The Dragon’s Daughter and the Winter Mage by Jeffe Kennedy
~ 11 ~
Briar Rose—Gendra—gazed back at him thoughtfully with her wide eyes, the indigo a nearly purple-black in the firelight. She looked so lovely, like the princess from the faerie tale, with her oval face framed by the tumbling glory of her glossy chestnut curls, the firelight glowing lovingly over the smooth skin of her long arms and casting tantalizing shadows in the hints of her bosom in the simple slip he’d had the folk put her to bed in. Her gown and cloak had blood on them, so he’d tasked Jasperina to having them cleaned.
It had seemed wrong to undress her himself, so he’d supervised from the other side of the small room, making sure they didn’t hurt her further. The longing to touch her, far from dissipating, was only building. It didn’t help that he liked her so much. And the fact that she was in his own bed, nearly naked, and so unbearably beautiful… Well, it was enough to make an old man forget himself. And how awful was that? The ancient dodder barely able to move from lusting after the fresh-skinned and sweet-natured young woman.
“I remembered Jak because he was teaching me bladework,” she was saying, reminding him he should be paying attention to her words and not fantasizing over something that could never be. “He learned from his mother, who was one of Her Majesty’s Hawks. He wanted us all to learn self-defense, particularly us shapeshifters, as we’d discovered we couldn’t shift out of whatever form we entered an alter-realm in. He thought we relied too much on being able to shift into a form with fangs or claws. And, it turns out, he was absolutely right, or your lead warrior guy would never have gotten the drop on me. Even as an orca, I should’ve been thinking about dodging that harpoon. Jak would have—so yes, my friend who wanted to teach me to defend myself better so I wouldn’t end up in exactly the circumstances I have was looming large in my mind.” She finished with a defiant flash of her incredible eyes, chin set in determination, empty soup bowl clenched in her hands far too tightly.
“I apologize again,” he said on a sigh, raking his hair back from his face. He was far too tired to be having any kind of conversation, clearly. “Would you like more soup?”
“Yes, please,” she replied meekly, handing him the bowl. “Or, wait—your leg—let me get it.”
“I can get it,” he said mildly, pushing to his feet. “It’s good for me to move around, and you shouldn’t yet with that concussion.”
She leaned her head back on the pillow. “Thank you. The food does help. And it’s my turn to apologize. I didn’t mean to subject you to a tirade.”
He handed her the bowl, steadying it until she’d wrapped her hands firmly around it. “It wasn’t a tirade, and I deserved the set-down.” Unable to resist the impulse, he caressed her cheek, her skin seductively warm and soft. Not a grandfatherly gesture at all, so he made himself step away, pacing to the fire and adding a log, though it didn’t really need it.
“Should you really be walking on that leg?” she asked dubiously.
“If I don’t use it, I’ll lose it.” He’d said it far too snappishly, his greatest fear fueling the emotion behind his words. Then he’d be entirely at the mercy of his supposed subjects. More than he already was. “Tell me more about this intelligence,” he said, making an effort to sound more civilized. A lifetime amid the folk had clearly made him unfit for polite company.
“There’s not a lot to tell,” Gendra replied easily, taking the peace offering. “Lena—Princess Salena—was the first one to notice it, after we were attacked at Gieneke. Do you recall the place?”
“At the confluence of the Phoenix and Grace Rivers, where they join to form the River Danu, yes?”
“I’m impressed you remember that, after all this time.”
He was, too, frankly. “I did study the geography and political landscape of the Thirteen Kingdoms in my youth. I thought I’d be adding the Isles of Remus to Her Majesty’s realm and learned accordingly.”
She made a small sound of sympathy, which grated. He didn’t want her pity. What do you want from her? a taunting voice whispered. That answer was all too starkly clear. He wanted to press her into the bed and hold her against his skin. He wanted to hear her moans and cries of delight, taste her sweetness and sink into her heat.
All things he could never have.
“Well, Her Majesty had sent us on a quest following the strange eclipse of the crystalline moon during the Feast of Moranu, and—”
He held up a hand to stop her, his attention at last captured by something that wasn’t this intense craving for his faerie princess. “An eclipse? On the longest night?”
“Yes. Why—did something happen here, too?”
“It did.” Wanting to go back and sit on the bed with her, he instead stretched an arm along the fireplace mantel, using it for support to take some weight off his throbbing leg. “Not that anyone here observes the Feast of Moranu, but I’ve kept track of the calendar all these years.” Something in her expression as she gazed at him, eyes large and glistening over the rim of the bowl made him hurry on. “That’s how I know exactly how long I’ve been here. On the rare clear nights, I track the stars and make calculations.”
“And observe the feast days,” she inserted in a quiet voice.
He shrugged off the surprising sentiment at having someone else understand. “It made me feel connected to home.”
“Of course it did. I—” She broke off, expression going abstract with thought. “The stars are the same?”
“Yes. And the phases of the moon…” He trailed off, following her line of thought.
“And you used them to track the passage of time, but the time here isn’t the time there, and yet the eclipse happened on the same night. It doesn’t make sense!” She pinched the arched bridge of her nose. “Trying to calculate time slippage is giving me a headache.”
“That could be the head wound,” he noted drily, and she dropped her hand with a huff of a laugh of agreement.
“All right, time slippage aside, the eclipse that shouldn’t have happened also gave Queen Andromeda violent premonitions of a world-ending disaster. Ah, I should mention…” She looked abashed, wrinkling her nose at herself so charmingly that all he wanted was to kiss her lush mouth until she moaned with pleasure.
Get a grip,he instructed himself. “Mention what?”
“Our eventual destination were the Isles of Remus, because Andi—Queen Andromeda, that is—saw this area, or that area, depending on the overlap of the alter-realms, which also gives me a headache to think about so I won’t, as being the epicenter of the disaster.” She creaked out a tentative smile. “I am realizing that information would be of vital importance to you, and I should’ve mentioned it before now.”
A curious storm of anger, regret, fear, and the fierce need to protect his kingdom that never was flooded him. “What happens to my isles?” he asked softly, so he wouldn’t shout or scream or rage at the goddesses for stranding him here to slowly fall apart while his people—the people who truly needed him—suffered.
Gendra’s face creased with regret, and she set her bowl aside, sliding out from under the covers. He caught a glimpse of long golden-skinned legs before her slip fell to cover them. “You shouldn’t get up…” he started to say, but she shushed him.
“You’ve been alone for a long time,” she murmured, coming to him. “Take some comfort when it’s offered to you.” And she slipped up against him, sliding her arms around his waist in an embrace, leaning her cheek against his, and hugging herself close. She was very nearly as tall as he was, he realized in an abstract way, as the sheer enormity of human contact thundered through him.
He folded his arms around her slim, strong body, the reflexive reaction turning urgent and needy. Holding her against him felt like a hot fire after a day on the ice, like a draught of water after a raging fever, like… like touching another human being after fifty years without. Emotion welled up, choking him, and his eyes dampened with tears. He didn’t want her to know, so he leashed the unexpected sentimentality tightly down. Surely nothing was more unpleasant than having a crippled old man sobbing on you. But he couldn’t make himself let go of her. Instead, he clung tightly, burying his face in the glory of her hair. You’ve been alone for a long time. Maybe too long. Maybe he’d lost his mind somewhere in the dull tread of years.
“I should have been there,” he choked out. “I was meant to be their king, and if I hadn’t gotten lost, maybe I’d have been there to prevent this destruction.”
“Isyn.” Though he tried to stop her, she pulled back, framing his face in her hands, gazing into his with soft compassion, not commenting on his unmanly tears. “You’re forgetting something very important. It hasn’t happened yet.”
“What?”
“Listen to me closely. In my timeline, it hasn’t happened yet. Queen Andromeda saw it in a vision, with foresight. Yes, you’d disappeared, and the Isles had fallen out of contact, but there were no disasters yet. Your parents were concerned, but not overly so. They said the elapsed time wasn’t unusual. Her Majesty sent us to prevent the calamity from occurring. We were, in fact, searching for you so you could help us.”
He couldn’t help returning her half smile. “And you did, in fact, find me.”
“Yes, I did.” Her eyes went vague with thought. “I wonder if that means something, since I more or less fell right into your arms.”
With her words, they both became suddenly aware of the intimacy of their position, their bodies pressed together from thigh to breast, close enough to kiss if he only closed the breath of distance—and they sprang apart, like guilty teenagers caught by their parents. Well, he did. She was no doubt repelled by unpleasant groping from a man old enough to be her grandfather. Great-grandfather, perhaps. Huffing an embarrassed laugh, he raked a hand through his hair, scraping it back from his eyes. When had he last attempted to trim the stuff? Clearly far too long ago. “It only means something if we escape this frozen prison.”
“Are you a prisoner here, Isyn?” she asked quietly. “I mean by more than the nature of the alter-realm,” she clarified when he didn’t reply. “You alluded to this before. It seems the folk control a great deal of your life. For a king, you don’t seem to have much power.”
“Noticed that, did you?” He was tired and his leg ached, so he sat, pointing at the bed. “You should get back in bed. It’s too soon for you to be up.”
She nodded, not arguing, and climbed back under the covers. He watched the fire, so as to keep from devouring her lithe form with his ravenous gaze. “Finish telling me about this intelligence, would you? You’ll learn the dreary mundania of my world soon enough.”
“All right,” she conceded. “It’s a long story, and I think I’m going to fall asleep again soon, so I’ll try to sum up. At Gieneke, we encountered a monster ravaging the town. A giant made of local stone. It was tearing people and animals into pieces and mashing them back together, only all wrong, like a child playing.” He winced at the image but didn’t interrupt. “When it caught sight of Zeph in her First Form—which is an gríobhth, or a gryphon in Common Tongue—it transformed itself into that shape.”
“So, it’s a shapeshifter, too.”
She shook her head, glossy curls sliding over her enticingly bare shoulders. “Not in the same way. It’s more like a chameleon, seeing an intriguing shape and taking it on. It became a gríobhth roughly, but still made of stone and not detailed. And it couldn’t fly, fortunately, or we’d never have defeated it.”
“How did you?”
“Lena and Stella combined their magic—Lena is a weather mage, like King Nakoa KauPo—and that’s when Lena noticed the presence of an alien sort of intelligence animating the creature. And Stella, who is also an empath, I think that’s common knowledge?”
He nodded. He’d heard as much, though not in any definite way.
“She took the intelligence’s emotions and hurled them back at it, which wounded it, but also unfortunately attracted its interest. It became fascinated with her and jealous of her love affair with Jak. It tried to abduct her and assume the form of Jak. It’s gotten better, though not enough to be convincing. They killed it, this time with Silversteel, and escaped.”
“So the intelligence was destroyed.”
“That would be nice, but we doubt it. Stella has some foresight, and she says the futures that she can glimpse haven’t shifted. That’s why we continued on to the Isles of Remus in search of you. And…” She spread her hands, indicating the stone chamber. “Here we are. Or here I am anyway.”
Yes, here she was—trapped in this icy prison of an alter-realm with him. Even if her friends managed to find her, it could be decades from now. The slow grind of anger burned under his skin. “I can’t believe my parents agreed to assist you with a winter crossing in the first place,” he ground out. “And then encouraging this ridiculous fantasy that you’d be able to find your way to me, something impossible without a guide, even under the best of circumstances, let alone knowing I’d disappeared.”
“Remember that they think you’ve only been temporarily misplaced, not lost forever,” she cautioned, seeming unperturbed by his harsh tone. “Besides which, Her Majesty the high queen had charged us with going. And we did have a guide,” she added. “Falada, the fae spirit horse.”
That jolted him as hard as being, oh say, thrown against a wall by a tentacle monster. “My mother sent Falada with you?” he asked incredulously, then with even more shock. “You can see her?”
“Not me,” Gendra assured him. “I haven’t got a lick of magic in me, but—”
“Other than shapeshifting.”
“Other than shapeshifting,” she agreed, “which doesn’t count.”
“Why not?”
She paused, realigning her thoughts, apparently surprised by the question. Tilting her head, she considered him. “Because it’s not me doing something. It just… happens.”
“But you mentioned your mother acquiring dragon form, so there’s clearly some sort of effort or practice involved.”
“Lots and lots of practice,” she assured him. “I only have as many forms as I do because I practiced so much growing up.”
“See? You are doing something. And you’re good at what you do because of diligent practice. It’s an admirable trait.”
“I don’t know about that.” She looked wistful, a little lost. “I didn’t have anything else to do.”
“Why not?” He shouldn’t be badgering her with so many personal questions, but she intrigued him so. He wanted to know everything about her.
Her nose wrinkled—just a bit—and she gave him a long, bemused look. “Why do you ask?”
Hmm. Good question. He needed a good reason besides this growing obsession with everything to do with her. “Understanding you and how your shapeshifting works could be important to figuring our way of here,” he improvised.
And didn’t fool her for a moment. “Up until this point, you’ve sounded fatalistic about our chances of escaping this place.”
“I didn’t know about Falada then,” he replied, which was true, if not the whole reason. But what could he say? I’m fascinated by you, and the obsession is only growing. I think you might be the woman I’d waited for, and it’s killing me to finally meet you now and know it’s too late. “And you dodged the question.”
She shrugged, just a little, a twitch of irritation. “I’ve never been a very social person. I’m sure you understand why.”
“No? You’re a beautiful, vivacious, and intelligent woman. I’d think you’d be at the center of every social whirl.”
She laughed, a hearty sound with a bitter edge. “No, that would be Zeph. But I’ve resolved not to dwell on those things, and you distracted me from the actual topic of conversation.” She shook her finger at him, eyes dancing. “Stella is the one who can see Falada, which I suppose is a sorceress thing. And apparently Falada volunteered to come along, however that works, and agreed to guide us to you.”
Falada. She’d known of his predicament and had come to save him, as he’d dreamed for so long that she would. Another heartfelt wish finally granted—and again, far too late.
Gendra yawned hugely, clapping a hand over her mouth, her jaw cracking nonetheless. “I apologize,” she said as soon as she could.
“Not at all. It’s me who should apologize.” Pushing painfully to his feet, he took a few stiff steps, teetering embarrassingly, before his hip would cooperate. Bone breaks and arthritis did not play nicely together, though he should be grateful he could walk at all. Old people got laid up for the rest of their lives from injuries like his. Sobering when the bright side of that equation was that the rest of his life wouldn’t be all that long.
Are you always this morose?Yes. Yes, apparently he was.
“Let me help you,” he said, adjusting the pillows for her and tucking the covers up under her chin. She blinked sleepily at him, a childlike innocence in her lovely eyes—though his feelings toward her were anything but paternal. “Sleep well,” he said, beyond tempted to kiss her. Once upon a time, he would have. And he’d have crawled under the covers with her, tempting her to make sweet love with him.
Such an ironic twist of fate, that he’d once had any woman he fancied. The ladies of the court at Castle Marcellum had been more than eager to join him for a night of pleasure, sometimes several at once. Then he’d been stuck here, having not touched a woman in all these long, lonely decades. And now he… simply couldn’t.
Gendra frowned at him. “This is your bed, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid you’d have found all the other sleeping arrangements far too small to be comfortable,” he answered wryly. “But don’t give it a thought. You need your rest.”
“So do you. You were exhausted after saving me, and you need plenty of rest to heal that bone break. Have you even slept at all?”
“I’ve slept some.” In the chair, quite uncomfortably. “I had to extract you from the protective fury of the folk. They were quite alarmed at your sudden appearance, and it took some doing to settle them down and have you installed in here.”
“Oh.” She chewed her lip. “I didn’t think of that. I’m so sorry for the trouble I’ve caused.”
“The trouble you caused by being unfairly attacked and wounded?” He tsked at her. “How terribly thoughtless, indeed.”
She smiled weakly. “I suppose I’m being silly. But… please come sleep in the bed with me. I’ve been sharing with the other girls on the journey, and it’s not as if—” She broke off, blushing intensely enough to be discernible in the dim light.
No, not as if anything sexual would occur with an oldster like him. He didn’t blame her, but the bitterness lodged in his throat. “All right,” he conceded, the prospect of lying down suddenly more than he could refuse.
She scooted over, making room for him so he didn’t have to go around to the other side. Sitting heavily, he eased his way under the furs, aware that the delicious warmth he settled into had come from her luscious body. Her scent lingered, too, on the pillow. Tropical flowers and seaside sunshine. It reminded him of his long-lost youth, of summer trips to the beach, and kissing girls with skin heated by the sun.
