Hers to Claim (24 page)

Maddie grinned. “
Pottsdim Likor
from off-planet. It’s the prince’s private reserve. He said it would raise the dead.”

With a
sthmatic heaves, Adonia wheezed, “I agree. Was I that bad?”

“Yes, my L
ady. We knew you weren’t dead—you still breathed…but he
was
quite concerned. Let me call for a tray and then I’ll help you dress.”

With an audible clunk, Adonia put the now empty tumbler on her bedside table, swept her coverings off
and rose. She stumbled the few steps to her closet, pulled out the dress she’d worn earlier that day and then stripped off her nightgown. She threw out an arm and braced it on the wall to steady herself. “I feel like I’ve fallen down the gallery stairs.”

~~~

Adonia had satisfied her hunger and then announced she would take Hel his dinner, eager to thank him for his care of her.
“Actually, you are just eager to see him,”
the painfully honest part of her had corrected.

“
Hel, I’ve brought your dinner.” Adonia peered cautiously through the doorway, past the open “game room” door. As her eyes searched the softly lit chamber for Hel, her eyes consciously avoided the racks of implements on the walls. “Over here.” His deep baritone preceded his massive shape emerging from behind a row of cabinets. He moved to a low table, pulled out a chair and sat. His eyes fixed on her as she entered. The welcome in them filled her with quiet joy. She crossed the room to the table and emptied the basket of its contents. She pulled up a chair beside him and began to sit.

Hel reached over and clasped her wrist gently.
“No. Here.” She followed the steady pull until she sat on his lap. Her gaze met his and she held it for as long as she could before she had to drop her eyes overwhelmed by the blaze of emotion in his steady stare.

“How do you feel?” A broad hand swept the hair off her cheek and cupped her jaw.

She leaned into the pressure and closed her eyes. In spite of her rest, exhaustion wrecked her and she couldn’t shake a persistent, inner chill. “I feel like someone dragged me by my heels down the hall to the bed, but I know you must have carried me.” At his small snort, she opened her eyes and lifted both arms around his neck. “I’m fine, really. Just tired.”

His forehead descended to rest on hers. His
warm breath washed her cheeks. “I’m pushing you too hard. Asking too much of you.”

“You don’t
request one-half the things of me that you demand from yourself. I want to do this. I
can
do this.”

H
e pulled back and his eyes searched hers. “I hope so or I’m no better than the corruption that we battle. I’ll have destroyed something beautiful and fine.”

His words did much toward dispelling the chill that permeated her, but she dropped her eyes shyly
. “I’ll say again...what I give is given freely.”

“I know, Nia
. I know. But I think, without speaking a single word of protest, you would allow me to empty you of all life.”

At that, she lifted her eyes to his and considered his words. “Yes.” A small smile tilted the corners of her mouth
at the worry and concern she saw there. She lifted a delicate shoulder in a slight shrug. “If that is what you need.”

“
Oh, Nia,” he groaned. “You are so precious. Our need is desperate, Beauty. Of that, I am certain. But I’m equally certain that a future without you is of little value to me. It seems as if I tempt fate, but, Nia…you have given me hope for a life I thought lost to me…children…a home...a loving partner. When this evil is driven from our planet, stay in Nyth Uchel—as my wife.”

An upwelling of emotion
sealed her mouth as effectively as if he’d gagged her. He read her answer in her mute nod, the soft sheen of tears she couldn’t prevent and the trembling smile on her face. He gathered her to him, and his arms wrapped her in a painful constriction—which she endured gladly.

“Please, B
eauty, you must have a care for yourself. Promise me.” Hel cupped her face and breathed soft kisses on her mouth. “Promise me, Nia. This is important to me. Promise.”

When he would allow her use of her lips, she
whispered, “I promise.”

“And still I have no doubt you will give yourself up without a moment’s hesitation, as you did with the mutant beast...as you are doing with our sick.”

She felt his ribs rise and fall and heard his heavy exhalation of breath. In the lull, she considered his words. She considered how
she
would feel in a world that didn’t contain those strong arms that now encircled her. She drew back slowly until she could see his face. Her hand rose to trace his elegant cheekbone, his strong jaw, and then slid back to his shoulder. “I’ll make a pact with you. Promise me that you will guard yourself and I will promise you the same. I would not choose a life without you, either.”

His storm-
gray eyes held hers steadily. “Pact.”

Adonia supposed if she were most women she’d spend the next few hours extracting heartfelt vows and
romantic plans for the future from Hel. While she’d no doubt he meant his words, their future together looked so uncertain she didn’t want to spend any time investing emotion into things that might never be. She’d done that with Klaran. The pleasures of this moment would serve her very nicely, thank you very much. The knowledge that she belonged to this man, that he wanted her as a wife and mother to his children was glory enough. For a fraction of a moment, she missed Steffania. The red-haired warrior would have celebrated with her, she was certain.

Adonia relaxed into the shelter of
Hel’s embrace, and her mind wandered to another issue that had troubled her throughout the last night and day. “Hel, I’m afraid for the female
miku
. I’m worried exposure to the black corruption has fatally traumatized her.”

He
l shifted her in his arms, and Adonia felt the full force of his intent gaze. “Why do you think that?”

She
lifted one shoulder and turned troubled eyes to him. “The little creature has withdrawn into silence. I sensed nothing from her for the past day, at least—perhaps longer.”

“
When I put you in your sleeping gown, I noted she had left her nest between your legs.”

A hot flush of blood crept up Adonia’s neck.
In theory, one of these days his casual handling of her naked body wouldn’t disconcert her so—though she’d not give long odds on that happening any time in the immediate future. “Yes. After the last session in the
Chambre Cristalle
, she moved to wrap my waist, and has not left that position. As a delicate creature of empathic bond, I fear the ordeal of my battles on the aetheric plane have damaged her.”

Hel leaned back in his chair, placed a portion of meat in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. A
nother mouthful replaced the one he swallowed and still he didn’t speak. Slowly, the dinner she had brought disappeared. Adonia waited in patient silence, content to simply be—to absorb the intimacy and sense of safety this man seemed to impart effortlessly.

Finally,
Hel cleared his throat. “There is one other possibility. Gestation.”

Adonia straightened in his arms
and pushed back, turning her face to his. “Excuse me?”

His expression softened and pleasure lit his eyes. “She could be pregnant with young. That would be a very good thing
, as I believe this pair is one of the last of their kind.” Hel stood, cradling Adonia in his arms as he rose and then placing her on her feet. “The pair could have mated during your instruction in the fourth level rite for kinetic energy. The
miku
require human intercourse to complete their own reproductive process and, if memory serves, they were particularly active when we coupled. The female could have shut down afterward to protect her developing offspring from empathic overload.”

“What do
we do?”

“
Are you up for a hot soak? We need to return the pair to the Grotto D’oro. Come.”

She took the hand Hel offered.

As before, they descended the narrow, spiraling stairs deep underground into an increasingly humid and warm environment. As before, the display of flashing gold and green that illuminated and gilded the vast cavern walls and deep lake mesmerized Adonia with its fantastical splendor. When they stood on the white sand shores, the bath-temperature water of azure blue and chromium green lapping at their bare feet, Hel turned to her and lifted her heavy hair to her back. His hands rested on her shoulders. “I thought I could be content simply to soak in the grotto’s warm waters. I thought I could stay away from you for one night. Allow you rest.” She watched as his expression made a lie of his words. He scoffed in self-derision. “I want you. Goddess help me, but I’ve wanted you from the first moment I saw you. I will never have enough of you.”

Shivers of anticipation raised gooseflesh on her skin
, and Adonia felt her nipples harden to pebbles as he bent and with warm sips of lips and tongue, covered the bare skin of her neck and collarbone. “So sweet, so fine. I’ll try not to ride you too hard, Beauty.”

The warm, humid air of the cavern
caressed the bare skin of her upper torso and then her tender buttocks and slender thighs as her dress fell away and puddled at her feet. When had he unfastened her gown? One powerful hand banded the soft nape of her neck while his thumb raised her chin to allow him to plunder her mouth. The other hand engulfed a tender buttock cheek and ground her hips across his hardening groin. She melted into him in willing surrender. He separated from her just long enough to shed his clothes then silently walked her backward into the hot water of the thermal lake.

When
Hel had finished with her some long time later, the two
miku amar
bobbed intertwined, glowing with incandescent brilliance in the warm waters of the Grotto D’oro, and he had to carry her insensate body to their bedchamber.

~~~

Adonia marked that evening as a turning point in her relationship with Hel. From that evening forward, he rarely left her side. She reveled in the luxury of effortless companionship and intimacy with Nyth Uchel’s prince that day-by-day repaired her shattered self-worth and replaced it with serene confidence and a deep sense of belonging—and the greatest miracle of all, the unassailable knowledge that Hel loved her.

Hel’s physical use of her never slacked. If anything, their private understanding
freed some constraint within him and with increasing frequency, he pulled her into a private alcove or hidden niche in the castle and drove her to orgasmic frenzy with his lips and tongue and driving cock. Her lessons from Hel in the
Chambre Cristalle
grew in occurrence, as did her familiarity with the game room and the use of its multiple implements. His demands that she learn and practice her arts never diminished.

There was nothing tame about Hel’s love
, but rather than beat her down, his aggressive masculinity and severe, exacting focus strengthened her, empowered her, and she gloried in the woman she was becoming. Steffania’s incomprehensible words—words that seemed to have been uttered in another lifetime—echoed through her thoughts with regularity.
“....the more I abandon myself to him, the more he gives of himself to me.
It’s a delicious contradiction. He is never more wholly mine than when I am under his total control, in complete service to him.”
A knowing smile tipped her lips. The next time Adonia saw Steffania, she’d have to tell her that now, she too, understood.

A
shockwave of unceasing, clarion blasts from the watchtower’s horn jerked Adonia from sleep. The pink light of dawn flirted with the gloom in their chamber. She pushed off Hel’s chest and looked toward the window with an impatient swipe at the itinerant locks of dark hair obscuring her face. Hel, his warrior instincts bringing him to full wakefulness at the first note of the horn, flew out of the bed, swathed his nudity in a heavy robe and then helped Adonia into hers as she staggered out of the covers on unsteady feet.

“There is some crisis. Stay here
and keep safe. I’ll be back.” Hel kissed her swiftly on the mouth and strode across the chamber. His sword blade hissed as he jerked it from its scabbard. He pulled open the door and disappeared.

Adonia
stood at the side of the bed where Hel had abandoned her and blinked owl-eyed at the open door. “I’m a First Arrow. I don’t stay and keep safe.” She’d no more tottered across the chamber to the door when Ramsey DeKieran staggered past her, cradling his wife in his arms. Hel followed on his heels. Adonia blinked, then made an about-face.

“Put her on our bed, Ram.”

As gently as if Steffania was spun of sugar, Lord Ramsey laid his wife on the bed that she and Hel had just left and turned a distraught face to Adonia. “Lady DeCorvus, help her. She is not far from death.”

His words
slapped her into complete wakefulness.

“Move! Let me see her.” Adonia pushed at Ram with frantic hands and peered down at
her friend. Purple lips in a chalk-white face laced with spidery veins of black met her eyes. Adonia’s trembling hands sought Steffania’s pulse points, and willed her fingers to feel the beat of a heart in a body that gave every indication of death.
There.
Faint. Irregular. But still beating, thank the Goddess. Gently, Adonia lifted an eyelid and almost cried in horror. Black film blinded the expressive golden eyes that normally invited the world to share with her in laughter. Death looked out of them, now.

“
Tell me she is not dead. Please, tell me you can help her.” The grating words sounded as if ripped from Ram’s gut.

She is so far gone
. Panic threatened to send all her newly found confidence scattering like so many wild birds.
I can do this. I must do this!
Adonia straightened and slowly inhaled then turned to Lord Ramsey. She caught one of his hands between hers. “She is not dead and, yes, I can help her.” Her gaze rose to where Hel stood grimly watching. “I need your assistance.” Her lips tipped slightly at his silent nod.

“How can I help?” Lord Ramsey whispered.
“Give me a task.”

Adonia
surveyed the gaunt man who stood before her. His hollow-eyed expression of despair shattered her. She feared for him should Steffania die. “Steffania lives. Where there is life there is hope, and I have come to know this enemy well. As for a task? You do the most difficult of all, my lord. Wait. Rest. Eat. Pray. She will need you strong. You are welcome to return to this chamber, though I must ask that you remain quiet. I need to calm and center myself…and then I, with Hel’s assistance, will fight the ugly war for her soul.”

~~~

Hel arranged Adonia’s exhausted body next to Steffania and tucked warm blankets underneath both women’s chins. His beloved’s eyes fluttered open. She saw him, smiled and closed her eyes again with a soft sigh. He noted with some concern that his own muscles quivered and lacked strength. It had been three excruciating days of hard fought advance and agonizing setback. Ultimately, the great blackness corrupting Steffania’s body had withdrawn, driven out by Adonia’s remorseless assault. Hel had suffered the tortures of the damned watching his Nia drain herself almost to death, but she refused to save herself at the cost of losing Steffania.

When he was certain that his beloved healer slept comfortably,
Hel rose and crossed their bedchamber to stand in front of a large chair holding the slumped, sprawling figure of Ramsey DeKieran. He leaned over and put a quiet hand on the man’s travel-stained shoulder. In spite of Adonia’s periodic urgings, Ramsey had not left—not even to change his clothes, bathe or eat. He’d remained in their bedchamber with his wife. He’d occupied that chair with all the fury of a caged
fell-
wolf, but as Adonia had requested, Ram contained himself. The man’s silent agony was another form of torture for Hel to watch;
he’d
sent Ramsey and Steffania to the border. He felt responsible.

Hel placed a gentle hand on
Ram’s shoulder. “DeKieran.”

With a start, Ramsey sat upright
and dropped his arm into his lap from where he’d thrown it over his eyes.

“G
o find a bed,” Hel murmured.

“Find a bed, you say.”
Blood-shot gray eyes ringed in indigo blue met and held his. “My wife?” the man rasped.

“
Will recover.” A smile tugged at one corner of Hel’s mouth. “She just needs time.”

“Goddess be praised.”
Ramsey rose and moved to stand beside Steffania’s sleeping form. His normally erect posture waved unsteadily, as if his balance was an uncertain thing. Methodically, he began to strip, dropping his clothes at his feet. When nude, the man pulled the covers to the great bed back and slipped in beside his wife. Hel didn’t have the heart to stop him, though any other time he’d have quantities to say about a naked Ramsey DeKieran in bed with his Nia. The expression Ramsey wore bared his soul. Hel doubted Ramsey knew Adonia shared the bed with his wife. Ram saw no one but Steffania.

Exhaling a fervent, “Vixen,”
Ramsey pulled her into his arms and settled his face into the masses of her red hair. “DeHelios.” Hel listened intently to Ram’s barely audible words. “As I breathe, if Lady DeCorvus ever has a want within my power to cure, be it great or small, tell her to make it known to me and it will be done.”

“I’ll tell her.”
Hel wasn’t certain Ramsey had heard him. The man had passed out.

~
~~

Hel understood
the elevated status and intimate connection with their Great Mother that House DeHelios enjoyed came with a price. Oh, how he knew. In his life, he'd paid handsomely and never begrudged it. He’d bedded a cold wife to ensure the Great Rites continued. He’d risked his body for loyal subjects whose lives weighed heavily on his conscience as he fought for their safety. He had sacrificed his basic humanity for years as the 
bás dtost
 vanquished anyone—anything—that had dared to threaten Verdantia
. 
But now? She had finally bestowed on him the one gift he would
not
sacrifice—the one price he would 
not
 pay—Nia.

He’d watched Ram almost lose the love of his life. The thought the same could happen to
 
him
 was not to be born. To watch Nia nearly empty herself of all life for Steffania, well … Suddenly the bedchamber closed in with claustrophobic threat, and his lungs labored to draw air.
I’ve got to get out of here.

He didn’t know why his feet
brought him to the old nursery door. His aimless wandering had taken him to the one room in the entire castle he hadn’t entered since he’d buried his small children. Perhaps with the knowledge that, by the grace of the Great Mother, more little heads would occupy these cradles, more tiny hands would reach for these stuffed toys, his frozen grief had finally thawed enough that he could face the memories held within these walls.

Tentatively
, almost reverently, he pushed the door open and entered, on guard against the recollection of the gruesome past. He tipped the nose of a rocking horse, his young son's first mount, and watched it nod up and down. His forefinger stroked the battered pile on a one-eyed pink hopper: the ever-present companion of his precocious little daughter, and slowly, he relaxed. The ghosts inhabiting this chamber now had smiles instead of sightless eyes.

The corner of his mouth lifted slightly as he imagined his
future daughters and sons, those beautiful children he could have with Nia, filling this empty room with laughter and gaiety, with hours spent reading storybooks and campaigning toy soldiers. It could happen. But what if he lost Nia? An upwelling of the same emotion that forced him from their bedchamber drove him to his knees. He sank, clinging to the bars of a dusty crib and buried his head between his bent forearms. His throat thickened. His eyes burned with unshed tears—and he begged unashamedly. “Please, Great Mother, as you love me, keep her safe. Allow me this future.”

He knelt there for a long time before he could master the
unvoiced sobs that shuddered through his great body.

~~~

“Nice place.”

“
The library of Torre Bianca is one of the few places in Nyth Uchel where I am assured of privacy—normally.” Hel watched DeKieran’s intent gaze evaluate the white tower’s fabulous library as if casing the room for valuables. Pure force of habit, Hel thought. He felt relatively certain Ramsey no longer needed to steal. Ramsey prowled into the spacious chamber, holding a carved crystal decanter that looked suspiciously like his carefully horded
Pottsdim Likor
in one hand and two tumblers in the other.

Trust the scoundrel to find the
outrageously expensive
Pottsdim
. While Ramsey’s red-rimmed eyes still appeared sunken and his cheekbones stood out too prominently, the man wore clean clothes, smelled of Nyth Uchel’s costly spice soap and had lost the aura of glacial despair. Hel leaned back in his armchair, closed the book he had been paging through and set it on the low, elegant table in front of him. He gestured in invitation toward one of several chairs placed in a comfortable arrangement around the table. “Our women?”

With a solid
thunk
, Ram set the decanter and tumblers on the table’s glossy surface and threw himself into a chair across from Hel. Ram poured both of them a finger of
likor
and shoved a tumbler across the table to Hel. “Lady DeCorvus rests comfortably. I moved Steffania to our bed. No matter how pretty, yours is not the face I wish to awake to.”

Hel
arched a brow. “A shared sentiment.”

“
Your maidservant said she would sit with Steffania and send for me if she wakes.” Ramsey rested his forearms on his knees and leaned forward. He leveled his uncanny gray eyes on Hel. “We need to talk.”

“
Yes. What happened on the western border?”

“
Nothing was as you described. The caches were gone. Steffania and I searched for days but could find only three or four crystals. In the end, there were not enough stones to set the boundary again. Those diaman caches were deliberately scattered. Someone in this city works against you, DeHelios.”

“Th
e same thought has occurred to me. Though I have cudgeled my brain, I cannot think of anyone who would be so insane as to threaten the entire city of Nyth Uchel simply to attack me.” Hel pulled the tumbler toward him and ran a fingertip around its lip. “How did Steffania become infected?”

DeKieran rake
d his hands through his hair. “I don’t know. She doesn’t know. It could have been a dozen different ways. That living nightmare you sent us to...” Ramsey stopped speaking and exhaled through pursed lips, swearing softly. “Fuck.” He tossed the contents of the glass down his throat. The decanter clinked on the rim of Ram’s tumbler as he poured another. “The infection overtook her with such virulence I feared she would succumb before I could return to Nyth Uchel.”

Hel
rubbed his jaw and blew out a heavy breath. “Ram…I don’t know what to say. If that had been Nia? I’m sor—”

“Don’t. I don’t blame you.
I should have been able to protect her.” A small silence settled in the room. Ram swallowed the second glass in a single gulp and poured another. He motioned to the volume in front of Hel. “What do you search for in these scratchings of the long dead?”

“I’ve
pulled the old architectural drawings of Torre Bianca. Perhaps there is some hidden room, some place lost to time. Our inspection of the tower walls found nothing.” Hel sipped at his drink, rolling the
likor
around in his mouth before swallowing.

Ramsey
rocked his chair onto its back legs and drummed his fingers on its arms. “You have examined every bit of exposed stone?”

“Exhaustively.”

Long minutes passed.

“When was
the tower built?”

Hel frowned. “
Nuovo Terra Solar 4142. At the start of the First Tetriarch.”

“So…over four hundred years ago.”

“Yes.”

“Enough time for many layers of dirt and debris
to build up and obscure Torre Bianca’s original foundation stones.”

Hel straightened in his chair.
“Damnation, I’m a blighted idiot.”

“I’ll drink to that.”
With a crooked smile, Ramsey raised his glass in a toast and tossed the contents down his throat. This time, Hel joined him.