So Jasmine learned to kill. Whenever they had
time to stop during the nights, her warrior escort taught her new
ways to maim and butcher, silence and scavenge, or made her
practice what she did know.
She soon discovered Keilor had been right;
compared to him, her new instructors were merciless, inflexible,
and exacting. They never deliberately hurt her, and physically they
were more careful with her hide then they were with each other, but
she did accumulate her share of bruises, mostly from learning to
fall and roll over uneven ground.
None of them cared if she got angry, swore at
them, or cried. As far as they were concerned, she was now a
warrior in training, and she could just get over it.
Wonder of wonders, she did.
The symbiont was a big help. Not only did it
thrive by absorbing the damage to her person, it lent her a never
before known speed and agility. It did nothing for her strength,
but her stamina almost matched that of the Haunt, and that was not
a small thing.
No amount of grueling exercise could take her
mind off of her husband for long, though. With every day that went
by her longing grew, until she came to the point where she dared
not think of him while riding lest her seat on the
saddle
usually behind Mathin or
Raziel
become an aching torture.
Oddly enough, none of her companions seemed
to be affected by the increased levels of pheromone she knew she
emitted at those times. Wondering if her marriage had something to
do with it, she finally asked Mathin about it.
He snorted with ill humor. “Isfael merely
remains in Haunt, where one never feels the desire to mate, and he
can still scent danger. As for Raziel and I
…
” He scowled. “We’ve been taking a sinus blocker since
we reached you. We can’t smell or taste a blasted thing while using
it.”
Jasmine’s eyes widened. “Is that why you’ve
been such a jackass?”
Raziel roared with laughter. “I don’t know
what that is...?”
“A male beast of burden, known for its
stubborn refusal to cooperate and its nasty temper,” Jasmine
supplied.
Raziel grinned wickedly at the glowering
Mathin. “A jackass,” he repeated, smirking. “I’ll have to remember
that. However, I’m afraid our Mathin can’t blame the sinus blockers
for his disposition. You ought to know by now he’s just naturally a
foul tempered beast.”
Mathin curled his lip at him.
Almost two months to the day Jasmine had been
taken, they finally came within a days’ ride of Jayems’ citadel.
Instead of growing relaxed as they entered the forest of fern and
towering redwoods, however, her escort increased in vigilance. All
traces of levity ceased, as did superfluous chatter. Everyone was
on the alert for a last minute betrayal.
They needn’t have worried.
Within minutes of entering the forest, volti
joined them, running just inside the forest beside the bridle path.
Jasmine felt a strong sense of deja vu, but instead of fear, this
time she felt exhilaration and a sense of homecoming. Only one
thing worried her. “Do you think Keilor will be happy to see me?”
she whispered.
Three heads, two in Haunt, whipped around to
stare at her. “I can’t believe you just asked that,” Mathin finally
got out. Giving her one last suspicious look, as if wondering if
she’d left her wits somewhere in the swamps, he went back to
scanning the trees for assassins. Shaking their heads, Raziel and
Isfael did the same.
Well. That would teach her to ask a man to
boost her confidence.
Her tension increased the closer they got to
home, and she kept forcing herself to relax her legs from around
the barrel of the stag, lest it run. Still damp from her recent
bath, her hair flowed loose down her shoulders, beginning to wave
from the wind of their passage.
“Do you think we could go a little faster?”
she asked. The men ignored her, and she slouched, sulking. “I could
almost get off and run there faster,” she muttered, but nobody
listened.
Two hours from the citadel, Isfael and Raziel
signaled they heard riders, coming fast. Excited, Jasmine leaned to
the side, watching the road. Would Keilor be with them?
He was.
“Keilor!” she shouted happily as he thundered
into view on a sweating stag. She levered up on Raziel’s shoulders
and knelt on his halted stag’s back to get a better look in a way
that must have been very annoying for Raziel. Grinning like a fool,
she waved to her husband, almost losing her seat in the process but
for Raziel reaching back to steady her.
Keilor snatched her from Raziel’s stag at a
trot and seated her so she straddled him. He proceeded to kiss her
as if about to ravish her there and then. With eager lips and
hungry hands, she told him she wouldn’t mind.
“I missed you,” she gasped, snatching some
air before the dizziness he caused overwhelmed her.
He groaned, pulled her head back and told her
with his volcanic kiss that he'd missed her, too.
Wrapping her arms around him in a fierce hug,
she sobbed against his neck, “I’d thought you were dead.”
“Never,” he assured her fervently, holding
her close as he stroked her hair. “I’m right here, Dragonfly.”
At his use of her nickname, the tears came in
earnest, and it was some minutes before she even noticed they were
heading for the citadel at fast clip. By then Keilor had switched
her position so that she sat curled in his lap, supported by his
arms. “I missed you,” she said again, giving him a hug.
His arms tightened around her. “Good,” he
answered with fierce satisfaction. “I was beginning to wonder if
you were ever coming home when the news came you had entered the
forest.” His jaw tightened, and he shot a glare of pending
retribution at Mathin over her head.
Mathin inclined his head coolly but said
nothing.
“How is your arm? We had heard it was
broken,” he asked with concern. There was no telling what she had
suffered on her journey, and the first thing he intended to do was
to have her examined by a medic. If Mathin had let anything happen
to her…
“Oh!” Jasmine squirmed upright and
unwittingly bumped against his groin, forcing a grunt from him.
“Sorry,” she said, but she couldn’t help looking down with a smile.
Keilor was as eager to be with her as she was to be with him. The
first chance she got…
Forcing her attention away from him, she held
up her wrists so that he could see the silver twined around her
forearms. “Mathin got me a symbiont that fixed it. See?”
His reaction was not what she’d expected.
Eyes widening, Keilor bared his teeth in rage
and snarled at Mathin, “As if we did not have enough problems! By
what right did you do this to her? How dare you use my wife to
cause trouble?”
Mathin’s rough voice was glacial. “She was
dying, maggot brain. Had I not ‘caused trouble’ you would not be
holding her now.”
Worried, Jasmine’s gaze swung between the two
men. “What’s wrong? It didn’t hurt me, Keilor.”
“You’ve done nothing, love. Be still,” Keilor
told her, and said to Mathin with barely restrained violence, “She
would not have been in that condition if you hadn’t botched your
job in the first place. What kind of savage—”
Mathin’s eyes ignited gold and he leaned
towards Keilor with a curl to his lip. “I am not invincible, any
more than you are,” he said in warning. “Could you have fought off
Yesande’s garrison and guaranteed you could have brought a sick
woman through unscathed? I think not. I traded a small hurt for her
life, and a complication for the same. You could not be there to
see to her, so do not judge me.”
Before Keilor could say more, Jasmine clamped
a hand over his mouth. “It was
my
arm, Keilor, and I forgive
him. Maybe there was another way, but I wouldn’t have gotten out of
there on my own. I’m just glad—” She choked up, fighting to beat
back the remembered terror. “The drugs were making me…” She closed
her eyes, feeling again the nightmare images. “I wanted only you,
and I kept saying that, and making them go away, but I was losing
my mind, and beginning to see you, and if he hadn’t—” A tremor
wracked her body, and he pulled her close, stroking her back
soothingly. “Please don’t fight. Just take me home. I just want to
go home.”
Out of respect for Jasmine’s feelings, Keilor
and Mathin ignored each other for the rest of the journey. They
would resolve matters between themselves at another time, where
Jasmine couldn’t see it. In the meantime, Keilor wanted to know
everything that had happened to Jasmine while she was away.
Tucking a stray bit of her hair behind her
ear, he asked, “So what did you think of the swamps?” He surveyed
her ragged tunic and badly patched pants. “They don’t seem to have
agreed with you.”
Rolling her eyes, she nevertheless sat up,
glad to share her adventures with him. “What’s not to like? Eating
mystery creatures
I swear, if anyone says
the word escargot to me, ever again…” She grimaced. “These guys
might be handy with a sword, Keilor, but the next time, could you
send someone who can cook?”
He grinned. There would never be a next time,
but he wouldn’t interrupt his wife while she was being
entertaining.
Looking stoic, she said without enthusiasm,
“I now know about twenty-five different edible plants that grow in
the swamp and how to find and prepare them, but not one of them
tastes worth a darn. It doesn’t matter anyway, though, because
after Mathin gets a hold of them, they all come out tasting like
salt.”
Disgusted, she went on, “Finding clean water
is a chore in itself, and you can almost forget about taking a
bath
not that I could, with three guys
constantly under foot, and none of them willing to leave me alone
for even five minutes.”
“We turned our backs,” Raziel, who’d shifted
back to normal, protested vehemently what was obviously a sore
subject. “Your woman has a bizarre fixation with modesty, Keilor.
Even in the middle of nowhere, without a stranger in sight, she
insists that all present turn their backs just so she can wash!
I’ve never seen anything so peculiar.”
“Yes,” Mathin chimed in, forgetting for a
moment his truce of silence. “And the one time that she saw poor
Raziel washing in the morning she screamed and threw a tantrum like
to bring all of Yesande’s hunters down on our heads.” He glowered.
“We had to ride hard that day to avoid them.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jasmine countered, deciding to
air her own grievances. “At least I wasn’t the one who nearly got
us eaten by that water snake.” Eyes huge, she told Keilor, “It was
as big around as a barrel, and he insisted after it swam by it
wouldn’t come back for some time and it was safe to cross.”
Disgusted, she said, “Well, he was right,
it
didn’t, but he
hadn’t counted on the one that was following it, just two minutes
behind. I’ve never been so scared in my life!”
By the time they reached the citadel, Jasmine
had managed to paint her companions as heroes and friends using
unflattering words and grumbled complaints.
Keilor began to feel a little jealous. Maybe
taking his wife to the medics would be the second thing he’d
do.
As they approached the busy stables with a
jingle of bits and the huffing of hard working stags, Jasmine
finally remembered to ask, “How is Rihlia?”
“Pregnant,” he answered succinctly, leaping
off and lifting her down. Suddenly boneless, she stared at him, and
he grinned. “Don’t look so surprised. Jayems has been working hard
on that particular project since the moment they mated.”
Jasmine blushed and allowed him to take her
hand and tow her toward the citadel. Rihlia was pregnant? She was
going to be an aunt! She was so preoccupied, she barely noticed
where they were going in such a rush. Keilor opened the door to her
room just as she asked, “When? How—”
Slamming the door closed with one booted foot
and locking it, Keilor shut off the flow of words with his hungry
kiss. His loving was fast and needy, but then so was hers. He,
however, was quicker at stripping her. Her hands kept getting
distracted by the sight and intoxicating feel of his bare arms and
naked chest.
They didn’t make it to the bed.
Chapter 24
Jasmine was slick and ready, but she cried
out and stiffened as her husband slid in fast. Instantly he
stopped. “What’s wrong?”
She ducked her head. “Um, it’s been a
while.”
Keilor cocked his head and moved a fraction
in experiment. His eyes flared. “You’re a little tight.” A shimmer
obscured his vision, and he eased off his wife, untangling his
pants from his ankles to hide his reaction.
A dark part of him had writhed with fear that
while she’d been away from him, she’d learn to scorn him for his
failure to protect her and turn to another as more worthy. This
physical evidence of her loyalty both humbled and shamed him. She
deserved so much more
a man who wouldn’t
shame her.
Since he could never tell her his thoughts,
he showed her instead. With infinite tenderness he kissed her and
carried her to the bed, showing her with his body how much he
cherished her and the gift of her fidelity. Hearts and souls
communed through hands and lips, speaking of a connection that was
more than skin deep. It was a beautiful moment, and when he finally
took her body, they truly became one.
A long while and much loving later, Jasmine
snuggled with sleepy satisfaction against her husband, reveling in
the feeling of being held. Her languidly stroking hand encountered
her dragonfly pendant, and she smiled, fingering it. Sighing with
pleasure, she told him, “You sure know how to spoil a girl,
honey.”
Keilor chuckled and hugged her in response.
“I’ve thought the same about you.” Remembering the agony of the
last few months, he felt the need to reassure her, “It will not
happen again.”