Chapter Thirty
Ina had food sent there ahead of their arrival.
They had already fed a kingdom’s worth of pastries to snakes, after all.
The kitchens could spare a tray enough for three, carried in by a page who set it down with wide eyes and who fled before curiosity overcame manners.
There were rolls, slices of honey roots, little savory pies, and a modest stack of the sky court pastries, leftovers from what had been made for the trip.
They were all a little cold by the time Ina and the princes walked into the room, thanks to the slow wandering flight home and the foolishness in it, but none of them seemed to mind. They ate leaning against pillows and bedposts and one another’s nearness, more content than hungry.
Karai took one of the pastries, bit into it, and said, with that dry gravity he could bring to anything, “The sky court may be ridiculous in many respects, but this is surprisingly good.”
Derran lowered his eyes to hide the pleased look that tried to break loose. Ina saw it anyway and smiled.
That was the moment she chose.
They were tired. Satisfied. Guard lowered by success and food and shared relief. If she was ever going to say the thing properly, it ought to be while love sat in the room plainly enough for all three of them to see it.
She set down the little roll in her hand and took a breath.
Both princes looked at her.
Ina turned first to Karai. “I love you.”
Then to Derran. “And I love you.”
After that she looked down, not from shame, but because she needed the next words to come out cleanly and could not spend herself on eye contact too.
“I love you both. Desperately.” She let her fingers rest against the edge of the tray while she searched for the shape of what she meant.
“Today was... everything I’ve ever wanted.
It was not easy, but we did it all together, and we did it with love in our hearts.
I want that.” She took another breath. “I want that every day. To share my life with you both. To love you both, as freely and openly as I did today, and to know that doing so won’t break either of your hearts.
” Her eyes lifted to theirs then. “Because what I want comes with a promise. A promise to keep your hearts whole, whatever power I must use to do it. Whatever it costs me. I’ll give whatever it takes to love both of you and hurt neither of you. ”
She stopped there. There may have been more to say. Perhaps there always would be. But the important part was in the room now, and she had said it.
For a little while neither of them answered.
Then Derran reached for her.
He drew her to him and kissed her, deep and sure and with none of the jealous hesitation in it.
Before she had fully settled into that kiss, she felt Karai come close behind her.
His arms went around her, not claiming, not pulling her away, only holding, bending down to kiss her neck.
She felt his hands at the lacing of her dress, loosening it with quiet patience.
She let out a soft breath, understanding their answer then.
After that she gave herself over to them.
They did not rush each other. Nor did they ignore each other.
That was part of the beauty of it. They moved with a joint acceptance that needed very few words.
One stepping back when the other came nearer.
One hand where another had been. One mouth at her shoulder while another kissed her brow.
A harmony discovered rather than planned.
When Karai’s long fingers had finished unlacing her, she took a breath and let the gown fall to the floor.
Derran freed her mouth then to look at her, and in that brief pause she felt the full force of both their attentions.
Her heart fluttered for a beat. Then Derran stripped off his prince’s robe in one swift motion, and she turned to Karai to help him out of his own.
For a moment the three of them stood there with the last tokens of rank and dignity pooled at their feet.
Derran lifted her gently and laid her on the bed, her arms drifting sensually above her head.
She drew a knee up, and they paused for a moment, their eyes trailing over the shape of her, the longing clear in both their faces.
Karai broke out of the reverie first and eased himself down beside her, cupping her face to his, kissing her lips softly, caressing her.
He traced the line of her waist, the curve of her side, the smooth rise and fall of her breathing beneath his palm, and she felt herself opening under that gentleness as surely as she ever had under their prior urgent and heated desire.
Derran joined them, though his mouth sought her legs, lips moving over them with patience and devotion in equal measure.
He kissed her knees, the inside of her thighs, the places where the slightest touch made her breath catch and the stronger ones made her shiver – pressing into her center to find the honey sweetness there.
There was no haste in him. Only an attention so complete that the room grew quieter around them, smaller, until Ina could no longer have said where the walls were or how long they had been there.
They treated her, and each other, with a kind of reverence that would have embarrassed all three of them if named aloud.
Their attention stayed with her, with her comfort, with her pleasure, with the strange new grace of learning how to share what none of them had ever imagined sharing quite this way.
She reached down for Karai then, needing to give as well as receive, finding him rock hard, and he groaned against her at the touch.
That made her smile. She shifted then, not awkwardly, but enough to reach him with her mouth.
She moved her lips slowly against him, not able to go much further than the first bit, though he did not care. The pleasure in his face was immediate.
In turn, Derran’s patience gave way to a more playful confidence, the kind that had always lived in him beside his tenderness.
He knew how to draw sound from her, how to open her with his tongue, how to coax rather than demand.
He cupped his hand under her, pulling her closer against his mouth, sending spirals of anxious delight shooting through her.
Her back arched then and her mouth opened in a loud cry.
With an involuntary smirk, he vibrated his wings, in that wicked way he so often enjoyed, and the sensation moved through all three of them.
Ina let go of Karai with a gasp, the building sensation in her rippling outward with such sudden force she hadn’t expected at all.
Her back arched again as she moaned, loosely gripping Derran’s hair with one hand and Karai’s chest with the other.
When the pounding in her center quieted, she opened her eyes again to find that the two princes had shifted.
Derran had positioned himself at her opening, rubbing gently against the dampness.
Karai had angled himself so his tongue could flick at the bud above her folds.
What had begun in separate attentions became more joined, more coordinated, almost musical in the way it rose and fell.
Derran did not disturb that motion as he slowly pushed himself in, so thick with desire that she felt herself being stretched to her limit. She let out a breath, not quite a cry, just a long sound pushed out of her almost unintentionally, as though it was coming out of the space he was filling.
Karai flicked her harder with his tongue and with that, the breath did become a cry. He gave her a sideways glance and a smirk, then did it again.
And again.
And again.
Derran found a rhythm to match Karai’s tongue, pushing in with every flick, pulling out when his tongue paused briefly in between. They were not guessing any longer. They were listening.
Ina’s cries had no beginning and no end. They came and came and came out of her unstoppably, overwhelmingly.
Pleasure built in her in layers. Not one straight climb, but a gathering.
Wave upon wave, each one loosening something in her and then tightening it again.
It seemed to move through her whole body rather than remain in any one place.
Her back arched. Her fingers tightened in hair, in shoulders, in sheets.
More than once she tried to speak and could not manage words, only sounds broken from breath and need and wonder.
Derran looked delighted by every one of them.
He felt her tightening around him, felt the shift in her body, and felt himself unable to hold back too.
She split open and burst again, and he did too, filling her completely.
For a few moments her eyes closed and she could hear only buzzing in her ears.
The pleasure had been so intense that it had taken over every one of her senses and left them all unusable.
At last it quieted, and she found the scene in front of her shifted yet again.
Derran lay now next to her, kissing her shoulder, her collarbone, her breast. Karai was pushing himself into her opening, and his eyes closed at the feel of her around him.
Derran had loosened her, and something about that made Karai shiver with lust as his effects coated him.
He was less patient than Derran was once the control left him, knowing she could take the feel of him thrusting deep into her.
Yet even he did not lose himself entirely.
Desire in him always ran deeper than his expression admitted, and tonight it showed in the set of his mouth, the tension in his shoulders, the way he kept having to steady his own breathing before he could go on.
At some point Ina ceased trying to direct anything at all.
She let herself be carried by the moment. There was trust, and in that trust, a sweetness to yielding when she knew both of them would guard rather than take advantage. She felt cherished between them. Adored.
Derran kissed Ina’s lips then, moving his fingers to stroke the same spot where Karai’s mouth had been, gentler even than before, though in some ways that gentleness made the sensation harder to bear.
Ina whimpered and reached weakly to stop him, the feeling overwhelming her now that she had been led to sweet collapse twice already.
It wasn’t Derran that stopped her.
It was Karai.
He pulled her hand gently, but firmly, back above her head, as if commanding her to take the pleasure that came and not try to hide from it. Derran smiled against her lips at that and continued his motions, assaulting her senses with delight so great she began to tremble in his arms.
For a little while she thought it truly would be too much.
Then her body shifted.
She succumbed to their movements, both of them working in tandem to spill her over again. Karai caressing at the spot inside her, Derran caressing at the one outside.
What had seemed unbearable became instead another ascent, faster this time, thicker, because her body had already been opened so completely to feeling.
Karai’s intensity, Derran’s precision, the closeness of their bodies, the rhythm they had found among themselves, all of it gathered again and drove her upward.
She lost control before she saw it coming.
When the first great crest of it finally broke over her, it came with such force that she scarcely knew whether she cried out or simply lost the ability to hear herself clearly.
Her body shook with it. She gripped blindly at whoever was nearest. The world narrowed to light behind her eyes and the pounding rush inside her, and for a few breaths afterward she could do nothing but feel the aftershocks move through her in helpless waves.
Her body thrashed once, helplessly, and another release tore through her with such strength that for a moment she could not have said where she ended and the pleasure began.
Neither of them rushed her through it.
Derran stayed close, kissing her shoulder, her throat, whatever part of her he could reach without breaking the spell too abruptly. Karai held her with both steadiness and heat, as if he knew that if he loosened his hold too soon she might drift away entirely.
Then, as her body quieted, he followed close behind, falling briefly from above her onto his elbow.
She felt fuller than she ever had before, laying half limp between them, trembling and full of warmth from their mingling release, letting it drip out of her slowly onto the bed.
None of them cared about the state of the sheets.
None of them cared about anything very practical at all.
Karai shifted to lie beside her, joining Derran in those softened kisses and small caresses that seemed to go on long after urgency had been spent.
They took turns again without speaking, one at her mouth while the other kissed her shoulder, then her brow, then her hand.
It would have been inconceivable if it had not been so tender.
Ina had not known such joy was possible.
Not only of the body, though that was there and abundant, but of the heart. To be held in both loves together and not torn apart by them. To be cherished from either side and know that neither tenderness canceled the other.
All three of them were spent, but it still took some time for those kisses and caresses to slow. No one seemed willing to be the first to let the moment end. At last, though, the fiercer edge of it passed, leaving only warmth and drowsiness and the pleasure of staying close.
When they finally settled, one prince lay in the crook of each of her arms, and Ina, smiling in the dim quiet of the room, felt wholly at peace.
No one said much. There was little to improve by speaking. All three of them knew this would not become ordinary. It was too rare, too delicate, too much shaped by circumstance and trust and mood. It would not be every night, nor even many nights.
But once in a while, perhaps, it could be this.
Lying there with both princes close and the remnants of laughter and love still warm between them, Ina thought it felt like victory.
Not the kind won by force or cleverness or battle.
Some softer unity. A peace all three had almost denied themselves for fear it could not exist.
It was more than she had ever hoped for in her mother’s kitchen, when her only companions had been snails and ladybugs and the dream of being loved. It was a life that was not simple, and never would be, but had at last become the life she wanted.
Loved by two princes. And more than loved.
Free.
Free from the burden of choice. Free from the fear of jealousy. Free from the guilt of secretiveness.
Free, it turned out, to love them both in return.