Chapter XXIX #2
Fia reached out and placed a hand on the Priest’s bare chest, and her touch felt like fire.
At first, she’d been a distillation of the goddess to him—Raea made manifest, in all her brilliant and stubborn glory.
Now, she was both more and less than that.
Fia was herself only: a woman with weaknesses and shortcomings like any other, but with a force of will and a taste for living like none the Priest had ever known.
He wanted everything about her—her mulish, sharp temper; her refusal to abandon those she cared for; her ruthlessness in protecting the very same.
He wanted her so badly it ached within him, resting alongside the knowledge that he couldn’t save Ariana, and the two twined together, becoming the same pain.
Fia, after all, had never known a definitive failure. And the Priest was deathly afraid that losing Ariana would damage her in some way, dimming the radiant fire at her core.
When Fia spoke again, there was a slight smile in her voice.
“I will stop trusting you the moment I leave this mountain. I will trust Nikolau forever, whether I can keep watch over him or not. But that’s only because I understand him completely—he’s easily known, and straightforward in his tempers and desires.
You are a different soul entirely. I’ll never fully know you, as you’ll never fully know me, and I couldn’t feel for Nikolau the depth and breadth of what I might one day feel for you.
I can grow fond of what I’m able to control, but I can’t love it, not truly.
I can only love those who are equal to me—who may choose to yield, but could just as easily force my own submission.
So I suppose the matter rests in your hands.
Which would you rather receive from me someday, Silas Inver? Perfect trust, or love?”
At the sound of his name coming from Fia’s lips, a shiver ran through the Priest. When she’d finished speaking, he had only one reply. He reached up, fitting a hand to the warm, arching back of her neck, beneath the thick rope of her heavy braid, and claimed Fia’s mouth with his own.
The Priest kissed her slowly at first, reveling in the softness of her, the sunlight and honey taste of her lips and tongue against his own.
If this was the only reward he gained for two decades of servitude shackled to an Inver throne, it would have to be enough—to kiss a woman he’d once considered an embodiment of the sun.
But as always, the sun was surpassingly generous, and intended to give him more.
It was Fia who pushed closer to him, pulling loose the drawstrings at the front of her kirtle and turning aside a little so that his mouth traveled along the line of her jaw, the curve of her throat, the velvet softness of the tops of her breasts, still bound by a strip of linen.
With a single fluid motion, Fia lifted herself, shifting until she was on his lap, her legs straddling his waist. Everything in the Priest caught fire as he raised his face to her and met her mouth again, their kisses deep enough now to drown in.
Fia grinned wickedly as she kissed him, and moved against the long, hard swell of the Priest between her legs until he couldn’t help the groan that escaped his lips.
“Now touch me,” Fia murmured, and he obliged, sliding a hand beneath the linen that bound her swollen breasts. Two of his fingertips brushed her nipple, and a stifled, yearning sound broke from Fia, an echo of the Priest’s own longing.
The Priest took her breast in his hand, and he could hear from the ragged, wanting cadence of her breathing that his touch was a sweet torment.
She kissed him as if she was starved for it, her hands on either side of his shorn head, the movement of her body against him growing rhythmic.
They were both wholly abandoned to the moment, out beyond themselves, wanting nothing but to sink further into each other’s welcoming heat.
From the bassinet near the bed, an irritable squall escaped Justus.
Fia froze, her forehead pressed to the Priest’s, and then it came—the full and unhappy cry of Honoria’s infant king.
The Priest tried and failed to hide a smile as Fia caught her breath suddenly, and the warm trickle of her milk let down.
“Silith’s pearl,” she ground out. “Why now?”
But the Priest was laughing, a low, amused sound.
“He’s Orden’s son,” the Priest said as Fia pulled herself away and scooped up Justus, then settled onto the bed.
She put the little king to her breast, and the soft sounds of Justus’s contented feeding filled the room, which had previously echoed to the precursors of passion.
Getting to his feet, the Priest went to Orden’s washstand and cleaned his hands, then pulled on the shirt and doublet Fia had given him.
He’d put off going out to Hadrian and the nobles long enough, which meant he needed to gather his courage and tell Fia about the queen. Not all of it, but the necessary part.
“You look different,” Fia said as the Priest fastened his doublet. “More like an Inver. I’m not sure I like it.”
“You put me in this room, in these clothes, and on Honoria’s throne,” the Priest said. “So you’ll just have to live with everything that follows.”
Fia let out a peevish sigh. “I suppose. And it will all be worth it, when you and Justus are safe here, and Ariana and I are back at our cloisters where we belong.”
There was no question in her mind but that he would pardon Ariana. Why else had he ascended, if not to save their beleaguered queen?
Stay with me, was what the Priest wished to say. I want you here. I need you here.
Instead, he did the inevitable.
“We have… a problem,” the Priest told Fia reluctantly.
“Ariana is safe for now, but Hadrian won’t hear of clemency for her.
And he isn’t wrong. If you truly want me to hold Honoria for Justus, I can’t begin my regency by issuing a pardon to someone who’s confessed to murdering the last king.
It’s not the Inver way—if you kill one of our people, you must be strong enough to avoid punishment for the crime, or clever enough to lay blame elsewhere.
We were fortunate in being able to take the throne as we did, but the most powerful of the Invers aren’t at court—they viewed Orden as an indisputable fact of life and an insurmountable obstacle, and have contented themselves with remaining on their own estates, in their own provinces, and amassing wealth and private armies there.
Hadrian is the most highly placed and influential of such nobles that I could count on as an ally, but there are others like him, who would think nothing of biding their time and moving against me if I show weakness.
Pardoning Ariana would be a death sentence for Justus and I. ”
“You’d have the support of the cloister still, and Hadrian, and the guard under Nikolau. Wouldn’t that be enough of a deterrent to anyone seeking to overthrow you?”