A Tale of Two Kingdoms (25 page)

“Yes.”

“Da has no’ told me what is ailin’ him. He says only that he believes he will live long enough to see a transition to peace, but no’ long enough to see Helm king.”

“Helm? King? Rammel!”

“I know. I know. But this is what I’m thinkin’.”

Ram was walking outside on a terrace when he saw Mr. Kilter arrive. He said goodbye to Elora and hurried back.

“Mr. Kilter, sorry to trouble you to return so soon.”

“No’ at all, my lord. Happy to do it.”

“I believe my son, Rammel, has another question or two. Same terms as before. Do you agree?”

“Certainly, sir.”

Kilter turned to Ram with the eagerness of a hobby puzzler receiving a new monthly in the mail.

“Mr. Kilter, my question concerns the possible succession of my son, who is on the cusp of emergin’ from infancy. Hypothetically speakin’, would it no’ be possible for my father to name his grandson king, but appoint a regent to act in his place, with full power and authority, until he’s twenty-five?”

“Aye.”

“Would it be possible to appoint himself as that regent with a contingency that I would be next in line to act as regent in the event of his death or incapacitation?”

“Aye.”

“Thank you. And, last, would it be possible for my son to decline, to name someone else ruler on the occasion of his twenty-fifth birthday?”

Kilter looked at Ethelred then back at Ram. “Aye.”

“What steps would need to be taken to legally dethrone my brother?”

“Legally? Why nothin’ more than a public announcement by your father,” he looked at Ethelred, “the king.”

Ram smiled. “Aye, Mr. Kilter, I can appreciate your sentiment. There are many of us who see my father’s face when we think ‘king’. So the new arrangement would be effective at the time of a public announcement?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Thank you.” Ram looked at his father. “That’s all I have for him at present.”

Ethelred thanked Kilter again for returning and showed him to the door.

“Would those terms be agreeable to you, Da?”

“I’m thinkin’ you’re sellin’ yourself short, lad. You’d make a fine king.”

Ram grinned. “Hearin’ that is worth more to me than I can say, but bein’ an improvement o’er Blood does no’ make someone a fine king.”

Ethelred made the announcement to a television news crew on the palace lawn with Ram standing behind him and quickly made arrangements to resume peace talks the following day.

When Aelsblood’s jet landed, he was surprised to see so many representatives of the press crowding around the gates of the hangar. While still on the plane, his people were fielding calls asking how he felt about being removed from office.

Tepring came downstairs with a smile and without a handkerchief. She walked straight to Ethelred and put her arms around him. For a long time they hugged, gently swaying like they were slow dancing. Ram wondered how he could have missed the affection between them, realizing it must have always been there to be seen.

The three of them were in Ethelred’s study talking about the future.

“Why the provision that Helm can appoint someone in his place?”

“Because,” Ram began, “first and most obvious, he may no’ want it. Second, if all goes well over the next twenty-five years, elves and fae may be ready to form a commonwealth. And who could better serve to reunite us than a grandchild of yours and the Scotia crown?”

Ethelred and Tepring were each thinking about the privilege of being part of such a sweeping change that would stand for the good of future generations. The moment came and went quickly when Aelsblood entered. He closed the door and leaned back against it looking first at Rammel, then at their mother, and finally at Ethelred.

“A public announcement, Da? You might have at least told me in private and saved me the humiliation.”

“Was that no’ a public announcement you made a few hours ago in which you called your sister a traitor and said she was no’ motivation enough to cause you to talk to the Scotia king about a peace between us? I thought ‘tis how we do thin’s under your regime, Aelsblood. If you’ll excuse us, we were just goin’ to dinner. As a family.”

He stepped away from the door and let them pass by. Ram didn’t bother to try and hide his contempt.

CHAPTER 14

Ritavish Torquil and Ethelred Mag Lehane Hawking stood together in amiable agreement as they waited to sign the document in front of them. One of the things that Ms. Logature had done for them that was most helpful was to suggest they hire Idelman and Company, a New York public relations firm, to help them sell the new age to their own people.

Idelman and Co. proved to be worth every penny. Within twenty-four hours they had spun the event as the greatest love story the world had ever seen, the love that overcame a two-thousand-year-old conflict. Overnight, an industry of products, tours, and clubs featuring Song and Duff sprang into being including some scams promising tickets to the wedding. Idelman and Co. made sure the news media in Scotia and Ireland carried positive stories about how the fortunate mating was benefitting the GNP of both countries and how the celebrity of the couple had brought them under the global spotlight.

Between the documentary outlining the true history of the race and a powerful global wave of affection for the young couple, most fae and elves began to state publicly that they’d had private misgivings about the prejudice. “I’d been questionin’ the sense of the thin’ for a long while,” was a commonly voiced sentiment when elves and fae were stopped on the street and asked how they felt about the end of hostilities.

Etana, in her guise as Arles Logature, approached the Eskildsens, owners of a guest house in the Faroes that had enjoyed the privilege of hosting the famous couple. She explained that the pair had actually been in their guest cottage the entire time and offered to pay the bill at three times the going rate. She also mentioned that the guest house could expect a deluge of reservations requests for having housed the royal celebrities and that they would have all the business they could manage for whatever price they’d like to charge for a while.

Mr. Eskildsen responded that, at his age, he got dates confused sometimes. If the young couple said they’d been guests, then who was he to argue? He created an invoice and thanked Ms. Logature for settling the bill.

“What would you do for me?”

For the sake of diversion Song and Duff had been to the village a couple of times and met interesting people with stories to match, but mostly they had spent their “honeymoon” reveling in the exhilarating pleasure of simply being together. After the first couple of days of solitude, they had fallen into the habit of doing without clothes. They found that perpetual access to each other’s bodies only added to the euphoria of their reclusive love nest. It had been a time of companionable joy and seductive amusement, a euphoric bliss that was as intoxicating as any drug.

Their awareness of the illusory quality of their days and the likely transience of the experience only heightened their determination to suck every morsel of delight from every moment.

Duff looked up at Aelsong who was straddling him. He was lying on the little grass knoll that sloped down to the stream that ran beside the house. The air was heavy with the scent of blooming flowers and the grass felt cool and soft against his skin.

He raised an eyebrow and grinned as he trailed his fingertips slowly down between her bare breasts. “Are you hidin’ a dragon for me to slay?”

“Oh, no. The dragons are all gone away. Except for my brother.”

“Your brother, the king, or your brother, the hero?”

She laughed. “Aelsblood. I tried to kill him myself.”

“When?”

“After they brought me home and he said I was goin’ to be locked away.”

“What did you do?”

“I picked up one of those old-fashioned iron pokers, the heavy kind, and swung it at his head.”

Duff stared at her for a couple of beats and then started laughing. “I would have loved to have seen that. What did he do?”

“Well, first, he said, ‘Ouch’.”

Duff laughed so hard at that he had to sit up. He put his arms around her waist and adjusted her position while she put her arms around his neck.

Face to face, he said, “And then what?”

“Then he called the guards to drag me away. I told him he’d better no’ ever let me out or I’d kill him for sure the next time.”

“I will take this as a cautionary tale, love. I’m renewin’ my pledge to remain true to your good graces. I’m also makin’ a new pledge to keep the pokers locked away when we are established in our own home.”

Song’s smile died away at that. “Our own home? ‘Tis hard to guess where we may end.”

“I do no’ care so long as you’re with me and no’ tryin’ to kill me.”

The giggle that bubbled up was smothered by a kiss so lovely that she was happy to give up the laughter in sacrifice. There was growing evidence between her legs that Duff was taking the conversation in a new direction. As his kisses trailed down her neck he moved his hands to the sides of her breasts and lifted her at the same time. In a dance of mutual understanding as old as time, she reached between them to perfectly position his cock at her entrance and then sank slowly down. As she lowered herself, she pulled air in a gasp, let her head drop back, and finally brought her gaze back to watch his face as she whispered his name, “Duffy.”

In the throes of the most powerful intimacy possible, his concentration on her reactions was so intense that it was a rapture almost painful. Song moved slowly, deliberately, erotically to heighten the sensations. Just as slowly, Duff’s hands moved lightly over her body, his fingers greedy for the next touch before the last was complete. When Song began to move faster, increasing the friction, Duff’s arousal kept pace.

He came up to his knees while holding her in place so that he could get more leverage. Holding her in a tight embrace, with arms wrapped around her, he pulled almost all the way out and plunged into her with a thrust so purposeful it could only be called ravishment. Hearing her responding cry spurred him on to pumping in a merciless triumph of claiming. He adjusted her position once more so that her most sensitive nerve endings would be brushed by the piston motion between them. Within a few seconds, he felt her squeezing him and let go in a seizure of ecstasy that can only be known by species that mate.

They stayed in that position, panting. He held her close with one arm while he reached up and used the other hand to brush the damp hair back from her face. Keeping his hand against her cheek, he angled her head back a little so that she was looking at him. “I love you, Song.”

She swallowed and felt her heart clinch in her chest. Her beautiful kiss-swollen lips parted so that she could say it back, but her throat closed and she felt a tear run down her face instead.

“Here now. What’s this?” He wiped one wet trail away with his thumb.

She nodded, then shook her head, and then flapped her hands until she could find her voice. “Is this what matin’ does? I’m goin’ to be as bad as Elora with the silly weepin’.”

“She has a reputation for tears, does she?”

“Aye,” Song laughed. “She does. But that was no’ what I intended to be sayin’. What I meant to be sayin’ is, I love you, too, Duffy. We’re goin’ to be okay, whate’er ‘tis that comes next.”

“O’course. I proclaim it. Also, as to what I would do for you. I will murder your brother if you wish it, but ‘twould surely mean war,
actual
war, between your people and mine.”

She seemed to contemplate that. “You’re goin’ to have to retrain yourself to stop thinkin’ in terms of your people and mine. ‘Tis our people now. And, no, love. I release you from the charge. If he needs killin’ badly enough, I’ll do it myself,” she smiled just as the doorbell rang.

“Did you hear a doorbell?”

“Aye. I think ‘twas the tune of ‘Comin’ Through the Rye’.”

They got up and walked to the cottage, looked around the front door, but there was no sign of a doorbell.