The Hallowed Hunt

'Then,' she breathed, 'neither are you.'

Oh. Neither time nor his heart stopped, surely, and yet he floated for the space of a breath as though he’d stepped from some great height, but not begun to fall. Weightless. 'Sweet logician.'

Closing the handbreadth between their lips was the work of a second. Her eyes flared open.

Her lips were as soft as he’d ever imagined, as warm as sunlight. The first touch was chaste, hesitant, but a great shock seemed to roll through his body, his belly, and echo back up his limbs, which left his hands trembling. He stilled them by gripping her around the waist, around the back of her head, fingers clenching in her loose dark hair. A warm arm wound around his shoulder, flattened to his back, pressed him inward. Fingers gripped his upper arm in turn, spasming. Her lips parted.

A wave of lust ran in the track of that first shock, firing his loins, kindling an awareness of just how long it had been since he’d held a woman like this... . No, he’d never held a woman like this. The kiss grew abruptly passionate, and not chaste at all. He explored her mouth in desperate haste, and the white hands wrapping him fairly wrenched him toward her, crushing the softness of her body against his. Their breath synchronized; their heartbeats began hammering in time.

And then they were reaching through each other...

A magical kiss was suddenly not a romantic turn of phrase. It was not, in fact, romantic at all. It was terrifying beyond breath. She choked, he gasped, they drew apart, though their hands still gripped; not lustful now, but more like two people drowning.

Her eyes, wide before, were huge, the pupils stretched black with only a narrow ring of gold iris shimmering around them. 'What are you... ?' she began, as he panted, 'What have you done?'

One hand released him to clutch at her heart, beneath the dark robe. 'What was that?'

'I don’t know. I’ve never... felt... '

A creak of floorboards, a clank, a scrape; Ingrey sprang back as his chamber door opened. Ijada folded her arms together like a woman freezing, and spat an unexpected short word under her breath. He had just time to cock a wry eyebrow at her, and she to grimace back at him, before he twisted to see Tesko poke his yawning face through the door into the dim hallway.

'M’lord?' he inquired. 'I heard voices... ' He blinked in mild surprise at the pair sitting on the steps.

Ijada rose, snatched up her candlestick, gave Ingrey a mute look of scorching intensity, and fled up the stairs.

For a brief, self-indulgent moment, Ingrey pictured himself drawing his steel and beheading his servant. Alas, the hall was too narrow for such a swing to be executed properly. He gave over the vision with a long sigh and levered himself to his feet.

Tesko, perhaps sensing Ingrey’s displeasure at the ill-timed interruption, bowed him warily into his chamber. The clubfooted youth had been issued half-trained to Ingrey when he had first taken up his place as Hetwar’s more-than-courier. Used to caring for his own needs, Ingrey had treated the menial with an indifference that had overcome Tesko’s initial terror of his violent reputation a little too completely. The day he had caught Tesko pilfering his sparse property, however, he had replaced repute with a vivid demonstration. After that Hetwar’s other servants did more to whip their junior into shape than Ingrey ever had, for if Tesko were dismissed, he would have to be replaced with one of them.

Ingrey let Tesko remove his boots, gave curt orders for the predawn, and fell into bed. But not to sleep.

He was too spun up to sleep, too drunk to think straight, too exhausted to sit up. His blood seemed to hiss through his veins, growl in his ears. He was intensely conscious of every faint creak from overhead. Did Ijada’s breathing still rise and fall in time with his? He was still aroused, and more than half-afraid to do anything about it, because if she felt his every heartbeat and movement the way he seemed to feel hers...

They had surely been falling toward that moment of meeting for days. He felt coupled to her now as though they were two hunting dogs, leashed to each other for their training. So who is the huntsman? What is the quarry? The heavy click of that binding reverberated in his bones: chains thinner than gossamer, stronger than iron, less readily parted.

He didn’t have to hear the creaks, as she turned in her bed. He knew where she was as certainly as he knew the position of his own body in the dark. He held out a hand in the dimness. This is an illusion. I am simply going mad with unrequited lust. Except that it hadn’t seemed as unrequited as all that, now, had it? A perfectly demented grin stretched his mouth, briefly.

HE MUST HAVE SLEPT EVENTUALLY, FOR TESKO NEARLY HAD TO pull him from the covers and onto the floor to wake him again. Tesko’s jerky motions betrayed a fear balanced between the dangers of dealing with an Ingrey half-awake and the dangers of disobeying; Ingrey swallowed the glue from his mouth and assured his servant that disobeying would have been worse. Sitting up proved painful but not impossible.

He let Tesko help wash, shave, and dress him, in the interest of protecting his new bandage; Ingrey frowned to see it nearly soaked through again with browning blood, but there was not time to change it now. The filthy covering on his left wrist he at last abandoned, as that wound was now better than half-healed, all black scabs and new pink scars and greening bruises. The sleeves of his town garb—gray and dark gray—covered it well enough. With sword, knife, and clean boots, he was made presentable, if one ignored the bloodshot eyes and pale face.

He rejected bread with loathing, gulped tea, and took the stairs down with a faint clatter. He glanced up through two opaque floors. Ijada still sleeps. Good.

The chill, moist air outside was tinged with just enough light for Ingrey to make his way through the streets. He arrived at the opposite end of Kingstown with his head, though still aching, a little clearer for the walk.

Color was leaking back into the world with the dawn. The stolid cut stone of the wide front of Hetwar’s palace took on a buttery hue. The night porter recognized Ingrey at once through the hatch in the heavy carved front doors, and swung one leaf just wide enough to admit him into the hushed, rich dimness. Ingrey turned down the offer of a page to announce him and made his way up the stairs toward the sealmaster’s study. A few servants moved quietly about, drawing back curtains, stirring fires, carrying water.

Ingrey blinked and hesitated when he rounded the corner to find Prince-marshal Biast’s own bannerman, Lord Symark kin Stagthorne, leaning against the wall outside Hetwar’s chamber. Symark exchanged a familiar nod with Ingrey.

'Is the prince here?' Ingrey murmured to him.

'Aye.'

'When did you arrive?'

'We reached the Kingstown gate about two hours ago. The prince left his baggage train in the mire near Newtemple. We rode all night.' Symark hitched his shoulders, dislodging a few small lumps of drying mud from his coat.

'Is that you, Ingrey?' Hetwar’s voice called from within. 'Enter.'

Symark raised a brow at him; Ingrey slipped inside. Hetwar, seated at his desk, motioned him to close the door behind him.

Ingrey made his bow to the prince-marshal, seated with his booted legs stretched out before him in a chair opposite Hetwar, then to the sealmaster. Both men returned acknowledging nods, and Ingrey stood with his hands clasped behind his back to await his next cue.

Biast looked as mud-flecked and road-weary as his bannerman. Prince Biast was a little shorter than his younger brother Boleso, and not quite as broadly built, but still shared the Stagthorne athleticism, brown hair, and long jaw, resolutely shaved. His eyes were a touch shrewder, and if he shared Boleso’s sensuality and temper, they were rather better controlled. Biast had become heir presumptive only three years ago, on the untimely death through illness of the eldest Stagthorne brother, Byza. Prior to those expectations falling so heavily upon him, the middle prince had been guided toward a military career, the rigors of which had left him little time to match either