The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

flames around Moncriith and his men, preventing them from menacing the refugees as they clambered aboard the dragons.
     
    “Do you suppose we really conceived a child this night?” Katie asked, pressing her hands against her flat belly.
    Quinnault looked at the pale skin beneath her hands. An occasional freckle enticed his eye, beckoning him to search her entire body for more. He’d found most of them in the hours since midnight, after the wedding banquet.
    “If we haven’t made a child tonight, we’ll have to keep trying until we get it right.” He couldn’t stop smiling. He felt like an idiot, grinning until his face hurt. Loving Katie was the most natural, satisfying thing he’d ever done. The casual liaisons he’d indulged in paled in comparison to the joy he knew with Katie.
    Questions and problems of kingship faded whenever he thought of Katie. Her father had arrived for the wedding, suitably clothed as befitted the Crown Prince of Terrania. He hadn’t renewed his argument with Katie. When asked about progress on the new port he had nodded curtly and replied, “Before dawn.” He hadn’t said much else the entire evening.
    “I never thought I’d be lucky enough to have a child,” Katie said wistfully.
    “Why not?”
    “Pregnant women and small children are particularly vulnerable to the plague that attacks my people. It comes in waves every few generations. Usually it goes away, naturally, after three or four years and tens of thousands of deaths. This time it has lasted ten years and doesn’t look as if it’s waning. Any woman healthy enough to have children is afraid to have them. That is why we need so much of the Tambootie. We have to get the plague under control before our population dwindles to nothing.”
    Quinnault kissed the smooth skin just above where Katie’s hands still pressed against her stomach. “Your people will have as much of the tree of magic as the dragons can spare. The plague will be stopped,” he promised. A delicate quiver across her skin followed his trail of caresses upward. She reached to bring him higher, matching his passion in yet another long kiss.
    Her response to him delighted and awed him.
    His Katie.
    He released a satisfied sigh. “Wherever you come from Maarie Kaathliin, you belong here now, in Coronnan. With me.”
    “I never thought I’d be happy calling any port home except where I was born. But this certainly feels like home now.” She rested her head against his shoulder.
    For a moment they lay silent, enjoying the contented closeness. Her mind brushed his in a momentary deepening of their mutual joy. Then she withdrew, slowly, as if drifting into sleep, not the quick closing of a barrier.
    “I feel as if I’ve known you all my life,” Quinnault murmured sleepily. It had been a long day.
    “One day can be a lifetime,” she replied softly.
    He drifted on the edge of sleep, reluctant to give in to the clouds that pressed against his brain, lest he awaken and find Katie a mere dream.
    “I’m cold, Scarecrow. I’d like to get my shift.” She squirmed away from him.
    Reluctantly he let her go. The room seemed no cooler than usual for this time of year. “There’s an extra quilt in the wardrobe cupboard.” He rolled to his side, one arm draped across the empty space where Katie had been a few moments ago. Her scent lingered on the sheets. He inhaled deeply, anxious for her to return, too sleepy to follow her movements about the dim room.
    “Mind if I blow out the candle?” she asked from behind the privacy screen that led to the water closet.
    “Mmmmm . . .”
    The soft rumble of voices hovered just below his hearing. He shut out the brief annoyance. The palace never slept. Servants found chores and duties at all hours of the day and night.
    The rumble came closer, louder. A touch of anger colored the tones. He should get up and see what the fuss was about. No one was supposed to disturb him tonight, except for the most dire emergency. He’d had enough of those yesterday to last a lifetime.
    He half-opened one eye, willing the disturbance to go away and Katie to come back again. The tiny night lamp didn’t cast enough light to see her moving about. He hadn’t heard the wardrobe door open or close, nor the curtain to the water closet swish on its sliding rings, only the distant but angry voices. Kinnsell again? Where was Katie?
    He sat up, suddenly alert and alarmed.
    The voices grew louder, more insistent.
    “You can’t go in