Eidolon (4 page)

As if recognizing the source of her fear, his voice gentled, and he twined her still damp braid through his fingers. “There’s nothing one can do that I didn’t already take care of on the road, Ildiko. It’s a small thing and will heal soon enough.

“You still should have sought out a healer.”

He wrapped the towel around his middle and took the second one she handed him to dry his limbs. “I was in too much of a hurry to return home. I had a wife waiting. And food.”  He flashed a fanged grin at her. “Not one and the same of course.”

She swatted him lightly on the arm before scampering away on a screech when he returned the gesture with a hand to her buttock.

They caught up with each other’s week as they ate. Brishen’s foray sounded miserable, complete with rain, fighting and bad-tempered cattle. He was on his third plate of food when he mentioned the barge carrying trade goods to Escariel’s docks. “We saw the barge as we traveled back to Saggara. I expected it to be much further down the Absu. Was it delayed?”

Ildiko leaned back in her chair, twirling the stem of her goblet slowly between thumb and fingers. “You could say that. Someone in Gaur decided it might be amusing to list the weights and measures of the cargo in Gauri Old Form.”  She described the visit from the messenger and her anger at seeing the manifest completed in temple script as well as the long hours at the dock completing translations.

Brishen’s dismay made her own irritation over the entire affair flare once more. “You’re an excellent helpmeet, Ildiko, but it’s disappointing this happened. I’d hoped the actual trade exchanges wouldn’t start out so contentious.”

She caressed his forearm where it rested on the table’s surface. “I as well, though I suspect we won’t see much more of that in future shipments. This was someone testing the waters.”

He shook his head. “You’d think they’d find better ways to waste their time and ours.”  He finished the rest of his wine and helped her stand. His undamaged eye was at drowsy half mast, and he’d tossed aside the patch earlier while bathing. Scar tissue welted the curvature of bone around the empty socket in a corona of pale, jagged lines.

Ildiko slid her thumb along the grouping below his collapsed eyelid. “I know you’ve said they don’t hurt, but it’s hard to imagine you no longer feel the pain.”

Brishen captured her hand and brought her thumb to his lips for a brief kiss. “They would only hurt if you thought me hideous because of them.”

“That will never happen,” she vowed.

“Then they will never hurt.”

She spread her fingers across his soft mouth. “Come to bed. I’ll massage you, then take advantage of your body while you’re too relaxed to protest.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Threat or a promise?” he murmured under her hand.

Ildiko gave him a coy smile. “Does it matter?”

He grabbed her hand and tugged her toward the big bed where the sheets were turned down. “Not at all.”

The towel dropped, abandoned by the bedside. Brishen sprawled face down and naked across the bed, feet hanging over the edge, arms hidden under a pillow he tucked under his cheek. He closed his eye and gave a deep sigh when Ildiko seated herself on his lower back, knees and thighs pressed against his narrow hips. A drawn out moan followed the sigh when she began kneading his shoulders and upper back with hands slippery with scented oil.

Tight muscle loosened under her ministration, his smooth skin made even more supple by the warm oil. Ildiko rubbed and kneaded him from shoulder to calf, shifting position so she could reach the various spots on his body and still avoid the painful looking bruise on the back of his leg.

His breathing slowed, and he settled deeper into the mattress. Ildiko assumed he’d fallen asleep until he spoke in a somnolent voice. “Are your hands tired?”

She heard the thread of hope in his voice that her answer would be “no.”  She lifted her weight and balanced on her knees. “Not yet.”  She shed her robe, giving a small shiver as a cold draft coursed over her skin. The hearth was doing its job of warming the room, but the air remained frigid. Brishen, on the other hand, lay hot beneath her. She bent, pressing her breasts to his back, and nuzzled his ear. “Turn over,” she whispered.

He rolled to his back under her, his hands settling on her hips. He was fully erect, the head of his cock tapping against the folds of her night rail as his pelvis shifted. A bluish flush highlighted his cheekbones and washed over his neck and clavicles. “How long will you deny me, wife?”

The light scrape of her forefingers over his dark nipples made him gasp and arch his back. “How am I denying you?”  She knew the answer; they played this game each time he returned to her, but she wanted to hear him say it.

His right eye had paled from vibrant yellow to glowing alabaster, and he replied in staccato breaths, broken each time she stroked his nipples. “You haven’t kissed me yet. Not once since my return.”

Of the many things they both had to adapt to in this marriage, a simple kiss had been the one Ildiko was certain had carried the most thought and planning. The Kai typically kissed each other with closed mouths and affectionate nuzzling of the nose and cheeks. Even in the heat of passion, they didn’t kiss with open mouths and tongues—a bloody business considering the sharpness of their teeth.

Ildiko had taught Brishen to kiss her in the way that was human but not so dangerous. A careful dance of lips and tongues, his stroking hers in the hot space of her mouth, her licking and sucking on his lower lip. Neither fully human nor fully Kai, the kiss was solely theirs, altered to please each other, and made of pure magic. Ildiko delighted in kissing her husband and quickly learned that Brishen craved it, demanding she bestow that particular display of affection on him at every opportunity.

She stretched across his torso, his cock long between their bellies. “You’re impatient, love,” she said and punished him for the failing by drawing his right nipple into her mouth to gently suck.

Brishen nearly heaved them both off the bed. Powerful legs wrapped around hers, heavy arms crossed her back, and he thrust against her, caught in the tangling folds of her night rail.

Undaunted, Ildiko abandoned his right side for his left, showering the same attention before nipping and licking a path up his chest to his neck and the hollow of his throat. Brishen arched his neck to grant her greater access, and his pulse beat hard and fast under her lips.

His fingers flexed on her backside, the pointed tips of his claws spearing the cloth of her night rail to press into her skin. Ildiko shivered in his arms, as much from desire as from an instinctive wariness. He could easily bloody her. A careless twitch, an involuntary jerk, and he could flay her open. He didn’t and never would. Her trust in him was absolute, and the danger implied by the Kai physical traits of tooth and claw, strength and speed, only heightened her passion for him.

“I do not deny you,” she whispered against his temple, damp with perspiration. He tasted of salt and the cool sharpness of juniper. She feathered light kisses along his hairline, traveling across his forehead to the clear space between his eyebrows before gliding lower, over the bony bridge of his nose to the fan of scars and the collapsed lid covering his empty eye socket. The breath of a touch on mutilated flesh before she moved to his ear. “I will never deny you,” she whispered and nipped his earlobe. He shuddered in her arms. “Ask anything of me, and it’s yours.”

Brishen’s only reply was the tightening of his arms around her and the steady cadence of bestial growls vibrating low in his throat. Ildiko’s lips mapped a path to his mouth, pausing for one incandescent moment. The room had grown hot, heated by more than one fire. Shivers still raced across her skin but not from the cold. She had successfully reduced her husband to incoherency and wordless moans that begged her for mercy. He, in turn, had set her alight. Every nerve ending tingled, from the top of her head to the arches of her feet. The interior muscles of her sex throbbed, and her thighs were slick as her body readied itself in anticipation. Brishen shoved the night rail up to her waist. They exchanged a mutual groan when his shaft pressed into her bare belly, the head smearing a trickle of seed below her navel.

She kissed him then. Not a peck on the lips or the click of teeth in the more violent throes of passion, but a slow, decadent play of mouths and tongues. She opened to him, both mouth and thighs. He slid in, filling both places until she’d burst from the fullness of him inside her. He swallowed her throaty whimpers.

His hands slid from her waist to her hips, holding her in place as he ground against her pelvis. Ildiko sucked on his tongue, all her internal muscles matching the rhythm as she squeezed his shaft. Their position didn’t allow for greater movement unless they ended their kiss, and Ildiko waited until the last wisp of air emptied out of her lungs. She pulled away to inhale and rested her forehead against Brishen’s.

“I won’t last,” he said in a guttural voice. “It’s too good.”

It was too good, and she didn’t care that any prolonged lovemaking was no longer a choice. She had brought them both to fever pitch. The grind of his pelvis against her pubic bone, the swell of his cock inside her, the scent of him inundating her nostrils—all served to drive her to madness.

She rocked atop him, back arching, fingers kneading his shoulders as jolts of heat and sensation shot down her spine to spiral in her abdomen. She cried out, nails digging into Brishen’s flesh as her knees clamped down hard on either side of his hips. Caught in the throes of climax, she only vaguely heard his responding groans and the cant of her name uttered in broken breaths as he clutched her buttocks and found his own release.

Ildiko hung her head, panting hard, before stretching atop Brishen’s length. His chest heaved against her breasts. He tightened his forearm across her backside to keep her anchored to him and rolled them both to their sides. Dark hair drifted over his cheek and eye, and she caught the silky strands in her fingers before draping them back behind his ear.

He nuzzled his face into her palm. “I’ve thought of nothing else except that kiss since we started for home.”

“And what about that which came afterwards?”

She squeaked when he hugged her even closer. “I didn’t dare,” he said. “Too much of a distraction. I’d likely have walked my mount into a tree with such thoughts occupying my mind.”

They both laughed at the image his words conjured. Brishen yanked the covers one way, then another until he and Ildiko lay beneath them instead of on top. He plucked at her night rail. “This has to go.”  The garment ended up in the corner with his dirty shirt and trousers.

As naked as he was now, she huddled into the cove of his body for warmth. He caressed her back and rubbed his chin on the crown of her head. Both motions soon slowed and finally stopped. Deep, even breaths drafted across her scalp.

Ildiko tilted her head enough to glimpse Brishen’s features. Despite his assurances they wouldn’t sleep for hours, he’d drifted off, the shadows of exhaustion indigo-dark under his eyes. She smiled, settling deeper into his embrace and the warmth of blankets and furs. He was home; he was safe. He was in her arms. There was no better moment in all the world than this. She closed her eyes and joined him in slumber.

CHAPTER TWO

“I reviewed the agreements regarding water rights assigned to Natep Holt and those assigned to Istari Holt as well as the map drawn up showing the stream’s path through the two holts. There’s an error in the cartography which puts almost a league of the contended stream in Istari territory instead of Natep’s. Both holts are now up in arms. Your Highness, I’m afraid no matter how I rule on this matter, the end result will require a martial intervention from Saggara.”

Brishen nodded without comment, wondering idly how history might remember him if he impaled himself on his own sword in a last ditch effort to escape the soul-killing boredom of his vicegerent’s conversation. It might be less excruciating to hear if he hadn’t already heard it three times before—in excruciating detail. That, and the water rights conflict between those two holts was a long-running one, existing when Brishen’s own grandfather ruled Bast-Haradis from Saggara instead of the current capital. The map was always wrong and the stream’s geography seemingly as fluid as the water coursing through it.

He gazed longingly at the open doors that led from the great hall to the loggia outside. The silhouettes of figures danced and leapt near the threshold, their forms outlined by the many bonfires lit for the festival of
Kaherka
. Kai from every village and holt in a two-day’s ride had gathered at Saggara to celebrate, from humble farmers who had labored in the fields to bring in their harvests to the vicegerents who labored at their desks and now whittled away at him with their bureaucracy.
Kaherka
promised two days of eating, drinking, and lovemaking—none of which Brishen was enjoying at the moment.

The crowd in the hall was sparse, populated mostly by the provincial ministers who answered directly to Brishen and considered this an opportune time to bend his ear, and servants who ran to and fro between the kitchens and the serving tables laden with food. Those who feasted filled their plates and returned to the celebrants filling the loggia and spilling into the redoubt’s outer perimeter. Music and raucous laughter drifted inside, and Brishen bit back a groan as a second vicegerent pressed him for resolution on a litany of concerns he was certain he already addressed during the previous month’s visit to that particular province.

At least he wasn’t alone in his misery. Ildiko, dressed in a gown of deepest indigo that highlighted her pale skin and red hair, traversed the hall from one corner to the other, stopping at each cluster of Kai to greet visitors and talk for a moment. As the only human in the gathering, she stood out like a beacon on a hill, drawing every gaze as she passed.

His presence in the hall and the awareness of rank assured none would be anything but courteous and even friendly to her. She might be human but she was also a
hercegesé
, a duchess through marriage to him, and outranked every Kai occupying Saggara and its provinces except himself. Still, he knew their thoughts. He once had them as well.

Serovek Pangion, the Beladine margrave whose lands bordered Saggara, had assured Brishen that to human eyes, Ildiko was pretty. Beautiful even.  To the Kai, she was ugly, and he’d received numerous pitying glances and overheard an equal number of whispers about how regrettable it was that the handsome Kai
herceges
was given such an uncomely creature to wife.

His gaze followed her as he listened with half an ear to his minister’s relentless drone. Lust surged in his blood. A day in her arms wasn’t enough for him, especially after a week spent away from her, knee-deep in mud, cow manure and blood. Surely there was some way he could spirit her away from the hall, out the doors and into the wild crowd that frolicked and cavorted under the light of a waxing moon. He’d dance her past the bonfires and the revelers to a quiet spot where he could assuage his passion for her in the tight grip of her body while she serenaded him with soft moans.

Ildiko caught his stare over the shoulders of a duo of Kai who chatted with her. Her eyebrows quirked upward as he mouthed a desperate “
Help me
.”  Her gaze flickered back to her guests; she laughed at something one of them said, responded with something he couldn’t hear and inclined her head in farewell before strolling to where he stood, his well-meaning ministers’ prisoner.

The vicegerents’ complaints faded at her approach. Each gave a low bow and polite “Your Highness” in greeting. She returned the salutations before turning her attention to Brishen. “My lord, please forgive the interruption, but I seek your advice on a matter that’s come to my attention.”  Brishen clamped his lips tight against the laughter threatening to escape. As she spoke, Ildiko’s right eye slowly drifted toward her nose while her left stayed in place.

“It’s a small matter,” she continued as if unaware of the bizarre ocular motions or the stifled horror they elicited in her guests. “I promise to return you to your companions as soon as possible.”  Her right eye snapped back to center and leveled a stare on the female minister to his left. The woman shuddered and audibly swallowed.

Brishen choked back a gasp of his own when Ildiko partially closed her right eye but kept the left one open. The eye rolled in a slow circle and repeated the action as if chasing a speck of dust stuck in the white sclera. Judging by the shocked silence and stiff postures of the vicegerents on either side of him, they were as repulsed as he was.

Muttered assurances that she wasn’t interrupting and to take all the time she needed prefaced a flight toward the open doors and the sanctuary of the loggia where human women with chameleonic eyes didn’t lurk to seek them out for casual conversation.

Ildiko watched the vicegerents flee until they were lost in the darkness beyond the doors. She turned to a grinning Brishen, her eyes steady and no longer capering about in their sockets. “And now we are alone. Was that the help you sought, love?”

He pulled her into his arms, hands splayed across her back and hip. “That was the most grotesque and formidable performance I’ve ever witnessed.”

She “harrumphed” and tapped a finger against one of the ivory clasps that closed his tunic. “I’ve been practicing. And it’s only grotesque because you’re Kai. Had I done that to another human, they would have either laughed or ordered me to stop acting childish.”

“My savior,” he murmured against her cheek. “You’ve frightened my vicegerents and rescued me from an evening of dull complaints. What payment can I offer you?”  He leaned back and wiggled an eyebrow. “Gold?  Jewels?  My body?”

Ildiko traced the pattern of embroidery decorating his tunic sleeve. Her lashes, a darker red than her hair, shielded her strange human eyes for a moment. “Hmmm, that is far too difficult a choice, therefore I choose all of them.”  The lashes lifted, and Brishen didn’t mistake the mischievous gleam in her black pupils. “For now though, you can repay me with dancing. Nearly all of Saggara is outside celebrating, except us. This is my first
Kaherka
festival, and I don’t want to miss it.”

She didn’t need to say it twice. Brishen meshed his fingers with her and strode toward the doors, wearing a scowl he hoped deterred anyone from stopping him. Ildiko jogged behind him, laughing and admonishing him to slow down.

A crush of people filled the loggia from one corner to another, clustered in small groups to drink and toast a successful harvest. Others danced around great bonfires while even more lingered at the long trestle tables dragged from the hall and laden with food prepared by Saggara’s kitchen staff and brought by festival goers who had traveled from homesteads in Saggara’s territory.

Brishen swung Ildiko into a crowd of Kai standing at the ready before a group of musicians. The dancers faced each others in two lines with a space between them, men on one side facing women on the other. Several applauded and whistled when the
herceges
and his human
hercegesé
joined them.

The musicians tuned their instruments, playing teasing notes that revealed the song they prepared to play. Brishen grinned, delighted when Ildiko clapped and laughed. “I know this song,” she called to him over the din of voices and celebration.

“But can you dance to it?”  Ildiko was an adept dancer, as a woman raised in any royal court was expected to be, but she wasn’t dancing with Gauri humans. This dance, a reel, was fast, and the Kai were faster.

She cocked a hip, her expression challenging. “Better than you, I’ll wager, Your Highness. It’s a favorite Gauri dance as well.”

More whistles and catcalls from the line of dancers met her reply and Brishen bowed. “I accept the gauntlet thrown, my lady.”

The musicians spun out the first notes and rhythms with string instruments and percussion. The two lines danced towards each other, the men spinning the women around as they met before parting once more and widening the gap between the lines.

Drums beat faster and the players’ fingers flew across strings as the dancers flew over the ground, spinning and jumping in a swirl of flying skirts and tunics. Ildiko threw back her head and laughed as Brishen caught her up in his arms and whirled through the serpentine line as it coiled and stretched, compressed and expanded to the increasingly wild music. The dancers spun, calling out encouragement to each other and to the musicians to play faster, play harder.

Ildiko was a feather in his embrace, and he tossed her high in the air. She screamed, not with fear but exhilaration. He caught her easily, snatching a quick kiss before spinning her away from him to her original place in the line. They slid around each other, a wordless courtship that fired the blood in his veins from hot to boiling.

His wife’s hair had come loose and flew about her head and shoulders each time he spun her around him. Even in the light silvered by the moon and warmed by the bonfires, he could see the pink glow washing her pale skin. He’d once compared her coloring to that of a boiled mollusk. The mollusks and their bounty of amaranthine dye were the wealth of Bast-Haradis and Ildiko of Gaur the greatest treasure of Brishen Khaskem.

The beat of the song slowed in increments, finally coming to a halt. Brishen admired the quick rise and fall of Ildiko’s breasts as she struggled to catch her breath. She massaged a spot on her side. He guessed she rubbed at a stitch similar to the one pinching his ribs at the moment.

Her eyes narrowed as she followed the line of his gaze. “And what are you looking at,
Herceges
?”

He drew her closer and pushed a lock of red hair off her shoulder to expose her neck, shimmering with perspiration in the half-light. “The exceptional stitchery on your bodice, madam.”  He bent and licked at the spot no longer hidden by her hair. She tasted of salt and flowers. “You’re nimble on your feet, wife,” he whispered in her ear.

She chuckled and stroked his arms. “I have to be if I don’t want to be trampled by you and the rest of your kin. Heavier than an ox you are. My toes would be crushed beyond hope if I didn’t keep them out of the way.”

Brishen hugged her, careful not to squeeze too hard. She was human and far more fragile than a Kai woman, at least physically. If her physical strength equaled that of her character, she could carry a loaded wagon on her back up a mountainside and never break a sweat.

“What if I told you, I’m a sliver of a breath away from hauling you behind that barricade.”  He indicated a low wall away from the crowds with a thrust of his chin. His voice thickened. “Hitching your skirts and taking you against the timbers.”  Her soft sigh tickled the underside of his jaw where she nuzzled him. His trousers stretched tight over his erection, and he held her even closer, no longer aware of the many people eddying around them.

“I would tell you to remember to cover my mouth so I don’t embarrass us both by screeching your name from the pleasure of it.”  She winked.

“Holy gods,” he muttered before ending their embrace to grasp her hand and pull her toward their chosen trysting place. Once more, she jogged to keep up, her breathing as harsh as his in anticipation.

They made it three steps before a voice rose above the crowds and the music and the crackling bonfires in a bellow that brought silence down on the loggia with the force of a thunderclap. “
Herceges
!”  Anhuset strode toward him and Ildiko, the gathering of Kai parting before her like grain before a thresher’s blade. Her eyes glowed almost as silvery as her hair, her features harsh and leached to the color of cold ashes. Another Kai followed close behind her.

A warning roil gathered strength in Brishen’s gut. Had his father died?  Djedor was already an old monarch when he married Secmis and sired children off her. Brishen hated his mother and barely tolerated his father. The apprehension swelling inside him rose from something other than a sorrow he didn’t possess for a parent he hardly knew, an instinct that warned of news more dire. Anhuset’s expression mirrored that of the man who accompanied her.

Anhuset inclined her head briefly toward Ildiko. “
Hercegesé
.”  She turned immediately back to Brishen. “A messenger from the capital. You need to hear this.”  She stepped aside and motioned for the man to come forward.

Ildiko released Brishen’s arm to step behind him, an observer now. The man looked as if he’d ridden off a battlefield, horror stamped on his haggard face.  Brishen eyed him, noting the shadows of sleep deprivation, the ragged and dirty state of his clothing. If he’d ridden from Haradis to Saggara, he’d done it without stopping by the look of him. “What message do you have from Haradis?”

The messenger blinked at him slowly, as if unsure Brishen was real or simply an illusion born from lack of sleep. “They are gone,” he choked out in a raspy voice. “All of them. Every one gone. Destroyed by
galla
.”

Startled cries and gasps broke the suffocating stillness. Brishen slashed a hand through the air, and they quieted. “Bring wine,” he ordered and waited while someone rushed forward with a full goblet. The messenger took it with shaking hands and downed the contents in three swallows. He gripped the empty goblet as if it were a talisman, and he shuddered.