Beneath the Thirteen Moons (13 page)

Mahri gritted her teeth. She wished he’d stop talking about love when he couldn’t possibly understand the depth of it.

“A Bond is above the laws of man,” he recited, “acknowledged by all and denied by none. Even a Royal.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Even a King.”

“Korl, if you don’t speak plainly, I’ll dump you over the side.” Mahri felt for her pouch. “Where’s my zabba?”

He laughed, a full-throated sound that echoed through the dark trees, set a few night creatures to squawking. “You make me laugh, water-rat. Perhaps that’s why I love you.”

“Would you stop prattling on about love as if you know what you’re talking about?” she snapped.

His face grew serious, the angles harsh and grim. His voice vibrated low and controlled. “That’s the second time you’ve accused me of not understanding what love is. So, why don’t you enlighten me, Wilding?”

It doesn’t matter, Mahri scolded herself. After a couple of days she’d never see him again anyway. Would it hurt him to keep his illusions? Why did she have to say anything? But the words were out and his nonchalant attitude about his feelings infuriated her.

“You want to know what love is?” Now that she’d started talking, the anger took control. Her eyes flashed fire, a fire more brilliant than any root Power could
produce, and her dark red hair danced around her face in a fury. Mahri knew what a sight she looked when truly angry.

Korl stared at her as if mesmerized.

“Love is giving all of yourself until there’s nothing left to hold onto, doing for another day after day, feeling their aches and joys as if they were your own. It’s entwining your life with another’s until there’s no separating them.” Mahri rose to her feet and towered above him. “It’s a loss of freedom. It… It’s soul-crushing agony when it… when it dies.”

Mahri looked wildly around. No place to go, nowhere to hide. She’d told this man more in that one burst than she’d ever told Caria in her months of grilling. Why could this man do this to her? Why’d she let him? She backed away in horror, watching the changes of expression on his face.

Korl held out his hand to her and she backed up. He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “So, that’s how it is,” he murmured.

Mahri felt like she teetered on the edge of an abyss, any wrong move and she’d fall. And keep falling.

Korl looked up at her and smiled, that rakish half-grin that made her chest flutter every time. “I like my definition better,” he said into the silence.

Mahri’s mouth dropped open in disbelief, and then she slowly, almost painfully, began to laugh.

Korl sat in the stern, his knuckles white where they gripped the sides of the craft. “I command you to let me take off this blindfold.”

Mahri grinned and had to shout to be heard over the roar of water. “All right, but remember, you asked to see this.”

They’d almost reached her most secret place, the place that she thought of as all her own, where she’d taken no one else before. Not even Brez. But in order to get there she’d had to chew zabba and pole with her utmost skill, and even then they’d still almost capsized in the rough waters.

Mahri danced from one side of the boat to the other, red hair sodden from spray and whipping around her face, muscles tense and rippling as she pushed against one obstacle after another. Humps of seashell, backs of wide-mouth skulkers, dead limbs and gnarled roots threatened her small craft and yet allowed her to pole against them to change direction. She didn’t have time to hold on, the water flung them through the wide channel with a speed that made her skin tingle. The deck bucked and dropped beneath her feet so that at times she hung suspended in air, nothing but her bone pole to hang onto, nothing but skill and timing allowing her to stay in the boat.

She whooped and hollered while she fought the current. Such terror, such excitement… such fun!

Korl stared at her as if she were a madwoman. Jaja shrieked from somewhere beneath the collapsed tent. Mahri ignored them both, ready for what came next.

The boat shot over the edge of a drop off, hung suspended for a split second of infinity, then plopped back into the water with a gut-wrenching splash.

Mahri glanced around and sighed with relief. It hadn’t changed.

The roar of white water could still be heard above
them, yet somehow muted now by the gentle waterfalls that surrounded this small pool of calm. Insects skittered along the mirror-like surface, purfrogs basked in the sun atop pallets of green moss pads, and swanies paddled gracefully along, stretching their long necks and singing their “tra-lee-lee” songs to each other.

Korl blinked. “How?” he managed to ask.

Mahri shrugged. “The only thing I can figure is that this entire channel is over one large tree root, or maybe a collection of dead ones. So there are dips that create these pools and we’re below the surface of the natural sea right now. Of course, I’m just an ignorant water-rat, so I can only guess.”

Korl raised his chin and gave her a look that said he felt the barb but it was beneath his dignity to respond to it. “The sea is flat, so there aren’t many places that could produce these magnificent waterfalls. We have fountains in the palace gardens, though, that create the same effect.”

Mahri flushed. He knew how to deliver a backhanded compliment, all right. “What about flutterflies?”

“My cousin has a collection he’s quite vain of.” Korl shrugged. “But they’re common enough insects. Why?”

“The swamps have their own kinds of gardens.” Mahri sat on the collapsed narwhal tent, cradled Jaja in her lap. “I’m bushed from fighting the white water. Would the Great One mind paddling for a while?”

He stretched his arms. “Where to?”

“Beneath that waterfall, second on the right.”

“Beneath?”

“Aya.”

Korl paddled while Mahri admired the way his
muscles bunched and spread through his back. Why hadn’t he put his vest on today? His bare torso would drive her to distraction. His skin glistened in the sunlight, as if tiny crystals lay embedded in every pore. Over the past few weeks his pale complexion had darkened to a light gold, his hair now had pure white strands running through it. He’d been muscular before but now they bulged at the shoulders and rippled along his spine.

A deluge of cold water doused the fire building within her and made her splutter from the force of it. They’d drifted beneath the waterfall and Mahri tensed in anticipation while Korl looked around quizzically.

“Which way?” he asked.

“Let the current guide us through the tunnel to the other side.”

“Interesting place,” muttered Korl, peering into dry tunnels that water had carved eons ago. “Like a maze through the roots. Have you ever explored where these led?”

“Some,” admitted Mahri. “But not all. It’s easy to get lost in them and things live back there in the dark,” she shuddered, “that I’d rather not see closer.”

Their pupils had adjusted to the dusk of the tunnel so that when they emerged into the bright sunlight they both squinted and blinked. Mahri scanned the open sky above. No canopy sheltered them from winged predators here; a vista of open water stretched before them, unusual for Sea Forest, unless one ventured into the open sea. She knew it bothered Korl too, from the way he hunched his shoulders.

But Mahri knew from experience it’d be worth the risk. “The water’s shallow here. I can pole.” So she
pushed from the stern and he paddled from the bow, through a meadow of grass that grew up through the still water.

“The grass is moving by itself,” hissed Korl.

She grinned and turned to Jaja, nodded her head. He winked at her and strutted to the bow, scurried up the side until he sat on the front vee of the boat, pounded his little chest, and let forth an ear-numbing shriek.

Korl jerked backward as the field of grass erupted. Little brown birds chirped angrily and flew from their nests, rustling the grass with the beat of their wings. Hoppers as big as a fist jumped into the air and bounced across the deck of the boat. Snakes of all colors slithered forth to land with plops into the water, and for a few moments he became occupied with batting a few away from the boat with his paddle.

“Now, Korl, watch,” demanded Mahri.

He flicked the last snake from the boat, a lethal looking variety that sported bright crimson spots of color along its skin. Korl looked at her a moment, his eyes meeting her own. She felt his annoyance at her—he must not like snakes—but it faded into that soul-searching gaze that made her heart skip over and her knees go weak. His stare traveled to her flushed cheeks, across her breasts and down the length of her legs.

He saw her excitement and responded to it.

Mahri shook her head at him, told herself to remember to breathe. Either she must be careful not to annoy him, or to contain her excitement. It did peculiar things to both of them.

Jaja hopped on Korl’s shoulder and slapped him upside the head. The man shook the hair from his face and
grinned sheepishly, caught movement from the corner of his eye and his mouth dropped open.

The field convulsed in one giant heave, threw half of itself upward, and left naked stalks of greenish-brown. The fluff in the air swirled and undulated and although Mahri knew what to expect she still sighed when it happened.

A cloud moved toward them, close enough to see that what had looked like one mass actually contained thousands of flutterflies. Some with wings larger than an open hand, others as tiny as her fingernail, all of them colored in shades of rose, with either spots of gold or purple, brown and yellow.

They eventually settled back in their grassy homes, but some stayed to twirl around their heads, alight like breaths of air on her boat and across her shoulders. Mahri held out her arms until she had her own wings of flutterflies.

She looked at Korl and giggled. He had a crown of flutterflies in his hair. One had settled on the end of that tipped nose, fanning its elegant wings in graceful homage. He slid the insect onto his finger and stared at it a long time.

“You have a crown, my prince,” laughed Mahri.

He grinned crookedly and she knew the image of him surrounded by wings of softness would stay in her mind forever. He executed a courtly bow, barely rocking the boat, losing only a few of his winged passengers from atop his head, and pierced her with his gaze once again.

“No better one,” he replied, “could I ever hope to wear, my lady.”

Mahri thought for a moment that she’d swallowed some of the flutterflies, her insides trembled so softly.

And then she knew she’d take him to one other place.

M
AHRI WATCHED
K
ORL’S MOUTH DROP OPEN WHEN
they emerged from beneath yet another waterfall, and she nodded with satisfaction. She’d heard of the wonders of the Palace Tree, the many rooms filled with skillfully crafted treasures. But nothing could match the creations of nature.

The boat traveled through a narrow channel of water surrounded on all sides by crystal coral that had somehow been sculpted over the eons into massive towers of lace. It glittered in the sun with multiple prisms of fractured color and in places joined over the canal to form delicate bridges.

“Do you know how rare crystal coral is?” asked Korl in stunned amazement.

“Aya.” Mahri imagined the Seers taking the coral, using the Power to shape it into their own man-made trinkets. “But I’d die before I’d let anyone destroy this for their own profit—or pleasure.”

Korl studied her with scepticism, and then smiled. “I believe you would.”

Mahri shrugged and scanned the way ahead, looking for a particular shape of crystal, then anchored onto the coral shore when they reached the bubble-like structure. She grabbed a satchel and stepped out of the boat. Jaja bounded ahead and disappeared into the maze of lace.

“Careful,” warned Mahri when Korl hastened to follow her. “The soles of your feet aren’t as tough as mine.”

He reached out and stroked the side of the translucent stuff, felt the pitted but smooth surface warm beneath his fingers. Then took a step and winced.

“When it breaks it’s sharp as a razor,” she explained, pointing at the shards littering their path.

Korl nodded and stepped where she did, concentrating so hard that when she stopped he bumped into the back of her, his apology fading away as he looked up in wonder around him.

They stood under a bubble of coral, the lacy stuff creating a ceiling of shimmering light, surrounding them in a cocoon of translucent crystal. In the middle lay a pool of clear water, curls of vapor rising from it to dance with the shafts of colored light from above. Around the pool grew several types of almost colorless flowers, as if they knew they couldn’t compete with the rainbow that the crystal radiated, and instead grew within the beams of it and mirrored it back.

Mahri turned and watched the brilliant points of light shimmer through Korl’s hair and dance along his golden skin. She memorized the way he looked standing in her secret place, so that she could remember every detail of him whenever she came back here. Alone. Her sigh broke his trance with the magical place and when he turned to her he frowned.

“Why do you look so sad? This is the most wondrous place I’ve ever seen!”

“Better than your palace?”

He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, even that feather-light touch making Mahri
tremble. “Why’s it so important to you, water-rat, that the place you grew up in should be better than mine?”

She withdrew from his touch. “Because you think you’re better than me.”

“I’m a Royal,” he proclaimed, as if that answered everything. He threw back his head, his chin up in that oh-so-familiarly arrogant manner.

Mahri reddened with anger, flung her satchel on the ground and reached for the ties of her vest. He’d always think he was better than her, with his learning and wealth. But she knew of a way to shake him out of that superior self-confidence.

She felt so angry and sick at his arrogance that she didn’t hesitate. Didn’t stop to think of the consequences. Mahri would bring him to his knees.

She untied the top of her laces where they tightened across her breasts. The strained ties whipped free, releasing the mounds of annoying flesh that always got in her way if she didn’t keep them bound. For the first time in her life she felt grateful for them as Korl’s mouth dropped open in wonder. “Wha… what do you think you’re doing?”

Mahri slowly unlaced the vest down to her navel. It’d been so dark in that xynth flower, with only the glow of the pollen to light each other, that they hadn’t truly seen each other’s bodies. Or so she hoped. “The pool is freshwater and I could use a bath.”

Korl swallowed hard, his handsome face white with shock. He turned his back on her, then spun right back around. She watched that magnificent chest heave and his leggings tighten and tried not to giggle. She was sure that proper ladies of the court never behaved this way.

Her vest hung open in front, the edges of it barely covering the tips of her breasts, and he watched as if mesmerized while she let the laces fall from her fingers to the ground. Mahri reached behind for the laces of her leggings, fumbling at them while Korl gaped, for her movements had bared her chest fully, jutted her breasts upward.

The open air on her nipples tightened them to hard points and Mahri heard him suck air like a beached fish and she smiled. Her leggings sagged. She pulled the laces from behind her back and held them before his face, and again, slowly let them fall from her fingers while he watched them flutter to the ground as if in slow-motion.

“Mahri,” he choked.

“What?”

“Don’t… you have to stop.”

Her brows rose in feigned innocence. “What’s the big deal? It’s not as if you haven’t seen me naked before.” She wiggled her hips out of the snar-scale with slow, undulating motions.

“You’re baiting me and you know it.”

Mahri frowned. So he knew she was purposefully using her body to… to what? What did she think to accomplish? She only had to breathe and he wanted her, what she did now almost… It was too much.

Good, she thought, he’d know how it feels.

The leggings puddled around her feet and she gracefully stepped out of them. With a gentle shrug the loose vest joined them on the ground. Mahri reached behind and pulled the braid of her hair in front, began to unwind it with slow, fluid movements. Korl’s eyes started to burn and she hastily looked away. This time she’d stay
in control and she couldn’t if she continued to look into his soul.

Mahri raked her fingers through her now loose hair and as usual it billowed around her with a mind of its own. She reached down to her satchel, felt the long strands of red slide slowly over her bottom until her smooth rounds lay bare and she purposely bent further over.

Korl groaned while she fumbled for a bit of soap root.

She ignored him while she went to the edge of the pool and stuck a toe into the water, aware of the way the muscles tightened in her calves and upper thighs. The water felt warm, as it usually did here, whether from the sun or some undersea source of heat she couldn’t be sure. With a grin of anticipated pleasure Mahri dove in, her hands sweeping the hair from her face when she surfaced.

She blinked and looked to Korl. He stood frozen on the shore, his hands fisted at his sides, the muscles bulging in his arms and shoulders. Mahri walked toward him, using the water to again reveal her body, the contrast of the warm pool and the cool air making her skin shiver with tiny goose bumps.

She felt a ripple lap the very tips of her breasts and she had to pause for a moment to quench the fire that feeling kindled between her legs. It’s his fault, she thought, that my skin becomes so sensitive beneath his gaze. If she wasn’t careful she’d be caught up in her own seduction and Mahri tried not to ignore that warning.

Don’t look in his eyes, she cautioned herself as she walked toward him. You’ve lost a bit of your control and lay vulnerable to
him
overpowering
you
.

The brilliant sparks of light from the coral reflected
in the water drops on her skin as she bent down to retrieve the floating soap root, the pool now only up to her ankles. She lathered it up in her hands and started at her calves, rubbing the foam across her skin with seductive, caressing movements, moving up her thighs, curving her hands to the inside of them but not daring to touch that part of her that could shatter her control. Her fingers played across her breasts, then she lifted them up with her palms, rubbing over her nipples when they fell back down.

She glanced up at Korl beneath her lashes. He still stood like a statue but she was close enough now that she could see the muscle that clenched in his square jaw, the sweat that trickled from his forehead. The enormous bulge beneath his leggings.

Mahri could feel his transfixed gaze on the reddish triangle of hair between her legs as she likewise stared at that bulge of his flesh, and couldn’t stop the moan that ripped from the back of her throat. Their eyes met and Mahri shuddered at what she saw. His arrogance had been replaced by something far stronger.

Korl fell to his knees.

Mahri did likewise. Only by gritting her teeth did she manage to get back to her feet, wade into deeper water, and dive into the middle of the pond, trying to wash away her sudden shame. She’d played with this man and it wasn’t fair of her, for she knew she couldn’t finish what she’d started. Terror filled her at even the thought of the way she’d be consumed if he possessed her now. Yet at the same time a fire burned inside of her; Mahri ached and throbbed and cursed herself for she knew there’d be no relief.

She surfaced just as Korl started toward her, his face turning rigid as he read the look on her face.

He knows, groaned Mahri inwardly, that I started this with no intention of finishing it. She’d never seen him look so furious, and belatedly vowed never to be the cause of such anger again.

He strode right into the water, the muscles of his legs playing beneath the wet leggings, and came straight for her, his face intense, his jaw rigid. It took every ounce of courage that she possessed not to turn tail and swim for her life.

He expressed no surprise at the warmth of the water, it seemed as if his entire being concentrated on her and nothing else. When he stood close enough to her for Mahri to smell the musky scent of him, he released her from his gaze and let those pale-green eyes travel over her breasts, caressing them as surely as the water did as it lapped over and under them.

Don’t let him touch me, prayed Mahri.

Korl reached out, his trembling hand poised just above her right breast, so close that she could almost feel the heat of it. “I vowed,” he whispered, “never to violate you, in any way, ever again.” His hand dropped and Mahri trembled. “But you started this and you’ll finish it.”

She blinked at the hardness in his voice, the deep, alluring threat of it. He leaned closer, his breath caressing her face, strands of his golden hair falling across his brow and the sculpted plane of his cheeks. Mahri could smell his heat.

“Kiss me,” he commanded.

It never occurred to her to refuse. His mouth felt hot against her own and she impaled him with her tongue
until she felt him shiver. But he didn’t hold her, even when she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled at his fine hair with fingers that trembled from the strength of her passion. Mahri flung her head back and saw that he stood with arms straight at his sides, the muscles in his shoulders and chest rigid with strain.

“Don’t stop,” he growled.

She had no intention of stopping, at least not yet. Whatever code of conduct he felt compelled to follow didn’t extend to her. She might’ve seduced him, but she’d seduced herself as well. For some reason his resolve not to reach out to her made her feel safer, as if she controlled what could be given. Or taken. Need overrode fear, without the drugging influence of a xynth flower, and she wondered if that had been his intention.

Mahri flung herself at him with an abandon she’d fantasized about, trying to make him touch her, run his hands across her breasts, rake his fingers through her hair, anything that would quench the longing she felt. But the stubborn man stood firm. When she swept his mouth with her tongue in an invitation to do the same to her, he refused, until she sucked it into her own mouth and released and sucked until she near screamed with the want of his own strength behind it.

Korl growled and groaned but refused to touch her. Mahri’s body soared with passion and she touched him everywhere.

Almost.

Her hands explored the hard muscles of his chest, her fingers played with the fine golden hair that ran down the middle of it, fluttered across the ridges of his stomach until she heard him suck in his breath. She reached
behind his back and pulled herself against him, felt all that warm, golden skin against her breasts and went mad, rubbing them back and forth until her nipples shot flames of desire down between her legs.

Mahri’s want of him became unbearable.

She pulled back and looked at him, saw the anger still etched in the lines of his face and wished she’d never put it there, for he’d proven to be an exceptionally stubborn man. Mahri opened her mouth to apologize to him—the game she’d played was unforgivable. He hadn’t deserved it no matter what the provocation. But before she could say a word, he spoke.

“Touch me.”

Again, a command. And she knew exactly where he wanted her to touch him, so that his words made her tremble and pant as she buried her face in his neck; against that pale, oh-most-softest of skin that she licked between breaths, like an animal in heat.

Mahri laid her palm flat against his chest. “I want you,” she whispered into his ear.

Korl pulled back his head and stared at her.

“If I thought you really meant that,” he growled, not bothering to finish his sentence, looking at her as if he probed her very soul. “But you don’t love me yet, you can’t. And I won’t settle for anything less.”

She moved her hand down, across his navel, to the top of his leggings. Oh, she wanted him all right, just not the same way he wanted her and what was wrong with that?

“I still want to touch you,” she whispered. When he said nothing she impaled his ear with her tongue, ran it down his neck and across his chest, played with his own
nipples until they hardened under the assault. With one hand she pulled the waistband of his leggings open and then ever so slowly, she slid her other hand down inside.

Korl gritted his teeth. Mahri flung her head back, all of her senses focused on that one hand, interpreting the prickly feel of hair; the hot, smooth, throbbing warmth of him.