The Winter King (25 page)

“It is for me.” Khamsin headed for the bedroom, tearing off her velvet overdress as she went. She reached for the laces at the back of the satin gown, but the ties were hopelessly tight. “Come help me out of this dress.”

“Of course, Your Majesty, but I need to clean up this mess and wash the ink from my hands before I dare touch that gown.”

“A stain or two wouldn’t hurt it,” Kham muttered under her breath. But she raised her voice, and called, “That’s fine. There’s a storm outside. I’m going out on the balcony to enjoy it.” She pulled open the leaded-glass doors that led to a private balcony circling the castle turret where her bedroom was located. The wind rushed to greet her, cold and hard and stinging with icy rain, but she only spread her arms and lifted her face up to meet it. This storm was strong but not deadly. She’d left the banquet hall before it had become so.

Her skirts whipped wildly around her legs, the pins pulled loose in her hair, and long, curling strands of white-streaked black blew around her. She breathed deep, drawing the chill, fresh air into her lungs, and turned her face up into the sluicing streams of rain. Storms, for all their rage and potential danger, were cleansing and ultimately calming. She gave her temper up to the winds and wished her body could float up and join it. What joy it would be to skate the skies on swirling black clouds or ride the lightning as it raced miles in mere instants.

She stood there for a long while, letting the wind whip at her, the rain soak her through to her skin, until the last remnants of her hot anger had faded away. When she was finally calm again, she went back inside. Bella was gone. Kham poked her head in the main parlor and called to her, but got no response. The girl must have gone to wash up in the servants’ washroom down the hall instead of doing the reasonable thing and using Kham’s bathing chamber.

With a muttered curse, Kham returned to her bedchamber and tried once more to untangle the knotted ties at the back of her bodice. Really, how ridiculous was it that ladies wore fashions they could not put on and take off without assistance? Men weren’t such fools.

She twisted her arms, fumbling blindly with the ties. The rain had soaked the fabric and swollen the cords, making them even harder to unknot. Her chin dropped down to her chest. The wet, tangled curls of her hair fell forward and dripped a steady stream of water on the floor that joined the greater puddle seeping from her gown.

“Summer Sun!” she exclaimed bitterly, giving the ties a furious yank.

“Let go. You’re only making it worse.”

Khamsin froze at the low rumble of Wynter’s voice and the jolt of electricity that jangled across her nerves when his fingers brushed against hers. She stood still, her heart in her throat, while he tugged at the ties of her gown. After a few moments, the ties loosened, and the fabric at the back of her gown parted. She started to clutch the gown to her when Wynter slid it from her shoulders, but she remembered her oath of matrimony and let the gown fall.

His hands went to the ties of the silk underdress, loosing them with similar ease. “Why did you summon the storm?” he asked, as the ties slipped free. “And why did you leave?”

Holding the last flimsy shred of protection to her chest, she stepped away and turned to face him. “You aren’t so blind as that.”

He wasn’t, and he surrendered the pretense without a fight. “She is just a childhood friend, nothing more.”

“She wants to sit on the Winter Throne,” Khamsin countered, “or at the very least, lie in the bed of the man who does.”

“Reika?” He laughed and shook his head. “She’d sooner bed down with a wild wolf. I’m too big and rough for her. She wants a man with poetry in his heart. She’s said so many times.”

“Has she said so since the day you chose her sister over her?”

His look of consternation was all the answer she needed.

There were benefits to living in the shadows as Kham had done all her life, being unseen, unnoticed. One of those benefits had been to watch the court ladies work their wiles on the men, to observe not only what they said to men’s faces but also what they said behind their backs. Khamsin had no doubt Reika’s youthful protestations had been flirtation, intended to call attention to her delicate femininity and instruct Wynter how to woo her.

Unfortunately for her, Reika hadn’t realized Wynter would interpret her protests so literally. And Kham had no intention of letting her amend her past mistakes.

“I swore an oath to offer you the fruits of my life,” she told him. “You swore the same to me, and you promised to keep only to me. As I honor my oaths, I expect you to honor yours.”

Surprise flashed across his face for the briefest instant before he marshaled his features into an inscrutable mask. “You ask me for fidelity?”

She hadn’t meant to. It had just sort of popped out. But now that she had, she wasn’t going to back down. She lifted her chin. “I demand it. Considering my life lies in the balance, it’s only just that you restrict your . . . breeding efforts . . . solely to me.”

He took a single, purposeful step towards her, a predator stalking prey. His eyes burned like blue flame. “Is that the real reason? Because you fear death?”

Every instinct for self-preservation screamed at her to back away. Pride would not let her. She had issued her challenge, and she would stand her ground. “What other reason could there possibly be?”

He took another step towards her. A growl vibrated deep in his throat.

Her body went weak, legs nearly collapsing beneath her. Heat burst across her skin in dizzying waves. That was so supremely unfair. One intent look, one low, thrilling growl, and she went up in flames.

His nostrils flared, and the muscles in his jaw clenched hard as stone. With a swiftness that left her blinking, he reached out one hand and snatched the underdress from her hands, leaving her standing naked before him. He didn’t even bother to remove his own clothes. He simply freed his jutting sex from his trousers, lifted her up with both hands, and lowered her onto his shaft, growling, “Put your legs around my waist” as his hips surged forward, and his body drove deep into hers with devastating effect.

Then again, she thought dazedly as the first orgasm exploded across her body, perhaps instant, undeniable lust wasn’t so unfair after all.

He bent her backward, one hand holding her spine, the other clutching her buttocks, lifting and lowering her with effortless strength as he bent over her body. His mouth moved across her neck and breasts, nipping, licking, leaving trails of heat and ice burning together in lines of indescribable pleasure. His voice whispered over her skin. “Tell me, Khamsin, why you demand my fidelity. Tell me why.” Whether he was using magic or not, she could not tell, but the words acted upon her like a persuasion spell, dragging the truth closer and closer to the surface with each whisper and each thrust of his hips. “Why Khamsin?” His body drove into hers, then withdrew with aching slowness. “Why?” Another thrust, deeper, making her gasp and shudder. “Tell me.”

She grabbed the soft folds of his shirt, wanting skin beneath her hands, not cloth. “Because,” she bit out, “I will not share with her or any other woman.” Power crackled at her fingertips. The shirt singed in her hands and shredded from his body like paper, baring the silken skin and hard muscle of his arms and chest and back.

“I will not share this.” She dug her fingers into heavy muscles of his chest, then dragged her arms around, running her hands up his back to clutch his shoulders. Her body pressed against his. Her thighs clamped tight around his hips. Her inner muscles clenched his shaft, clinging tight as she lifted her body up and held his gaze with the burning fire of her own.

“I will not share you.” Still holding his gaze, she drove her body down onto his. Tiny threads of lightning danced over his skin in a shocking web of blue-white light. He gave a choked cry. His spine arched. His buttocks clenched tight. The tendons in his neck stood out like cords of steel. His hips surged again, powerfully, rising up to meet her downward slide. She felt the shock of it to her bones.

“I will not share,” she cried out fiercely, one final time as both of them shattered.

When the firestorm passed, Wynter lay on the bearskin rug beside his wife. He stared up at the frescoed ceiling overhead and tried to regulate his breathing and gain some measure of strength back in his muscles.

Winter’s Frost! What she did to him.

Although the cold, logical part of Wynter’s mind whispered,
Leave her now. Keep a wise distance,
he did not. He stayed with her throughout the night, waking her countless times to claim and reclaim her in the darkness. She was like a drug in his system. Every time he touched her, every time he sank his body into hers, she drove him to heights he’d never known, and he would think,
This is it. This will sate me.
But scant hours later, he would wake again, even more hungry for her than he had been before.

If it was an enchantment, as Valik feared, it was a very powerful one. The only saving grace was that she seemed as incapable of denying him as he was of denying her.

He woke her one last time just as dawn was breaking in the eastern sky. He let his hands skim across her soft skin, relearning the already-familiar curves of her flesh, and watched the passion bloom in her eyes, turning the gray to shifting silver. He smiled in triumph when her hands reached for him, and smiled again when he lowered his head, growled softly in her ear, and felt her body quake. His Wolf called to her as strongly as her scent called to him, and she opened to him like a summer bloom to the sun.

She was so fierce, so passionate, so willing in this, at least, to give him everything without caution or restraint. And so boldly, so fiercely insistent that he be faithful. Elka had never been so possessive. No woman ever had. Not of him. No woman until Khamsin.

One thing was certain: Keeping her at a wise distance was going to be exceedingly difficult.

Her hands clutched at him. Her power sparked across his skin, driving all rational thought from his mind. There was only wave upon wave of hot pleasure, driving need, sensation and instinct and the feel of his body pumping rhythmically into hers, pushing them both higher and higher. Her volatile heat gripped him tight, burning, scorching. Her hands urged him on. She sobbed his name on a keening cry that broke into a scream as the climax swept over them both.

Later, when he could breathe without gasping and see more than flickering stars in a field of blackness, he bent over her limp body as she drifted back to sleep, and whispered in her ear, “I am no oathbreaker either, wife. I will honor my vows.”

C
HAPTER 12

Allies and Enemies

When Khamsin woke again, full daylight was streaming through her bedchamber windows, and Wynter was gone.

She laid her hand on the empty sheets. They were cool to the touch. Her body was aching and sore in more places than she’d ever known existed, but already the need for him was rising again. Her fingers smoothed over the indentation in the pillow beside hers and plucked a long, silvery white strand of Wynter’s hair from the linen. She brushed the strand across her lips, remembering the feel of his silken hair sliding over her as his body surged against hers. She wished he’d stayed. She wished she’d woken, as she had so many times in the night, to find him there beside her, his eyes intent, his magnificent body stretched out on the sheets, naked and inviting.

A knock sounded at the bedroom door, and the door swung open. Bella entered, carrying a thick robe draped over one arm.

Khamsin tucked the strand of Wynter’s hair beneath her pillow and sat up, dragging the linen top sheet free to wrap around her body. She sniffed the air. A warm, delicate aroma had wafted into the room. “Is that jasmine tea?”

The maid gave a smile. “Mistress Greenleaf said it was your favorite. There’s a pot steeping on the hearth. Will you rise, or shall I bring you a cup here?”

“I’ll get up.” Khamsin smothered a yawn and stretched. “What time is it?”

“Half ten, ma’am.”

“What? Half past ten?” Kham leapt from the bed. “Why didn’t you wake me? What about Vinca and the tour of the palace?”

“The king left word that you were not to be disturbed. Mistress Vinca has rescheduled your tour of the palace for this afternoon. Lady Firkin has arranged a luncheon for you with the ladies of the court before that. Mistress Narsk delivered a new gown for the luncheon a few moments ago.” Bella held the robe open for Khamsin, who swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. As Khamsin thrust her arms into the robe’s sleeves, Bella added, “And Lady Villani is waiting in the parlor. She said she needed to speak with you. Shall I tell her to come back later?”

Khamsin froze. “Lady Villani?” What could Reika Villani possibly want? Khamsin put a hand to her tangled hair. She looked a mess: bed-rumpled, her lips still swollen from Wynter’s passionate kisses, faint marks on her neck where he’d nipped at her skin. Reika Villani would take one look at her and know how Khamsin had spent her night. Kham’s eyes narrowed. “No,” she said slowly. “Thank you, Bella, but I’ll see her now.” She tightened the robe’s sash. “I would like a hot bath though when I return, and a little something to eat. I didn’t have much of an appetite last night, but now I’m famished.”

She opened the door to the parlor and stepped through. Reika Villani was standing near the hearth, looking out the bank of windows across the valley far below. She turned at the sound of the opening door. Her gown and hair were as pale, elegant, and perfect as they had been last night, her face a confection of graceful features dominated by big, heavily lashed blue eyes that narrowed as she took in Khamsin’s rumpled appearance.

“Your Grace.” Reika curtsied in a smooth, unhurried motion.

“Lady Villani,” Kham murmured in reply. How odd her new title sounded after a lifetime of being just “Storm,” “dearly,” or “girl.” “You caught me just rising from bed. I didn’t get much sleep last night.” She smoothed a hand across her rumpled hair and gave what she hoped looked like an embarrassed smile. Reika’s lips tightened, and Khamsin turned to reach for the teapot in order to hide the flash of triumph she feared might show in her eyes. Those years of watching from the shadows had not gone to waste. She understood the manipulations and maneuverings of court ladies, and even though she’d never participated in their intrigues before, she had claws of her own and was not averse to using them.

Last night, she’d been too weary from travel, too unsettled by the strangeness of her new environment, and taken aback by Wynter’s apparent obliviousness to what Kham considered Reika Villani’s blatant drawing of battle lines. This morning, she was none of those things. Hours of incendiary passion and the memory of Wynter’s voice whispering that he, too, would honor his vows left her feeling far more secure in her new position and determined to put Reika Villani firmly into hers.

“My maid has prepared a pot of jasmine tea,” she said, pouring the fragrant liquid into a warmed porcelain cup. “Shall I pour you a cup?”

“Thank you, but no, Your Grace,” Reika demurred. “I’m not very fond of tea.”

Kham blew on her drink to cool it. The first sip made her reach for the sugar. Bella had steeped it so long it had gone bitter. She sipped again, then added more sugar and turned back to her elegant guest, who was watching her intently.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit this morning, Lady Villani?”

The woman smoothed a hand over her expensively gowned hips and summoned a surprisingly convincing expression of worry and remorse. “I’m afraid we may have somehow gotten off on the wrong foot last night.”

“What makes you think that?” Kham asked in a mild tone. She lifted her teacup and regarded Reika over its rim.

“Well . . . I . . .” Clearly, she hadn’t expected Khamsin to play ignorant. “The way you left the dinner . . . it was obvious you were upset.” She took a half step forward, wringing her hands. Kham thought that was a particularly nice touch. “It’s just that Wynter—ah, I mean, the king—and I are such old and dear friends. I fear we might have made you feel a little left out.”

“Don’t trouble yourself, Lady Villani. I understood perfectly the nature of your relationship with my husband.”

“Oh . . . well, that is good . . .”

“Yes, it is, though perhaps not in the way you mean. Roland Soldeus always said understanding the nature of one’s enemy is the path to ensuring his defeat.”

Great blue eyes blinked in charming confusion. “Enemy? Defeat?” Reika gave a tinkling laugh. “You have me at a loss. Surely you’re not suggesting that I—”

Khamsin lifted a hand to cut her off. “Lady Villani, please. Spare me your fluttering lashes and false confusion. I am not susceptible to your charms.”

Lady Villani made one last attempt to cling to her illusion of innocence. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Let us be frank with one another. You want my husband. I will not share him with you. There, the matter is out in the open now, and the battle lines are drawn.”

“Indeed.” Reika’s voice had a new, hard edge that hadn’t been there before, and her eyes changed from limpid pools to glittering stone. “Well, like your countrymen before you,
Summerlander,
this is one battle in which you will find yourself far outmatched.”

Khamsin took another sip of her tea and curled her fingers around the porcelain cup. Energy from the confrontation was gathering inside her, and she could feel its electric warmth beginning to speed the blood in her veins, making the hot tea seem cooler by comparison. “It must have been very hard for you to want a man so badly only to have your sister snatch him away. And then, after she left him, and he was free once more, to have him go off to war for three long years and return with yet another woman on his arm, a wife no less. You have my sympathy. I know what it is like to want something you cannot have.”

“Keep your sympathy. I have no need of it.” The corner of Reika’s mouth curled in a sneer. “He only wed you to secure the peace and breed an heir acceptable to both kingdoms. You are simply a means to an end, chosen for your bloodline, nothing more. Any Summerlea princess could stand in your stead.”

The words struck deep, catching Khamsin unprepared and surprisingly vulnerable. Reika wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know, so why did it hurt to hear it?

Stung, and wanting to sting back, she touched the faint abrasions Wynter had left on her neck and forced a smug, triumphant smile. “Really? Then he truly is an amazing master of deception, to be able to feign such convincing passion again . . . and again . . . and again . . .”

The woman went quite still. For a moment, Kham thought her barb had struck home, but Reika was not so easy a target. Her eyes grew calm and intent. “Yes,” she agreed smoothly, “he is a very . . . intense lover and skillful enough to make a woman lose all reason. It’s one of the things I’ve missed most these last three years. And I can see how an inexperienced girl might assume the power of his sexuality implies a bond that doesn’t really exist.”

Kham’s confidence faltered. She would have sworn Reika and Wynter had never been lovers. She lifted her teacup and took a sip to hide her dismay.

Reika stood beside Khamsin, smiling with cool serenity, no doubt silently gloating that her second, well-aimed blow had struck home even more deeply than the first. And that made Khamsin’s temper simmer.

Walk away, dearly.
Tildy, who understood peace, would say.
Just walk away.

But Roland, who understood war, would have offered different advice.
Behind your enemy’s smile lies treachery. Show him that behind yours lies steel. Fail to do so, and you only make him bolder.

Khamsin stared down into the fragrant, golden brown depths of her tea. She was no wise, peaceful Tildy, no matter how she might try. She was a daughter of the Sun, capable of warmth, but just as capable of fire and lethal volatility.

Khamsin tightened her grip on the teacup and turned back to face her adversary. “What do you know of the Heirs to the Summer Throne, Lady Villani?”

Blond brows drew together in a delicate frown. “I beg your pardon?”

“The Royal Family of Summerlea—my family, and my ancestors before me—what do you know of us?”

“I . . . don’t understand how that has any bearing on this conversation.”

“It has great bearing. Have you ever heard of Roland Soldeus—Roland Triumphant, the Hero of Summerlea? No? Perhaps you should do a little reading, broaden your horizons.” She flashed a brief, tight smile. “Roland once crushed a well-supplied army of fifty thousand invaders with scarcely three thousand men of his own. They say he blazed bright as the sun, and that his sword shot beams of burning fire, and that his enemies burst into flames before him, and the charred dust of their bodies blew away on the fierce, hot winds—the khamsins—he could summon at will. My family can trace its lineage back to his brother, Donal. The same powerful blood that ran in Roland’s veins runs in mine.”

She looked up and captured Reika Villani’s gaze with her own. “I did not retire from the banquet hall last night because I feared you. I left because I feared what I might do to you if I stayed.” Curling clouds of steam rose up before her face. She saw Reika glance down, saw her eyes widen in shock at the sight of Khamsin’s tea bubbling madly in its cup. “Do not make yourself my enemy,” she concluded softly. “Do not poach what I have claimed as mine.”

Dark movement glimpsed from the corner of her eye made Khamsin turn. Bella stood in the doorway. “Your bath is ready, Your Majesty,” she said.

“Thank you, Bella.” Kham set the teacup down on a small lamp table near Reika’s frozen figure. “And thank you for coming, Lady Villani. Our discussion has been very enlightening. I hope I’ve made my position clear. Bella will show you out.”

Fired up by her confrontation with Reika Villani, Kham waved aside the pale cream gown Bella had laid out for this morning’s luncheon with the ladies of the court and chose instead to garb herself in bright, vivid, Summerland colors. Thus armored, she marched down to the small banquet hall where the ladies had gathered and met their cool gazes, head-on. She had not come to these people as a supplicant, but as a queen.
Their
queen—even if only for the next twelve months. They would give her the respect and deference due her station.

Something of that determination must have shown on her face because the ladies all curtsied deeply upon her arrival and regarded her with wariness.

“Your Grace, this way, please.” Lady Firkin gestured towards the table. “You were so tired from your journey. I thought a more informal luncheon today would be a good way to introduce you to the ladies of the court.”

Kham eyed the banquet table, laden with extravagant gold, silver, and crystal place settings, each chair attended by a private footman.
This was informal?
She hesitated to think what a dinner of state might look like. But she murmured something polite to acknowledge Lady Firkin’s thoughtfulness.

For the next forty-five minutes, Kham pasted a pleasant expression and did her best to contain her restlessness as Lady Firkin introduced her to the ladies of the court. Tildy had spent countless hours training Khamsin for just such an event. A princess of the Rose was expected to be a gracious hostess of her father’s kingdom, and in keeping with those duties, she was expected to remember names, titles, and other pertinent information about the courtiers and guests who frequented her father’s court.

Unfortunately, Kham had never been particularly good at those lessons, and though she was careful to repeat each lady’s name three times and came up with mnemonics to tie the name and the face together (Crooked nose, Lady Ros. Catty smile, Lady Wyle), it didn’t take long for her to become overwhelmed. There were only a handful of ladies she remembered from yesterday’s introductions: Lady Firkin, the tall, imposing priestess Galacia Frey, and, of course, Reika Villani, who was there, smiling as if she and Khamsin had not just squared off as enemies less than two hours ago.

Aware that this morning’s confrontation with Valik’s cousin had only been the first salvo in their personal war, Khamsin watched Reika from the corner of her eye, noting which of the ladies paused to speak with her and which sat closest to her. Kham had no doubt Reika would use every tool in her arsenal to achieve victory, including conscripting her friends into her service. Since Khamsin couldn’t very well go around asking everyone if they were Reika’s confidantes, she would simply have to be observant and take care to watch her back.

Turning to the Winterlady at her side—what was her name? Oh, yes, crooked nose, Lady Ros— Khamsin said, “Tell me a little about yourself, Lady Ros. Where are you from and how long have you been at court?”