“Tey,very lucky,” he agreed without any particular enthusiasm. “It only makes sense that Spring would be the Council’s choice for me. Having met them, she is clearly the leader of the three. She has the bearing of a queen.”
“But you find yourself more drawn to Autumn.”
“No. I mean yes, but no.”
Ari lifted his brows. “Well, that clears things up.”
Dilys bared his teeth and growled. “Yes, I find Autumn the more appealing. She’s warmer and more approachable than her reputation suggests. I enjoy her company immensely. She makes me laugh more than any woman I’ve ever met. And she has made it clear she would not refuse an offer of marriage from me. That’s not the issue.”
“You find the most beautiful woman in the world more appealing than you thought possible, the Queen’s Council has approved her as a potentialliana,and your courtship of her is going well. I’m sorry, cousin, but I really don’t see the problem.”
“Of course you don’t. Because there shouldn’tbea problem.” Beset by sudden frustration, Dilys sat up and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Argh! What is it about her? It makes no sense. I’m a fish on the hook, only I never saw the bait and I still can’t see the hook! I just know it’s there.”
“Autumn has you on a hook?”
“No! Not her!”
“Then Spring?”
“No, not her either!” Dilys flung himself out of the bed and began pacing the width of his cabin. “If it were either of them, would I be clawing the walls? They’re the ones I’m here for. The ones I was sent to court.”
“Ah.” Ari pushed several long ropes of hair over his shoulder. “So I take it the ‘she’ wielding the hook in question is the little sweet one, Summer.”
Dilys threw his hands up in the air. “I told you it makes no sense!”
Ari shook his head. “Of course, it makes sense. She’s beautiful. She’s kind. After fifteen years of fighting other people’s wars, coming home to her would be like escaping to paradise. Who amongst uswouldn’tfind that appealing?”
“Appealing has nothing to do with it. I need a strong, powerful,fearlesswife capable of mothering Calberna’s next queen, and she’s a coward!”
“That’s a little harsh.”
“Oh? What would you call it, then? She runs the other direction every time she sees me. She hasn’t spoken more than two words to me since the day we arrived.”
“Now, that’s not true. I’ve counted at least a dozen.”
Dilys’s stopped his pacing and turned to glower at his cousin. “I’m going to take your skull and smash it into the wall until your brains are soup.”
Ari laughed, utterly unafraid. “You’d have to catch me first.”
“My point is,” Dilys said through gritted teeth, “she’s not even close to what I need. She clearly wants nothing to do with me. So why is she the one I can’t stop thinking about? And my dreams...” His voice trailed off as he remembered in vivid detail the erotic dream turned nightmare that had ripped him out of sleep this morning.
“What about your dreams?” Ari’s voice had lost its teasing tone.
Tension shot through Dilys. His first instinct was to snarl and snap. The dreams of Summer, her hands on his flesh, his on hers... the seductive, silken feel of her nakedness against his... those were intimacies that belonged to him and him alone. Not to be spoken of. Not even with cousins he loved like brothers.
“She’s in my dreams every night,” was all he finally admitted. “She has been from the start.” He refused to tell Ari how erotic those dreams had become, how in his sleep he made love to Gabriella Coruscate over and over and over again, how it felt like the most right and perfect thing he’d ever done. Or how, lately, those dreams had begun ending each night with fury and violence. How this morning, he’d come awake shouting, torn from a nightmare so vivid he could still smell the acrid stench of Autumn Coruscate’s burning flesh, still see Gabriella standing in the doorway wearing an expression so ferocious and deadly only a fool with a death wish would dare cross her.
“It’s almost like she’s gotten inside of me somehow. And even though she’s been avoiding me from the start, it’s getting worse, not better. Every time I close my eyes she’s there. I can feel her beside me, I can smell the perfume of her hair, but when I look, she’s gone. I can hear her... but not. And the whole time I’m with Spring and Autumn, all I keep thinking is, ‘This is wrong. I shouldn’t be here.’ Like I ambetrayingher somehow by courting her sisters.Betraying her!A woman who clearly wants nothing to do with me!” He pressed his face against the cool glass of the sterncastle windows. “Ugh. I told you it didn’t make any sense.”
“I’m not so sure about that. It sounds like sorcery to me.” Ari’s expression had gone grim.
Dilys flipped around to press his back against the window. “Come on, Ari. They’re weatherwitches, not spellcasters.”
“They’re one of Mystral’s most powerful families, and they’ve been wedding into Mystral’s other most powerful families for thousands of years. Who knows what kinds of magical abilities they’ve accumulated and passed down over the years? Or what kind of magical services they might have hired?”
He opened his mouth to refute Ari’s charge, then closed it. Of course centuries of intermarriage with other magically gifted families would have resulted in offspring who possessed more than just their weathergifts—like Prince Falcon’s control over birds. That was one of the reasons the Bridehunters had chosen a Season to be his wife. He also knew that many wealthy families kept hired spellcasters on their payroll to deal with situations that required talents the family didn’t possess.
Dilys considered the possibilities for a moment, then shook his head. “No, it doesn’t make sense. Summer has made it clear she wants nothing to do with me. Why would she or any of them bespell me so that she was the only one I desired?”
