The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price (58 page)

They’d been burning the last time I stood here, with King Raynan Arcana. He said the candles were specially crafted by Rellan priests who wove ceremonial prayers into their making. Then he showed me where to push to make the wall move.

Using the shoulder that didn’t hurt, I found the spot, leaned against it, and shoved. As stone scraped stone, a few fragments chipped off to settle on my boots. Dust wafted, coating my hair and making me sneeze. But there was no resistance. The door-shaped slab swung open wide with a puff of musty, salty air and a brief tumble of gravel.

While I waited for the shower to stop, I reached back and stole the torch. Holding it out in front of me, flames burned away the darkness to reveal a small, cave-like chamber. Far below the sea, the walls were round and wet. The rocky floor was pitted. Straight ahead was a massive, wooden door, bolted into the cave wall. On my previous visit, the door had been in one piece. Now, it was in three.

Crossing the damp cavern, I jumped over the splintered planks and into the next chamber. I could only see a fraction of it. Housing the generations that were laid to rest here, the Royal Catacombs were quite large. Even setting fire to a few of the torches bracketed to the wall didn’t help much. They gave just enough light to make the shadowy stone likenesses of the dead dance and sway eerily about on the walls.

I moved farther in. The room was a dark, dusty maze of stone crypts. Brushing at the years of grime in the grooves, I cleaned off a few with faces I didn’t recognize. Then I found one that didn’t have a face at all. Flat and smooth, there was only a name etched into a metal plate at the foot of the lid. There had been no time or resources for more. No chance to pay tribute to the fallen. Not even King Raynan Arcana.

My eyes slid to the neighboring vault. The day I left Kabri, it too had been blank; without monument or rendering. But the carvers had already been hard at work to make it otherwise, and now there was an inscription, and a face.

A face I thought I might never see again anywhere but in my head.

Proceeding to the nearest empty bracket, I rid myself of the torch. Then I went back and walked the length of Aylagar’s crypt. Twice. I traced the outer edge, lingering on the rough spots where crude Langorians tools had chipped away the granite in their hasty search for the Crown of Stones.

I blew the sediment away from the side. Underneath it was a short Rellan poem about duty and sacrifice. On the lid, adorning the long, slab of light gray stone, was the recreation of her body. It was unexpectedly intact.
Intact, but wrong,
I thought, running my fingers over the plain, pious gown that covered her from neck to ankle. In place of her usual, Arullan battle armor, the gown had been chosen to make Aylagar appear more Rellan. For that same reason, her height had been exaggerated, her muscles down-played, and her frame slimmed. The miles of hair I loved had been shortened as well, shaped in a stern fashion and hidden under a wimple
—
something Aylagar would have died before ever agreeing to wear.

The injustice didn’t stop there. The fire in her eyes had been made vacant. The depth of emotion on her face tamed. Even Aylagar’s strong, exotic features had been reduced to a stoic expression of unsmiling indifference.

“They didn’t know you.” Bending, I placed a gentle kiss on the cold, hard surface of her cheek. I ran my hand over hers. Fingers lingering, I waited for the tightness in my chest, the ache that accompanied every thought of her. I expected to hear the thunderous
slam
of the lid falling into place. The sound had echoed inside me for years.

None of those things happened. I wasn’t overcome with grief or remorse, or love. There was no hitch in my throat or sting in my eyes. Standing over Aylagar’s grave was one of the most anticlimactic events of my entire life, and it made no sense. Her memory had driven me to more bottles and ill-tempered moods than I could count.

Killing her had nearly killed me.

Then I understood. Aylagar wasn’t the catalyst for my pain anymore. She was no longer the standard that I held all other women to. Thanks to my father, Neela was. She was the center of my nightmares. She haunted me now, and it didn’t seem fair. Aylagar had to die to earn that right.

Faint footfall alighted in the passageway. As it drew nearer, my perception of Neela multiplied. A moment later, I heard her climbing over the broken door.

Her dress rustled as she moved up behind me.

“That isn’t her,” she said. I didn’t turn around and Neela came closer. “You can’t blame the artist though. My mother was too fierce and beautiful to be captured in stone.”

My pulse racing, I stared down at the vault. “You look like her.”

“Not really.” She sounded a little sad. “I know how you saved me. Thank you.”

“Are you all right?”

“It’s strange having parts of another person in my head.”

“What’s strange is that I’m getting used to it.”

My jest put a smile in her voice. “When I woke, I could feel you so much I could barely breathe. Now, it’s vivid one moment and faint the next. I can’t keep up.”

“I had to block you out. And, our connection is fading.”

“Already?”

I was wary of facing her, but I jumped on the disappointment in her voice. “You sound as if you’ll miss me.”

“Perhaps. You are like a whirlwind.”

“I’ve been called a lot of things,” I chuckled. “But never that.”

“It’s true. You’re inspiring, but difficult. Your…nature,” she said delicately, “influences my words and decisions. It carries my thoughts in directions I would never go. Don’t take this wrong, but I have found few traits in you that are fit for a Queen.”

“Well, you’d make a lousy bounty hunter, so I guess we’re even.”

Neela gave into a brief laugh. She came to stand beside me at her mother’s tomb and I could sense her anguish. The mental wall between us wasn’t working so well.

“You long for her,” I said.

“Yes. Do you?”

“Not anymore.”

“Then, what do you long for?”

“That’s a complicated question.”

“Let me rephrase.
Who
do you long for?”

It was like reflex. Without thinking, I turned around with her name on the tip of my tongue—and swallowed it. Neela looked too spectacular for words.

Gone was the drab, unflattering dress she wore in Ula, as well as all traces of her ordeal in the cave. Clean and healed, her smooth, dark skin shimmered in the faint light of the torch. Her hair, shiny and debris-free, flowed unbound over the shoulders of an elegant, white, beaded gown. Instead of rope burns, strands of pearls surrounded Neela’s wrists. More adorned the slender, silver band on top of her head, and encircled her throat. One string hung lower, drawing my eyes to the wide, scooped neckline of her cinched bodice, and the enticing hollow it made between her breasts.

“I brought us something to drink.” Neela pivoted away and went back to the exit. A serving girl was there, in the passage. I couldn’t see the girl well, but when Neela returned, she had a silver goblet in each hand. “Is something wrong?” she said.

“Nothing.” I cleared the wobble from my voice and took the drink she offered me. “It’s nothing.”

Neela nodded, but from her expression, she knew I was lying. Or maybe she just believed I should have offered more. An apology, perhaps, for what my father did to her. I could have inquired about Jarryd as well, asked how many men were lost in the battle, or if Draken were gathering forces for another attack.

All of those things would have required far more composure than I had. I barely had enough to stand and drink in the sight of her without losing it.

Then, she smiled at me, and I couldn’t even do that. It was an open, delighted, amorous smile like I was the only man in the world and it completely disarmed me.

My hold on the barrier between us slipped. The wall broke, and she rushed in.

Her barefaced emotions and intent invaded me, and they were easy to decipher. Her sentiments had one basic theme. Neela wanted me to touch her.

Before I did, I moved away.

“I’m sorry if I remind you of her,” she said.

“That isn’t…” I glanced back. I could sense her discomfort as acutely as my own. “This isn’t about your mother.”

“Good.” She was quiet a minute. “I dreamt of you.”

“Oh?” I said, nearly choking on my wine. Recovering, I tried to feel her out without being specific. I didn’t want to ask about Reth’s spell if she didn’t already know. “Do you have a lot of my memories? The exchange is different for everyone.”

“No, I don’t believe I do. A few hazy moments of your youth, perhaps.”

“When did you regain consciousness?”

“Two days ago. It’s been nearly four since you cast your spell. The entire time, I’ve been having, what I believe, are your dreams.”

Retreating to the wall, I leaned against it, and downed half the goblet in one gulp.

“Is that even possible?” she asked, strolling over, “to share a dream?”

“I suppose,” I said, with a nonchalance I definitely didn’t feel. “We are connected.”

“They were quite vivid. Explicit, even…considering we barely know each other.”

The color left my face. “I’m sorry if it disturbed you.”

“It didn’t.” Neela took a small drink. “They say dreams let our most inner thoughts out to play.” She sat her goblet down on one of the tombs and came right up to me. We were nearly touching. “Do you really want to do those things to me?” Her eyes wandered down. I clenched my jaw, trying to fight it, but my interest in her was blatant. “You want to do them to me right now. Don’t you?”

I had nowhere to go. My back was literally against the wall. I didn’t trust myself to touch her, even as long as it would take to move her out of the way. I didn’t think looking at her was smart either, so I kept my eyes down. I just didn’t keep them down far enough, and before I knew it, I was counting the rows of beads that lined her bodice.

That led to mentally tracing the flower-like pattern; down around the collar, over the curves of her breasts and the flat plane of her stomach. I imagined doing it with my fingers. I saw myself reaching out, gripping the bodice and tearing it straight down the front. I could almost hear the beads bouncing as they hit the stone floor.

“Ian,” she said. “Look at me.”

I raised my eyes. I watched her lips part. She wet them with a slow caress of her tongue and things tightened in me that were already about to snap.

“You frighten me,” she said.

An awkward laugh slipped out. “I know the feeling.”

“You misunderstand. It isn’t you that frightens me. It’s how
I
am when I’m with you.” Doing away with the last, little space between us, she nestled in close. “I want to touch you. Here.” Neela ran an impatient hand down the front of my breeches. “And here.” She started stroking me through the leather and my pulse turned painful.

“Neela,” I breathed. “What are you doing?”

“If you have to ask then I’m not doing it correctly.”

I swelled in her grip. “You are. But we shouldn’t—we can’t. Not here.”

“So my mother does stand between us,” she said with anger.

“No, but…”

“Then finish it. Finish what you started that night when you came into my room…when you laid me back on the bed…when you pushed up my dress.” Her caress turned brisk. Blood throbbed in my veins. I was taught, aching. “You awakened this in me. You put your hands on me. Your mouth.”

“And you told me to stop,” I reminded her.

“Now, I’m telling you to finish it.” Snappish, she said, “I am Queen, Shinree. My will is law and you will obey.”

“Obey?”
What the hell is wrong with her?
“Are you ordering me to bed you?”

“Do I have to?”

“No. I’m not a—”

“Slave? I think we both know that you are.” Neela seized my rigid cock tighter. Glancing down at her prize, with low lids and a devious grin, she whispered, “At least part of you recognizes my authority.”

Resentment clenched my jaw.
It’s the dreams. It has to be. The memories, the lust—they’re funneling through the link, affecting her.

“You said you’d show me how to be a woman.” Neela took the cup from my hand and tossed it. She brushed her lips over my face, my mouth. “Do it. Show me.”

“You aren’t yourself.”

“I can’t be myself. Not ever. Not with anyone.” She drew back and looked into my eyes. “Only with you. Only right now.”

I shook my head. “It’s the spell I used to heal you. It’s influencing you, confusing you. That’s all this is.”

“I don’t care what it is. I don’t want to do what’s right and proper. Just this once, just for this moment, Ian, I don’t want to be Queen. I want to be the woman you dreamt of. I want to feel like you made her feel. Just this once.”

Frustration mounting in me, I growled. “You don’t understand.” Her body was rubbing up against mine. Her tongue was on my skin. I was so eager to be inside her—to feel the real
her
wrap around me—I was shaking. “If we do this, Neela, walking away after, having to leave you…it will wreck me.”

Her smile was unequivocal. “I know.”

FIFTY FOUR

L
ittle bits of stone fell away as I pushed Neela back against the wall. More showered her hair as I leaned in. Crushing my mouth to hers, digging my fingers into her arms in a feverish attempt to make her real, I held her there. I liked the feel of her in my hands, the permanence. I liked how she didn’t mind my need to dominate her. It was as uncontrollable and irrational as the clear hunger in her embrace.

Frantic and eager, drawing my lips into her teeth, winding her tongue around mine; a familiar, desperate yearning was in her every kiss, every rake of her nails as she snaked her hands under my shirt. It was obvious. Neela shared in my hysteria.

I gripped the captured fabric in my hands tighter. Yanking, I pulled the sleeves off her shoulders and ripped them down over her arms. The bodice tore, spilling beads down the front of her like tiny icicles. White against the black of her skin, they clattered to the floor, just as I imagined.

As Neela shrugged out of her ruined sleeves, the pieces of cloth fell around her hips. She stood before me, half-naked, with no tension whatsoever on her face or in her body. She was giving herself to the moment—and to me. I think I stopped breathing.