Mistrals Kiss   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

I was supposed to be having as much sexas I could, for if I didn’t get with child soon, not only would I never be queen, but I’d probably be dead. If my cousin Cel got someone with child before I got pregnant, he would be king, and he would kill me, and all who were loyal to me. It was an incentive to fuck that no aphrodisiac could match.

But there was something sharp under my back, and more smaller pains up and down my body. Dead branches and bits of plant poking and biting at me. I hadn’t noticed it until after the orgasm, when the endorphins were receding at a rapid rate. There’d been almost no afterglow, just mind-blowing orgasm, and then this feeling of fading, of being aware of every discomfort. If Abeloec had missionary position in mind, we needed a blanket.

It wasn’t like me to lose interest so quickly. If Abeloec was as talented with other things as he was with his mouth, then he was someone I wanted to bed, just for sheer pleasure. So why did I suddenly find myself with no upon my lips and a desire to get up off the ground?

THEN A VOICE CAME OUT OF THE GROWING DARK AS THE LINES of color faded — a voice that froze us all where we were and sent my heart pounding into my throat. “Well, well, well, I call for my captain of the guard, Mistral, and he is nowhere to be found. My healer tells me that you all vanished from the bedroom. I searched for you in the dark, and here you are.” Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, stepped out from the far wall. Her pale skin was a whiteness in the growing dark, but there was light around her, light as if black could be a flame and give illumination.

“If you had stood in the light, I would have not found you, but you stand in the dark, the deep dark of the dead gardens. You cannot hide from me here, Mistral.”

“No one was hiding from you, my queen,” Doyle said — the first any of us had spoken since we’d all been brought here.

She waved him silent and walked over the dry grass. The wind that had been whipping the leaves was dying now, as the colors died.

The last of the wind fluttered the hem of her black robe. “Wind?” She made it a question. “There has not been wind in here for centuries.”

Mistral had left me to drop to his knees before her. His skin faded as he moved away from me and Abeloec. I wondered if his eyes still flashed with lightning, but was betting they did not.

“Why did you leave my side, Mistral?” She touched his chin with long pointed nails, raised his face so he had to look at her.

“I sought guidance,” he said in a voice that both was low and seemed to carry in the growing dark.