Lonen ended up escorting his mother into formal dinner. He hadn’t seen Oria since they returned from flying. Alby had relayed a message via Baeltya that Oria would be occupying other rooms until the wedding, and that she’d dress there—wherever that was, as they all avoided saying exactly, determined to subvert their king’s worst impulses by keeping the location a secret—and that Oria would meet him at dinner.
It hardly seemed fair, to be stuck with his sharp-tongued mother instead of his delectable wife, but the situation would be temporary. Very temporary, which had him in excellent spirits. He’d put his afternoon to good use, keeping himself too busy to obsess about bedding Oria. Much. Several dire matters required the king’s attention, along with a great many only slightly less urgent ones.
He’d put Arnon in charge of designing a platform and new rooftop apartments, and his brother had leapt at the opportunity to take on the project, with almost embarrassing gratitude. No small part of it had to do with the enforced inactivity of winter, no doubt. But Arnon also seemed to feel he needed to make things right between them. Lonen had told him, in a private, intense conversation, that he understood Arnon’s choices. He’d been torn between loyalties to his two elder brothers, one who should have been the rightful king, had fate played out as it should, and one who’d had kingship thrust upon him. Nolan had been convincing in his righteousness and paranoia. Had their positions been reversed, Lonen might have made the same choices Arnon did.
But Arnon didn’t see it that way; instead questioning his own judgment and intelligence, because he hadn’t realized Nolan wasn’t himself. A difficult place for Arnon, who’d always been the cleverest, most learned, and most insightful of the four brothers.
“You gave Arnon a project, I hear,” Vycayla commented as they strolled toward the great dining hall, as if she’d heard his thoughts. His mother was no sorceress, not like Oria, but she did have an uncanny knack for reading people.
“Yes. An engineering project that should absorb his energies until the weather thaws enough that we can get back to work restoring the aqueducts.” He sounded slightly defensive.
“I’m not criticizing,” she replied mildly. “It was kindly done, to give him an opportunity to do you a service, one that will benefit you and Oria personally.”
“I don’t need him to make anything up to me, I told him that.”
“You might not need it, but he does. A wise ruler recognizes what his people need and gives them the opportunity to seize it, regardless of his own feelings.”
Lonen snorted. “Never thought I’d see the day you called me wise.”
“In point of fact, I didn’t,” she retorted in a tone tart enough to make him wince. “I was speaking hypothetically.”
“Ah.” He nodded to himself, assuming a sage expression rather than an aggravated rolling of his eyes at his mother. Eye rolling was probably not appropriate for a king, wise or not.
Vycayla stopped, turning to face him. They stood just shy of the short corridor that opened into the main hall, out of earshot of the palace guards stationed there. “I do think you’ll be a wise ruler, my son,” she said, her gaze unusually soft with sentiment. “When you were a boy, even a very young man, I never thought you’d be the one to show the true mettle of your father and me. You’ve surprised me, happily so.”
“Thank you, I think,” he said, feeling his scar pull with the frown. His mother never did pay unadulterated compliments, so he should settle for that and be happy. Then, from the opposite direction, Oria stepped into the hall, Baeltya a step behind her, and all thoughts fled from his mind.
Vycayla turned at his expression and hummed in satisfaction. “Ah, Oria, you look lovely.”
Oria smiled, pleased and also a bit abashed, her high cheekbones delicately flushed. They’d put her hair up in one of the elaborate piles of coils and braids the Destrye ladies of court favored, and it looked like a gorgeous crown of copper framing her piquant face. She wore a gown of light green, a sheer layer intricately beaded with copper swirls over a darker silk beneath—which wasn’t that much less transparent. The fall of the gown outlined her slender limbs, her full breasts, narrow waist, and gave hints of the vee centered between the graceful arc of her slim hips. The sleeves parted at her shoulders, leaving her pale arms bare, and caught again at her wrists in copper-beaded cuffs. A slit in the narrow skirt of the gown showed flashes of her long legs as she walked toward him. Mouth-watering.
His mother cleared her throat. “Shall we step inside, Baeltya, and give them a moment?”
“Do you think it’s safe, Your Highness?” Baeltya’s voice rippled with suppressed laughter.
“He can hardly ravish her in the main hall,” Vycayla replied dryly.
Lonen, who’d been fantasizing that very thing, quickly banished the image of Oria with her back against the nearby carved pillar, green skirts hiked around her waist and head thrown back in ecstasy as he plunged into her. Oria blushed a deeper pink, so he knew she’d seen it in his thoughts. He only grinned at her with wicked delight.
“You look beyond beautiful, love,” he managed once Baeltya and Vycayla discreetly withdrew, and his voice came out rough. “The green suits you,”
“Thank you. It no longer seemed necessary to wear red, like a Báran priestess.” She sounded almost shy as she looked down at herself, plucking at the gown self-consciously. “But I feel quite… naked.”
Oh, if she only knew. “Are you cold?” he asked with hasty concern. His desert-bred bride had become more accustomed to the bitterness of Dru’s winter, but she took chill easily.
Her mouth twisted in a wry smile, and she leaned closer, saying in a low, conspiratorial voice, “I’m using magic to keep myself warm. Is that wrong?”
Indeed, with her so close, he felt he’d entered a warm cloud of summer, with Oria its sun. The spicy perfume of the qinn that the Destrye ladies used wound together with Oria’s natural scent, becoming somehow both uniquely her and redolent of home. “I’d like to strip you naked for real and lick every inch of you,” he replied in a low growl of need. “Is that wrong?”
Her coppery eyes glittered with answering desire. “In the main hall of the palace, probably yes.”
“It would make for good illustrations in the history books.” He picked up her hand and kissed the silken back of it, then turned it over to press a passionate kiss to her palm, licking it in demonstration—and allowing the image of taking her, fast and hard against the nearby pillar, to bloom in his mind again.
She snatched her hand away, her breath lifting her breasts enticingly, her nipples hard against the clinging silk. “But perhaps not as we’d choose to be remembered,” she noted breathlessly.
“Do any of us get to choose how we’re remembered?” he countered, but he took up her hand and threaded it chastely through the crook of his elbow, turning to lead her into the hall for the feast. “I don’t know, going down in Destrye history as a king and queen noted for their passionate love for each other would be a legacy I could happily embrace.”
She slid him a sideways glance, one that he might’ve called demure for the way her long lashes veiled her gaze, except that her eyes glittered with wicked amusement. “As long as we’re not the great cautionary tale used to teach Destrye children the folly of going to war against the walled cities of the desert, I’ll be happy.”
“There is that,” he muttered agreement, pausing ceremoniously in the doorway so the assembly could rise and then bow to show honor.
“A nice change from the last formal dinner,” Oria replied in the same quiet voice as she smiled radiantly for the court.
“Isn’t it? It’s much more pleasant to rule when people aren’t looking for the first opportunity to put a blade in your back.”
She muffled a laugh and he led her to the high table on the dais at one end of the room. The Haligne tree Oria had grown from a spoon as a demonstration of her magical skills at their last dinner party spread its limbs over the table, elaborate and sweetly blooming.
“Has that thing grown?” he whispered.
“I think so,” she replied, equally hushed—and perhaps awed.
“How, without sunlight or soil?”
“I…don’t know.” She sounded a bit distressed, so he let it go. Arnon waited for them, standing next to his seat beside their two empty chairs at the center. He bowed again. “Your Highnesses.”
“I’m not queen yet, Arnon,” Oria replied, taking the hand he offered so she could sit.
“To me you are,” he said with some fervency, looking to Lonen also. “Both of you, my king and queen, always.”
Lonen gripped his shoulder. Then, on impulse, pulled him into a hug, pounding his back. As he did, he said into his brother’s ear, “Relax. We’re good.”
Arnon returned the hug but shook his head slightly as he withdrew. “I have a lot to make up for.”
On the other side of Oria, the dowager queen caught Lonen’s eye, reminding him of their conversation with a significantly arched brow. “Fine, fine,” he said. “Sit already.” He raised his voice as he said it, giving permission to the assembly.
Salaya, his brother Ion’s widow, standing by her chair at Vycayla’s other hand, moved a bit more slowly than the rest, lingering to give him a nod. Her hair shorn short in mourning, Salaya’s striking face stood in stark relief in the torchlight, her gaze speaking something. Then she looked away and sat.
They ate, the mood in the hall light, even festive. Oria received special plates of grains and vegetables, with cheese from the goats and buttered puff pastries, all prepared especially for her. Making happy noises, she ate heartily, the sight doing his heart good. Even his mother carried on pleasant conversations with Oria and Salaya, making an effort to be charming to her two daughters-in-law.
Arnon regaled Lonen with an impressive array of details on the planned addition to the palace, having accomplished a truly astonishing amount of work in the few hours since Lonen handed him the project. Listening—and nodding at hopefully appropriate intervals, since the in-depth explanation of stressors and load-bearing designs meant little to him—Lonen scanned the room, noting who was there and who wasn’t.
“Sounds excellent,” he said, when Arnon wound down. “As for your questions on the rooftop garden, ask Oria. She might be able to make some drawings for you.”
“Oh, perfect.” Arnon leaned around Lonen to smile at Oria, who nodded that she’d heard, though she listened to some tale of Vycayla’s.
“I don’t see Natly,” Lonen said, as neutrally as possible, after what he hoped was a reasonable pause.
He didn’t fool his brother, however, who gave him a sharp glance. “No. I didn’t imagine you’d want to. Not after… last time.”
When Natly, his former lover and would-be fiancée, had caused a scene—the one that led to Oria’s display of sorcery. “I don’t want to,” he replied, maybe a bit too sharply. “But I’ve also learned to distrust who’s out of sight, lest they be plotting something unpleasant.”
That was the wrong thing to say, as Arnon’s face creased unhappily, shadows of guilt and remorse darkening his eyes. “Natly is down with Nolan,” he said before Lonen could take back the careless words or reassure his brother yet again that he harbored no suspicions or ill will. “I am having her watched. When Oria’s not studying him, Natly slips down to the dungeon and sits with him.”
“Interesting.” And surprising. Though… was it? Nolan had been the target of Natly’s flirtations for quite some time before he brushed her off and she set her sights on Lonen, the next prince in line.
“I can put a stop to it,” Arnon hastily assured him. “It seemed like a harmless occupation to me, and perhaps good for both of them.”
“I have no problem with it.” As he said it, he realized he felt quite the opposite. “Is he… rational, with her?”
Arnon shook his head. “Whatever happened, however your iron axe affected him, he hasn’t put two rational words together since. And, to be frank, he was hardly better than that in your absence. From the moment he discovered you and Oria had fled in the night—” He cleared his throat, hesitating.
“Go ahead,” Lonen urged him. “Speak freely.”
Under the table, Oria put a hand on his knee, stroking softly. Not high enough to be titillating—or, rather, not distractingly so, since everything about her had his brain going in one direction—but a gesture of approval. In his peripheral vision, she seemed to be intently listening to Vycayla, but Oria possessed many skills, and had long since perfected the art of listening to several conversations at once—and probably to his thoughts, as well. Experimentally, he sent her a mental kiss, and she squeezed his knee in response. That answered that.
“He flew into such a rage,” Arnon said quietly. “At first I agreed with him, that your abrupt escape signaled your guilt and, ahem, her influence over you. I’m sorry for that.”
Lonen slipped his own hand under the table and took Oria’s, lacing their fingers together, just for the pleasure of touching her. “You’ve apologized countless times already,” Lonen said. “Let it go. I have.”
Arnon set his jaw. “I’ll decide when I can let this go. It took little time to see his madness—though longer for me to admit it. I was a fool.”
Lonen moved Oria’s hand up his thigh, noting the twitch of her full lips as she suppressed a smile. She didn’t resist, squeezing the muscle a bit. “We are all fools at one time or another,” Lonen said to Arnon. “What matters is you refused to support him when it mattered most.”
“Seeing Mother here—discovering that she’d arrived and he’d had her arrested and imprisoned…” Arnon shook his head and shoved his plate away, as if the sight of it made him ill. “I have a great deal to make up to you both.”
“Then do it,” Lonen said, allowing a hint of impatience to creep into his voice. He tried to tug Oria’s hand higher, but this time she did resist.
Arnon looked at him in shock, for his words and tone, Lonen realized—not his antics shrouded by the cloth on the table. “I need you,” Lonen told his brother. “Even if Oria can cleanse the sorcery from Nolan’s mind, I don’t think I’ll be able to trust him in the same way. You’re the only brother I have left who I can rely on. Do what you need to in order to get your head on straight—but get it done. We have a lot to accomplish before the weather thaws and I’m going to be relying on you heavily. So…” He waved a hand in the air. “Get your own load-bearing supports shored up, or whatever.”
Arnon’s lips twitched, the shadows lightening. “I don’t think that analogy plays very well.”
“This is why I leave such things to you. I trust you to understand them.”
Arnon sobered. “You really trust me—still? After everything?”
Lonen leveled his full attention on his brother, giving up the tussle under the table with Oria. “I trust you more than ever, after everything,” he said with quiet emphasis. “We learn from our mistakes.”
Arnon pressed his lips together, emotion shining bright in his eyes. “Thank you, Your Highness.”
“All the times I pressed your face in the mud to get you to show your older brother some respect,” Lonen said with a growl, “and this is what it takes.”
Arnon snorted, sounding a bit more like his old, irreverent self. “You’re much scarier now. And you have a super scary wife,” he added, dragging his plate back and spearing a piece of meat.
Oria leaned over Lonen, eyes sparkling with mischief. “You have no idea, Arnon,” and slid her hand up to squeeze Lonen’s balls under the table.
A perfectly timed attack, as he’d been drinking a deep swallow of wine—so he choked on it, nearly spewing it across the table. He glared at Oria, who only laughed, a bell-like sound of complete delight.
“But not wife,” she corrected, with an innocent smile for Lonen as she squeezed hard enough to make him wince. “Not until Arill says so. Only then will I have him to—”
“On that note,” he interrupted, taking her hand off him and keeping it in a firm grip as he tugged her to her feet. “I have an announcement.” The room quieted and Oria beamed up at him, mooning at him as if completely enraptured. Who knew that the minx would turn out to have such a mischievous sense of humor when she finally felt well? “The dowager Queen Vycayla, in her capacity as High Priestess of Arill, has determined the most auspicious date for the sorceress Oria, Princess of Bára, and I to wed.”
Oria raised her brows at him for withholding that bit of information until now. He smiled at her easily, with lots of teeth, which he intended to use to torment her into shameless begging. The hall briefly buzzed with excitement, then fell quiet as everyone strained to hear.
“In Arill’s Temple, as Sgatha rises full and Grienon briefly paces her tomorrow evening, Arill will set her hand as the final seal on our marriage, begun many months ago in Oria’s City of Bára.”
Everyone cheered, the hall in an uproar of toasts and celebratory shouts.
“Tomorrow night?” Oria practically squeaked, not only because of his arm tight around her. “I didn’t expect it so soon!”
He looked down into her upturned face, her copper eyes glinting with gold in the torchlight. “Last chance for second thoughts,” he said quietly, cursing himself for a fool even as he said it. As if he’d be able to let her go. No. No, if she wanted out, he would let her go. He would be a better man, a better king than his barbarian ancestors.
“You’re truly asking me that, Lonen?” Oria breathed, a straight light in her face.
“Yes,” he answered gravely, his heart stuttering to a stop. “I’m asking you to marry me, Oria. And if the answer is no, I’ll respect that.”
“Hmm…” She looked thoughtful, then burst out laughing. Reaching up, she wound her fingers in his hair, which he’d left loose because she liked it that way. Tugging his head down, she kissed him. “If you tried to get away,” she said against his lips, “I’d toss you over Buttercup’s back and keep you captive in the hills until you broke down and agreed to marry me. Again.”
Deep inside, where the marriage bond connected to his heart and soul, heat and joy burned like the sun over Bára.