She dropped her hand. She sat back again, propped her head against the dome and looked up at the stars.
"Is this truly how you want our futures to unfold?" she asked quietly. "War and bloodshed. You're determined?"
"Let me you ask you something, Princess. Why did you come here?" "You know why."
"A letter would have sufficed as warning for the sanf. The rings were ample proof. There was no need for you to show up in person, unless you had another motive."
She was surprised into a laugh. "You think I came here to marry you?"
"I think," he said, "that somewhere in your heart, you knew where your fate would lie. That there was no drakon of the Zaharen who would match you as I would. You were wed to an Alpha because that's what that black dragon simmering in your blood demands of you. You will wed an Alpha once more. Pendant que nous vivons, ainsi nous devons etre." The warmth of his touch modified, became lighter, a bare stroke down her arm. "I regret you heard what you did with the council. I regret there isn't more time to convince you that I'm right. I'm not your enemy, Maricara. Like it or not, for better or worse—I'm your husband, and your mate. King to king. Soon you'll be a queen as well. Neither of us can change it. It is why you came to me. Why fight what's over and done?"
Her throat had gone dry; she swallowed and looked away, and was glad he could not see her face. "How romantic. I'm quite swept off my feet."
Kimber's fingers tapped lightly against the backs of her own. "I can shower you with rose petals if you'd like. I can feed you Swiss chocolates and bathe you in French champagne.. .but you'll have to come with me inside for all that." He looked at her aslant. "Will you?"
"No."
The stars glinted silver and blue and gold and pink. Clouds of smoke drifted above, tails and twists of deep charcoal.
Mari said, "You can shower me with petals up here."
She felt him change, felt that edge of frustration in him sharpen and splinter, transforming into something else.
"I'll wait," she said.
It was no time for dalliance; she knew it as well as he. No time for anything more between them but the end rushing closer, enormous, inevitable. She had come to this place and brought with her the devil's wind, a searing ill harbinger of exposure and death and everything hazardous to a people woven from fiction, from threads of mist. She had not meant to do it, but it was done.
Yet the Earl of Chasen only fixed her with a hot, intent look she didn't even need to see to feel. Then he was gone, his clothing settling down to the roof with a sigh of cotton and leather, his boots falling over to lightly strike the tiles.
After a moment, his voice floated up from beyond the edge of the parapet.
"Great King. I'm afraid you'll have to join me down here, if it's petals you require."
He would not be able to bring them to her as smoke; she had no idea how he'd manage it as a dragon, either.
She Turned, following the scent of him to the garden, to a corner of arbors and pergolas and long, sweet grasses, and rows and rows of windows shining black above them.
He stood in the shelter of one of the arbors, a profusion of vines and red roses tumbling from the wooden slats. Fragrance twirled around him with honey-slow leisure; her first breath as woman was spiced and pungent, nearly too strong. It made her head spin.
She had Turned right against him. She had taken that breath and then leaned up to him with her bare body and kissed him, hard and open, her hands clutching at his shoulders. He caught her to him, returning her hunger with his own. She heard the rustle of rose leaves, the shifting of gravel beneath their feet that felt hard and real and wonderful all at once, like him.
He drew her farther with him into the arbor, shadows so thick she lost the image of him entirely; he was heat and muscle and touch. She felt his arms lift, held above her: rose petals floated down, patting her nose and her chest and her arms, skimming the surface of her hair. A few still clung to his palms as he lowered his hands to kiss her again; one trembled at the corner of her lips; another at her collarbone, a perfect fit to the hollow at the base of her throat.
"There," he murmured. "There. You look like."
"You can't see me."
"I can." His mouth found the petal at her lips, his tongue tracing its shape, tracing her. "Lovely girl, I can."
Mari closed her eyes and caught her breath, tipping back her head. "Like what, then?" she whispered.
He smiled against her. "Like an elfin queen. Like a dragon king." Like mine, he nearly finished, but kissed her full on the lips instead.
He wished for light. Torchlight, sunlight—to see her openly again, beyond the gleam of milky skin, beyond the dim luster of her hair, the gray-night shine of her eyes. Her lips were dark, and her hair was dark, and her nipples, God, her nipples were dark and plump and hard against his palms. He opened his mouth over her pulse, the tender column of her neck, dragging his lips lower, half-crouching to rub his face to her chest. Lifting her, hearing her low gasp over the drumming of her heart. But she was light in his arms, hardly a weight at all, and his mouth found one perfect tip, warm and puckered. He suckled her, and heard her gasp become his name.
He needed this. He needed this moment—not very long, not forever, just enough to wipe clean his worries right now, to bury the weight of his title and honor and the bitter fear for his brother in the lush promise of her body. In her kisses, and her taste, and her legs wrapped hard around him. There was a terror running through him so raw and deep it made him tremble; he was a leader and man, and he stood at the ruin of all he loved—and he just needed this one stolen moment with her to forget—
Deep, deep inside him, in a place so hidden and quiet he didn't even have a name for it, Kimber knew that the terror was winning: He was quaking apart. He could not think of his brother without anguish; it was a pain so profound, so vast it seemed to transfigure his very blood. He seemed made of lead now, not flesh, lead that was both numb and slow, useless against the vicious cold eating away at him from inside and out. He was desperate to help Rhys and could not. He was desperate for his tribe. Whenever he closed his eyes the image of the broken emerald burned like a brand behind his lids. The shattered stone. His little brother dead. Tortured. Rhys's heart—his heart—
If he came apart, Kim honestly didn't know what would be left behind. Nothing good. Nothing of use to the drakon, or his wife.
Perhaps Maricara sensed his secret trembling. She was mystic and surprising and when she looked up at him now, surrounded by roses and night, Kim actually felt like he was drowning, surrendering to her mysterious depths. He grasped at that, grateful. Aye, he could drown in her, and be free. There was nothing he wanted more in this instant than that.
Her legs lifted to encircle his waist. Her fingers clenched against his shoulders. She arched back and for one glorious instant he saw her gently silvered in the starlight: her throat and jaw and shoulders, slender muscles held taut, and then he'd swung her back into the protection of the roses and the subtle dark, giving his back to the barbed canes. Kim raised his head to nuzzle her neck and lowered her onto him.
He found her entrance. He was eager for her, he was aching for her, to the point where he nearly forgot where he was, forgot the garden and the manor and the drakon all around them. The dry leaves of the roses sketched patterns on his skin. Thorns pricked, drew blood. He didn't care.
She was here. She was ready. She kissed him with her tongue in his mouth and took him inside her and all thoughts of location, discretion, smoke, blew away, incinerated. He heard a noise, a deep visceral sound of pleasure, and realized it had come from him.