Hers to Claim (2 page)

“Adonia, with your height what do you see? Describe it.”

“A rather large man, Your Majesty. At least, I think there is a man underneath all the hair and pelts. A black beard and mustache obscure his face, and his hair hangs in ratted clumps down his forehead and back. The only thing I can tell with certainty is that he is a hulking lump with gray eyes and desperately in need of a barber.”

Hel laughed inwardly. Yes,
hulking lump in desperate need of a barber
probably described him well.

He heard a sigh and a creak from the upholstered chair then
the lilt of a melodious voice. “Ari, Doral, Lord Ramsey, please move aside so I may speak with, ah…DeHelios.”

With obvious reluctance, the High Lord and his assassin made an opening. Ramsey stayed where he was, arms crossed, but turned to allow Hel room to pass.

Hel climbed the steps of the dais toward a delicately beautiful blond woman, a mere pittance in the upholstered chair. Her weight barely dented the cushions in spite of her advanced pregnancy. The addition of a padded step stool prevented her legs from dangling. She arranged her arms across her belly as if somehow she would shield her unborn babe from danger. Pain at the thought she would consider
him
a threat to her child softened his aggressive stance. He paused several feet from her, and gentled his manner.  

“You
r Majesty is with child.”

Clear blue eyes held his and her
smile radiated joy. “Yes. It will be our fourth.” She pushed up on the arms of her chair and shifted to another hip. “And she cannot come soon enough. I find the waiting a little…burdensome.”

“
My wife complained of the same. Four children? You are truly blessed, Ma’am. I wish you a trouble-free birth and a healthy babe.” He softened his gruff tone and finished with a respectful bow. He had issues with a Constante ruler on the Verdantian throne, but the utmost respect for motherhood.

“
Thank you.” She studied him for a long moment. “House DeHelios—the first kings and queens of Verdantia. The First Tetriarch. Hmm. Your House and the mountain city, Nyth Uchel
,
are so revered by the common people that you are almost fable. All Verdantia grieved the loss of Nyth Uchel and the radiant Torre Bianca. We thought your line dead and Nyth Uchel razed in the Haarb massacres. I give heartfelt thanks to know we are in error. What brings you down from your mountain
,
Sir?”

“Ma’am, it is a
dire and complicated story. I suggest my tale is best discussed somewhere more comfortable for you.”

The q
ueen moved her gaze to her consorts, who stood protectively at either side of her. “Ari? Doral?”

High Lord DeTano
nodded. “The children will be running riot in our apartments but my office should be comfortable enough. I would like DeKieran and Steffania to join us—and Medica Corvus—attend the queen, please.” His eyes caught the tall woman who stood behind the queen’s chair and the brunette nodded.

“All right.”
Queen Constante wrestled her ungainly body to a stand. “Shall we?”

Hel stepped back
and held out his arm to assist her down the steps but the beautiful blond man moved forward and swept the slight figure of the queen into his arms. The two exchanged a look of such love Hel felt he intruded on an intimacy. The young queen must have seen his discomfort. She reached out and touched his arm.

“Prince DeHelios, my
Segundo dislikes seeing me ‘waddle like a duck’ and finds it too painful to watch my slow, ponderous steps. He says it is necessary to carry me and I must confess—I rather like it.” Her playful grin pulled an answering quirk of lips from Hel and an arched brow from Doral.

“My preference, my Queen, is that you forgo walking at all
and stay in bed these last two weeks, but I am just a poor male whose wishes you blithely disregard.” Doral descended the steps and carried his queen out of the audience hall followed by High Lord DeTano, Lord Ramsey and his wife, Steffania, and the woman called Adonia. Hel trailed all of them but clearly heard the queen’s gentle gurgle of laughter.

“I just like the feel of your arms around me,
my love.”

Hel found it difficult to continue his dismissal of this
sweet-natured, loving young queen as “that upstart Constante woman.” Perhaps he should have come down from his isolated mountain sooner. He acknowledged with bitter honesty that he envied Ari DeTano and Doral DeLorion. They possessed what he yearned for—a warm, passionate woman to love and bear him children. He’d even settle for what he’d had before—a marriage of cold respect—if the nursery held children once more.

Light
and warmth, the delectable smells of baking bread and savory roasting meats and the lift of happy voices had wafted through the palace halls. Hel contrasted the inviting interior of this palace with the silent, cold, gloomy elegance of Nyth Uchel. He promised himself, again, that he would labor until his city and his home reclaimed their former majesty and pulsed with vibrancy and life—no matter if it took him the rest of his own to accomplish it.

Adonia Corvus dismissed the peculiar agitation that had engulfed her body when she locked eyes with Prince DeHelios and followed Ari, Doral and Fleur through the halls toward Ari’s office. She pulled her soft wrap closer around her bony shoulders with a convulsive shiver. Until she had come to court, almost two years ago, she had known nothing but the searing heat of the Oshtesh wastelands. Even the temperate climate of Sylvan Mintoth chilled her tall, spare, twenty-eight-year-old body.

Doral murmured something to his queen and she flashed a glance toward Adonia.

“Adonia, are you cold
, again? The trees still hold their leaves. It is a warm fall day. However did you survive last winter?” Queen Constante laughed at her healer’s answering shudder and grimace. “You have been at the High Enclave for over a year. Your blood must have thickened a little.”

“It seems not, Ma’am.” Adonia schooled the tartness out of her voice. With two attentive lovers, Fleur
would never know the coldness of isolation or lack the warmth of human contact. Adonia’s eyes shifted enviously to the ice-bear pelts wrapping Prince DeHelios and sighed inwardly.
I could put those heavy furs to good use.
Drawn by some inexorable attraction, her eyes tracked upward and the same hyper-awareness as in the audience hall sparked through her when she met his gaze.
By the Goddess! The man winked at me.
She hurried to stay even with Fleur.

“
I had a high compliment about you, today,” Fleur teased, craning her neck to meet Adonia’s gaze.

“Oh?
”

“Yes, from the Senior Medicus of the High Enclave.”

“You did?”

Fleur laughed. “Yes, don’t sound so dumfounded.
Elder Beckton said he’d never before had a student with such a voracious capacity for learning. He told me you’d flown through the basic and intermediate material on applying healing magicks and were well into the advanced uses.” Fleur smiled as her head bobbed in time with Doral’s steps.

“He
’s a good teacher.” Adonia’s voice fell to almost a whisper. “It is my heart’s desire to be able to apply the magicks in my healing, but I cannot use the diaman crystals. My learning is all theoretical.”

“You are an exceptional medica—even without the
magicks,” Fleur maintained stoutly.

Yes, but
if not for my common blood, I could do so much more.
Adonia dropped her gaze to the floor and shrugged. “Thank you, Ma’am. I do what I can.”

She
counted everyday spent with the medicae of the High Enclave a blessing. Her skill with the healing arts had increased tenfold as she gorged her mind on the practical knowledge in the High Enclave’s great library.

P
ractical knowledge did nothing to assuage her obsessive fascination with the magickal rites—the
sexual
rites the highborn with their prized genetics used to energize diaman crystals to power their working of the healing magicks. But, that knowledge was of dubious use to her. Elder Beckton had shaken his head in apology.
“Only the highborn need learn this. You waste your time with those books.”

Her inner
most yearning could never be realized. She resigned herself to be an onlooker, never a participant. She lacked the inherited talents bred into the noble houses for over five hundred years.
Probably not a bad thing. The Great Rite is said to be arduous—dangerous to a woman’s sanity. I’d likely wind up like that poor insane magistra whose cries filter through the hall near my rooms.
A tendril of fear snaked up her spine.
Still…I wonder…

“You
r practical skills serve well, Adonia, and I am grateful that Eric and Sophi were willing to part with you.” Doral’s low voice brought a flush to her face. She hadn’t realized the Segundo took note of her existence.
I should know by now that nothing associated with our queen goes unnoticed by Ari or Doral.

Her close friendship with
Fleur exposed her to the indelible bond among the Second Tetriarch. At times she had to turn away, beset by want, overwhelmed by the love that flowed between the three. 
I have love to give a man. 
But two years ago, she’d buried those desires deep and had thrown herself into her studies. She gave her love to her patients. It was too painful to do anything else.

As the group settled itself into the comfortable leather furnishing
s of Ari’s office, Adonia shook off her troublesome thoughts and composed herself to listen. A pungent smell stung her nostrils. She turned her head, sniffing, lifting her chin to follow the smell—and came eye to eye with the hulk who proclaimed himself DeHelios. She dropped her head and turned away at his observant grin.

“I’ve had no time for the luxury of a bath, Lady. I expect I’m rather ripe.”

“More like something long dead and rotting,” she muttered under her breath.

The hulk
leaned over and whispered, “It must be the bear pelts you smell, Lady. Every part of 
me
 is alive.”

He’d heard her!
Adonia shot him a sharp glance then faced forward. Did he
flirt
with her?
Surely not. Unthinkable.
She snuck a peek out of the corner of her eye.
By Her light
. The grin had vanished but his eyes still laughed at her above a face obscured by curly black hair. She fidgeted with the two-headed phoenix charm on the chain around her neck and concentrated her attention on Ari.

“
State your business, Prince DeHelios. You said something about a
magistra
, a healer and brite-weed.”

DeHelios stood and
shrugged off his heavy outwear before he addressed the room, turning in a semi-circle as he spoke their names. “High Lord DeTano, Your Majesty, Visconte DeLorion, Lord Ramsey, Lieutenant Colonel…”

“Oh, by Her stars, Sir. Let’s not stand on ceremony
.” Queen Constante interrupted DeHelios with a smile. “I am Fleur.” Her arm gestured to her right and then to her left. “Ari and Doral. Ramsey and Steffania. My medica, Adonia. And you are?”

“Hel.”

“Yes, yes, but your first name is?” Silence settled into the room. “Sir?” said the queen.

“
Just, Hel.”

“Your mother named you Hel?”

“Just call me ‘Hel’.” DeHelios folded his arms and scowled.

With a rueful
shake of her head, Fleur conceded. “All right, 
just
Hel. Continue.”

The man gather
ed his thoughts for a moment then frowned. “I suppose it all began with the Haarb invasion of Nyth Uchel and the massacre of House DeHelios. Their armies took the city completely by surprise.”

“I understand the Haarb attacked you early
on in the war. At that point, most Verdantians were still unaware we had been invaded,” said Doral.

“Yes. And our
city-state is more isolated than most.” Hel gazed off at some unseen horizon. “My younger brother, Tristan, and I had gone down our mountain to track and verify the rumor of war and invasion. We returned to discover that war and invasion had come to us.” Hel walked to a window and looked out. Every eye followed him. “The Haarb looted the city and massacred the living. In the weeks that followed, survivors filtered back into Nyth Uchel, but at the time of our return, all we saw was death.

“
For the first time in our history, Torre Bianca stood dark against the sky, her
diamantorre
shattered. Nyth Uchel palace and the city below lay in ruins. Partially consumed bodies lay everywhere, the wolves and other scavengers so glutted they had eaten only the choicest parts.” Hel tapped on the stone sill while he spoke. “My younger brother and I buried our entire family—my older brother, his wife and their three children, my mother, my father, my wife and,” Hel paused and took a deep breath, “my six-year-old-son and two-year-old-daughter.”

Adonia ached
at the heartbreak poorly concealed in his flat voice. With a tiny, almost inaudible moan, Fleur slipped her hand into Ari’s. Her other reached up and found Doral’s resting on the back of her chair.

He
l turned to face the room, his arms loosely crossed, his hip cocked on the window casement. He gazed unseeing at the floor. “In the years that followed, I haunted the Haarb patrols that trespassed onto my mountain and made them pay.”

Doral spoke into the pause.
“Throughout the war, I heard tales of the
bás dtost
—the ‘silent death’—of Nyth Uchel, of Haarb soldiers gutted and left hanging from trees by their intestines. We were never sure if it was a superstitious tale or fact. That was you.”

Hel’s eyes held Doral’s and Adonia didn’t think she
’d ever seen a face so bleak.

“Yes. That was me. I thought that death befitting for it was what they had done to me.
Their screams were poor compensation for my loss.”

Another lull settled in
to the room until Hel gave a sigh and a shrug. “Finally, the Haarb stopped coming and the news of their defeat reached even the isolation of Nyth Uchel. I returned to my shattered city, my people, and we tried to rebuild.

“It was during that time that I noticed
…” Hel frowned and gave a puzzled shake of his head. “Dead zones in the forest surrounding Nyth Uchel—pockets of death where nothing healthy lived, no natural animal, no normal green growth. A foul blight polluted the soil. Strange mutations of creatures appeared on the outskirts of the city.

“
Since that time, the areas of blight have expanded unchecked and one now threatens the western border of Nyth Uchel. This unnatural contagion, which alters the soil and all that grows in it, is slowly killing my people. I don’t know how it spreads, but the foulness attacks a person’s soul, their spirit, their
anima
, feeding on their life force until the afflicted simply lose the desire to live and succumb to a pernicious rot. My people call it
fading
.”

Fleur’s gentle voice broke into his pause.
“Is there a cure for this
fading
? Is there some way to impede the blight?”

“Brite-weed administered early and often can sometimes
stop death, but it is an uncertain cure. Energized diaman crystals halt the spread of the contagion on the ground—confine it. We established a diaman perimeter around Nyth Uchel
,
but the contagion continually threatens. My warden tells me the blight has penetrated the western border.”

Hel
let out a weary sigh and closed his eyes. His head fell back. He half-sat, half-stood, propped on the window casement with his arms loosely crossed. The light from the window shone on a face gray with fatigue, the portrait of a man at the end of his resources.

The
desire to help this beleaguered soul who had taken so much upon himself grew inside Adonia. This descendent of kings had stripped himself of all pride to obtain assistance for those dependent on him. She knew something about losing one’s pride. “You must care deeply for your people.”

Hel
straightened wearily and frowned at her. “I am House DeHelios.” His statement implied an obvious answer to an ignorant question, and she felt the hot flush of embarrassment. With a slow exhale, Hel continued. “Our quarries labored night and day to replace Torre Bianca’s shattered diamantorre. We heard of DeTano’s defeat of the Haarb and then watched brilliance light the horizons as Verdantia’s sigil towers regained life.

Now, I
lack only a
magistra
to partner me in the Great Rite and the White Tower will once more blaze in Verdantia’s night sky. I am hopeful, once re-vitalized, Torre Bianca’s energy will combat the evil menacing Nyth Uchel.”

Ari cleared his throat. “Would that we could help you
, but the ugly truth is we have no
magistrae
—not of sufficient age to perform the Great Rite. Other than our queen and Sophi, Doral’s sister, our oldest
magistra
is thirteen years of age. She lacks a decade of age and training to be of use to you.” Ari nodded at Hel’s appalled exclamation. “Yes. The Haarb repeated the massacre inflicted on Nyth Uchel throughout all of Verdantia. They learned of the crucial role our
magistrae
played in our magicks and they targeted them. The Haarb’s elimination of all our magickal practitioners was horrifically thorough. The surviving members of our noble houses number a mere handful.”

“But
, how did all the sigil towers…?” Hel faltered to a stop.

“We are a true
Tetriarch,” Fleur said. “Just as with the First
Tetriarch—your ancestors, Primo Federago, Segundo Agentio and Prima Isolde—Mother Verdantia has gifted the three of us with the ability to empower all the sigil towers on the face of Verdantia when we make love.”

Comprehension dawned
across Hel’s face and he scanned the room, his eyes setting first on Fleur, then Ari and finally, Doral.