held her tight, as if anticipating his role in Calder’s story.

“Imagine for a moment, three young people thrust together by destiny.
Bound since birth by laws of tradition and nature.”
Calder’s voice was still low and husky with the promise of pleasure. “There wasn’t supposed to be a moment that they lived apart. The consorts were rushed to the Sacred City within days of their birth, for fear a newborn princess, with only her mother and fathers for company, would grow despondent without the ones who are supposed to share her soul by her side.”