Chapter 14 – Sacred Plantings #4
He groaned, his head hanging. Inside her was fertile ground, a blessed place for planting, and he willed it to happen as he filled her, praying wordlessly that his essence would take root there, so part of him would grow and be with her always.
“Stay,” he managed, catching her hips to keep his softening length inside her. His head was spinning and he couldn’t make his eyes focus, but he found her lips and kissed her. “Brother Oleare said…we have until dawn.”
“We’re not done?”
“No.” Holding her thighs to his hips, he let his forehead rest on hers, drawing long, deep breaths to get his strength back. “I will plant you as many times as I can. Does it hurt?”
“No. Just…muddy,” she said, and kissed him reassuringly. “Is that what we’re supposed to do?”
“I want to try.” He grunted as she fluttered around him, slippery with his seed.
She was so warm in his arms, always warm, his little flame.
“Again,” he made himself say, focusing on how she felt to him, all the things about her that made him hard and wanting for her.
“And again, I will…you feel so good on me, my wife…”
Talk like this did not come naturally to him.
Especially when her body was still wringing the last of his seed from him, and his muscles were twitching with the urge to move, and his own weight on his knees was making them ache.
He didn’t know if he even believed in the stars.
He didn’t know if they cared what he was doing, whether they would bless him with a child or let him die in his blood.
All he could do was everything he could.
“So beautiful,” he whispered, his sides belling in huge, deep breaths.
Her small face was darkened with dirt and streaked with sweat, a jagged mask around her extraordinary eyes.
Stars, she was lovely. His lips brushed hers, tingling.
“Your face…your chin, I love your chin, this little point…it makes me want to catch you…”
“Kiss me,” she breathed as he caught her chin in his fingers and tasted her tongue. Her skin, her body, the hot and slippery silk inside her, tangled around him and tugged tighter.
“You’re…squeezing me,” he said breathlessly, his big hands sinking into the dirt even as he sank into her, and felt like he was melting in the fire. “Oh, I do love you, Ophele, I do…”
And never more than when her arms wrapped around him and her body moved to meet him, receiving him like the earth opening to the plow.
He wanted to see it so badly. Small, lovely Ophele ripe with his child. He wanted to see the fields his people would sow, and the vision that flickered behind his eyes was like waves and waves of golden grain, alive with the breath of the wind.
Distantly, he heard her voice rising and falling, her high cries of pleasure. Felt her breasts against his chest and her legs wrapped around him, the heat and the wet and the grit and the hardness of his body, working furiously to completion.
“Rem—oh, oh! Remin!” She bucked beneath him, a seismic shock of joining that made him cry out hoarsely.
“No—don’t, don’t move!” Gripping her waist, he strained to keep himself inside her, when it felt so good he could hardly stand it. “I can…I can, one more time…”
He could, because he must. Through his closed eyelids he could see the growing light beyond the glow of the stoves, sense the approaching dawn in the noise of distant birdsong, the stirring of morning. But he could do it, he could do it once more. Plant, and bless the planting.
The back of his mind understood what he was doing, and why.
He must make a child. He must give her a child.
Beneath that heavy stone in his chest was the knowledge of his own weakness, the kernel of terror that fed him nightmares every night, that he would not be strong enough for this destiny, that he would fail and die and leave her all alone.
Remin was as mortal as anyone else. He could die. He could be afraid. He had been afraid, for so long.
Beneath him, Ophele’s sides heaved. Her thighs flexed and her hands covered his and her eyes lifted to his face, willing to help even when she didn’t understand why he was trying so hard.
He loved her so much. He loved her, and he loved this valley, and it was his duty and his honor to bind himself to them for all of his life. He would give them everything he had.
One more time.
Pebbles chewed into his knees. Muscles burned. How long had they been doing this? How much time was left? Hurry, hurry, he had to go faster, dawn was coming and that would be the end of the spell, this blessed time when all the magic in the world was bent toward life.
“Stars…” Ophele gasped. Her legs tightened around him, her nails biting into his shoulders as she flung her head back. “Stars, let us—let us make a child!”
He felt her go. Felt the clutch of her body straining with his, sweat-slicked skin and so hot, so close, melding him and her and the earth and the air together at once.
His hips plunged on as he gathered her up, holding her to him to shut out everything else.
A thousand distractions clawing for his attention, aches and pains and itches and discomfort and that creeping knowledge of the dawn, but he pushed them all away.
Behind his closed eyelids was something wide and dark and waiting, opening for him.
He fell into it.
Wordless noises punched from his chest. The climax burst through him, from him, flowing into her.
He was spending himself like rain. Everything he had, everything he was, all of his love.
His stubbornness. The powerful pounding of his heart and the huge breaths that filled his mighty lungs, all his strength and will and the relentless force of his life.
All of it. All for her. All for his land. He had come so far, he had fought so hard to live, he had brought so much death, and now his reward was to make life.
He was taken in, and accepted.
Far away, he heard the blast of a hunting horn. The last star had vanished from the sky.
“No…stay,” he said fuzzily as he felt Ophele move under him. He felt very peculiar. He barely knew where he was, the words tumbling from his lips, disjointed and senseless. “Wife. Give it…time to root…”
And then he slumped forward, lost in the peace of the quiet earth.
* * *
Really, she ought to have known he would do this as thoroughly as he did everything else.
“Remin?”
Gently, she nudged him, turning his head to look at his face.
His eyes were closed, long black lashes smudging his cheeks.
Sprawled on top of her, he was limp and exceedingly heavy, and even though the feel of him inside her was uncomfortable and a spiky rock was jabbing her directly in the backside, Ophele exhaled and gave up.
She guessed he had a right to be a bit tired, after that.
Lying on the cold, muddy ground, she was very much awake, which meant thinking.
Justenin had a deeply unsentimental view of the Empire’s holidays and festivals, and though Ophele had not dared to ask him directly about this one, she could just imagine what he would say.
A pagan relic, when everyone knew there was no magic in the Empire, and impractical and dangerous besides.
And it was mortifying; how was she ever going to walk back into town and face everyone, when they all knew what she and Remin had just been doing?
But Remin had delivered a surprisingly profound answer when she asked why they must do this: it was important because people believed it was important.
And wasn’t that a sort of magic in itself?
A self-fulfilling prophecy. Belief was a curious thing, and her limited study of magic had made her quite sure that she didn’t know enough to have an opinion.
It was some time before Remin finally stirred, a ripple of alertness through his body, and she smiled as his lips nuzzled her throat in a sleepy inhalation.
“We are not doing it again,” she informed him, as his black eyes slitted open.
“Not here, anyway,” he agreed, rumbling with amusement. Brushing a thumb over her cheek, he kissed her and sat up, wincing as he extracted his body from hers. “Did I hurt you?”
“I’m all right. I want a bath,” she said with feeling, trying to sit up without touching anything.
“No, stay still,” Remin objected, and it wasn’t until he had dressed her, picked her up, and was halfway back to town that it dawned on her why he was keeping her more or less horizontal.
“You know you’ll have to put me down when we get back,” she said, laughing and crimson to her hair.
Stars, he was the most determined man alive.
But she saw the smile crease his cheek and wrapped her arms tighter around his neck, feeling that she could face even the mob at the North Gate so long as Remin was beside her.
It was embarrassing. It couldn’t be anything else, dozens of people staring at her when she was wearing a wettish, muddy linen dress with the sticky feeling of Remin between her legs. This seemed one of the more unlikely ways to look after their people.
But the people themselves appreciated it.
She could hear them cheering when Remin finally set her down, their hands raised in greeting and in blessing.
The farmers were clustered to the front of the crowd, the Conbour clan as well as all the folk from Remin’s villages, who would join them in the plowing as soon as the ground was dry enough.
This was even harder for Remin. The last part of the ritual was the sharing of the blessing, and while he wasn’t easy to embarrass, he intensely disliked letting other people touch him.
Half of Tresingale was reaching for him, hands out and sleeves rolled up, and Remin’s knights were watching like hawks.