Sunday's Child(27)
She committed his face to memory. He was, in her eyes, the most beautiful creature she’d ever beheld. Distracted by her fascination with him, she almost forgot to bow, and he laughed gently as she blushed and bent at the waist.
“There’s no need for ceremony here, scribes woman.” That low, silky voice slid over her skin like scented oil, deep and rich with the promise of decadence.
Her thighs clenched in reaction, and she crossed her arms to hide the pinpoints her nipples made against her bodice. “Fair journey, Your Majesty,” she said, just loud enough for him to hear.
He seemed to still for a moment before bending down close enough that she became ensnared in the glitter of his eyes. “All men wish to be gods, madam, even fey kings. Were I granted such power, this would not be farewell.” He straightened again, his sharp face drawn with an emotion that made her stomach flip. “You would have made a worthy queen, Castil il Veras.” She gaped at him as he wheeled the bay around and trotted back toward the ship. He dismounted and crossed the gangplank, following Kareena as she descended into the hold. The retainers filed aboard behind her, leading the horses onto the ship. The sun dipped low on the horizon as the ship took sail, easing out of the harbor toward the open sea. Castil stood at the docks, watching until it was nothing more than speck, taking with it a forbidden wish and a treasured friendship.
“They’ll be lowering the dinghy soon, madam. You’d best get your gear together.”
Castil was startled out of her musings by the rough, friendly voice of the Estarta’s captain. She smiled, hoping he hadn’t been standing there long, watching her moon for something far beyond her reach.
“Will there be an escort to take me into the interior?”
Captain Lizera claimed a spot beside her and leaned against the railing to stare at the closing shore. “Aye, madam. You’ll travel with us to the trading houses. From there, we’ll set up an escort for you to the Frozen Maiden.” She raised an eyebrow in inquiry and he smiled. “The fortress of the kings.”
The cold of the northern sea faded as memories of a morning in a ruined temple surfaced, and she pushed them down again. Therein lay a dangerous path, one of forbidden dreams. She turned to watch as the gray mist blanketing the shore thinned, allowing a view of ramshackle huts and nets hung on poles for mending.
The captain’s voice, hard with a black humor, sent shivers down her arms. “Madam il Veras, welcome to Hel.”
2
“She has arrived,” the royal steward announced. “I’ve instructed the servants to take her to the queen’s solar.”
Doranis nodded once and placed his son into the arms of the waiting nursemaid. The baby squirmed for a moment before nestling contentedly against the woman’s breast. Tiny and fragile, he looked much like his father, save for his coloring. The king still gave thanks to whatever deities listened that the curse of his blood didn’t pass to his offspring. He looked to his steward, finding the other man regarding him with hooded eyes. Marcilun always had more to say.
He didn’t disappoint. “The news of your wife’s death will come as a blow, Your Majesty. What do you wish me to tell Madam il Veras?”
Doranis thought for a moment, wondering if such tidings would be more merciful coming from a stranger or from him. In the end, it mattered little. Kareena was dead, and Castil il Veras didn’t know it. The pain would be no less, no matter who delivered the message.
“I’ll tell her. Kareena would have wished it, I think. She adored her friend. And if Madam il Veras was willing to travel so far, the sentiment was reciprocated.” He kept silent of his wish, his need, to once again speak with the woman who had haunted his dreams these many months.
“She will fear you, as Kareena did.”
Doranis’s light eyes narrowed. “Mayhap, but something tells me otherwise.”
Marcilun’s tone became diffident. “Forgive me, Sire. I meant no disrespect. I only wished to warn you that your meeting with this Caskadanian may not be pleasant. Like the queen, she may also consider us barbaric.”
Marcilun didn’t know Castil il Veras, but Doranis did, after a fashion. The idea that she might react to his people in the way Kareena did seemed ludicrous. He contemplated his son, content in his nursemaid’s arms. Kareena had despised most everything about her new home. Had she been a more forceful personality, her displeasure would have manifested itself in endless harping and screaming tirades. As it was, she was a stoic, withdrawn woman, one who shut herself away in her chambers as the weeks and months passed, and neither Helenrisia nor her son grew dearer to her.
Doranis didn’t mourn her, at least not in the way a husband might mourn a beloved wife. He and Kareena had remained distant strangers to each other, coming together only in the darkest hours of the night to beget an heir. Such couplings were always brittle, tense, no matter how gentle or coaxing he tried to be. His wife simply lay beneath him, colder and more rigid than a corpse, until he finished. Her disgust was palpable in the bedchamber’s heavy silence, though she accepted his touch without argument. Despite the parody of lovemaking in which they engaged, she soon quickened with child, and he left her to her solitary bed, as relieved as she that neither of them had to suffer the forced intimacy they both hated.
It was during those dismal moments, when he would rise from the bed, shivering with cold and a dull emptiness, that he thought of the fascinating Castil. Had the irony not been so harsh, he might have laughed at the turnings of Fate. But for her dowerless state and low ranking, she would have been a better match for him. She had lured him to her with her scholarly ways and ready laughter. There was about her a vibrancy, as if the heat of a Caskadanian sun burned in her blood. Unlike Kareena’s exquisite blonde beauty, Castil was nondescript in appearance—small and dark haired, with a smattering of freckles across her nose. He had barely given her a second glance at their first meeting. Until she recited the do Enrai verse stitched on his tunic.