Chapter 1 – A Tale of Wolves
On the other side of the Empire, the Emperor’s enemies were still enjoying their honeymoon.
Of course, Ophele had already been married for nearly eight months, but she had only felt married for a week or so.
It was as if she had wandered into another, more beautiful world.
Flowers were everywhere. The very air seemed more satisfying, as if she had never taken a proper breath before in her life.
If her husband had his way, her precious feet would never touch the earth.
She didn’t even mind getting up early anymore, if it was Remin doing the waking.
Back in Aldeburke, she had hated it; the person waking her was unlikely to be gentle and certainly not someone she liked, so for years she had slept in hidden places and awakened when it suited her.
Remin’s dawn risings had seemed particularly sadistic at first, but that was before she knew that he was the handsomest, sweetest, bravest, most wonderful person that had ever lived. Ever.
Big hands caressed her into wakefulness.
The feel of his bare chest at her back, always warm, solid as a stone wall.
Ophele stretched, mewing with pleasure as his fingers slid over her breasts and moved between her legs, his mouth inscribing a biting caress at the juncture of her neck and shoulder.
Behind her closed eyelids she sensed a dim light, but her sleepy mind wondered no further whether it might be daylight or firelight; all that mattered was …
“Remin,” she murmured, squirming as his fingers found the new spot between her legs that they had discovered a couple days ago.
She was still a little sore from the previous night—having found a new pleasure center, Remin wouldn’t leave it alone—but it felt so good that her breath caught, and he muffled her moan with a kiss.
“Good morning, my wife,” he whispered, his deep voice vibrating into her bones, and his hard length moved between her legs. His hand tightened on her breast, pinching her nipple between his fingers, and both of them sighed as he drew back and stroked against her again.
It felt so good. Normally he would have turned her onto her back and moved over her, but as she met his gaze, the same thought occurred to them simultaneously.
Could we do it this way?
“Yes,” Remin said instantly, his black eyes heating.
Catching under her knee, he angled his body behind her, always game to try something new.
She felt him catch at her opening and then press forward, stinging just a little as she stretched to take him.
But it was an entirely new position, a new pressure, a new friction, and they gasped together as he sank inside.
“I like this,” he said, his voice breathy, and he withdrew and thrust again. “Does it feel good?”
“Yes, yes,” she moaned. It was still so hard to be quiet, especially when his other hand was moving, his fingers circling that spot. “We can do it like this?”
“I don’t see why not.” His hair tickled her neck as he buried his face in her shoulder to muffle a groan. “I never heard that we’re only supposed to do it one way. Ahhh, haaa, you’re squeezing me, wife—”
“I can’t help it when you do that…” The words ended with another gasp and then neither of them could talk anymore, lost in the new sensations and drowning together, which was more or less how they had spent the preceding week.
Was marriage really supposed to be like this?
The unions she had observed at Aldeburke had never hinted at any great passion, but maybe they were just better at hiding it.
Ophele loved the games she and Remin were playing, teasing and touching and discovering so many surprises in each other’s bodies.
Remin liked it when she bit his ears. Ophele melted instantly when he kissed her neck.
At night, she barely even noticed the howls and cacklings of the devils because she was waiting in a fever of impatience for Remin to come home.
Sometimes he didn’t even get all his armor off before he pushed her into bed.
Was she supposed to pretend that she didn’t like it?
None of the romances she had read went further than the wedding, and though Remin promised that other women would soon arrive in the valley, there was still no one she could ask.
Surely, it could not be right to lie to him.
When he was holding her in his arms and looking at her with such love, the last thing she wanted to do was push him away.
It was all so new and wonderful, like living inside a love poem, adoring each other and teasing each other and rousing each other all over again.
Unspoken was the knowledge that they would only have a little time for such play. For as the summer waned toward the harvest and the devils began to return to the mountains, Remin and his men had sworn to follow them and destroy them in their dens.
“You’re not getting up?” she whispered afterward, as they were lying together. Her fingertips traced the straight line of his nose. He had such a handsome nose.
“No.” Alone in their cottage, his face relaxed from its usual stern lines. “Today you get to lie abed as late as you want.”
“Why?”
“It’s your birthday, little owl,” he said, sounding amused. “Did you forget?”
“Oh,” she said, startled. “It is? I mean, you know my birthday?”
“Miche reminded me.”
She had forgotten her birthday. No one had celebrated it since her mother died, and only the Aldeburke cook Azelma had remembered it at all, slipping her a bag of cookies or a small cake to squirrel away.
She wouldn’t have blamed Remin for forgetting when she hadn’t remembered it herself, but the fact that he remembered made her throat tighten.
“Thank you,” she said, a smile curving her lips as he roughly caressed her, drawing her against him until her breath came short and he rolled her over again, tangling his long limbs with hers.
Hours abed with him would have been gift enough, but she should have guessed that Remin would do this as thoroughly as he did everything else. In centuries to come, there would be no room for debate among scholars as to whether there had been a celebration for the Duchess of Andelin’s birthday.
Her first gift was a hot bath drawn by Remin himself, so that she would be fresh for her second: a new silk gown from Mistress Courcy, who had done an excellent job with some very vague instructions.
It was a short-sleeved gown as green as summer leaves and worn without a kirtle, delightfully light and cool, with a skirt short enough to reveal pretty embroidered slippers.
Ophele lifted one small foot to admire the scrolling suns on her shoes, overjoyed.
“Do you like it?” Remin asked, examining her with a refreshed expression. He always liked to see her in green, especially with her gleaming hair falling loose to her hips.
“Yes, I love it.” She beamed up at him and very nearly won another of his rare smiles. She had seen three so far, with teeth and everything. His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled.
There was more. In the kitchen, Master Wen yelled at her and then gave her a basket of raspberry pastries. As they left the stables, they ran into Genon Hengest, who had a small parcel of herbs and spices that he said would make a fragrant, restful tisane in tea.
“It’s not medicinal, but it wouldn’t do His Grace any harm,” said the herbman, leveling a yellow eye at Remin.
“It was supposed to be a gift, not another one of your tonics,” Remin began with some heat. But Ophele, seated before Remin on his black horse with a pastry in one hand and the herbs in the other, lifted it to Remin’s nose.
“No, it’s nice, smell,” she said. There was a whiff of some subtle spice and the pleasant, earthy scent of chamomile. “I smell chamomile, what else?”
“What else would you put in a tea if you wanted a light sleep, my lady?” Genon returned, cheerfully putting her to the test.
“Evening primrose?” she guessed, surprised and pleased by the challenge. He had never asked her to try to apply her small store of herblore before. “And maybe lavender? Valerian would be too strong, wouldn’t it?”
“And a little ginger to warm the blood and add savor,” he said, with another one of his grimacing smiles, the scarred side of his mouth twisting. “Add a pinch of it to your tea in the evenings and it will relax you, without laying you out flat.”
Ordinarily, the gifts one made to a duchess on her birthday tended toward gold, jewels, and precious oils, the more rare and expensive, the better.
But such things were not to be had in the valley, and the humbler gifts Ophele received that year suited her very well.
At the north gate, Sir Tounot was waiting to present her with a dainty belt knife as if he had known she was coming, a gift on behalf of the guards of the watch.
“It would be our disgrace if you ever needed it, my lady,” he said, bowing his curly head. “But we give it in the hopes that you will have a great many more birthdays.”
“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “And please tell everyone else thank you, too.” She lifted a hand to wave at the distant guardsmen on the wall, who were shouting their good wishes.
She and Remin made the same tour of the valley almost every day, pitching in wherever they were needed, and that day there was a present waiting for her at every stop.
The carpenters had made her a set of gorgeous carved combs, the hunters produced two feather fans, and the masons had made necklaces for her from small, polished stone beads.
They were only common stones like jasper, quartz, and agate, but they looked as beautiful as jewels to Ophele.
She put them on at once and thanked them so profusely, even the rough stonemasters blushed like boys.
As they approached the work at the north wall, they came across Master Eugene, bedecked with flowers in celebration of the day and led by a very grudging Jacot of Caillmar.