“Oh, well, Lady Renata has been hoping for a dance with you, Girion!” Reynard said, maneuvering his daughter into Girion’s arms.
Girion grit his teeth. He could not dance to this fast waltz. He did not truly want to dance with anyone but Jocasta.
He hated balls. Too many people watching, expecting him to have manners.
“A pleasure,” he muttered, and was thankful the next song had slowed.A pleasure for some, but not for others. I am indeed one of the others!
“Where did you find her?” Lady Renata asked without any concealment of her dislike. “My father said you were in desperate need of a bride with magic in her blood. That’s what you unearth from this icy wasteland?”
Wasteland?
His Bear reared inside of him, fighting to the front.
Which is what she wants. To make you look savage. To make Jocasta look like a poor choice.
Something about Jocasta’s mere presence made it easier to think at his best, to act with the heightened senses he used when training and leading his men.
She is the prize. Can’t be taken. The hill that must be defended.
“Wasteland, yes. On the surface, it’s funny how much of Caledon looks so stark, and yet we have more gold and precious metals than any other of the Winter Kingdoms. We conceal some of our most beautiful, powerful assets under a layer of common snow, don’t we?” he said in a voice that he barely recognized, oozing with charm.
Renata was silent for an entire turn about the floor, but the song was not over yet.
Girion thought there should be some universal signal that one could tip a conductor to make him hurry up.
“It’s obvious she is from Caledon—her magic smells of Air and Water. What this place truly needs to save the hot springs is a Fire mage.”
“Ah, but that would be too easy. Too soft.” Girion’s grip on her hand tightened, just enough to make her wince. He loosened it with another smile, fangs prominent in his grin. “Air has its own heat, you know. We catch it from the sun as it warms the world. Earth has its own heat. We pull it up from the ground, from the core, the heart of fire that spins our great sphere. It’s a heat you have to work for.”
His eyes sought Jocasta, a small burst of blue against the taller, grizzled form of General Raghnall, both chatting away like old comrades.
By God, I will work for her to warm to me. Not to love me, necessarily. But to warm. To heat.
“Won’t that take too long? I hear ports are icing over. Hot springs are drying up, driving people from the settlements into the cities. Trade will dry up while you wait for her to learn enough manners to sit on the throne,” Renata pointed out in a falsely pleasant voice.
“Sit on a throne? Is that what you expect to do as a queen? The Queen of Caledon works, as do I, the king. When I marry, I will marry someone who knows the meaning of that word.”
“And someone who stinks of fish guts.”
Girion was too angry to wonder how she knew Jocasta came from a fishing village, that she had run a fishing boat and a fishmonger’s. “Better she smell of something delicious than like old ashes,” Girion said, snapping his teeth shut too close to her face, loving how she recoiled. “Don’t forget, polar bears adore fish, guts and all. We eat every scrap.”
Another unbidden thought sprang to his mind. He’d heard tales—what soldier hadn’t—of the ways that couples enjoyedeach other. Tongues and hands, mouths and bodies locked and fused.
Jocasta didn’t smell of anything but warm rain and flowers, despite what Renata said, but now his mouth was watering as he wondered what a mouthful of his future bride would taste like. Like warmth. Like that sweet, slightly salty, aroused smell he had caught the faintest whiffs of in passing.
If she is warm rain, then I would drink her down, chase every drop, and pray to be caught in a cloudburst.
“I can smell your desire.” Lady Renata gripped his hand, and her callous words made Girion hiss in surprise.
“How dare—”
“How dareyouact in such a way while dancing with a maiden, a maiden of royal blood?” she challenged, a dark smile on her face. “Should I announce that I can feel you pressing into me—”
“Then I will call you a harlot and shame you as a grasping whore who speaks of illicit things to the King’s face.” He ripped his hands away from her and bowed as he backed away from her, his face white with anger as hers turned beet red. “And if you persisted, I would be quick to declare that my love and my desire are only for Jocasta, the future Queen of Caledon.”
The music had stopped. Finally.
Loudly.
