Oh, my cock is never going to forgive me. And I seriously doubt I’m ever going to be able to forget the way Princess Elanerill kissed me, or how she moved her body toward me, or how she looked sprawled across the snow, curving her back and spreading her arms above her head, the points of her nipples jutting through her cotton tunic.
Damn it, damn it, damn it! I clench my fists and continue pacing around the fire. The glowsoft orbs flickered back to reluctant life some time ago, but Elanerill is still sleeping, and I’m loath to wake her.
She’ll probably be embarrassed when she does wake. I glance back over the ruins of our fire to where she’s curled up in my cloak. Everyone is disoriented after healing, including me. Especially me. My thrice-damned healing magic is tied to my sexuality in ways I can’t begin to unravel, and I’ve wished that wasn’t the case during hundreds of healing sessions. But Elanerill’s the first woman who’s ever tried to kiss me afterward. My cock pulses sadly at the memory; I ignore the little bastard.
Because of course I’d wanted to sink into that embrace, to lose myself in her kiss, in those sweet curves and that dark mouth. But I’m not the kind of man who takes advantage of a woman. Not ever, and not under any circumstances. When I join with a woman, I want both our desire and our pleasure to be mutual. I’m not the kind of sad, lonely son of a bitch who resorts to trickery to get laid. No matter what my cock had to say about the matter.
There’s a rustling sound and then a soft murmur from across the remains of the fire. Elanerill sits up, pushes her hair from her eyes, and then blinks as if she’s mildly disappointed to discover she’s still in the Lands Below. Voids, I can relate to that feeling.
“Morning, princess,” I say.
She catches my eye and gives me a smile. It makes me think of the sun that warms my earliest childhood memories.
“How’s your—” I gesture vaguely at my side.
Elanerill pulls up her tunic, revealing quite a bit of lovely dark skin marred only by two parallel gashes of bright pink, recently healed claw marks.
“That will probably scar,” I admit as I walk over to her. “I’m sorry. I’m not the greatest healer in the Lands Below.”
She runs her fingertips delicately over the wound, then turns to smile at me. “It’s fine,” she says. Her smile deepens into something a little more wicked, something that reminds me uncomfortably of last night. “I like it.”
And just like that, every single argument I constructed last night about why a sexual relationship with the Princess of the Kingdom of the Summer would be a terrible, terrible idea goes flying out the window, and I’m shifting on the snow to try to hide the way my cock is suddenly filling the crotch of my pants.
“So,” I say, after clearing my throat and reaching into the ragged pack they gave us in the World’s End. “Biscuit?”
* * *
I wait until my head finally feels clear to bring up what I’ve been considering all night. It’s a bit of a risk, admittedly, but the risk seems warranted. After all, if Princess Elanerill still wanted to kill me, she had the perfect chance last night. My sword was ruined, and her sword was in her hand. She could have brought her blade down on my neck the moment I rushed over to her.
And, yes, it’s a little disturbing that I didn’t even consider that possibility before I dropped to my knees beside her. Some Captain of the Royal Guard I’m turning out to be. I shake my head to dismiss the thought and turn to Elanerill. She’s trudging through the snow with a determined frown.
“I have a question for you,” I announce.
She raises an eyebrow. Her expression is guarded and carefully neutral, which makes me wonder how I could ever have mistaken her for anything but royalty.
“Go ahead,” she says.
“Do you still want to bring down the barrier?”
She stops walking. Her guarded expression slips and, for a moment, she looks surprised. Then she nods.
“Of course,” she says. “Even more now that I know what it’s doing to your kingdom.”
I make myself take a deep breath before answering. It’s the answer I expected, and yet I still feel like I’m stumbling in the woods after the glowsoft orbs have gone out. I’d been meaning to hand this entire situation over to King Galan, after all, and now here I am, diving in headfirst.
“The king has a group of magicians,” I begin. “They’re all working together, trying to find a way around the barrier. They’ve been working on it since we got down here, really, and it’s only getting more urgent. That’s what I was doing in the World’s End, trying to recruit someone to join their group.”
Elanerill’s watching me with wide eyes. I feel like I’m rambling.
“What I’m saying is, maybe you could work with them,” I finish.
Elanerill blinks, then frowns. “I’m not a magician. The only magic I can manipulate is illusions.”
“Well,” I begin, then hesitate. I rub the back of my neck through the hood of my cloak. “They’ve never had anyone from the Worlds Above. They don’t even know much about the Worlds Above, not anymore, and they don’t know anything about that side of the barrier. You won’t have to be a magician to be helpful, I think.”
Elanerill’s lips curve into a smile, and once again I’m remembering what it felt like to stand under that golden sun in the Worlds Above.
“I’d be happy to try,” she answers. “How far are we from the palace?”
“That’s another thing.” I run my mittened hand over my mouth, trying to think of a diplomatic way to explain that I didn’t want to teleport with her because I thought she’d try to kill me. “There’s a faster way to the palace, but it’s unpleasant.”
Elanerill’s mouth opens, and she laughs. “More unpleasant than this?” she asks, waving a hand at the freezing forest all around us.
I grin. “Good point. Do you have teleportation hubs in the Worlds Above?”
“No. I mean, we do, but the hubs in the Kingdom of the Summer have become too unstable to use.”
“You’re not missing much,” I say. “Especially traveling with me. Teleportation is not exactly my strong suit.”
She frowns. “Don’t you need a hub to teleport?”
“We should be close to the one in Fringe,” I reply. “With any luck, we’ll make it to the teleport hub before the glowsoft goes out, and we’ll be at the palace in time for dinner and a hot bath.”
Elanerill smiles at me in a way that reminds me almost painfully of how she’d arched her back against me last night as our lips touched. Voids, I want to kiss her again. I want to kiss her so badly it hurts.
“Okay,” I say, turning away from the princess of the Kingdom of the Summer. “Let’s get going.”
A hard, icy snow begins to fall as we start walking again, and the drifts beneath the trees get deeper and deeper until I’m pushing through snow that’s up to my thighs while Elanerill follows in my tracks. I know how to follow the glowsoft orbs toward the Crystal City, but I only have the vaguest idea where Fringe is located so, in the end, it’s only by sheer, dumb luck that we finally stumble upon the ramshackle cabins of the abandoned town.
“Is this—” Elanerill begins as we push our way through the trees and into a little cluster of houses.
And the lights go out.
Elanerill gasps. Then, before I can even ask, the golden light of her little sun illusion blossoms in the air between us. She lifts her palms, sending the orb floating above us. Somehow its warm, soft light makes the dark ruins around us seem even more intimidating.
“Welcome to Fringe,” I say.
Elanerill turns in a slow circle, her hand on the hilt of her sword. Icy snow coats her cloak, and her breath escapes in little puffs of steam.
“It’s so quiet,” she whispers. “What happened here?”
“Same thing that’s happening everywhere,” I say, with a shrug. “It got cold. The crops died. The people moved in. Most of the Outer Ring’s abandoned now, except for those few stubborn bastards in the World’s End.”
Elanerill nods. Somewhere in the darkness beyond her little sun illusion, there’s a low, slithering sound. It might be snow sliding off a dead tree.
“Let’s go inside,” I suggest.
The closest cabin is unlocked. There’s no furniture inside but, praise the stars, there’s an enormous stack of firewood just outside the door. I stack wood in the big stone hearth while Elanerill shakes the snow out of her cloak, hangs it up, and then bolts the door closed behind us.
“Check the kitchen,” I say as I fumble with my flint and tinder. “Sometimes there’s food in these old cabins.”
“Anything would be better than those biscuits,” she replies.
“No kidding.” I smile as my spark catches and slow tongues of fire begin to spread across the bone-dry wood. “They’re called survival biscuits. As in, eating them is only marginally better than not surviving.”
Elanerill grins as she pulls open the cabinets built into the far wall. Her sun illusion shines above her, and for just a moment it feels perfectly normal to be in an abandoned cabin in the Outer Ring with the heir to the Kingdom of the Summer. Elanerill pulls out a jar, shakes it, and removes the top. Then she makes a face like she’s just bitten something sour, slams the top down, and puts it back on the shelf.
“It was worth a shot,” I say.
“No, wait.” She pulls a little wooden box out of the shelf, slides open the lid, and brings it to her face. “Tea!” she exclaims.
“It’s a miracle,” I declare, grinning like an idiot.
In the end, we find a jar of dried apples and some beans that look like they’d been picked and dried before the war even began. I set the beans to soak in a pot by the fire and put on a kettle to brew the tea, which is both very stale and absolutely delicious. The fire is roaring, bathing the little room in light and warmth, by the time Elanerill and I settle on the floor with our dented metal mugs of tea and fistfuls of dried apples. The icy snow starts up again, and the sound of snow hitting the roof makes a nice counterpoint to the hiss of the fire.
“You know,” Elanerill says as she stretches her legs out toward the fire, “this is actually pretty cozy.”
“I always wanted to be a trekker,” I agree.
Her brow furrows. It’s rather adorable, and I take a quick sip of my tea to disguise the heat rising in my cheeks.
“Someone who explores the forests of the Outer Rings,” I add. “It was quite fashionable in the early days, before the cold set in. There were all these routes you could take, villages to visit, places where you might be able to view the violet glow coming off the void.”
Elanerill turns toward the fire with a wistful smile. “It sounds fun.”
“It did.”
Snow spits against the roof and the windows of the cabin. The fire crackles. I remember sitting around different fires, in the guard’s barracks and the training yards, listening to stories from the Outer Rings. Telling myself I’d have to make time to do that one day, to see it all for myself.
“How did your king choose his heir?” Elanerill asks. She’s staring at her tea with a rather serious expression. “Were there trials? Battles? Did he look for one of those, uh, trekkers?”
I laugh, but it comes out as more of a snort. “Oh, voids, no. He just asked me.”
Elanerill’s eyes snap up to stare at me. “You?”
I shrug and shift on the floor. I don’t like talking about this. It’s a great honor, of course. It’s the greatest honor of my life, but it’s also a wedge that fell between me and every one of my friends.
“I’m sorry,” Elanerill stammers as her face turns several shades darker. “I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, of course, you’re, uh— You would be a great—”
“It’s okay,” I say. “Really. It was a surprise to me, too.”
“Stars, I guess. I just, I wouldn’t think he’d have his heir be captain of the guard.”
“He said that’s why he chose me,” I reply. “Because I was already in a position of leadership.”
I roll my mug between my palms. Elanerill turns to me with a shy smile.
“So, that’s why you never got to try trekking,” she says. “You were too busy being captain, and then being the king’s heir too.”
“It’s a big job,” I admit, and some part of me notes that I’ve never said that to anyone. Because how could I possibly complain about the way things have turned out? I started my life in the Lands Below as an orphan, after all.
“I know,” Elanerill says. “Trust me, I know.”
Our eyes meet in the firelight. Elanerill is smiling at me, and suddenly I feel like I’ve swallowed her little illusion sun and its warmth is spreading from my chest to fill my entire body. Because she does know what it’s like. This woman understands what my life has been like in a way no one else in the Lands Below could possibly understand. You’re royalty now, King Galan told me on the day he chose me as his heir and changed the trajectory of my life forever. To be royalty is to stand alone.
But I’m not alone with Elanerill. Even if it’s only for right now, just one night before we teleport to the Crystal City and try to find a way to bring down the barrier. So that we can return to our separate lives. Alone.
I set my empty mug down and let my hand skate over the rough floorboards to rest on the fabric of her cloak. Voids, there are so many things I want to say to this beautiful woman who’s somehow broken the barrier between our worlds. I open my mouth, willing the words to come—
And she kisses me.