“I need to feed again soon,” the princess said when they were locked away in the servant’s cell for the day.

  Alaan paused in filing the swordbreaker’s deep serrations.

  He had felt the hunger growing steadily in the princess since she fed in Siu Rial. It had nearly reached that clawing, ravening beast once more. She had been right when she said the feedings were happening more often. A month after the pub girl had been murdered near Thornfield, she had killed the serving boy. Just over three weeks after the serving boy, she had fed from Alaan. Only a fortnight had passed since.

  “I’m afraid if I don’t feed now, then on my wedding day… Lord Clarencio will be the only one there… I don’t want to hurt him, Alaan. I’m sorry to ask you.”

  To allow her to drink from him again would not be wise.

  “Will animal blood fill you?”

  “Sometimes I was locked in places where mice were the only blood I could find. I didn’t want to kill them, but I would get so hungry…” She shook her head, clutching her hands to her stomach. “But animals are like wine and food and cold blood from bloodskins. They leave me as hungry as all the rest of it.”

  The only solution Alaan had come up with was the thieves and outlaws that populated the war-scarred land around the redoubt, but he could not leave the princess long enough to capture one, and the grafting would not allow him to put her in danger by letting her ride out with him.

  He saw no other options. But was that because there were none or because his judgment was clouded by the thought of her lips on his skin?

  “I won’t let anything happen,” she promised, sensing his misgivings. “I’m not like Mother. Sometimes I wish I was, because she’s so strong and fearless, but in this way, I’m glad I’m not.”

  Alaan sheathed the swordbreaker and stowed the file with the sharpening stone.

  “This is the final time,” he said. “After your wedding, your husband or I will secure condemned for you to drink from, and when they cannot be found, you will drink from him.”

  The princess nodded, a dark ringlet bouncing against her pale cheek.

  He drew his cutlass. “Barricade yourself from the grafting. Do not allow any sensations to pass through. I will do the same.”

  “I’ll try.”

  As soon as Alaan slit the vein in his elbow and felt her attempt to block off the sudden, straining eagerness, he knew they were doomed. His mouth watered with her hunger. His heart thundered with her excitement.

  Her lips closed over the wound.

  He grasped the hilt of the swordbreaker to make certain his hand would touch nothing else. He shut his eyes so he could not see the thick dark hair like an ocean of black waves or the bone-white slice of flesh at the back of her neck. He stopped breathing so he could not smell the warm, delicate scent of her.

  But he could not stop up his ears to avoid hearing the soft hums of satisfaction in her throat, and he could not block the sensations bombarding the grafting.

  Tomorrow night she becomes another man’s wife. Tomorrow night she becomes another man’s wife. Tomorrow night she becomes another man’s wife.

  That Alaan protected her, that he defended her, that he knew her like no other man did, none of it mattered. Dirter marriages were not built on such foundations.

  In ages past, dirter women could be taken as plunder. If, at the end of one raid season and one storm season, she wished to remain with the raedr, she would become his wife and an Ocean Rover.

  The princess would want to stay with me.

  With a sharp gasp, she broke away from his arm. Large, dark eyes searched his face. A bead of blood stood on her bottom lip. She licked it off as if she could not bear to lose even a drop of his essence, and a beast as ancient as the deeps roared inside him. That soft tropical breeze within her had become a typhoon.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  A barrier of thinnest stormglass stood between them. It shattered as he reached for her.

  The princess stepped back.

  “I promised I wouldn’t let anything happen,” she said, her voice thick.

  And she hadn’t. She had remained true to her word, while he had been a heartbeat from breaking his.

  Alaan stalked to the washstand, needing to put his back to her before he could speak.

  “This was intentional.” He scooped water over the bloody aftermath on his arm. “The king must know the effect the grafting has between a man and a woman. Does he hold such a vile grudge against your future husband? Is it not enough to send the man into danger intending that he die in the Night of Judgment?”

  She covered her ears. “Please don’t talk about that.”

  “Do you wish me to conceal the threat? Will you let your husband walk into the jaws of death unprepared?” The rage howled at him, at the dirter king, at the lord she would marry. “To whom will you be loyal when you are his wife?”

  The princess slid down the wall and hugged her knees to her chest. “Lord Clarencio is so kind and good… But I…”

  “But you are loyal to that obscene priestess who calls herself your mother and the king who calls you his beloved daughter while handing you over to her whims.”

  “They’re… They’re my…”

  “They are your abusers and tormentors. Would that I could slit open their bellies and tie them the rail to watch the seabirds tear out their entrails.”

  “Mother says she’s the only one who cares what happens to me.”

  Alaan clutched the wooden top of the washstand until it groaned under the pressure. “Do you believe her?”

  “I’m nothing,” the princess said in a small voice. “Even the strong gods hate me.”

  “Then why do you serve them?”

  Silence.

  Slowly, the dual storm of fury and lust calmed. That tropical breeze returned, painful in its gentleness.

  “Alaan, will you help me save him? Lord Clarencio is a good man. I don’t want anyone to hurt him. Even me.”

  The dirter king wanted the lord dead. Even a fool could see that meant Alaan should want him alive. And the princess wanted him alive. Her adoration for the man who would become her husband was a clear, strong note in the grafting whenever she thought of him.

  Alaan swallowed the covetous bile choking him. When he was able to speak without shaming himself, he said, “Yes.”

  The princess stayed where she was. Alaan stayed where he was.

  But he felt the arms hugging her legs tighten.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  ***

  Lord Clarencio arrived at Shamasa late the day before the Festival of Springlight. Royal Thorns stopped the carriage at the gatehouse. Saro, Jarik’s son and acting steward in his elderly father’s place, had to deal with them. His lordship was indisposed with the latest in a series of debilitating leg cramps.

  The House Mattius party had made two stops before turning north to Shamasa, one of them well out of the way. Afterwards, they had been delayed at the swollen Salt River, first at Notch Crossing, where the violent floodwaters had torn the bridge out, then farther south at the Landing until the ferryman deemed it safe enough to pull across. To make up for lost time, Clarencio had ordered his driver to replace the horses if necessary but, above all, keep them moving no matter what they heard from inside the carriage.

  Clarencio had had five agonizing nights and days to reconsider his decision. He’d never enjoyed travel by carriage before his laming injury; all that sitting still drove him out of his mind. After he’d been crippled, the jostling and jolting turned travel into a new sort of torture.

  There had been a few times during that final push north when he’d considered cinching a belt around the offending leg and having Saro help him hack it off. But finally, thankfully, they arrived at their destination with all arms and legs—even the defective one—still attached.

  The only inhabitants of the redoubt stirring when they arrived were on-duty Thorns and a handful of ragged, masked priests preparing for the festival that night. Clarencio was grateful for the minimal welcome. The fewer people awake, the fewer who got to see the cripple dragged to his chambers by his servants.

  Niceties were severely lacking at Shamasa, even in the officers’ barracks. No luxurious feather ticks or hot spring bathhouses like at Blazing Prairie, but Saro arranged for water to be heated and brought from the kitchens. While they waited, he warmed bricks in the fireplace, wrapped them in cloths, and laid them against Clarencio’s leg to begin loosening the muscles.

  By the time his lordship had bathed and rubbed enough liniment into his leg to make him smell like a herb garden, dark had fallen on his wedding night.

  Despite having glimpsed the royal carriage in the stables, Clarencio was having a hard time believing he would actually be allowed to see Princess Kelena let alone wed her after all this time. Still, he thought it wiser to sleep through breakfast rather than hope to find his betrothed there. Whatever potential royal death trap he was limping into, he wanted to approach it with his wits about him and some semblance of strength.

  Saro woke him before midnight with an early luncheon and kettle of coffee.

  “The fort’s better provisioned than some of the inns we stopped at, your lordship,” the steward said as he poured a cup of steaming brew. “But it’s an ugly business that kept the larder this full this long.” He described the rotting pile of corpses stacked in the bailey without regard for the slab of ham swimming in grease on Clarencio’s tray. “The kitchen staff say the mad queen and her priests set the soldiers to killing each other until there wasn’t a man left.”

  Clarencio took a sip of coffee. “Makes you wonder who she’ll burn for the Springlight sacrifices, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s not for a common serving man to wonder at the doings of nobles or priests,” Saro said wryly.

  “All the same, if I were the steward of a less-than-favored house, I’d keep my head down until after the sacrifices were lit.”

  “As your lordship says. Speaking of, will you be wearing House Mattius colors tonight?”

  “I’d best. This might be my last chance if Hazerial decides to sacrifice me.”