A Kiss of Fire: A Kiss of Magic Book 2 (31 page)

“Come my lady…come away.”

“No. I must go to the other wing,” Ariana said, sliding her arms through the sleeves of the jacket. She gave his hands a brief squeeze. “Thank you.”

She hurried away from him, toward the second point of fire. As she came around the bend in the hallway leading to the raj’s wing she was greeted with a raging wall of fire. Here too was the riot of men shouting and water flying and jackets and blankets beating. This fire was far worse than the other and she could hear screams from beyond the wall of flame.

Vich’s wives and concubines. She had unwittingly trapped them in the hall between two points of ignition. There was no escape for them. They and their children would burn to death if she didn’t take the flame back. But to do so on a massive scale would surely kill her, she fretted. She could risk her life willingly, but to risk her child?

No. She had to do what she could. She couldn’t leave them there to burn to death. She raised a hand against the burning light of the fire and began to focus on drawing it back into her. She was still hot inside from dousing the previous fire and this only made it worse. She began to pant from the heat, persevering as one inch of flame came away from its tinder, the another and another. She could just see beyond the flames to where Vich’s women were huddled against the floor, sobbing and wailing helplessly, clinging to their children. Ariana redoubled her efforts, her knees giving way beneath her. She fell to them, gasping for breath.

“Ariana!”

She barely heard whoever shouted her name. But then cold hands were shaking her, breaking her concentration. The man’s hands were like ice.

“Stop!”

“I can’t they’ll die!” she said numbly. Then it registered to whom she was speaking. “Sin!”

“Yes, love. Let me do it. You need to rest.” He cradled her to his chest and she felt the cold of his body like a soothing breeze. Her superheated skin was wet with perspiration and she clung to those deliciously cold clothes and hands as if she were drowning and they were her only means of staying afloat.

Then she was aware of the orange glow of fire dying down and the coolness of his body was gone, replaced by warming flesh and then he too was perspiring. Finally, the flames were gone and men were crossing the burnt hallway to retrieve Vich’s women and children. They were soot blackened, their noses beneath streaked with the smoke they had inhaled. They were coughing and crying.

“Lindo, take the women to clean quarters. See them bathed and put to bed. See that they are all well-guarded. I will figure out what to do with them later.”

He stood up and dragged Ariana up high into his arms. He turned and strode down the hall until they were entering the master’s quarters. He took her to the bathing chamber and ran cold water into the tub. He stripped her of the bedraggled jacket she was in and settled her into the icy cold water. Her body was so superheated that even a tepid bath would have felt icy cold to her. He knelt beside her on the floor, carefully keeping her head above water. Her teeth began to chatter and she automatically went to warm the water.

“No,” he said, realizing what she was doing. “Leave it cold. You need to cool down.”

“And what of you? You are warm too.”

He smiled at that and the way she tugged on him as if to get him into the bath with her.

“No,” he said on a soft laugh. “We’re taking care of you, not me.” He caressed her smoke-streaked face. “Where is that girl of yours? Scared out of her wits no doubt.”

“I told her to hide. She was scared. We both were. Oh Sin, I’ve never been so frightened. I thought he was going to use me to get to you. I thought you might give up your life for mine and I could not have it. He was going to kill me anyway once he learned I was pregnant with your child. He wouldn’t risk it being a son that could take it all away from him.”

“It was never his to begin with…and never would be. I know he would have killed you anyway. He would have killed us both. Giving in to his demands was never an option. But he could have made me feel it. Every minute of it. He could have used you to hurt me in…” His voice was throttled in his throat. “When my spies told me he was no longer in his camp I knew where he was. I knew he would come here. I played right into his hands. It was a clever ruse…almost a perfect one. But some of my spies are not so easy to fool, thank god.”

“Thank god,” she echoed through chattering teeth.

“I rode as if the hells were opening up behind me. I couldn’t get here fast enough. Kiltian dapples are strong and built for endurance, but they are not known for their speed. Oh how I wished for a Saren thoroughbred. But then I was here and I could see the fire. I knew it could not hurt you, but my mother…and so many others. And I didn’t know if he set the fire out of spite after taking you and going. Until I saw you in the hallways I thought the worst—“ Here his voice broke again. She saw him blink his eyes rapidly and she knew he was on the borderline of tears. It touched her to know she was so deep in his heart.

“Your mother is safe,” she said.

“I know. I saw her with the watch commander. Then he told me that you had told him Vich was dead and that you were inside.”

He reached for a sponge and a bar of soap. He lathered up the sponge and started to wash down her body in soothing, cool strokes. He washed the soot from her body and the smell of smoke from her hair. He did this tenderly and unhurriedly. He was gentle and thorough.

When he was done he had all the soap rinsed from her body and lifted her out of the tub. When she put her arms around him she realized he still had his heavy coat on from out of doors. He hadn’t even stopped to take it off before caring for her.

He wrapped her up in a thick, dry towel and then carried her to their room. Here he laid her on their bed and tucked her beneath the covers.

“Cooler now?” he asked.

“Yes. Much better.”

“You took a big risk,” he scolded her.

“I couldn’t let them die. Whatever their loyalties, they didn’t deserve that. They didn’t deserve to be punished for the acts of a selfish man.”

“I agree.”

“And now they have no one.”

“Untrue. They have me. I will care for my brother’s women and children just as I would have had he died by any other means. His firstborn son is now my heir. They, the women and the children, are still my family. They will be treated as such.”

“That is very kind of you.”

“That is the Kiltian way. Had my brother been a decent man, he would have cared for my wife and child if something were to happen to me. But he wasn't a different man. I forbore him too long. I always thought it was only political maneuvering, all his nay saying and his negativity toward all of my choices and decisions, his way of making himself feel powerful or useful or…I don’t know. I had been tolerating it so long for the sake of my mother. I didn’t want her to see her sons at each other’s throats. Yet all the while…it was not an example of my brightest moment.”

“You didn’t want to believe your brother could be so treacherous. You couldn’t have lived in a world of constant suspicion. It wouldn’t have been wise or healthy.”

“It will take me a long while before I can trust in those around me again. Lindo will help me weed out the bad eggs…but it will take a lot of time and a lot of caution. Thank God for Lindo. Were it not for him…I would be dead by now no doubt.”

She shivered at the thought.

“Cold?” he asked, mistaking the reaction.

She shook her head. “But come and warm me all the same.” She pulled back a corner of the bedclothes and patted the bed.

He sighed. “As much as I would like to, there is much to be done. I have to make certain all are accounted for…and that all of Vich’s men have been routed out. Lindo is doing that as we speak no doubt, but I should help him. You rest. Get some sleep. I will be in when I can. When I find Mariah I will send her to you.” He hesitated and looked at her curiously. “How did you get away from my brother?”

She blushed and looked away, murmuring her reply. “I threw up.”

“You…
what
?”

She explained what had happened and slapped him lightly when he started laughing. But she smiled. “It was just the distraction I needed. You can thank your child for it. He has saved both of our lives.”

“You said ‘he’,” he pointed out, a smile in his dark eyes.

“A figure of speech. It could be this was all the cunning of a promising young woman.”

He laughed. “I wouldn’t put it past her. She would be just like her mother.” He bent and kissed her warmly. “Now sleep. I will be in shortly.”

She nodded and hunkered down into the covers. She suddenly realized just how exhausted she was. It had been a long, traumatic night. She was ready for sleep.

She closed her drowsy eyes and was asleep before he even made it out of the room.

Probably because he lingered to make certain she was completely at rest.

And safe.

Epilogue

Sin paced outside of his bedroom.

It was taking too long. Too damn long by far.

Since the night of the fire, the night when he had almost lost everything, he had not let Ariana out of his sight. In fact, they had been inside each other’s pockets so much that this was the first time he had spent any extended period of time away from her since then.

Kiltian tradition demanded that the father not see his child until he was cleaned and dressed in the formal wraps of an heir of the Kiltian in question. Whether it be a son or a daughter. In Kiltian tradition, if he had a daughter and no sons were born, then that daughter could give birth to a son who would then inherit the royal title…provided the raja lived that long. However, if he died before his daughter had issue, then it would go to his next heir…who at this point was Vich’s son, a mere five-year-old boy. So, until a male child was born, a daughter could conceivably be the mother of the next stage of his legacy. As such, it was only proper she be given all the same ceremony as a male child.

And ceremony said he was to wait outside of his wife’s birthing room, listening to her screams and grunts of pain, unable to do a damn thing about it. Being in the room wouldn’t make much difference, he told himself. He would just be able to watch her struggle instead of just hearing it. And he didn’t want any bad luck marking his son’s birth.

Or his daughter’s.

He would be happy either way, he told himself for the hundredth time. As long as both mother and child came through in perfect health, he would be happy. He feared for them both. His mother had lost two children in childbirth…and he had discovered that Ariana’s mother had died while giving birth to her sister Gretha. These were bad portents on both sides.

He grabbed for the handle of the door, determined to go inside the bedroom…but again he let go, as he had over a dozen times already. He was not a superstitious man by nature, but in this case it was better to be safe than sorry. In Saren they were not so mired down in such traditions. Men chose whether or not they wanted to attend the birth in close quarters. And yet hundreds of healthy births occurred yearly.

This was nonsense. Superstitious nonsense.

But if he were to go in and something were to happen…he would never forgive himself.

But if something were to happen and he was not there for his wife, he would never forgive himself.

Lindo stood up from the chair he had been sitting in, walked over to the small sideboard where a glass decanter of hussa sat gleaming its amethyst color in the firelight. It was only just turning cold enough to have a fire these early days of fall. It had been a scorching summer, unheard of heat, and Ariana had been incredibly uncomfortable in her last heavy months of pregnancy. Lindo poured two fingers of hussa into two glasses and walked to hand one to Sin. Sin stared at the offering blankly for a long moment.

“Go on. It’ll settle your nerves.”

He took the glass and downed the hussa in two large swallows. He handed the glass back to Lindo.

“More?” he asked, offering him his glass as well.

Sin took it and it followed the same path down his throat.

“More?”

“No. I’ll not be,”  —he belched— “drunk when I meet my child.”

“Two glasses of hussa in under a minute, you might not have a choice,” Lindo said with a chuckle.

“It takes more than that to put me under the table,” Sin said dryly. But then he said, “but I do feel better. Thank you. You are a good and loyal friend Lindo.”

“So are you,” Lindo said, reaching to clasp Sin’s shoulder with his hand. “And you’re a good man. A great leader. I would follow you anywhere.”

“For that I am infinitely grateful. Without you we would never have gotten a foothold in our negotiations with the Sarens. They would have known our precarious position from the very beginning and negotiated us down to just a few acres of land. Your strength of mind as a Jadoc kept their Aspano majji from reading us. I will never forget that. I will never let our people forget it. In fact, I have been meaning to tell you…I would like to make a gift of land to you. Large enough that if worked right, if filled with tenant farmers, could make you a wealthy man for the rest of your days and on down into your line.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Lindo said quietly.

“I know I don’t but I want to. And you deserve it. And I want to make you rojo.”

“Sin—“ he began to protest.

“Ariana would be raji-mother if I were to die before my heir was of age, but she would need a rojo…a protector. I trust no one else in the role.”

“You honor me,” Lindo said, looking honestly humbled. “But in a sense I am already rojo…for you. I am already the protector of my leader.”

“But you have never been given the official title. It is high time you had it.”

“I accept.”

“We will have the ceremony after we have the naming ceremony for my child.” He frowned. “If that child ever plans to make an appearance.”

“I’ve known these things to take days,” Lindo said.

Sin sent him a withering look. “Don’t even joke about such a thing. She’s been at this for,” –he glanced at the clock on the mantle— “thirteen hours. Any longer and one of us will need a gallon of hussa to keep calm.”

Then Sin went still, suddenly realizing it had grown quiet on the other side of the door. He anxiously walked up to it and pressed his ear to it. No sooner had he done this then the door opened, startling the raja. He hastened to compose himself and looked down into the smiling face of the midwife. She was flushed and her sleeves were rolled up onto her forearms. She wore an apron over her dress and Sin saw blood smeared across its beige expanse. He swallowed hard and in a croaking voice demanded, “Is she well? Has Ariana…is she well?”

“She is well! Come and meet your new child.”

She swung the door wide and stepped back, allowing him to enter the room. He hastened to the bedside, at first ignoring the doctor who held a quiet infant in his arms. He went to Ariana who was already tidied up in a fresh nightgown and bed linens. She looked exhausted, her eyes drooping as if ready for sleep.

“Are you well, love?” he asked her anxiously, sitting on the bed beside her, facing her. He touched cool fingers to her warm face and she smiled at him wearily.

“I am well. But your son took the long way home it seemed.”

“My…my son?” he echoed dumbly.

Ariana held out her hands and the doctor placed the infant into her arms. She situated him so his father could see his wrinkled face in amongst the finery of the ceremonial swaddling.

“Your son. Raj Alexsander. As we agreed, yes?”

“Yes,” Sin said, suddenly feeling the effects of the hussa…or something like it. He could barely focus on the infant his heart was racing so madly. Then he reached out and touched his baby’s soft cheek. He immediately began to cry and Sin snatched his hand back as if he had been burned.

“Did I hurt him?” he asked, panicked.

“No. Of course not. Here. Hold him and he will stop.”

She handed him the child before he could protest and he awkwardly tried to settle the infant without hurting him. Ariana chuckled at him then rested calming hands on him. She settled her son in his arms and, as she had said, he stopped crying.

Sin was tense from head to toe, afraid he would somehow hurt his son or drop him accidentally. But as time passed and he grew used to holding him, he relaxed. He turned up a beaming smile to his wife.

“Is he as perfect as he seems?” he asked.

“Yes. All ten fingers and all eleven toes.”

He drew in a breath for a second, and then realized she was teasing him. He grinned at her in answer to her amused smile.

“So now all that is left is that we have his naming ceremony, then he will be recognized as my heir. The future raja.”

“That is not all that is left,” she admonished him. There will be many years of raising him between now and the day he becomes raja. But let’s not speak of it. For…for one to happen then my heart must be devastated by something else. I do not like to speak of your death.

“Then we will not speak of it,” he said softly before leaning forward and kissing her lips softly. “As you said, there will be many years between now and then. We will raise our son and his siblings happily and safely.”

“Siblings! You are already planning your next? I cannot think of it after what I’ve just gone through!”

He frowned. “This business of childbirth is highly unfair,” he said.

“In what way?” she asked curiously.

“Well, first that you get to hold the child beneath your heart for months before I even get to feel or see my son…and then that you must suffer so much pain alone and I have no way of taking it from you.”

“Oh, well I suppose being able to hold my child under my heart for all those months is my reward for the pain I must endure.”

He thought on that a moment. “I had not thought of it like that. Was it worth it?”

“Every moment of it,” she breathed. “The pain is nothing compared to how it feels to feel my child moving inside of me.”

“I envy you,” he said softly.

“Don’t. Now you can hold our child close to your heart too.”

He turned Alexsander in his arms and held him up against his heart, drifting a kiss over his downy soft head of black hair.

“You have given me everything I could ever dream or hope for,” he said to his wife. Then he leaned forward and kissed her lips with lingering soft sweetness. “I knew it the moment I first laid eyes on you that you would make me the happiest of men.”

“Well, it took a little longer than that for me to realize you would make me the happiest of women. But you have,” she said lovingly. “I love you more than my life, Sin.”

“Can I stay with you? With you and our child?” he asked, concern edging over him as he scanned her for signs of discomfort.

“Of course you can.” She drew back the corner of the covers and patted the bed. He handed her their child and worked off his boots. He climbed into the bed and put his arm around his wife. She snuggled against him and together they looked down on their son.

“I will never take for granted how lucky I am,” he said softly as he pressed a kiss to her temple.

“I know that you won’t. You have always been very methodical in your appreciation for the fortunes in your life…and you have fought for them at every turn. That makes me very lucky as well…because I know you will always fight to take care of our son and me. Even that night of the fire, when Vich had me in his power, even then I believe with all my heart that you would never fail me.”

“Do not speak of it. I almost did fail you. You fought for yourself that night. I had little to do with it.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps I wouldn’t have fought so hard had I not had you to live for. Had I not been terrified he would hurt you through me.”

“Let’s not speak of it again. It is over with. My brother is in the afterlife where he will never bother us again.”

“No. We will not speak of it again. And if our son has a brother we will raise both to appreciate what they have and to always put the love of a brother before everything else.”

“Yes. We will. And our second-born child will become heir to your fortunes in Saren, so they will have that.”

“Again we are speaking of heirs and more children. Let us enjoy what we have right now. Let us revel in our son. Let us spoil him as though he were the only one we will ever have…for he may very well be.”

“Do you think he is too young for a pony?” Sin asked, a teasing gleam in his eye.

“A tad bit too young,” she said on a laugh.

“Very well then…a hound. A loyal one to look after him.”

“That is a fine idea.”

Sin looked down on his wife and son and a feeling of pure contentment stole over him. Who would have thought that less than a year ago they had been nigh unto strangers to one another. Now he could never live without her. He couldn’t remember what life was like before her; only that it felt very lonely when he looked back on it.

Now his future was filled with love from many places. His son. His wife. Loyal men like Lindo. His mother.

He couldn’t have asked for anything more.

“I am a very lucky and very happy man,” he told his wife. “I never want you to doubt the joy you give me.”

“I won’t. And if I do doubt it, I will only remind myself of this moment when there is nothing but love and joy in our lives.”

“And then you will come to me and I will prove how content you make me,” he said on a suggestive growl.

She laughed and blushed.

“Perhaps I will claim there is doubt even when there is none…only to have you prove it to me,” she said wickedly.

He laughed at that. A full, ringing laugh that startled their son out of his dozing sleep. He began to fuss. This time when his father took him it was with confidence. He jounced him gently in his arms.

“There now. There now,” he soothed.

And, as he watched his son fall back to sleep, he knew a level of contentment that should have been unachievable. But it wasn't. He was happy and at peace.