Were he not the king or if Serovek didn't value his own skin, he would have flattened Rodan in that moment with a punch to the face. He reached out to hold Anhuset's arm, feeling the quiver of muscle there, half fearful that even if he restrained himself, she might not do the same. “Of course, Your Majesty,” he said, his voice calm. “Then if you require nothing else...”
Rodan dismissed them with a short “Go,” and turned his back on them.
Anhuset waited until they were halfway to the stables where she'd left her horse before speaking, and her tone would have curdled milk. “Spiteful old bollocks bag,” she spat. “He did that on purpose. He knew you'd want Bryzant's head on a pike. I want Bryzant's head on a pike.”
Her outrage for him made Serovek smile inside though he didn't dare display it. “He'll not get away with his treachery. There's always consequences. It's just a matter of when, not if.”
At the stables, Anhuset traded her mail hauberk to the stablemaster for a second horse. Serovek groused over the trade all the way to the gate. “He'll resell it in the market and get fourtime what this nag is worth.”
“Think of it as one less thing you'll have to strip off me for a good swiving,” she said. And with that, he no longer complained about the trade.
They put Timsiora behind them without looking back and Serovek followed Anhuset to a place deeper in the conifer wood, on a rise that gave a view of the road below but was hidden by the trees. A tent stood within the shadows, its gray canvas blending in with the patches of snow and the understory of winter-dead brush. The remains of a fire lay in front of the tent.
“Home for now,” Anhuset said. “Unless you'd rather return to Timsiora for a day of rest.”
If he never saw the Beladine capital again in his lifetime, it would be too soon. He was exhausted, in pain, lusting for his wife, and desperate for true sleep. The tent seemed the most inviting place in the world to him, even it did look rather narrow. “Are we both going to fit in there?”
Her eyes shone golden in the shadows. “One of us will probably have to sleep atop the other.”
“As I'm still recovering from having the breath knocked out of me when you fell on me, I call top.” She laughed at his wink before urging him to dismount so she could see to his blistered skin.
He sat patiently while she physicked the blistered patches of flesh where the scarpatine venom had burned him. Bare to the waist, he shivered in the cold, skin pebbled with gooseflesh under her touch as she made a quick salve from supplies she kept in a satchel. “It's just a comfrey ointment,” she said. “I'm sure there's an apothecary in Timsiora who can sell a better concoction, but this will do for now unless you want me to ride back.” She spread the ointment with careful fingers, pausing at intervals to brush her lips across the uninjured places on his body.
“This will do fine,” he said, shivering, unsure if it was from the cold or the sensual pleasure of her affection. That, more than the ointment, made him forget his discomfort.
He soon forgot everything except the weight of her limbs on his, the smoothness of her skin, her scent in his nostrils, and her heat as she sheathed his cock deep in her body and rode him into oblivion, reaching her climax before he reached his. Her moans and the grip of her thighs coaxed him to join her, and he uttered her name in prayer as his eyes rolled back and he came hard inside her.
The tent was indeed narrow and half collapsed on one side thanks to their exertions, but neither cared. While Serovek had claimed his place atop Anhuset, they ended up on their sides facing each other, legs and arms entwined, skin to skin, breasts to chest. He kept an arm around her hips, holding her close to stay inside her. Her lamplight eyes burned softly, and Serovek wiped away a streak of sand granules from her cheek with his thumb.
“How are you, wife?” he said, savoring the term.
Her features gentled even more, and the corners of her mouth curved upward. “Slippery.”
He chuckled, then stopped when he felt himself sliding out of her. He gripped her hips even tighter, not ready to leave that sweet place just yet.
Anhuset encircled his wrist in her hand and raised his arm. Her claw traced the dirty ribbon still wrapped there. “I thought this went into a monastery midden. Why did you keep it?”
Serovek could list a hundred reasons for why he kept it, but he gave her only the most important one. “Because it was proof your feelings for me had changed. There is no finer gift in all the world than the love of sha-Anhuset.”
She gave a tiny, inadvertent flinch. “I'm no longer a sha.”
He'd wondered what she sacrificed in order to offer her marriage proposal. She'd give up much to remain his wife. Regret filled him at the thought of her losing her position as Brishen's second. She was born to it, and he'd seen firsthand how she defined herself by it. As much as he wanted her, it wasn't under circumstances like these.
“You risked your life for me,” he said. “I'm losing count of the number of times now. I don't want you for my wife just to keep High Salure. It's just stones and mortar. Forfeiting it wouldn't
