Kushiel's Mercy

spoke about you without acrimony. I remembered hearing that he was one of her favorite courtiers before he was exiled. She was fond of Marmion. He made her laugh.
    But she never took him as a lover.” She gave me one of her quick, flickering smiles. “’Tis a pity. She might have been more sympathetic toward us if she had.”
    I slid one arm around her waist, pulling her against me. “Do you suspect your mother of harboring perverse desires?”
    Sidonie looped her arms around my neck. “Doesn’t everyone?”
    All in all, Lady Nicola’s fête was a considerable success. We were all strung tighter than overtuned harps, and we needed the distraction. None of us forgot about Carthage’s army camped outside Amílcar’s walls. None of us forgot that come the first clear night, we would attempt a desperate venture. But for now, we were alive and free, and we celebrated that fact, Aragonian and D’Angeline alike.
    If the food was scant and the great hall dim and a trifle cool for a scarcity of lamp-oil and hearth-wood, it didn’t matter. Keg after keg of wine was breached, and Ramiro Zornín de Aragon urged folk to drink with mournful enthusiasm, making everyone laugh and Lady Nicola smile with fond indulgence. The musicians played until sweat dripped from their brows.
    We were alive.
    We were free.
    And at the end of the night, I got to retire with my beloved.
    “Imriel.” In our darkened bedchamber, Sidonie breathed my name. I found her mouth and kissed her. She tasted like wine and honey on my tongue.
    “What’s your desire, Sun Princess?” I whispered.
    “You.” She sank to her knees, her hands gliding over my chest. I felt her fingers undoing my breeches. I felt my taut phallus spring free. I groaned as she licked the underside, swirling her tongue around the crown like a child with a sweet. Groaned louder when she took me into her mouth, sinking my hands into her hair and freeing its coils, feeling her nails digging into my buttocks.
    “Stop!” I gasped.
    Sidonie’s eyes gleamed in the faint light. “Is that a signale ?”
    “No.” The word emerged as a growl deep in my throat. “Come here, Princess.”
    Beneath her gown, Sidonie was still bandaged, clean strips of white linen laced across her shoulders, crisscrossing her breasts. For the first time since I’d wounded her, I ignored her injury. I laid her on her back and spread her thighs, fitting myself between them, propped on one arm. I teased her, taking my phallus in my hand and rubbing its swollen crown against her slick cleft until she gasped and begged, her back arching, hips thrusting helplessly.
    Then I took her.
    Deep.
    Hard.
    “Elua!” Sidonie’s last ragged gasp burst in my ear, her inner muscles milking my shaft. I burst in her, spending myself, seeing a sparkling darkness behind my closed eyelids.
    Good, so good. Where did Sidonie begin and Imriel end? I couldn’t even tell anymore.
    This could be the last time. I didn’t know.
    I never wanted to know.
    Our bodies quieted in the aftermath of pleasure.
    “Your back?” I murmured.
    “I think it’s all right.” Her voice was low and different. It always was after love-making.
    “If it’s not, it was worth it.”
    I rolled off her, sliding my arm beneath her. “Sleep, love.”
    Sidonie lay in the crook of my arm. “Look at the window. It’s almost dawn.” We watched the light seep through the shuttered window. “It looks as though the weather might have cleared.”
    “Mayhap,” I agreed.
    We looked at one another. “Right.” Sidonie nodded. “Sleep.”
    In the morning—or later in the morning—when we arose, we found it was true. The weather had broken and the day was clear and bright, giving every promise of a clear, cloudless night.
    “I don’t think they’ll do it tonight,” I said to Sidonie. “Not after the fête.”
    I was wrong.
    In the early afternoon, Captain Aureliano, the soldier I’d met atop the walls of the city, sought us out, finding us in the palace library. He’d struck me as a competent, easygoing fellow when I’d met him. Today he was as serious as death.
    “Well met, your highness,” he said when I introduced him to Sidonie. “General Liberio sent me to confer with you.”
    Sidonie paled. “Is it tonight?”
    “It is.” Aureliano took a deep breath. “The general had us let the word slip to Astegal’s men that there was a fête last night. We do a fair bit of taunting back and forth, you know.
    Not much else to do. But he