Claimed by the Elven King: Part Four (14 page)

He ran his fingers through my hair. “Do you remember me being ill at
all?” he asked.

I furrowed my brow, considering. Yes, I
did
remember sitting in
this room for long marks by his bedside, holding a hand that had gone as cold
as ice while several healers fussed over him with faces that had become
increasing graver. I dug a little deeper into the memory, and suddenly the
queen’s infuriatingly smug face flashed into my mind, standing inside the
dungeon cell she had condemned me to while she gleefully told me of Sethian’s
impending death.

“The queen tried to kill you!” I exclaimed, outrage coloring my voice.
“That curse…!”

It was all coming back to me now, as though my sudden rage at what the
queen had tried to do to my family had cleared all the remaining haze from my
mind, allowing my last memories to finally rise to the surface. Thaylan phasing
into the dungeon to rescue me, what he did to the queen, his anguish when he
realized that he could not save his father—everything.

“Then Thaylan showed me how to save you,” I finished more softly.

Sethian took my face into his hands. “And once you did, and the curse
broke, he showed me how to save
you
.”

“All I remember is blacking out once your soul had begun to consume
mine. What happened after that?”

“I woke up the moment the curse broke. It happened only moments before
my soul could consume all your life-energy completely, and I was able to stop
it before all hope to save you would have been lost. Because our souls were so
intertwined and his so intrinsically linked with yours, Thaylan was able share
some of his own life-force with you, enough so that with our combined efforts,
we were able to brink you back from the brink of death.

“I have been lying here with you day and night, every moment I was
able, feeding you as much as my life-energy as was safe in the hopes that it
would help you to recover, but the human soul is different, and unlike with me,
I was not certain receiving the life-energy of an elf could help you at all as
it appeared you were unable to absorb it well.”

“I put my soul through a tremendous shock. Maybe all it needed was rest
and time. And giving me some of your life-energy
did
help. Now it makes
sense why I didn’t wake up still feeling half-dead.”

“Nevertheless, you will not be getting out of bed anytime soon,” Sethan
said sternly.

“Well, right now you’re not exactly making it hard to obey you,” I
teased. I turned and kissed the palm of one of his hand softly. “Is it night or
day right now?”

“It is early morning. The children will be up soon and anxious to see
their mother. They have been keeping vigil at your bedside along with me as
well.”

Anger boiled to the surface again. “Limira, she didn’t hurt them, did
she?”

I could feel an answering anger within Sethian’s own emotions as he replied,
“Not physically, but Arra witnessed a guard striking you over the head and then
Limira had her sent to a relative within the palace who promptly informed her
that we were both dead. She won’t be forgetting any of this anytime soon.”

“Thank goodness Anir and Rinya were with Rinwen when that whole
horrible mess started. As far as I know, the queen was never able to get her
hands on them.”

He shook his head. “Saeria and Rinwen were able to hide them with their
father.” He pause a moment, flashing me a rather serious look, before
continuing a bit hesitantly, “However, Lariel was not so fortunate. She has
recovered, but when we discovered her in the dungeons, she had already been
badly beaten by one of the queen’s guards. We believe it was to lend
credibility to the lies about you that Limira had fed the court.”

“Did Thaylan explain to you what he did with her?” I asked.

Sethian’s lips stretched into a satisfied grin as he nodded. “He folded
her up within the material of one of the many pocket dimensions he has created
over the years. She fell into a kind of stasis until I was well enough to deal
with her. In the end, she was less than forthcoming in the answers she was
willing to give, and with the mage that had delivered such a deadly curse upon
me still unknown, I had no choice but to perform a mind extraction on her
before he could target us again.”

“Why did she do something so stupid? She had to know the consequences
of protecting that mage. She had to know how pointless it was to remain silent
when you would get the answers from her anyway.”

“Treason against the king carries a harsh punishment,” Sethian said,
but when he did not elaborate further, I didn’t press him. I was probably
better off not knowing, anyway.

“At least her death was not completely in vain. The information within
her mind pointed me to not only a dangerous mage but also to several enemies I
had not even been aware of. It seems the queen was only one of many that wanted
you removed from the realm. It was they, and not Limira or her family, that
sent the many assassins that attacked you over the years, though she did aid a
few of them wherever she could. The only one that could be attributed
completely to her is the man that attacked you in our bedroom. Unbeknownst to
all of us, every guard on duty that night were those in the pockets of her
family. By no means did we find all of them, but we have certainly struck a
serious blow to their cause.”

“The queen once told me that the healers and mages within her people
believed that they would be able to safely extract the human genes safely from
their genomes someday pretty soon,” I said quietly. “I believe this is why she
hated me so much. She saw me as something that would make the ‘taint’ within
the
Sidhe
blood worse. For her, at least, I don’t think it was about
seizing the throne just for the sake of the throne at all.”

I didn’t tell him the rest, about how she had tried to convince me to
leave the realm voluntarily. The queen was dead. It was better to just let
sleeping dogs lie on some things.

Before he could comment, a soft knock sounded at the door.

“The healers have arrived, Your Majesty,” Lariel called softly through
the door.

“Ah, yes,” Sethian said. “It is later in the morning than I had
initially thought.”

“I shall meet with them shortly,” Sethian called back to her. Then he
suddenly smiled. “In the meantime, I believe there is someone here that would
very much like to see you.”

She gasped loudly, then the door flew open in the next second, and she
was barreling towards the bed. “Emily! Thank the High Powers! You are awake!”
she cried as Sethian carefully helped me to sit up to receive her very
enthusiastic hug.

While Lariel was bust fussing over me, Sethian used the opportunity to
climb out of bed and change his clothes in order to meet with the healers.

“I shall send them in to examine you, shortly, as well as the children”
Sethian said to me, giving my hand an affectionate squeeze before turning to
address Lariel. “After your visit, I need you to go to the royal baths and make
certain the pools are hot and ready to receive us.”

Her eyes immediately fell to the coverlet. “Yes, Your Majesty,” she
said with a slight bow.

I couldn’t believe it, but Lariel looked a little afraid of Sethian
now.

I was definitely missing something big here. I opened my mouth to
question them both about it, but Sethian must have seen me frowning at Lariel
because he gave me a
look
and shook his head almost imperceptibly as he
stood behind her. Right. We would discuss it later. For now, I just wanted to
make sure that she really was all right after the ordeal she had endured
because of me. The details could wait.

“I could have walked, you know,” I said pointedly as Sethian set me down
gently at the edge of the largest bathing pool.

“It does not mean you
should
,” he said in all seriousness.

I sighed, but conceded the point. He would probably be over-protective
of me for a good long while and knowing how stubborn he could get, it was just
easier to let him have his way. Besides, I thought with a wry smile, it wasn’t
like being pampered was any kind of hardship.

I lifted my nightgown over my head, tossing it carelessly over to the
side, and slipped down into the gloriously hot water while Sethian removed his
clothes. I sat down on the underwater bench and just leaned back against the
pool’s wall with my eyes closed, allowing the warmth of the water to begin
soaking the weariness from my body. I was surprised at how quickly visiting
with my friends and the children had tired me out, but then there had been many
tears involved. The emotional toll no doubt had doubly weighed down on a soul
so recently drained as mine.

Soon, the water sloshed beside me as Sethian lowered himself down next
to me. I opened my eyes and scooted myself into his lap without any urging on
his part. My days of being shy were long past me.

“Do you want to tell me why everyone is suddenly treating you like
you’ve become the big, bad monster?” I asked as Sethian began to caress my body
with a soapy sponge.

“Your ladies are just a bit unnerved at the moment,” he replied quite
matter-of-factly.

“It’s not just them,” I insisted. “The healers were even more jumpy
every time you got near to one of them.”

I felt him nod his head behind me. “They are unnerved for the same
reason. When you opened yourself so completely to me and our souls merged more
perfectly than they ever had before, you inadvertently unlocked a latent power
within me, something that has never been seen among my people. I have caught
you scrutinizing my face more than once since you awakened. You can sense
something is different but cannot quite pinpoint what exactly has changed,
correct?”

“Yes, and I’ve been so annoyed because I couldn’t figure it out.”

“I am now completely connected to the natural energies of the whole
realm. That is the difference you sense when you look at me even though what
you see is not what others have seen when they look upon me now.”

I really hated it when he explained things so vaguely. It was a bad
habit of his.

 “What do you mean?”

“When I am with you, your soul acts like a buffer, tempering the power
that now perpetually flows into and is absorbed by my body from the natural
energy streams around me. I shine quite brightly now without the presence of
your soul, as brilliantly as the sun when it is high in a clear sky, I am told.
It can be rather troublesome—for everyone.”

I looked back at him. “Rather than temper it, it just sounds like my
soul is a contaminate,” I said with a laugh, “like it’s getting in the way of
the purity of your essence or something.”

The sour look Sethian directed at me had me laughing even harder.
However, my chuckles soon turned into a startled moan when I felt him reach
between my legs and firmly press his fingers against my clit, rubbing in a
slow, circular motion. He pressed his lips against mine and greedily swallowed
my moans as I tried not to squirm too much. I knew I was still a little too
weak for the more vigorous and sometimes wild sex we often enjoyed, and I
didn’t want to accidentally drive him into a needy frenzy.

Even so, I could feel his rapidly hardening member begin to poke into
my lower back. Knowing that I would not have the energy to prolong this, I
started to turn in his lap so that I could mount him more easily, but he
immediately moved the hand that had been cupping and caressing one of my
breasts down to my hip to stop the movement.

Sethian pulled away from the kiss and moved his lips to the crook of my
neck. “Stay as you are,” he murmured huskily against my skin. “This time I
shall do all the work. Just relax and enjoy and let me feel your warm and your
life pulsing around me. I need to feel that you are here with me right now,
that you really have come back to me.”

Hearing such melancholy words had my throat instantly tightening with
emotion so that I was only able to nod in answer. He bit at my neck gently
before I felt his lips stretch into a smile against my skin.

He resumed his gentle but vigorous fondling of the hot button between
my legs while continuing to slowly kiss, lick and suck a red path from my neck
to my shoulder. This slower pace made sudden actions like the pinching of my
nipples or the insertion of a couple of fingers into my moist passage much more
potent, and soon he had me moaning and writhing on his lap with blissful
abandon as his fingers massaged me into my first orgasm.

Despite his desire for me to just sit back and enjoy, I couldn’t help
thrusting myself up and down on his fingers as I rode out those pleasurable
spasms.

“Please Sethian,” I begged breathlessly, “I need to feel your cock
inside me.”

He needed no further persuasion as he pulled his fingers from within me
and gently grabbed my hips to lift me up and onto the cock that was bobbing
eagerly in the water. I reached a hand down and wrapped it around his member to
help guide it into my passage. I moaned as the head rubbed across the shallow,
sensitive spot that Sethian loved to drive me wild with. Then he was buried up into
me to the hilt and he once again stilled my hips when I tried to raise myself
to begin grinding myself down onto that thick cock.

“Let me,” he whispered again into my ear, making me shiver.

I leaned back against his chest and tilted my head back and to the side
to give his lips and especially those teeth better access to my neck. Knowing
what I wanted, Sethian began to slowly nip at my neck with quick, shallow bites
while starting a slow, upward thrust deep into my recesses. Once he had
established a rhythm, his hands moved from my waist to cup both of my breasts,
squeezing and fondling them with greater aggression as my fingers clutched at
his thighs in time to his thrusts.