The Dragon’s Daughter and the Winter Mage by Jeffe Kennedy
~ 19 ~
At some point in time, he regained his senses. Gradually his desire-fogged brain cleared, and he became aware of Gendra collapsed over him, their bodies still joined, her limbs tangled stickily with his. The fire had died down too much, so he needed to get up and put on more logs or she’d get chilled. He also needed to move his aching leg, awkwardly pinched between them.
He didn’t move, fully intending to stay that way forever, if only his Briar Rose would remain in his arms. She stirred, murmuring something he couldn’t make out, and nuzzling kisses under his ear that made his cock, still buried in her tight, velvet-hot sheath, stir to life. He should probably move. Really, he should.
He didn’t.
But she did. Slowly sitting up, she kept his hardening cock inside her, her glorious hair falling in a gilded, tumbling cloak of rich brown silk around her slender golden body. Her perfectly shaped breasts stood out, her tight nipples reddened and mouthwatering. She pushed back her hair with one hand, giving him a slumberous smile, feline in its satisfaction, and she rocked her hips, making him gasp.
Setting both hands on his chest, she raked her soft, round nails over his skin, adding to the increasing build of tension as she lifted her hips and sank again, an ancient rhythm like the ocean distantly surging beneath the ice that held it captive. He lifted his hands to her breasts, marveling anew at how perfectly they fit into his palms. All of her, made exactly to fit him, mind, heart, and body. She arched into his touch, expression dreamy, nipples hard points in his palms, and she worked his body like a goddess come to claim him. He gave himself over to her, his personal goddess, the magical fish he’d pulled from the sea. He could die happy this way, ending his miserable existence drowning in the miracle of her love.
She arched her entire body, a slim golden bow of a woman, drawing back in a perfect curve from her narrow hips and concave belly, up the continuous line of her breast, throat, and jaw. The cry of pleasure she released sounded like the guttural purr of a big cat, and he threw himself up into her, filling her with his seed, wondering for the first time if they could make a child.
Through the wrenching orgasm, his emotions tossed wildly—horror at his utter carelessness that he hadn’t thought of it before, agonizing hope that there might be life to come out of this sterile world; terror that he’d bring a child into it only for them to be condemned to a crushing fate of ice and loneliness; a sweet, heart-twisting wish that Gendra wouldn’t be alone; an even more bitter wish that he wouldn’t miss it all. Closing his eyes against the onslaught of visions, he finished, her body milking him of all he had to give.
She tapped a finger between his eyes, so he opened them, finding her bending close, hair a fire-riddled veil all around them, eyes a smoky violet, lips curved in sensual satiation. “I suppose it’s not practical for us to simply stay like this always, making love over and over,” she murmured.
With a low laugh, he ran his hands up her long back, fingertips rippling over the delicate bones of her spine up to her neck. Clasping her there, he pulled her down for a long, rapturous kiss, then let her go. “I don’t know that we’d freeze, exactly, but the room is getting decidedly chilly—and I know you wouldn’t choose to be anything but practical.”
She canted her head at him, eyes sparkling, her expression soft and mischievous. “I’ve discovered an odd quirk in myself. I seem to love being impractical, too, at least where you’re concerned.”
He flushed at the memory of confessing what her begging did to him—and at the even more vividly arousing image of her thrashing wildly against him, her salted-blossom flavor heady in his mouth, her silken body his to possess. He, impossibly, hardened inside her, and she cocked a sultry brow. “Again?” she purred.
“No.” A third time so soon might truly kill him. “Give an old man a chance to rest.”
She laughed, a melodious peal of sound, and clambered off of him, lifting her hair to perform an enchanting pirouette before letting it fall to veil her exquisite body again. “No old man could make me feel the way I feel now. Any more vigorous and I’d never walk again.” She pointed a coquettish finger at him. “No, don’t get up. I can handle the fire.”
It was a joy to see her happy. Until this invisible sadness had fallen away from her, he hadn’t realized how much her sorrows had been weighing down what turned out to be an effervescent personality. “It’s good to hear you laugh,” he commented, easing his aching leg fully onto the bed and stretching it out. Ah yes—he’d be paying the price for acting like a young man in love. Though any price would be worth it.
“I laugh all the time.” She had a puzzled frown as she returned to him, the fire crackling into greedy vigor, her hands full of washing cloths and her warmed oil.
“Not that laugh,” he explained. “A fully happy laugh.”
She began washing the residue of sex from his body, something he sort of regretted as he loved having her scent all over him. Still, she was determined, cleansing him and using the opportunity to discreetly check his injuries. He should’ve known she wouldn’t skip treating him, and he smiled in vindication as she palmed warm oil and began working her magic hands into the exact spot where his hip felt the most strained.
“That’s how we knew Stella had truly fallen in love with Jak,” Gendra confided after a long enough silence—excepting his grunts of pain and groans of sighing release—that he’d lost track of the conversation. “She giggled at breakfast, the morning after they finally consummated the affair, and it was this sound…” She trailed off wistfully, her eyes rising to meet his. “We dubbed it the love giggle, and Jak took great pride in it, saying it was all for him.”
He coiled a long lock of her hair around his finger. “You miss them.”
“Yes.” She let out a heavy sigh. “I mean, of course I miss them, but I miss them now more than ever. I want you to meet them, and for them to meet you.”
“Briar Rose….” he sighed. “We have to face that I likely can’t ever leave this place.”
“This again? I’m not facing any such dire, gloomy, and morose sort of pessimism.”
He smiled despite himself. “I feel like the descriptors of my unsunny outlook are multiplying.”
“As well they should.” She paused in her ministrations, pinning him with a fierce indigo glare. “I’m not leaving you, Isyn. Either you’re coming with me or I’m staying here with you.”
“I want you to—”
“What?” she snapped, cutting him off, her fingers digging painfully into his muscles. “You want me to be the sort of person who abandons the man she loves? Because I can’t be that. I might not be hero material—I know I can be dreadfully self-absorbed—but my parents are both heroic, with the greatest of hearts, and they raised me better than that. I won’t change who I am, not even for you, Isyn, not even if you ask me to—because then I’d no longer be the person you fell in love with. At least, I hope you know who you fell in love with.”
He stared at her a moment, a bit taken aback by the sudden ferocity of his gentle Gendra. Opening his arms, he beckoned for her to come to him. “Come, lie beside me under the covers. You can pummel my poor body into submission in the morning.”
She looked aghast at her death grip on his thigh. “Oh, Isyn, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“No, you didn’t. I’m fine. But come lie down. Sleep beside me.” Once she’d complied, her slim body tucked perfectly against his, the furs cozily piled around them, he kissed her on the forehead. “I know who I fell in love with, Gendra,” he murmured. Because she didn’t reply, already asleep with the easy speed of youth, he added, “and because of that, you can’t stop me from doing everything in my power to save you from going down with me.”
They headed outon the ice again in the morning—the folk happily speculating about an excellent catch as they towed the sled along—Isyn feeling every moment of the wild night before in the least jolt or jostle of his aching bones. Moving the storm away, even from a narrow alley, and holding it clear felt like opening a vein, too, the drain almost nauseating. Gendra guessed it, too, throwing him assessing and concerned looks with almost irritating regularity. He deserved it, of course. This is what you get for cavorting with a nubile young woman like the last fifty years never transpired, he chided himself. But for her he produced a warm smile and squeezed her hand under the furs.
“Maybe today isn’t the best—” she began, and he interrupted, knowing exactly what she’d say, as she’d already said it several times.
“We’re not wasting a single day in looking for that rift. I’ll be fine.”
“Says the man with a fever and who couldn’t put weight on his injured leg this morning,” she muttered unhappily.
That was true. He’d made one attempt, and it had felt like he’d applied a red-hot poker to the inside of his thigh bone. The leg was getting worse. He knew it, and by the dark worry in Gendra’s eyes, she knew it, too. The difference between them was that he knew he was done for and she still clung to a foolishly optimistic hope that he could somehow be saved. He knew better. Even if by some miracle they managed to escape the Winter Isles, and an additional miracle let them find Stella and she was able to heal him, he’d still be fifty years too old for his Briar Rose. He was no valiant prince to give her a happily ever after. She’d be tied to a dried-up old man, spooning food into his toothless mouth while his mind wandered in forgetfulness.
She deserved so much better than that. Though he might already have burdened her with a possibly unwanted child. Yet another consequence of a series of bad decisions he’d made the night before. He cleared his throat, drawing her immediate attention. “We haven’t talked,” he said hoarsely, “about the possibility that you could be, ah, as a result of last night. I wasn’t thinking—unforgivable of me, really—and we must confront the fact that my carelessness could have resulted in a, ah…” He trailed off in the face of her bland stare.
She raised an eyebrow. “Do you need help choosing a term? Child? Baby? Pregnancy? Bun in the oven?”
He choked a little. “Bun in the oven?”
She waved that off with a mittened hand. “My father’s family uses that euphemism. A bit yeasty for my taste. Regardless, you needn’t be concerned about this. You weren’t careless—as I recall, I was there, too, and I’m not an idiot—and there’s nothing to worry about.”
“I see.” They were quiet for a bit, the wind soughing over the ice and the folk chattering away. For several long minutes, he attempted to not worry. Couldn’t stop himself. “Do you mean to say that a pregnancy isn’t possible?”
“You seem virile enough.” She slid him a knowing smile, full of cat-in-the-cream satisfaction, blissfully unaware of how his balls ached from overuse after such a long, very dry period of disuse. “And I’m living proof that Tala and non-Tala can interbreed, with my mother as pure shapeshifter as it gets and my father stolidly mossback, little as I like to use that word. Although Dafne’s research shows that the people of the Wild Lands foothills around Ordnung, like my father’s family, probably have ancestral overlap with the Tala, which increases the likelihood of compatibility, procreation-wise. In fact, outbreeding—another of Dafne’s terms—seems to improve the odds of bearing healthy children, given the Tala history of insularity and the interbreeding that led to all sorts of problems, from infertility to fatal birth defects. Anyway, the Tala don’t worry about preventing pregnancy because even a generation after my mother was able to stabilize healthy pregnancies, we’d still much rather have babies than not.”
He’d vaguely known some of that, but the barrage of information made his head whirl. She was rattling on, very unlike herself, so he squeezed her hand, stopping her. “What’s wrong?”
She caught her breath, pressing her lips together, her eyes suddenly luminous with tears. “It’s really unlikely that I’m pregnant.”
“All right,” he said slowly, waiting. She looked away, using the mitten to swipe under her eyes. “Gendra, talk to me. Are you hoping you are or that you aren’t?”
She looked back at him, tears freezing on her lashes like crystals, and gave a watery laugh. “I have no idea. Just thinking about it, I….” Her voice broke, and she clamped her lips together.
He extracted an arm to put around her shoulders, pulling her close against him. “It’s a lot to think about.”
She sniffled and nodded against his shoulder. “More than I realized until this moment.”
“The thought of making a child between us,” he said, thinking it through as he spoke the words, “makes the future seem real in a way it didn’t before.”
The stark, gut-hollowing vision of her standing alone, holding a child by the hand returned with biting vengeance. And that was the best-case scenario. If she was trapped in the Winter Isles and the folk decided to kill her—or if the alter-realm creatures attacked again and she had no way to defend herself and their child…
“Maybe that’s it,” she agreed quietly, then abruptly sat up, staring fiercely into his face. “I hope I am pregnant. I want a child—your child—but I don’t want to do it alone. I want you with me.”
“Gendra.” He fought the overwhelming emotion elicited by her declaration and the crushing despair of having to face reality. “Even if we somehow escape this place, even if this wound doesn’t kill me, I don’t have many years left.”
“I refuse to accept that—” Her eyes widened, face going pale.
“What is it?” he demanded, sweeping the area with his mage senses for danger. There was something… An inconsistency he’d detected before when the alter-realm creatures attacked. Could it be…
“A rift,” she replied in hushed tone, her gaze going to the folk and back to his. “It’s here.”
“Are you sure of it?” Before she could reply, he grimaced. Of course she was as sure as she could be. “Bad question. Never mind.”
“How do we proceed?” She asked the question with trusting expectation, as he’d assured her he was working on a plan.
Unfortunately, exhausting himself cavorting in ill-advised sex with a much-younger woman had swept most rational thinking from his mind. He had yet to develop this amazing plan. The wages of despair: a large part of him hadn’t believed they’d ever find a rift. “It’s under the ice?” he asked, stalling.
She nodded. All right, then. First things first. She’d said that the rifts tended to behave unpredictably without stabilization, so he’d have to try to set his magic to stabilizing it while the folk cut a hole in the ice. He called out instructions for them to stop, explaining to their dubious expressions that his magery had determined this would be a good place. Gendra listened quietly, not interfering, but still clearly awaiting an explanation.
He also took a few moments to handle the weather, including clearing a path back to land. If he did somehow manage to exit this realm—or died trying—the least he could do was make sure the folk could get back to shelter. The weather magic wouldn’t hold long in his absence, but they were canny survivors, and it should be enough. If nothing else, he and Gendra would’ve helped the folk with one last fishing haul.
Once the folk had started unpacking their supplies, he agreed to being carried in his chair to where they’d make a hole in the ice. He hadn’t used the chair the day before, his pride greater than the pain, so he’d managed to avoid having Gendra witness his invalid status. But today he needed to conserve all his magery to create a new fishing hole—and to handle anything else that might occur. Also, as she’d ruthlessly pointed out, his leg wouldn’t bear any weight today. With the storm as stable as he could get it, he turned his attention to the rift submerged far below.
The shape and size of the phenomenon wasn’t easy to encompass with his conscious mind or with his more intuitive mage senses. It seemed to shift and billow, not unlike the colored lights that danced in the skies on clear winter nights. It didn’t feel like a doorway to him—which was perhaps how he’d missed it all these years—but seemed more like a… fold, almost as if reality had doubled over, creating a place of greater intensity. Definitely magic.
“Do you have a dagger I can use?” Gendra asked, walking beside him as his bearers carried his chair to the spot more or less over where they agreed they felt the rift was strongest.
“Why a dagger?” he replied absently, still focused on the rift and bemused by the question.
“Because, strong as I am, your sword is too unwieldy for me,” she retorted, then lowered her voice, though the folk couldn’t understand their conversation. “I’d prefer to be armed. If I can’t have claws, I’d like to at least have some kind of blade.”
“Ah, thoughtless of me.” He gave her his favorite blade, figuring she needed it more, and he could give her that much. “It’s not Silversteel, unfortunately.”
She tested the grip, nodding appreciatively. “It’s a good blade. And Silversteel is unnecessary, as I’m not planning to defend us against the intelligence today—I hope—just anything else that might cause us problems.”
Us.She was determined that they would both go, and probably had it in her head that she’d defend him to the death. The folk had begun chipping at the ice, so he added judicious amounts of magery to begin the melt that would make it easier. They didn’t need a large hole this time—but it did need to be big enough for Gendra to go through.
“Should I be touching the net?” she asked, shifting from foot to foot restlessly. It bothered her more than she’d said, he knew, that she had to depend on him to make her shapeshift. He’d suggested they practice, but she’d demurred, using the excuse of not wanting to drain his magic unnecessarily. He suspected she didn’t want to endure his manipulation more than needed. Since his own desire to practice was derived equally from an eroding doubt over whether he could perform the same trick again—and under pressure—and the almost salacious desire to see some of her other forms, he’d given in without further protest. Now, with the moment upon them, and his doubt taking the lead, he wished he’d insisted.
“No, don’t touch it until I give you the word.” They were near enough to the widening circle of black water for her to make the leap from where she stood. “What form will you take—fish?”
“Osprey,” she replied. “That way I ensure I can fly fast into the hole and then—Moranu take me, no, that won’t work because once I’m away from you I won’t be able to shift again. Has to be a penguin, then.” She slanted him a crooked smile. “Not my sexiest form, but I can toddle over the ice and stay under for quite a long time in that form. Just give me a kick if I’m not going fast enough.”
“I am not kicking you,” he informed her decisively.
“Not hard.” She grinned, indigo eyes sparkling. “Just a nudge. A good belly slide will get me there. How do you think the folk will react to seeing me shapeshift?”
A fine question. One with no good answer. Even after all these years, communicating with the folk was complicated and frequently muddled. “They respect magic. I’ll do my part and take responsibility. They’ll take it better if they believe it’s all my magery at work.”
“Which, in point of fact, it will be,” she noted blandly, staring into the distance and not fooling him at all.
He took her mittened hand, wishing he could touch her skin, tugging so she looked down at him in the chair. “I can’t push just anyone into shapeshifting. The magic is all you. I’m only a catalyst that helps you over the threshold,” he reminded her. “It will be both of our magics, working together.”
She smiled warmly. “I like the sound of that. And—” She broke off, an odd expression crossing her lovely face.
“What is it?”
“I’m having two thoughts at once, about entirely different things. Or are they? They’re tangled up in my mind.” She shook her head slightly. “A catalyst that helps cross a shapeshifting threshold—that gives me an idea. Also, I’m thinking about the intelligence and what it’s trying to do.”
“Besides isolating populations of magical creatures”—he swept a hand at the diligently working folk—“and tormenting us?”
She wrinkled her nose at him, then continued seriously. “What if those things are just side effects of whatever it is that it’s trying to do? Lena has observed that it seems to be experimenting. It’s clearly drawn to magic, thus its obsession with Stella and possessing her. It wanted to isolate her in that tower in the poppy alter-realm, much as you’ve been isolated here among the folk, where your magery has grown in power. I’m also thinking about how shapeshifting is somehow prevented in the alter-realms even though, as you’ve pointed out, the magic is still in me, manifesting in other ways. So it’s more like I’m being blocked. And the intelligence is interested in making new shapes—mashing the people and animals together at Gieneke and trying its own version of shapeshifting…” She trailed off, chewing her lip in thought, staring at the black hole in the ice as if it might hold answers.
“That sounds like more than two thoughts,” he suggested wryly.
She flashed him a rueful smile. “I said they were tangled up. I wish I could—” She stopped, but he knew what she’d been thinking, that she wished she could talk the problem out with her friends. Well, she would be back with them soon enough. He would see to it. His best and last gift to her. Goddesses knew, he had nothing else to give her.
“It’s time,” he said, careful not to let any emotion show in his face or voice. The folk, satisfied with the hole’s size, had all turned their attention to preparing their fishing lines and net. “Ready?”
She nodded, a determined look on her face. “I’ll go down, pinpoint the rift, then come up. You throw yourself into the hole.” Fretting, she studied the distance. “Is it too far?”
“The folk won’t like me too close,” he explained yet again. “Even in thick ice, the edge can crack, and they won’t risk me. Don’t worry. I’m not helpless. I can get there.” He ruthlessly played on her sympathy. Anything so long as she bought the lie.
“I know you can.” She smiled, meaning it so sincerely that guilt gripped him. “Once you’re in the water, push me back into orca form, and I’ll take you through the rift as fast as possible. It doesn’t feel to me like the rift is very far down, so you won’t have to hold your breath for long. Just hold on to my dorsal fin and you’ll be fine. On the other side, it’s not far at all to the surface. Mostly the cold will be shocking.”
“I’ve felt it before,” he reminded her. Then squeezed her hand. “I love you, Briar Rose.” He wanted to say more but was afraid anything else would sound like goodbye.
She bent to kiss him, lingering over it. “I love you, too,” she murmured against his lips, then straightened. “More important: Do you trust me?”
“Until the end of time,” he replied, hoping those words would stay with her, that she’d understand what he was telling her. “Better go now.”
Nodding, she pulled off her mitten and held out her bare hand. Draping the net over it, he reached for the magery, finding what felt like another sort of doorway. Portals within portals, wanting to pull him down to other worlds and bodies. He pulled himself from the rabbit hole of vision to see Gendra as a penguin, moving swiftly to the edge of the fishing hole. He’d never seen a penguin, and her toddling gait would’ve been funny if he wasn’t holding his breath, gripping the arms of the chair and willing her to go faster. If he’d been close enough, he might’ve given her a swift kick into the water. Especially when Gizena spotted the penguin and yelped in surprise, diving for the bird.
He opened his mouth to halt the hunter, but Gendra neatly dodged and was gone into the water. The folk shouted at each other to get the nets into place while Jasperina gave him a long, accusing look. She was no fool—none of them were—and they’d soon put together Gendra’s appearance and disappearance with the unusual animal sightings.
It didn’t matter, because she would be free, and the folk could accept his explanations or not, which also didn’t matter, as his life among them was coming to an end. Maybe, just maybe, a child of his would be going home with Gendra, a piece of him that would live on. I love you, he thought to both of them.
“And I love you,”Gendra replied in his mind, startling him, the shape of her thoughts slightly different than they’d been as an orca. He’d forgotten she could mind-speak with him while in animal form. Why then and not as a human? It didn’t matter.
“Can you sense the rift?”he asked, diverting her from seeing too much into his head.
“Yes. No. Sort of. It’s not as clear to me as when I was in human form.”
“Explains why you had trouble as the orca. Let me show you.”
“Please.”
Taking her mental hand, he pulled her toward where the rift loomed in his mind, a folded double layer shimmering with the time and space of multiple realms at once. It made more sense to him all the time, the magic so similar to that of the Isles of Remus and his ancestral skills that it began to reveal itself to him. Multiple portals in one. Sifting through them, he found the portal to home, his and Gendra’s.
“I see it!”she exclaimed in his mind. “You be ready. I’ll surface and—”
With his magery, he seized the currents of water around her, pushing her through the portal to home, her mind-voice silencing as she went beyond his reach forever.
Goodbye, my love.
