no mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed
a.s. byatt, 1990
...
The whispers began months earlier at Mako's coronation: what could be the meaning of this, did she not understand the insult to the Concordian princes, to the King of Gower, to the dukes of Stockhelm and Southaven? Why should she save her every smile, the favor of every dance, the seat of honor at her right hand for an untitled knight with but a little land in the rocky north? It was only right that Sir Becket should gaze at her as if she were the sun rising after a long night; she was his queen, his comrade and savior from the field of battle and besides something lovely to behold, but did she have to return those gazes with near-equal affection?
Mako would just as well have ignored the gossip. She had made her choice, and she thought it perfectly clear when, before he'd ridden off with a column of men to deal with the remnants of the kaiju raiders, she had kissed him long and deep on the palace steps before a full-parade contingent and the whole court and bid him happy hunting.
("Not good luck?" he'd asked, smiling and a little breathless.
"I don't believe in luck," she hadn't needed to say, because he knew her mind on the topic of luck. Instead, she had said, "Come back to me, my knight," and kissed him again.)
"Your Majesty, respectfully, you cannot marry Raleigh Becket."
Mako took a sip of her tea, long gone cold, and leveled a serene look at Ambassador Taylor. "When I require your opinion on the matter, Ambassador, I shall ask for it, but in equal respect to yourself and the rest of this council, I have made my decision. I shall have Raleigh or no one."
"Better you never take a husband at all than that one," Councilor Cole said with venom. "We won the war against the kaiju raiders at great cost, and if ever we've needed outside alliances now would be the time. We gain nothing from—"
"Love," Mako said. "I will have love."
"If not for love we wouldn't be in this position," Councilor Willson said. "King Stacker's stunt with Tamsin of Engelland, gods above see them rest, that will be fodder for generations. The new king has a son of age, it's a small miracle they've not demanded reparations yet." Further down the table than she would have preferred, Herc's face, already set as stone to betray no emotion, reddened the slightest bit.
"I won't be made to marry a prince of Engelland. I won't countenance it even as a topic of discussion."
"It is a topic of discussion, Your Majesty, and you must accept that," Ambassador Taylor said. "The balance of power on the continent is rather tenuous and if you won't marry to secure an alliance then you must create the appearance that you might consider doing so. Our former king, for all his proclivities," Taylor pointedly looked at Herc then, "played a savvy game, and you could do worse than to follow his example. So long as you bear the man no bastards—"
"That's enough, Ambassador!" Herc snapped, rising from his seat. Mako held her hand out, signaled him with the slightest shake of her head. He nodded back a fraction and retook his seat. "My apologies to the council. I would prefer to see no disrespect to our queen here."
"The Ambassador does overstep himself," Councilor Cole admitted, "but he has a point. Could you not be persuaded to accept Sir Becket as your lord protector, or perhaps the captain of your personal guard? The rumors would be overwhelming, but rumors may be dismissed."
"Perhaps I have not made my position clear enough," Mako said. "When, whom, or if I marry is not a topic of concern or discussion for anyone except myself and the man of my choice."
"And that is precisely why, Majesty, we are concerned. Think beyond this room, this castle, to your country! For all the traditions we've broken with, the people still demand the Old Rites and Becket is not, nor should he be, an option!"
One of the other councilors placated Cole from his frenzy and called the Council to a close. Herc bowed before he left, and his face at least was apologetic.
"This discussion isn't over," Ambassador Taylor said as he departed.
"We shall see," Mako said.
...
An early spring storm swept Raleigh Becket back into Mako's court, like the one that had first brought him to her a year earlier, except this time she met him in the great hall and fewer insults were involved.
He lifted her hands to his mouth to kiss her palms before leaning in close. At first she thought he might kiss her mouth as well and tipped her head accordingly, but he only rested his forehead against hers, closed his eyes and brushed his fingertips over her cheekbones. "My lady," he exhaled, as if he'd carried the words with him for miles.
Mako breathed him in, the smell of the rain on his skin and of green growing things, and suddenly had to fight to catch her breath for the bite of yearning that settled low in her abdomen and burned. "My knight," she answered. "I thought you said you were bringing me strawberries."
He laughed then and opened his eyes, bright and blue and wondering as a summer sky. "Will you settle for news of your borders?"
I love this man, she thought to herself, and reached up to pull his mouth down to hers.
...
Two months passed, then a third, in an uncomfortable pattern: Raleigh would return to her for a day, sometimes three, before rumors and reports carried him back out to aid whichever stretch of the beleaguered coast required him next. More often than not he was requested for rebuilding efforts rather than for his swordskills, but Mako felt it rather convenient that his absences should coincide with the diplomatic visits of unmarried princes and kings.
Spring was a very frustrating season for Mako. Productive, but frustrating. Even moreso on the rare days they had together away from her councilors' watching eyes. Raleigh was a perceptive soul, and he seemed to know exactly when the weight of the expectations on her reign became too much. A few mornings, he came to find her before anyone could lay claim to her time and they rode out early, accompanied only by whichever guard had been assigned to her that day. She had no doubts those members of her guard were regularly interrogated before her council, ruthlessly cross-examined for any hint of witnessed improprieties. Raleigh was indignant but Mako tried to take some amusement from it. What did her council honestly think they would do given a few hours and a mile from the palace, ravish each other in a field?
The truth was far less salacious. The palace grounds were extensive enough within the siege-walls, but further afield, past the empty stretch of land that had been a wheat field before the dragon came, the margins of the King's (now Queen's, she supposed) Forest beckoned with open leafy arms. Mako had ridden to the Royal Hunt all of once and decided she didn't much care for the dim hostility of the forest's deeps, but the outer margins were marked by ancient trees with huge weathered roots that made excellent seats for a queen at study.
Those mornings she and Raleigh reclined together under the canopy and the distant respectful eyes of her guardsman. She looked over neglected notes and correspondences while the strangling tension in her chest eased, and Raleigh lounged with his head in her lap and busied his hands making flower crowns. The rushing sound of the wind through the leaves far overhead served to help both of them catch their breath.
What no few people outside her council had somehow forgotten was that Mako herself was foreign-born. King Stacker had adopted her with all proper ceremony and rites to ensure her succession to the throne, but for all she'd lived half her life in the kingdom there was still so much she didn't know, and that no one had thought to tell her. To that end, Raleigh was invaluable in ways the council couldn't appreciate. His family was old blood as far back as the palace archives cared to trace, and they'd followed all the Old Rites into his grandparents' day.
"My sister Jazmine could tell you more," Raleigh said, and yawned. "She always was the smart one. Yancy and I were more the kind you handed a stick, pointed at a problem and said 'Go to.'"
Mako swatted at his shoulder with the folded paper of her current missive. "You underestimate yourself, Raleigh."
His face crinkled into a drowsy grin and he yawned again. "S'rry, Mako. I didn't mean to make such disappointing company. Feels like we only got in yesterday and we're riding out again tonight already."
She stiffened. "Tonight? So soon?"
Raleigh shrugged and stretched his arms out to the sides. His right hand brushed past her calf and the edge of her skirts, and when he released the stretch his fingers curled loosely around her ankle. "Another one of the villages along the coast. They lost most of their men to the war and their seawall besides." He made a face to indicate how pleased he wasn't.
"What is it with you and walls?" Mako thought aloud. He hummed a noncommittal response and shifted again, and she recognized the motion for what it was. "If you're so tired, why come out so early with me? No one would have begrudged you the sleep."
Raleigh peered up at her with heavy-lidded eyes and smiled again, the curve of his mouth sharp and sweet at the same time. "Wanted to be with you. I lo—like being with you, like this." His fingertips moved against the inside of her ankle, traced a few tiny circles against her bare skin, and she shivered at the sudden frisson of want that traveled up her body.
"Sleep," she told him. "I'll wake you soon enough."
In sleep, the lines of his face softened, and the years worry and pain added around his mouth and eyes fell away. As easily as others forgot Mako hadn't been born to the royal line, so was it easy for her to forget just how young Raleigh was still. She carded her fingers through his fair hair until his breathing evened, then set aside her letters for a different sort of reading.
(That evening on the palace steps she scraped her teeth along the inside of his bottom lip and bit down nearly hard enough to draw blood. His fingers clenched at her waist and he groaned into her mouth, and she soothed the sting with her tongue.
When she pulled away from his mouth, his eyes were dark and covetous and hungry, and his breathing was hoarse. "Come back to me, my knight," she said.
"Always.")
...
Amidst all this, Mako visited the new mistress of the stillroom.
Allison Choi blanched so far as her tawny skin would allow and she took half a step back, as if Mako's words were a physical blow. "Your Majesty," she started, sighed, and shook her head the barest fraction. "Mako. I'm not questioning your wisdom or your judgment, but do you understand what you're asking me for?"
"I do."
Allison's face wracked with indecision and her dark brows creased together. "I would have you understand I mean absolutely no disrespect, but Tendo tells me what your council would have you do and I wish... I would rather..." She picked at the bouquet of dried rosemary in her hands, and said quietly, "Please don't."
Mako puzzled at her meaning for a long moment before comprehension hit her. Her council had demanded many indignities of late, from insisting she finally sit for her regnal portrait to politely demanding she retire from the smithy in favor of more lady-like habits. The greatest transgression, however, involved the Clovien prince currently in residence at her court.
She would surely run through whichever craven bastard had dreamt up the scheme when she discovered him, but someone had noticed the oldest son of the Clovien queen was a sunny, easy-tempered young man, half a year Mako's junior, with a keen interest in diplomacy and proving his usefulness. Prince Roland was tall, coppery-blond and blue-eyed, not-unattractive, and from a distance so easily mistaken for Raleigh (or worse, Chuck, Herc had gone white when the prince first arrived) that Mako wanted to break something. That Raleigh's own mother had been Clovien only heightened the insult of his presence.
Mako understood her council's baiting message too well, and refused to dignify it with a response, though gods above help her temper. "Mistress Choi," she said primly, "my council may try to manage me, but my choices are my own. I have asked you for a favor, I would rather not make it a command."
Mistress Choi inclined her head. "I should never have expected any less; you are your father's daughter. My apologies, Majesty." She laid out the herbs and explained their preparation as she parceled them into sachets: vervain and harestrap, thistle and tanselin, gruengart and nutmeg and rue, among others. "Steep in tepid water for nothing less than eight hours. Overnight is best, but beyond ten hours the infusion becomes acrid and you'll feel incredibly nauseous. Drink it first thing in the morning every day for a week and follow with a full glass of water, but perhaps wait an hour before you breakfast. For best effect, you'll want to begin the first day after your monthly's ended. Have you any questions?"
"How long will the... effect last?"
"A full week's course will last a month, sometimes two, though you'll begin to feel it set in within two to three days."
Mako blinked. "How do you mean 'feel it?' Is there something else I should know, Allison?"
The professional facade cracked, and sympathy shone through in the slant of her mouth. No longer was she Mistress Choi advising a patient, but Allison, who had gotten on with Mako as a companion and occasional adviser before the worst of the war had sent her to the safer west. Allison said, "I should tell you there's a secondary effect beyond the contraceptive. It's not written into books on the matter, I can't tell you if it was brewed intentionally in the original formulation, if it was a happy accident, or if someone changed it later—"
"Tell me. Please."
Allison told her.
Mako swallowed hard and exhaled. "Ah."
Allison smiled gently and reached over to cover Mako's fidgeting hand with her own. "So you must understand, then, why I might be concerned," she said.
...
Mako was not unfamiliar with the basic mechanics of the act. A few weeks before her eighteenth birthday and a few years after she'd learned not to expect Chuck's presence in her romantic future, she had happened upon Chuck and her riding instructor in the stables.
She had been politely negotiating with the king's warsteed when she heard voices and peeked out over the stall door to see Chuck and the darkly lovely Mistress Halia enter the stables laughing and pulling at each other's clothes. It was a private moment, one she knew she wasn't meant to see, but it had been so long since she'd seen Chuck smile in any way that wasn't a derisive smirk that she couldn't tear her eyes away. They paused in the center of the aisle while Halia pulled Chuck's shirt free from his breeches, and kissed, a messy collision of mouths. Mako gasped then, because it wasn't a nice kiss, nor was it polite, but it looked good.
Halia said something low that Mako couldn't hear, and Chuck pulled his mouth away from her neck long enough to exclaim, "What, here?"
"Who's going to see us? The horses don't care," Halia replied. Without breaking apart the pair of them staggered over to the massive mahogany tack trunk scant feet from where Mako was hiding. Chuck lifted Halia the few spare inches to the top of the trunk and dragged the hems of her skirts up over her thighs; Halia pulled him in close by the waist of his breeches and set to work on the ties. Mako realized suddenly what was going to happen in front of her.
She had never seen a completely naked man outside of paintings and sculpture, and though Chuck was still mostly dressed there was... rather more of him than the palace gallery had taught her to expect. She also hadn't expected there to be hair there, though why that surprised Mako as much as it did, she didn't know. She hadn't thought much of such matters after Tamsin's altogether mundane, uncolorful explanation, and between artistic examples and her few limited explorations of her own body, she thought it must be a rather pedestrian activity.
"Gods above, get on with it," Halia cried.
Chuck laughed quietly and bent just enough to hook his arms below her knees and draw her legs up and open before him. "Impatient thing, aren't you?"
Mako pressed her hand to her mouth and fought to control her breathing as Chuck took his thick, crude-looking length in hand and guided it into Halia's body. She needn't have worried they'd hear her: between Halia's enthusiastic directions (more, fuck, just there, again), Chuck's deep-chested groans and the rhythmic smacking of skin, there was no chance they'd notice anything past the sounds of their own pleasure. Halia moved her hand to the juncture of her legs, and almost immediately her cries went wordless and high-keening.
A few minutes later Chuck too raised his voice and his body clenched through a few last abrupt thrusts. He sagged, spent, into Halia, a satisfied smirk on his face, and Mako looked away at last. She felt exhausted and exhilarated at once, and she leaned against the wall while she waited for the weak trembling feeling in her legs to subside. Just outside the stall, Halia and Chuck set their clothes to right and parted ways, agreeing to another rendezvous later in the week. Mako waited, silent, until she was certain they were gone, and considered the reaction and feelings in her body. She felt overwarm, her skin burned, and the flesh between her legs throbbed in time to her pulse, like a fresh bruise.
It was a month before she knew to articulate it as the feeling of desire. A week after her birthday, Tamsin, still weak from another relapse of the sickness that eventually killed her, pulled Mako aside and presented her with the Book of Loves and an apology.
Later still, Mako channeled the memory into fantasy. Her knowledge bolstered by the illustrations and instructions in the Book of Loves, she imagined herself in Halia's place in the stables, imagined herself spreading her legs wide and taking Chuck's cock into her body again and again. She still disliked him greatly, but her eyes occasionally followed his form across a room over the march of years and she would think, "Maybe."
There might have been time yet for them to reconcile and renew their childhood affections, but when sweet, kind Raleigh came to court, her fantasies changed form again. She had seen him half-stripped on the way to the communal baths after his arrival and known then she wanted him physically. It was easy to imagine, how his fingertips would run up the inside of her thigh as he spread her open, how he would watch her as he entered her. She thought of making love with Raleigh often, imagined the wet sounds of their bodies and touched herself in the night the way she thought he might touch her.
The third day after she began taking the contraceptive, Mako woke before dawn from a dream so vivid and so hunger-stricken she nearly wept when she put her fingers to her clit and brought herself to a quick, needful orgasm. Allison hadn't lied to her when she'd warned Mako the infusion increased desire those first few days; Mako was simply the fool for thinking she wouldn't feel its hooks so strongly. She spent most of the day snappish and resentful, and cursed her council soundly when the court portraitist was invited to set up in her solar. That the light was only accommodating a few hours each afternoon was little consolation.
That evening she retired early and devoted hours to the careful study of the Book of Loves and its applications to her own body. She thought of Raleigh and those mornings in the forest, his face dappled by shadows. She thought of his slow, easy smiles and the way his breath warmed her skin even through her skirts when he slept. She thought how those mornings might have gone instead, if her guard had chosen to take leave of them, how Raleigh's fingertips might chase up her calf and thigh and tease her open and aching. She imagined, briefly, the way he might kiss her there and dismissed the fantasy just as quickly, flushed and embarrassed in spite of herself. The Book of Loves promised such things were possible, but, Mako thought, not likely.
The fourth day was marginally easier. Mako was better prepared, and spent her morning in the smithy, hammering and reshaping the dents from her armor. It had served her well in battle at the cost of aesthetics, and she had let it alone far too long. She finished just in time to meet the painter in her solar, and in spite of his protests for the lovely neckline of the gown her maid had chosen she sat for the initial sketches in her breastplate and pauldrons.
She dreamed of the practice yards that night.
...
On the fifth day, Mako felt safely enough herself again that she invited Prince Roland to sit with her in her solar as the portraitist worked. "Entertain me," she said, and seated him at her right hand.
The painter paused in his work, bewildered, and Mako inclined her head and bid him continue. He set down his brush and picked up his sketching charcoals again, and Mako listened as the prince spoke of his country and his politics. He was not uninteresting and he had some wit to him, but Mako's attention caught on the sound of his words and the way he formed his syllables. She'd somehow never realized Raleigh had an accent, and no one had pointed it out, but she heard shades of him in the prince's voice.
It was only when Prince Roland asked whether something was amiss that she realized she had been frowning at him. "Not at all," Mako said. "I was thinking on how I know so little of your language." She wondered how much of his mother's tongue Raleigh understood, thought of his startling competencies in Engellan and Ivorais and his knowledge of her own Ryusoe, and remembered the Lady Dominique had lived nearly into his adulthood.
"I wonder if you might be persuaded to teach me a little," Mako said.
The prince brightened, and with good cheer began explaining the parts of speech and grammars. He was a patient teacher, and forgiving of her difficulties with certain sounds. In a different life or different circumstances, Mako thought she could have liked him enough, could have considered him at her side and thought, "Maybe."
Instead, she asked him, "In your language, how does one say 'I love you?'"
...
On the sixth night, she dreamed of winter, and of tracing patterns with her fingertip on the frost-kissed panes of her window. She also dreamed of her body ungainly and heavy with child, and of strong arms wrapping around her to ward away the chill. In the dream, she smiled when he pressed whisper-soft kisses to the side of her neck, and pulled her arms in to clasp around his.
She leaned into him with a contented sigh. "Are you hungry?" he asked, his voice rumbly and low.
She hummed her response and turned her head toward him. "For you, always."
He laughed and tipped his mouth into hers for a series of slow, lazy kisses. She turned in his arms, less gracefully than usual, and brought her hands up to frame his face. Affection crinkled the corners of his eyes, and his stubble tickled her palms. "I love you," she said.
He closed his eyes and pressed a long, tender kiss to her forehead. "And I love you," he returned.
Mako woke with tears on her cheeks, feeling suddenly bereft. She might have blamed the infusion, but this was an altogether different torment, quite separate from the burn of artificial desire that had already all but left her. She hadn't given much thought to the idea of children, in spite of her council's proposals, but in the wake of the dream her body ached in a wholly new way. Gods above, she didn't know that she had ever felt so completely cherished.
She pulled her bedding close around her and turned the concept over in her mind. The idea of Raleigh as a father, gods above, Raleigh as a father, Raleigh as a husband... She curled into herself to try to contain the longing. Any children of his would be strong, and steady and so, so beautiful.
That her council thought she could be content to have him and to keep him as a lover only, bear him no bastards, she made herself wretched at the thought. Her feet carried her from bed to forge in the earliest hours of morning and she set to work on another long-neglected project. When a page came to summon her to Council, she bade him bring the council to her.
Like a flight of grumbling geese they came, and gathered 'round in the smithy while she twisted and wrapped brass wire around the grip of a new sword. When she glanced up, she espied Herc sharing an amused look with Doctor Gottlieb, returned at last from the furlough he had taken to be with his wife and new infant daughter.
"What is the meaning of this," Councilor Cole demanded, "bringing us down here in such a way?"
Without the irritating Ambassador Taylor's presence, the gesture was not so insultingly dramatic as she would prefer, but Mako thought it would do well enough.
"I thought I should seek the opinion of the council on my newest sword," Mako said, and held it up and across her arm to better display the subtly-gleaming ripples of the three-times-thrice-folded and tempered steel, the white gold gilt of the guard and pommel, and the sapphires carefully inlaid from finial to finial.
Councilor Willson stared at the cut of the gems, bemused, and suddenly went stark white. As he should; for Mako's coronation, an elaborate sapphire parure had been ordered, including a brutishly decadent collar encrusted with diamonds and pearls and oversized sapphires. It had been heavy, gaudy, insultingly remote from her tastes and prohibitively expensive.
"I see you recognize my jewels, Councilor," she said. "How do you think they suit?"
Herc took a closer look and coughed to cover his laughter. 'Round their own forges, the other smiths were less polite with their snickering and smiles.
"Very elegant, Majesty," Doctor Gottlieb said, his polite tone betrayed by the wry quirk of his mouth. "Well-matched to the hand of a queen."
The council came to a grudging accord that Gottlieb was not wrong. It was a masterful weapon, and beautiful besides.
"Excellent," Mako said. "It shall make a fine gift to my best sword."
"Pardon, Majesty?"
She smiled pleasantly at Cole. "Councilor, I could not grant such a thing to any but someone as well-suited to my hand as this blade. To ask otherwise..." She raised her brows. "One would think you again question the judgment of your queen."
Without the ambassador to raise his voice in opposition, the council proved rather less quarrelsome. Mako dismissed the rest and watched Herc take his wearied leave, but she delayed Doctor Gottlieb to inquire on the health of his wife and child.
"Vanessa is," he paused, searching for the exact word, "incandescent. She is quite pleased with herself, but given our Ada is every perfection I suppose she may be allowed." His words were sly and slightly disparaging, but the smile that lit his face, gods above, he was a small sun for joy.
Mako bit down on her envy and bid him send his wife her regards, and departed for the armory. She was arrived half a moment before Tendo appeared, and he barely spared her a greeting before asking after the sword. "Rumors fly, Majesty, let's see it then!"
She unwrapped it from its oilcloth covering and handed it forth to Tendo's appreciative whistle. "What do you think?"
"I think if you're planning to make a statement this will do nicely. You need a scabbard, I'm sure."
She nodded, and Tendo promised he'd see to it as she took her leave and returned to her quarters. The painter tutted at her wasting good daylight, and she flicked through her missives while Prince Roland quizzed her on her verbs.
Halfway through her correspondence, her fingers passed over Raleigh's haphazard handwriting, and she ignored all else to tear into the water-stained letter. The words were few, a brief recounting of the campaign, how uneventful the rebuilding was. I miss you, he'd written and crossed through. The water marks smeared a few words near the margins, but to receive a letter at all was a gift, and oh! Yours, forever and until, he'd signed above his name.
In the body of the letter he mentioned he anticipated his return to her before two weeks were passed. She searched for a date or postmark and found it at last, all but smudged out of existence. She stood suddenly, startling the painter into dropping his brush.
"My lady!" the prince exclaimed, rising from his chair as well. "What's amiss?"
"I require a calendar, the date." Her mind raced for counting the days. Prince Roland helpfully named the day, and Mako clutched the paper between her fingers as if it were the only thing anchoring her to the ground.
Tomorrow.
...
On the eighth day, Mako woke early from habit to take her infusion and remembered after a brief confused moment there was no need. Instead, she brewed a single cup of ginger-spiced tea and planned her day as if it were any other. It wasn't a council day, the painter wouldn't be 'round for hours yet, and her appointment with the dressmakers and the Lady of the Wardrobe (she still had a hard time accepting there was a person whose position was wholly focused on what she wore) wasn't until the end of the week. She consulted her calendar and was startled to see High Summer and its attendant festivals were only a month away.
She'd been Queen for nearly a year now, victory over the kaiju raiders and her father's burial only scant weeks before that. Where had the time gone?
Mako added the days and weeks and the moments eaten up by waiting together in her head as her maid came to dress her for the day and she proceeded to breakfast in the great hall. It was no small wonder her council had pressed so hard for her to wed, she thought as Prince Roland greeted her across the table. Summertide was the traditional season for marriages in the Old Rites, and historically no few royal unions took place during its week of solstice celebrations. If she chose to marry, the auspicious time would win over any doubter who said she wasn't equal to her reign. It might also go a ways toward silencing those more dissenting members of her council who wouldn't forget she wasn't born to this land's traditions, and wasn't that an appealing thought?
The meal was barely served when a page approached the high table to announce the return of Sir Becket's company. Mako suppressed the urge to bolt from her seat and dismissed the page with her thanks. She ate a pear and picked at a few grapes until she decided a seemly number of minutes had passed and excused herself, citing something she'd forgotten and needed to attend. If her walk was a little hasty, it was only that she walked with purpose, and if her mouth kept trying to form a smile, well, why shouldn't she be pleased with such a beautiful, clear morning?
The palace halls soon enough gave way to the rear courtyard steps, and she took her skirts in hand to descend faster. She didn't run toward the stables, that wouldn't have been seemly, but she didn't check her course, nor did she care that she splashed through a few murky puddles, especially once she caught sight of his broad-shouldered form. "Raleigh!"
He stiffened and turned just as he was pulling the saddle from his horse's back, and smiled broadly enough to hurt. He was halfway across the yard before he seemed to realize he was still carrying his saddle, and dropped it where he stood before running the last few feet to meet her. If a few of the soldiers and stableboys around the yard laughed, he didn't seem to care, and his smile never faltered. "Mako," he said, his voice quietly giddy.
"Ral—EIGH!" she shrieked as he picked her up and spun her around once, before returning her to her feet and kissing her with a ferocity that all but turned her legs to butter. She moaned into his mouth and clung to him, one hand clutching at the fabric of his tunic and the other clasping around his neck. He groaned a little when she broke the kiss to catch her breath, and she played with the longer hairs at his nape to placate him before she dropped a brief, close-mouthed kiss on his lower lip and pulled away.
"You taste delicious," he said, then opened his eyes and flushed deeply at the unthinking words. "That is, I mean, gods above, Mako."
She bit her lip to hold back her laughter and brought her other hand up to his face, where his usual stubble had grown into a scraggly blond forest of a beard. "So what's this then?"
"You don't like it, my lady?" His lips quirked into a smile again, and it was all Mako could do not to kiss him again, prickly beard or no. "My men assure me it's 'rather appealing, in a manly way.'"
Mako shook her head minutely and pressed her lips together, and watched the way Raleigh's eyes followed her mouth. "You could use a shave, my knight. And a bath." She made a show of leaning forward to sniff him a bit and fought not to press her face to his chest and just inhale. "You're absolutely filthy."
He looked down with a small frown, then stepped back and out of her arms in chagrin. "I am, at that, and my apologies now my lady, so are you."
Mako looked down at her own gown, now smeared with sweat and clay-red dust from the roads, and spattered with mud at her hem. The Lady of the Wardrobe would be distressed, she was sure, but the gown was a dark color, surely it would wash. "It's only a dress."
"But a very fetching dress," Raleigh said, and colored again. "My apologies for my mouth, my lady, it's gotten into the habit of wandering—" He cut himself off and swore, and apologized again. He shrugged, embarrassed and silent, and Mako laughed.
"Your mouth, sir," she said, trying not to stare too intently at the mouth in question, "may be forgiven. Three weeks is a long time."
"Almost four," Raleigh said. "Weeks, that is. It's been twenty-six days."
Gods above, had it been that long? No small wonder Raleigh's every thought escaped through his mouth, if he'd felt those days half so keenly as she had. Her fingers itched to tear the clothes from his well-made form and—ahem.
"It's been a long twenty-six days," Mako said, "and we've much to discuss. Meet me in my solar at noon for lunch and your report."
"As you will, my lady," Raleigh said with a formal nod.
"My knight," Mako replied, and curtsied. She turned on her heel to return to the palace, though she did sneak a glace back over her shoulder just as Raleigh was bending to retrieve his saddle and her mouth went dry. Her face felt overwarm as well, but she determinedly told herself she was not blushing and carried on.
When she passed Councilor Willson in the hall she held her head high through his look of shock, and nodded in passing acknowledgment of his quick, almost disrespectful bow. In retrospect, the state of her gown gave her away, and she thought she'd rather not attract any more attention than she already had. She passed into the servants' corridors that had been her childhood playing grounds and took the back stairs to return to her quarters.
Mako ordered a bath drawn and reconsidered her plans for the day while she soaked in the pleasantly-scented water. There were a few hours to midday yet, and another two hours past that before the painter returned. Surely two hours was enough time for appropriate discussion of the matter, assuming her nerve didn't falter. (She was not unaware of the irony, that she should be less alarmed by the prospect of facing down death and a horde of rabid armed invaders than by the idea of articulating her desires to a man whose devotion to her was steadier than the point of a compass guidestar.)
She rose from her bath wrinkled and fragrant and fidgety, and unsure of what to do with herself. She dressed, she trimmed her nails, she idly paged through the Book of Loves, but what Mako needed was not how to approach the act so much as how to broach the subject in conversation. Chances had abounded in the stableyard, and she cursed herself a little for allowing herself to be so pleasantly distracted. She sighed, looked to her secretary desk for aught to do, and settled in to wait.
...
Noon came and went with no sign of Raleigh.
Mako wasn't overmuch concerned; the logistical carnival of coordinating the comings and goings of some fifty men or more occupied more of Raleigh's time than he usually let on, and Mako wouldn't have been surprised if he'd been delayed making sure every last man was settled in at home before he attended to his own needs. He would come as soon as he was able, of that she was absolutely certain.
She read over correspondences and wrote replies, and reviewed the preliminary plans for the week of the solstice. In the past, her father had allowed the planning to Tamsin and been content to sit back as a benevolent non-participant, except for those blessings and ritual motions that required his direct action. For Mako, this solstice was her first on the throne, which called for several ceremonies devoted to welcoming a new ascendant sun to the land, and others still beyond those because she was a sole monarch and regnant queen.
An hour passed, then two. Mako learned to her relief that unlike times in the not-too-very-distant past, there was no expectation of a royal blood tithe to bless the land. She was willing to bleed and die for her adopted people, she'd proved it time and time over on the battlefield, but the description in the history books of the ritual rock and stone knives in the hands of occasionally overzealous priests turned her stomach.
The painter came, and still Raleigh did not. The sitting was delayed a few minutes while they both waited for the Prince Roland to answer Mako's summons, and still she had no word of Raleigh. She didn't doubt him, but she still felt the hooks of concern settle in and take hold, and the certainty that whatever had delayed him, it wasn't of his choosing.
An hour and a half crawled by with only Prince Roland's occasional ventures into polite conversation to break up the hanging silence. Eventually, he gave up his attempts and attended to his letters, and Mako resumed reading about solstice celebrations, old and new. A light knock on her solar door drew her attention, and she let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding when the entering presence proved to be Raleigh at last.
She drank in the sight of him, clean-shaven and clad in a freshly-pressed tunic with the kingdom's sigil eagles stitched at the shoulders. Raleigh's expression, though, gave her pause: he was a little flushed, his jaw clenched, and his hair was pushed back every whichway, as if he'd recently run his hands through it again and again. Tension hardened the line of his shoulders. He smiled when he saw her, and his posture softened a little, but there was no mistaking that something had made him very angry, very recently.
He settled into the chair nearest to the door and watched the painter work. Mako, in turn, watched him, and the chase of his expressions as his focus changed from the artist's process, to the canvas, to her. She saw the instant he realized the portrait wasn't of her alone, and the brief flash of confused grief on his face before he swallowed it down and smothered it with resignation. She smiled at him when his eyes finally met hers, but more than anything she knew they needed to talk.
Finally the painter put away his palette and declared an end to his work for the day. Mako set aside her book to stand and stretch, then meandered around painter and canvas to greet Raleigh. "My knight."
"Your Majesty," he replied with a nod. "I see you've repaired your armor."
She opened her mouth to reply just as Prince Roland arrived at her side. She paused and flicked her eyes skyward for a moment before smiling apologetically and introducing them.
"The famous Sir Becket!" Prince Roland exclaimed. "How good to meet you at last!"
Raleigh looked to Mako briefly, and replied in perfectly-accented Clovien. The prince responded in kind, and they were off. Mako knew one word in five, but the conversation was easy enough to follow. Raleigh was a credit to her court and asked every appropriate question: how did the prince like the country, had his stay been comfortable, had he yet visted the gallery or the former king's library, had he seen much of the city?
Their exchange was rapid-fire and liltingly beautiful, all smooth vowels and consonants, and as much she usually enjoyed Raleigh's voice this was beyond delightful. As many questions as Raleigh had asked at first, the prince asked more in exchange, and the conversation turned. Raleigh's answers came a little slower, a little more thoughtfully each time. To one of the prince's questions Raleigh hesitated, and looked to Mako for a long steadying moment before answering in the negative. The prince glanced to her as well, briefly, as if he were unsure of Raleigh's veracity. From then on, her knight was harder to read, his tone less expressive and his face guarded.
At last, Prince Roland returned to a common language. "Your Clovien is quite excellent," he said, "near as good as any scholar's of Toureau. I cannot place your accent, though. Where did you learn?"
"My mother was Clovien, and a great teacher."
"Would I know her family? We are not dissimilar," the prince said, gesturing between them. "We could be mistaken for kin. How funny should it be if we are?"
Raleigh wore his skepticism on his face as he replied, "Maybe, but more likely not. My mother was a LaPierre, of Haure."
"The family LaPierre... The, how do you call in this country, the shield-wardens?"
Raleigh nodded. "The very same."
The prince laughed, delighted, and clapped Raleigh on the shoulder with an enthusiasm he didn't return."Your Majesty," he said to Mako, "how privileged you are! No city ever fell that was defended by a LaPierre, not a one! Sooner the ocean should dry up! It is thought an honor to name one in your service."
Raleigh's face was pained, and she knew he was thinking of Anchorage, and how it had been overrun in his absence. She took his hand and laced her fingers through his as the prince talked on and on.
"Even such a reputation as yours undervalues you, sir. Surely you must know, my lady," the prince turned back to Mako, blithely unaware of Raleigh's flinch, "how lucky you are to claim his loyalty."
Raleigh's fingers clenched in hers, and she smoothed her thumb over the back of his hand.
"Yes," Mako agreed. "I am very lucky."
...
After the prince left, Mako ordered a light supper brought up and picked half-heartedly at the bread while Raleigh studied the painting. "He's a very good artist," Raleigh said, leaning in close to examine the brush strokes. "The curve of the light on your armor is especially fine."
"Raleigh."
He didn't look at her. "The level of detail, really, it's astonishing, you can almost feel the texture of the brocade." He reached out a little, as if to touch the still-drying paint, and pulled his hand back at the last moment.
Mako drew her legs up onto the bench seat by her dining table and wrapped her arms around her knees. "Raleigh," she said, "please. Sit down and eat something."
He straightened and joined her with a stiff formality she'd never seen from him before. She didn't know what to make of his distance, for all that he was close enough to touch; she rested her chin on her knee and watched his hands, nearly hypnotized, as he cut a pear into quarters, then eighths. Somehow, for all the times Mako had thought of his hands, imagined them on her body, she'd never seen them as elegant, never realized how graceful his fingers were.
Once she was assured he'd eaten enough to qualify as a meal, Mako uncurled on the seat and reached forward to take his nearest hand into her own. She traced the fine lines of old scars on the back of his hand and knuckles, and turned his hand between hers to run her fingertips from the smooth skin of his wrist and down across his palm, from callus to scar and back again. He watched her with an unreadable expression, but she felt the tiny shivers that passed through him as she trailed ghost-light paths from his heartlines to his fingertips.
"Earlier, the prince asked you a question," she said, certain Raleigh would catch her meaning. "What did he want to know?"
Raleigh's shoulders dropped as he let out a short, sharp breath. "He asked me... if I was your consort, as the rumors said."
Oh. No wonder he'd shuttered and drawn into himself like a closing fist. "Surely you don't think—"
"You could do worse," Raleigh said, glancing back at the painting. "He admires you, and you look well together."
"You misunderstand, Raleigh. He's not you. He's no substitute for you, and he never will be. I don't want a prince, I want you."
He stared at her for a long moment, raw longing and frustration at war on his face, and dropped his gaze to where her hands still clasped his. "I can't ask you to marry me," he said quietly.
Mako held her breath while she waited for him to continue. His fingers curled slightly beneath hers and he drew slow circles against the pulse-point in her wrist.
"I met several of your councilors today," Raleigh said at last, almost conversationally casual. "I was waylaid coming here, it's why I was late."
"Oh?"
He nodded and said, "They would have me be your lord protector."
Mako narrowed her eyes. "Really now."
As much as she disliked several of the brittle old men who tried to dictate her actions in Council, she wasn't so foolhardy as to think they were entirely useless. She loathed Ambassador Taylor but he'd negotiated no few impressively advantageous treaties. Willson and Cole, for all their meddlesome ideas of how her personal life should be run, were effective administrators and had been instrumental in helping to consolidate her reign in the early days. It was one thing to attempt to push Mako toward a desired course; she was Queen and on some matters she would not bend. It was quite another to circumvent her authority and act against her wishes, especially where Raleigh was concerned.
"They seem to believe," Raleigh said, his voice somewhere between disgust and tense amusement, "that I have particular designs on your virtue, and that closing the gaps of rank will somehow prevent them."
"Is that so," Mako said. "More the fool them. That can't have been the entirety of the conversation, though."
"Your council has gotten into the nasty habit of promising away what's not theirs to give. When they couldn't buy my honor they tried to appeal to it, named half a dozen reasons of politics and patriotism..." He trailed off with distaste.
"What did you tell them?"
"That I was content to serve you in whatever capacity you asked of me and I wouldn't disrespect you so by accepting a position you hadn't offere—"
Mako leaned forward and cut him off with a kiss. The angle wasn't the best, and her neck ached for reaching as she did, but gods above, never had she wanted him more. She raised his still captive hand to her mouth as he fought to catch his breath and pulled a trailing kiss over his knuckles.
"Will you come to my bed, my knight?" she asked.
Raleigh's eyes snapped open wide and met hers with a searching focus. "Mako?"
"You may not have designs on my virtue, but I certainly have designs on yours. Take me to bed, Raleigh."
Raleigh watched her, unblinking and unmoving for an agonizing span of seconds, and for a moment Mako wondered if she hadn't grossly misread the nature of his interest. Romantic love didn't necessarily translate to physical desire, after all. She needn't have worried. He closed the gap between them quick as thought, brought his hands up to her face and crushed his mouth into hers.
It wasn't a heartbeat later that she realized that every kiss they'd shared before this one had been altogether chaste in comparison. He kissed her without finesse, sucked at her lip until she opened her mouth to allow him entry, made claim with his tongue and teeth. His fingers wandered into her hair as she angled her mouth into his, and she hummed her approval. Gods above, he kissed her like a man dying of thirst, like he would drown in her if he could.
She made a tiny disappointed noise when Raleigh ended the kiss at last, and leaned forward as he pulled away. He dropped a tiny kiss on the tip of her nose for consolation and she laughed a little breathlessly against his mouth.
"So I have your consent, my knight?" she whispered.
"Anything, my queen," he whispered back. "I'm yours."
...
Raleigh pouted when Mako wouldn't permit him to carry her to her bed, but he acknowledged her expediency as they pressed breathlessly from one room to another. The royal apartments weren't monstrously large as they were in the castles and palaces of other lands; only an anteroom that served as a bathing chamber and the Queen's Wardrobe lay between her solar and her bedroom, but when King Stacker had taken the throne he'd fortified the palace interiors as well as the walls, and that included doors sufficient to halt minor sieges. It was all Mako could do to work her hands on the latches while Raleigh's fingers played at her hips and his mouth... It was one thing to dream about him kissing her neck, but gods above it was quite another to have his mouth trailing wet, open kisses from the line of her jaw down to her shoulder.
"Raleigh!" She dropped her head back against his chest when he swirled his tongue against the juncture of her throat and shoulder, then sucked hard at the spot to mark his place. Mako trembled at the line of heat that shot straight through her from his mouth down to the well of need pooling in her belly. Her hands fell limp against the latch at her own door and she said his name again, more air than sound.
His lips curved into a grin against her skin. "Do you want me to stop?"
Mako dredged for resolve and found enough to get the door open and pull Raleigh in behind her. She watched him as he surveyed the room, from wall to fireplace to sunset-brightened window to bed. His eyes lingered on the bed for a significant moment, before he swallowed and looked back to her, waiting. "Mako?"
She stepped into him again and presented the lacing at her back. "Undo me," she said, determined not to show her nerves. Raleigh hesitated before his hands went to work, and she felt the slightest tremors in his fingers through the fabric. He laughed a little when she asked him.
"It's just... I dreamed this, so many times and so many ways. And now it's real and it's just the same."
"You've never seen..." Mako trailed off, and Raleigh laughed again.
"I have a very good imagination," he told her, voice low with promise. She shivered when he finished with the laces at the base of her spine and reached up to help him push the collar of her gown off her shoulders. The fabric slipped easily down her body to pool on the floor once her arms were freed, and she turned to face him again in only her shift.
"Now you," she said. "Undress."
Raleigh nodded and yanked his tunic and undershirt up and over his head in a smooth motion and cast them aside. Mako bit her lip in appreciation for the sudden glorious expanse of sun-golden skin and taut muscle before her. He held very still when she reached out to brush her fingers across his chest toward the ropey scars that marked his shoulder and arm.
"I never asked," she said. "Do these still hurt?" Raleigh let out a choppy breath as she traced the still-red lines with her fingertips.
"No. Not... not anymore."
Mako brought her other hand up to rest on his chest and leaned forward to lay her mouth on his throat. His pulse jumped beneath her lips and she opened her mouth to taste him, to leave her mark on him as he had marked her. When she drew away, Raleigh's eyes were dark as twilight with desire, and half-again so hungry. "Good," she said, and pulled him back with her towards the bed.
When they were close enough, she circled him and pushed him down and onto his back. Raleigh propped himself up on his elbows to watch her pull his boots off, and he helpfully lifted his hips when she untied his breeches and dragged them down and off. Mako took a step back to study him and decided that in the general sense she very much liked the look of him in her bed. In a more specific sense, well, she was not an expert, but Raleigh was a big man, tall, broad-shouldered, and in that particular aspect he seemed to be likewise proportional.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position to drink in the sight of her as Mako slipped her shift off and bared herself to him. The room wasn't cold, but she still shivered a little beneath the weight of his reverent gaze. She thought for a moment of teasing him, of asking are you going to say anything? The way he looked at her though, his stillness, completely stole her words away.
Mako climbed up onto the bed to straddle his legs and inched forward until her hips pressed into his and there was barely a shred of space between their bodies. Though Raleigh's breath quickened, though she felt his cock shift against the inside of her thighs, though he watched her still like she was as vital to him as air, he made no move of his own to touch her at all. She reached out and brought his right hand up to palm her breast. "You can touch me, you know," she said softly into his ear. "I won't break."
Raleigh took her encouragement with the slightest of laughs and swept his thumb across the bud of her nipple before he bent his head to brush his lips along her collarbone. His other hand skimmed up the outside of her thigh to settle at her hip while his mouth roamed. She tilted her head back to grant him better access to nibble and suck his way back up her neck and wrapped her left arm around his shoulder to anchor herself against him.
Mako bit her lip to hold back a wicked grin as she moved her hand ever-so-slowly down his stomach and shifted over him the slightest bit. Raleigh hummed a distracted question against her skin; she sighed into his hair and wrapped her fingers around his length. His mouth stilled while she worked her hand over him in investigation, and again when she rocked the slick of her center against the ridge of his cock. Raleigh made a low desperate noise and jerked his hips up into hers, and then it was Mako's turn to cry out from the delicious friction against her clit.
"Where," Raleigh panted, "did you learn that?"
"I've studied," she replied. "I read about this in books."
"Mako!" he said, scandalized. "What sort of books are you reading?" Another strangled sound escaped from his throat when she ground wetly into him again, but he got his vengeance when he twisted back and rolled her into the velvet coverlet.
Mako thought suddenly of the practice yards. She'd never been pinned in such a way, and the way Raleigh's knee pressed into the bed high between her thighs would never have been allowed, but nevertheless something to the way he leaned over and into her seemed familiar. The last rays of daylight cut warmly across Raleigh's face as he looked down at her, fond and wondering, and she couldn't resist lifting her head to nip at his mouth.
Raleigh kissed her back, and she decided that familiar or not, she very much liked the new closeness and the way he bracketed her body with her own. His mouth trailed away from hers again, and as he bent in closer to run his lips along her jaw she murmured, "Point to you. One-one, my knight."
He pulled back to look at her with an expression of amused incredulity. Mako arched her brows in challenge and rolled her hips against his thigh. Raleigh shook his head and said, "You will be the death of me."
"Maybe," Mako replied. "But only so long as you take me with you."
The answering groan that started in Raleigh's chest reverberated through her body as he put his mouth to her skin, and she echoed it a moment later when he circled the tip of her breast with his tongue. His eyes locked to hers as he sucked her nipple to a hard point and gooseflesh pricked her skin, and held her gaze when he moved to grant equal treatment to her other breast. She dropped her head back when he grazed her with his teeth, and trembled as he began to work his way down her body in earnest.
Raleigh all but assailed her, set upon her with determined focus. He peppered her flesh with demanding nips and bites and sucking kisses that made her pulse jump and her muscles quaver; his hands followed with achingly tender caresses that wrung sigh after hitching sigh from her lips. He trailed from breast to belly to hip to knee to ankle and back again, making sure to linger at those places that pulled her bowstring-taut from pleasure. Mako whined a little when his mouth returned again to that spot just inside her hipbone, and obliged him when he pushed her thighs further apart. She shifted her hips in hungry invitation as well, and waited for him to climb back up her body.
She was unprepared for the heat of his breath or the brush of his fingers spreading her open there, and she jolted back with a squeak of alarm at the first teasing press of his tongue. Raleigh stilled her hips with the press of his palms and lifted his mouth, the question writ clearly on his face.
"Raleigh, I..." Her words were slow to come, stolen away by the want simmering in her blood and skipping between her heartbeats. Gods above, she wanted him to... that. She wanted it, wanted him, but. "I don't expect you to perform such a service, it is not required of you," she said in her first language.
"I know," Raleigh replied, also in Ryusoe. "But I like doing this. I want to do this for you, I want you to feel good." He slid a hand up to smooth soothing circles over the tensed muscles of her stomach and tipped his head to rest against her thigh. "Please?"
Mako exhaled shakily and nodded. "Yes."
Raleigh smiled up at her, slow and bright as dawn breaking as he bent his head between her legs again. Mako leaned back and closed her eyes, uncertain of what to expect.
He delved into her with a long tasting stroke that sent her hands fumbling and clenching into the bedding for something to hold on to. She moaned as he lapped at her, arched her back and rocked into his mouth for more when he licked briefly at her clitoris. He answered with the flat of his tongue, all pressure and enveloping heat, then put his lips around her and kissed her clit like he would kiss her mouth, gentle and wet and open. The words that had failed her moments before came back to her in a desperate, pleading rush.
If Raleigh was swayed by her begging and promises, he gave no sign of it and gave her no quarter, spreading her with his thumbs before he pressed in deeper to fuck her with his tongue. Mako swallowed a sob of pleasure as her body bowed up and arced like lightning down a wire at the sensation. Raleigh pulled away to tut his tongue at her and moved his forearm over her hips to bar her movement, then smeared his mouth against her again.
It was too much, he was too much. "Please," she panted. "Please, I need, ohhh!" The muscles of her inner thighs quaked, wracked from tension and riding the verge of orgasm. Two of the fingers holding her open for his mouth slipped together and slid in and twisted; Mako screamed, high and breathless, and shattered around him.
Raleigh kept his tongue on her as she rode out the near-tidal ebb and swell of pleasure, clenching and unclenching around his gently rocking fingers. She had barely come down and blinked the spots from her vision before he began stoking her up again, teasing her with shallow licks and the lightest scrapes of teeth. He curled his fingers within her to a slow rhythm, suckled at her clit, and drew her gasping back over the edge.
Mako floated, cut adrift and languorous. She made a noise of complaint when Raleigh pulled his fingers from her sex and drew away from her, and cracked her eyelids to watch him as he pushed up to kneel between her thighs. Raleigh swiped his hand across the wet sheen on his mouth and chin, and when he saw her watching, sucked his fingers into his mouth and clean of the taste of her. The hollowed-out wanting within her rekindled, aching with its own pulse and more intense than ever, and she lowered her gaze down his body to study the swollen stand of his cock.
"Raleigh," she said, "I need..."
He required no further encouragement, and leaned forward on his elbow to settle over her, his spare hand coaxing the angle of her hips as he pulled her knee up and around his waist. He took his cock in hand and watched her face with a searching gaze. "Mako. Are you s—"
She kissed him, and tasted herself in his mouth. "Yes."
"I don't want to hurt you."
"You won't." She brought her arm up over his shoulder and curled her hand around the nape of his neck and let her other hand rest at his hip.
Raleigh fit the head of his cock into her and pressed in with a slow, easy slide. Mako bit her lip as she took him in and sighed when he stilled and steadied in her. There was some small discomfort from the newness, but satisfaction too from the warm stretching feeling and fullness. She moved her hand between their bodies and ran her fingertips around the wet point of their merger, stroked up to the root of his cock while he trembled from the effort not to move, then back down and across the sensitive swell of her own flesh where she sheathed him.
Once she finished with her exploration, Mako adjusted her hips ever-so-minutely, shifted by degrees for a more comfortable angle and cried out from the good-slick friction when her motion rocked him in the slightest bit deeper. Raleigh exhaled sharply against her shoulder and released a groan that filled her nearly as thickly as his length within her.
"Yes," she hissed into his ear. "More."
He moved slowly at first, rocking in smooth careful strokes while her body rolled to learn the rhythm. It was easy to fall into cadence with him, instinct guided by sensation and movement and Raleigh's breathless instructions. Here, he said, a little more, up, YES. She encouraged him in kind: more, again, there, deeper, yes, AGAIN, harder, please. Yes, yes, yes.
The Book of Loves proved its use: Raleigh bit down on her collarbone and swore when she tightened around his withdrawal and relaxed with his thrust, another rhythm added to their dance of good-full-push and aching-drawing-pull. Yes, yes, yes.
Her next orgasm came upon her almost by surprise, intent as she was on keeping in rushing time with his quickening pace and eager to feel him come apart inside her. Mako had barely a heartbeat's warning before pleasure rippled through her in hot waves. She clawed at Raleigh to hold him close, hold him in as she clenched, keening and tight around him, and was rewarded when he shuddered and spilled into her a moment later, chanting her name like a prayer.
...
After, Raleigh poked fun at Mako's alarm to find herself leaking.
"It's a simple mistake, anyone without the experience could make it," Raleigh said sunnily, daubing between her legs with a dampened cloth.
"In that event you might have seen fit to warn me, my knight."
"And deprive the world of that adorable little squeal you made? Gods above take me first."
"I did not squeal," Mako grumbled. Somehow, in spite of her readings and studies, Mako had failed to comprehend beforehand that lovemaking would of necessity be something of an untidy undertaking. Once Raleigh had gotten his disbelieving amusement out of the way, he'd retrieved a washbasin and a cloth, obliged to help clean up the sticky mess that was honestly and entirely his fault.
"If that's what you need to tell yourself, my lady, far be it from me to dissuade you." Raleigh set the cloth aside and grinned up at her from where he sprawled between her parted knees. By candlelight, the boyish curve in his smile set her yearning for him again, no matter the lingering twinge of soreness or the inevitable mess afterwards.
Mako swatted at his shoulder. "You are such a... saucy, impudent person."
"But you like me."
"But I like you." She smiled and ran her hand through his hair. "I suppose I do. It would be foolish otherwise, to give my heart to a man I didn't like."
It was the closest she had been able to come to telling him she loved him. Even Raleigh, certainly the more demonstrative of the two of them, hadn't dared say it aloud, though anyone with eyes to see the way he looked at her could say he looked on with love, the way he regarded her even now.
Raleigh lowered his head to press a kiss and a whispered endearment to her stomach, just below her navel, and ascended her body in that way. Mako wasn't able to parse his words until he reached her breastbone, then thrilled with tenderness at each firmly murmured I love you. He took his time in declaring himself to her breasts, more than was perhaps strictly necessary. Mako pressed her lips together to suppress the laughter that tried to bubble out of her and at last asked, "Are you saying that to me or my breasts?"
Raleigh chuckled, and the wry quirk to his smile didn't change the low husky cast of his voice when he replied, "Well, I love you too."
Mako pulled him up the rest of the way and kissed him deeply, hands sliding back from his face to clutch at his hair as she wrapped her legs around him. His cock brushed her stomach, hard and ready again as she rocked with him, and he groaned deeply when she asked him to take her again.
"Gods above, you are trying to kill me," he said when he turned her onto her stomach. She hadn't thought the topic needed to be discussed again, but when she tried to say as much he snaked his arm around her hip and beneath her to press his fingers to her clit.
There was little to discuss after that.
...
Their first morning dawned bright and clear, and Mako cursed the sun and habit for drawing her from sleep so early when she finally had reason to need it. Raleigh roused slowly beneath her with a sleepy frown, mumbling a complaint into her shoulder until she bade him go back to sleep. He let her go reluctantly, and she felt more than a little resentful when she slid from the bed and looked back at the inviting tableau of dawn-kissed skin amidst her love-tousled sheets.
Soon, she promised herself as she pulled on thin dressing gown. If she was to be awake, she might as well accomplish something before returning to bed. She considered her agenda for the week on her way to her solar and mentally struck off anything that couldn't be accomplished from her quarters, and found her morning miraculously cleared.
Mako rang for a servant and cast her gaze about her solar while she waited. Someone had done some tidying, attended to the remnants of the evening meal, which wasn't unusual, except... She remembered abruptly that, in their haste the evening before, they had left every door in her apartments hanging wide on their hinges, and neither she nor Raleigh had been particularly quiet. They wouldn't have noticed anything beyond each other, but gods above, the servants.
She was still flushed for that realization when a pair of maids entered with a polite knock. She composed herself as best she could while she ordered a bath and a hearty breakfast, but there was no missing the surreptitious glances the girls sneaked away from her face before they were dismissed. Mako glanced at the great mirror on her wall after their departure and winced at the impressive line of love bruises trailing over her neck and collarbone.
She had no intention of being discrete in this endeavor, but she didn't much care for the idea of half the palace and associated countryside trading gossip, which was almost a certainty now.
Breakfast was set out and her bath all but poured when Raleigh arose for the day. "Gods above, Mako," he called from the bedroom. "I think you've killed me. It was a good death, a very good death, don't mistake me—" He ambled into the bathing chamber, breeches untied and hanging loosely off his hips, and stared at Mako and the half-dozen waterbearing groomsmen. He flushed, frozen in place and silent, until someone behind Mako whistled, long and low; Raleigh had left his marks on Mako's skin, but over the course of the night she had more than returned the favor.
"Leave us," Mako commanded, and pressed a her fingers over her mouth until she heard the latch-closing sound of her solar door. For a long, silent minute, she stared at Raleigh and he stared back. She lowered her hand from her mouth, took a breath, and burst into laughter. Raleigh joined her a half-second later, and she stepped forward to pull him back with her into the bedroom, pressing laughing kisses into his mouth.
"Gods and stars and the sixteen lesser devils, Mako," Raleigh swore, amusement and apology coloring his voice. "I didn't know!"
"It doesn't matter," Mako said, and rode him into the downy mattress to another good death while breakfast and her bath went cold.
When the painter arrived in the afternoon, Mako seated Raleigh at her right side and clasped her hand through his. The portraitist threw them a look askance and asked, "Are there to be any other changes made, Majesty?"
"Just the one," she replied briskly. Raleigh didn't ask any questions then, and Mako offered no answers, but once the painter left he went to his knees on the floor before her chair.
"Your Majesty," he said, his voice a little unsteady, "what would you have me do?" He bent his head to await her judgment, and Mako wondered for a still, angry moment what her councilors had said to make him think himself so unworthy.
"Raleigh." He looked up at her face and took a breath. "My knight, I would have you stay."
...
On their second morning, it rained.
Without the sun's intrusion, Mako felt more content stay abed and drowse, Raleigh's chest pressed to her back and his arm loose around her waist, so close their hearts beat together in sleep. Today, he was quicker to wake, and hungry for her; when he slid down her body, she spread her thighs and came gasping, wrecked open and raw on his tongue while rain beat at the windows. When they left her bed late mid-morning, breakfast was already set out, berries and sweet bread with honey and cream. If Raleigh knew the significance, he said nothing, nor did he note the fresh vase of woderoses with their tiny white star-shaped blooms.
While Mako wondered whether someone on the staff knew or was simply guessing, she ordered a bath drawn up, and called a page to bring a few changes of clothes and Raleigh's correspondences from his quarters. They traded off turns in the bath while midmorning turned over to midday and the storm picked up again outside, then sprawled together on the long couch by the fire and went over their letters.
In the first hour after noon, the messengers began to arrive in force. The painter sent his regrets, citing the poor light. Prince Roland sent a message enquiring after her health, and to ask if she might take visitors. The first messenger from her council came, saw Raleigh all but wrapped around her, and took leave without delivering the message. The second messenger, a page Mako recognized from Councilor Cole's service, inquired on the state of her health and whether she was aware that Council was in session. She replied that she was aware, thank you. The page then asked if the Queen had any intention to appear in Council. Mako replied to the negative and thanked the young man to pass along to the other councilors that she was not receiving visitors at this time, nor for the forseeable future.
The page nodded, paid his respects to them both and departed, dispersing something of a ruckus in the hall outside her door as he left.
"Efficient," Raleigh said.
"Mmm," Mako agreed.
The last messenger of the afternoon came bearing a letter of only one word, stamped with the armory's seal and writ in Tendo's hand.
Tomorrow.
...
Their third morning began not unlike the preceding two: Mako woke early, wrapped in Raleigh's arms while the first shreds of morning light crept across the room. She considered blearily and couldn't account for why she'd awakened so early, still feeling as wrung-out and boneless as Raleigh had left her the night before. She yawned and turned her face into his shoulder, away from the light, and started awake and suddenly conscious when the door to her bedroom scraped heavily open and thudded into the wall.
Raleigh bolted upright into awareness beside her and had enough presence of mind to pull the sheet up to cover her as Herc Hansen strolled into her bedroom, shooing off several maids and one of her household pages as they insisted in a chorus that truly, Her Majesty is not accepting visitors and especially not right now.
Mako quietly dismissed the servants as Herc crossed his arms with an unreadable expression set on his face. "Well," he said. "Well then."
She shivered under the scrutiny, and Raleigh wrapped his arms around her shoulders to pull her in closer. Herc followed the motion with his eyes, and like a wall coming down emotion crashed onto his face, good humor and happiness and sadness and worry intermixed.
"I'd heard the rumors, but I didn't think either of you would... I'd care to know whose idea this was and how you'd like to salvage the situation, Your Majesty," he said to Mako. "Your whole council or nearabouts is in fits, the Ambassador is back from that visit to Gower and out of his head incensed—" Herc cut himself off and shook his head. "Mako, put some clothes on, you're like a daughter to me and I am not having this conversation while you've your bits out. I'll be in the solar, and I expect you to be as well in two minutes, alone." Herc threw a pointed, displeased look at Raleigh before he turned on his heel and marched out.
Mako clenched her fists and didn't look at Raleigh as she pulled away from his embrace.
"Mako?" Worry drenched his voice, and she still didn't meet his gaze as she pulled on a discarded shift and a robe. "What can I...?"
"Please, stay here," she said, and left the room.
In her solar, Herc stood in front of the windows with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out and down into the main courtyard.
"I love him," she said simply.
Herc turned and approached, surveying her for signs of injury or ill as he would a soldier returned from the field. His eyes fastened on the still-fading love-bites and asked low-voiced, "Did he hurt you?"
"No."
"Was this his idea?"
She raised her head. "No."
"Do I need to... that is, did he, in..." Herc gestured miserably at her midsection. "That's to say, need I worry you'll be—?"
Mako sighed, to spare him the indignity of trying to phrase his question in a way that neither accused nor insulted her. "I took precautions, the council need not worry that I will carry a bastard." She spit the word out in distaste, and Herc winced. When he spoke again, his words were gentler.
"Mako, my girl, I mean no insult, but is there any chance at all you might change your mind?" She gave Herc a look that spoke her thoughts plainer than she ever could. He put his hands up placatingly. "I know, but there's a first time for everything, I had to ask. If you have any doubts, this is your last chance. Excuses could be made, nobody knows anything, just know I'll support any choice you make."
Mako thought of the unknown servants who had gone out to gather a whole bouquet of thorny woderoses to bless her Rites and thought Herc was maybe a little too optimistic. "No doubts, no regrets."
"All right then, that's fair. Was there a plan beyond getting through the Rites, or were you hoping you could leverage tradition against politics?"
She rolled her eyes. "I am not born to this country. Anyone who takes my hand marries the Pentecost crown, not Pentecost blood. How easy would it be for a Pentecost cousin or coup or invading army to remove me in favor of someone born here?"
"That's ridiculous, everyone in this castle would lay down their lives—"
"Hundreds would die for me, yes, but how many others?" Herc gave her a long measured look and nodded for her to continue. "Any choice I make is political. Raleigh is old blood, of a traditional family. He served in the army, fought the kaiju, nearly gave his life for loyalty, and because my council would have him anywhere but at my side he's rebuilt half the coast with his own hands. He is good, he's kind, the people love him, and he is beautiful. Beauty speaks," she said, cutting off Herc's almost certain rebuke. "Were he less worthy, the people would still trust him for his face alone."
"Gods above, my girl." Herc smiled, nostalgic and a little sad. "Anyone who says you're not Stacker's daughter is a thrice-damned fool or a liar. You have my support, for what good it counts, Your Majesty. I'll enjoy watching you prove those witless bastards wrong."
Raleigh was sitting at the edge of the bed when she returned, still naked but for the bedclothes and nervous, sick with love and languid still. She stepped forward toward the bed, set aside the canvas-wrapped bundle in her hands and clasped her arms around him. He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her stomach.
Mako ran her fingers through his hair while Raleigh clung to her like he thought he'd never be allowed to touch her again, and wondered at what had obviously been a tragic miscommunication. "Raleigh," she said. His fingers fisted in the material of her robe as he breathed her in. "Raleigh, beloved," she called him in Clovien, "look at me."
He tilted his face up to her at last, tensed and uncertain. She said, "Three nights I have given you."
She watched as hope and disbelief warred in his eyes, as he relived their every exchange. "I heard... I thought..."
"Three nights." Three nights given over to love alone, a declaration of intent, an exchange of gifts, and a public exchange of cups: so comprised the Old Rites of marriage, which even still were honored over their civil laws.
Raleigh sucked in a breath, and said, "Three nights you have been mine, and mine alone." His lips cracked into an uncertain rueful smile. "I have nothing to give you."
How little he valued his love, and the joy she'd found in him. She could make him understand later. For now Mako said, "I would have your name, for our children to carry after us."
He smiled brilliantly up at her. "I told you before, my lady: I'm yours. You can have anything."
(Later she would give him the sword, and they would swear intent before her court and trade cup for ritual cup. Later, she would call him consort and husband and build a life with him. For now, she let him pull her back into the bed, laughing delighted kisses into her mouth.
"My lady," he said, "what would you have me do?"
"My knight, I would have you love me."
He looked down at her, bright-eyed with promises.
"Always.")
...
Notes: I regret nothing, and blame bloglikejaeger for everything.
This was supposed to be a quick one-off PWP epilogue to a very capslock-y high fantasy AU tagfic that got out of hand (you can find it linked on my worklist page on Tumblr if you're interested), and instead turned into this plot-heavy politicized monster, which, APPARENTLY, is the second part of a three part series. There will be more. Sooner or later.
All credit to hauntedjaeger and my darling friend Lisa (sorry I ruined your life with this movie!) for beta work and handholding.
...
we only live, only suspire/consumed by either fire or fire