Oria's Gambit
Authors: Jeffe Kennedy
Tags: #romance, #magic, #fantasy paranormal romance, #romance adults
Sorcerous Moons – Book 2
by
Jeffe Kennedy
A
Play For Power
Princess Oria has one chance to keep her word and
stop her brother’s reign of terror: She must become queen. All she
has to do is marry first. And marry Lonen, the barbarian king who
defeated her city bare weeks ago, who can never join her in a
marriage of minds, who can never even touch her—no matter how badly
she wants him to.
A Fragile Bond
To rule is to suffer, but Lonen never thought his
marriage would become a torment. Still, he’s a resourceful man. He
can play the brute conqueror for Oria’s faceless officials and bide
his time with his wife. And as he coaxes secrets from Oria, he may
yet change their fate…
An Impossible Demand
With deception layering on deception, Lonen and Oria
must claim the throne and brazen out the doubters. Failure means
death—for them and their people.
But success might mean an alliance powerful
beyond imagining…
To the wonderful members of SFWA, who helped me
figure out the moons. All subsequent license and errors are my
fault entirely.
Copyright © 2016 by Jeffe Kennedy
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the
U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the
prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s
imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, or business establishments, organizations
or locales is completely coincidental.
Thank you for reading!
Credit
Content Editor: Deborah Nemeth
Line and Copy Editor: Rebecca Cremonese
Back Cover Copy: Erin Nelson Parekh
Cover Design: Louisa Gallie
~ 1 ~
T
he golem’s glassy claws
flashed, arcing through the rosy light of the moon, and sliced open
his throat. Blood poured down his naked body, steaming in the chill
desert air. Out it flowed, sweeping around him like the bore tides
of Bára. So much of it pooled around him that he began to drown in
it. He strained to lift his battle axe, to cut the golem down with
cold iron, but found a flower in his hands instead.
A white lily, luminescent and fragile,
somehow escaping the blood that drained his life away.
The golem struck again and he shouted at it,
no sound escaping. Because he had no throat left. Because he was
dead.
How could he still be standing?
The golem’s claws dripped crimson and its
black maw yawned, glistening with glasslike fangs. It wouldn’t ever
die, forever coming after the Destrye until every last one of his
people were dead, unless he managed to cut it down. Out of its
mouth, sickly green fire blew, a lethal wind of flame that burned
the crops and aqueducts. Not a golem then, but one of the Trom.
Skin over bones, a humanoid spider, it grinned, lips red as the
claws, hand reaching to turn him into skin without bones, nothing
but pulped flesh. No, they were fingernails, enameled and jeweled.
Natly’s elegant hands slicing across his throat again, lips curving
in a lascivious smile. With that third swipe, his head tumbled to
the ground, and as she reached for his cock with those scarlet
daggers of her nails, he finally managed to shout his anguish and
fury.
“Your Highness?”
Lonen jerked in the hot water, the nightmare
shredding around him with the spray of droplets. The servant boy
gave him a wide-eyed look. Bero. The Báran lad had attended him his
last time at baths, too. He was in Bára, again, cleaning up after
the journey. No Trom or golems here.
Except in his tortured brain.
“Did you need something, Your Highness? You
called out, but I didn’t understand the words.” Bero carried a
stack of the much lighter colorful clothes that men of Bára wore.
Silk
, Oria had called the fabric, another thing apparently
made by insects. Despite its disturbing origins, and like the
addictive and tangy sweet honey she’d also introduced him to, the
cloth had an exotic loveliness, more refined than anything produced
in his homeland.
Like the sorceress herself, both unsettling
and compelling.
“No, I’m fine.” He cupped his hands and
splashed water on his face. Sloppy of him, to have fallen asleep in
the city of his enemy—and then failing to awaken at Bero’s
footfalls as he approached. Too comfortable in the soothing waters.
Too many months of short sleep. Ion would have slapped him upside
the head hard enough to have his brain ringing for the
carelessness. But his brother was dead and gone these many weeks,
reduced to boneless pulp at the simple touch of the Trom’s evil
hand.
“Would you care for wine or food now, King
Lonen?” Bero asked in the trade tongue, setting out the soaps and
oils. “Princess Oria said you’re to have anything you ask for.”
Luxurious baths, booze, and fine food—an
excellent strategy to lull him into meekly doing the sorceress’s
bidding. The nightmare had served as a timely reminder of his
purpose here—to save his people from destruction, not to indulge in
Oria’s gifts or seductive presence. He might have agreed to her
startling proposal of marriage, but he’d proceed on his terms, not
hers. For the sake of the Destrye and his sanity both.
“What are the chances of a decent steak?” He
meant it as a joke, though the boy wouldn’t know that. The Bárans
didn’t eat meat as a rule and, though the Destrye did, the grave
losses to their livestock and wild game meant Lonen hadn’t had
anything worth calling a steak since before Battles of Bára.
“Princess Oria said to tell you she sent some
of the hunters to find meat for you, Your Highness. It might take a
few hours, however. Until then the best she can offer is some meat
kept to feed the animals, and our usual fare.”
Him and livestock—both pets of the Bárans.
But his stomach growled, cramping with hollow pain, so he told Bero
to bring whatever, enjoying the quiet when the boy went to fetch
it. It seemed like years, not weeks, since he’d last visited the
baths. That evening he’d washed himself clean of the ashes of too
many dead before negotiating the peace treaty with Oria.
Short-lived as that peace had been.
Then, as now, the elegant beauty of the
underground chambers both enchanted and intimidated him. Built of
carved gold and rose stone like the rest of Bára, the baths were
pools of still water, several of them at varying temperatures,
going from shallow to deeper than a man could stand. Elaborately
carved pillars and arches supported the shadowy ceiling, the subtle
light of the sconces not quite enough to illuminate it or the far
corners of the room.
For a man who’d learned to jump at shadows,
he found it surprisingly lulling. As evidenced by his falling
asleep deeply enough to dream, though the nightmares were nothing
new. The cursed things plagued him most nights. Odd to see Natly in
this one, though, rather than Oria stalking him. A facet perhaps of
his dramatically changed reality—exchanging one fiancée for the
other. It appeared that by agreeing to marry Oria, he’d now have
Natly haunting his sleep.
At least no one else had heard him cry out.
He had the place to himself on this occasion. Probably the Bárans
didn’t bathe in the middle of the day. The baths simply remained
filled, awaiting their convenience.
A shocking waste of water.
Bero returned, setting down a platter of food
and a jug of wine, along with a tray of shining instruments. “Would
you like me to shave you before you eat, or after, Your
Highness?”
Reflexively, Lonen clapped a hand over his
beard. He had no doubt he looked scruffy from his travels, and in
comparison to the Báran men who were all clean shaven that he’d
seen, but…
“Is that another of Princess Oria’s edicts?”
He asked, not bothering to disguise the sarcasm.
Bero ducked his head, clearly chagrined. “I
apologize, Your Highness. Please forgive me. I did not mean to
offend. When I serve the prince and folcwitas at their baths,
they—”
Lonen held up a hand to stop the increasingly
penitential torrent of explanation from the already nervous boy.
“No apologies. I am short-tempered.” He rinsed himself one last
time, then rose from the water.
“Your Highness, I did not mean to abbreviate
your bath.” Bero sounded even more contrite.
“You didn’t. I’m clean and I don’t need to
lie about, indulging myself.” Especially not while his people could
be dying by the Trom’s dragon-breath while he luxuriated in deep
water and napped. Oria had said she’d stop the incursions, but
she’d also promised him that very thing before this. He had no
reason to trust her—and plenty of evidence otherwise. Better to be
ready to fight whatever battle presented itself next.
He dried himself with the cloth Bero handed
him. Not the silk of the Báran garments, but likely the same
source, woven thicker to be more absorbent. Nothing like the rough
cotton towels the Destrye used. Then, draping the cloth around his
hips, he sat on the bench next to the platter of food, pouring wine
into the delicate goblet—made of
glass
, Oria had called it,
supposedly formed of the endless sands that surrounded Bára—and
drank deeply. Not Oria’s sweet juice this time, but a potent dark
blend made from fruits of the vine. The sorceress might not be
watering her formerly lush rooftop garden any longer, but whatever
the reasons for her choice, the rest of Bára didn’t seem to be
enduring similar privations. Of course, the fruits fermented for
this wine were likely grown years ago. Possibly even before Bára
turned her greedy gaze on Dru’s once plentiful lakes.
“Go ahead and trim my hair and beard, but no
shaving,” he told Bero. “That’s an offense against Arill.”
Bero moved behind him, setting to trimming
the curls that tended to spiral wildly when untamed. “Leave it long
enough to tie back,” he belatedly thought to tell the boy before he
scooped up a chunk of cheese, dipping it in a dish of honey before
taking a bite. It drove him crazy when his hair was too short to
pull back, falling into his eyes all the time. Arill knew he didn’t
need to go any more insane than he already had.
Probably he’d started coming unhinged during
the privations of the Golem wars. Plenty of Destrye warriors had.
Fighting a relentless, inhuman enemy that kept coming at you, no
matter how many you’d chopped into pieces, gave even the most
stalwart man nightmares. Their camps at night had often rung with
the shouts of men still fighting in their sleep, causing the
lookouts no end of trouble sorting real alarms from phantasms.
Not every man showed the erosion of sanity
immediately. Lonen hadn’t suffered from the plaguing dreams until
much later. Not until after he’d lost his father, two brothers, and
countless men in the Battles of Bára. Not to mention the last
bloodstained fragments of his idealism.
A wonder, really, that he’d held onto it that
long.
No, for him the nightmares began after he met
Oria, with her fragile beauty, demonic lizardling pet, and the
ability to read his thoughts more easily than Lonen could decipher
his brother’s plans for aqueducts to save the Destrye from
starvation.
Very likely she could do far more than that
with her mysterious magic. She might be able to cloud or even
direct his mind. That would explain how, though he’d come to Bára
to exact revenge and restitution for her crimes against Dru, he’d
somehow ended up agreeing to marry the witch.
As uneasy as it made him, he’d prefer to
blame his decision on her magic, rather than contemplate how much
of it might spring from his strange obsession with her.