Cadeyrn eyed me suspiciously as I held out a crabapple to him, taking care to extend my fingers in line with my flattened palm, and offering him my most charming smile. But he stood imperviously out of reach and ignored my attempt to lure him forward for a scratch. He shot an unimpressed snort at me and lifted his cavalier head even higher, staring down his nose at me from a lofty height. I had been coaxing him sweetly for a while now and was starting to take the horse's rebuff quite to heart.

"Come here you dull-witted beast! I only want to scratch your head!" I was of a mind to throw the blasted fruit at him, but to my amazement he stepped forward and plucked the apple from my palm, crunching noisily on the flesh as I smiled triumphantly. "Ahh, so you will respond when I bluster at you. Tis duly noted, you ill-tempered savage," I winked.

I reached a steady but confidant hand up to his forelocks, rubbing him vigorously behind the ears and down his neck. This charger, in particular, was as infamous as his master. Thankfully Lucian was not known to bite unpredictably, as Caderyn was, so I kept my ministrations brief for I would as soon not incur another injury just to appease the horse's capricious whims — on the likely chance he decided to have a taste of my fingers.

"I do believe I've tamed you, Cadeyrn," I giggled as he leaned over the stall and snorted into my hair as if to disagree gently.

"You believe that if you wish," came an all too familiar, deep voice, "but plying him with apples and honeyed words will not ensure you his affections; I warrant it takes a little more than that to domesticate the beast..."

As Lucian entered my sphere, my core constricted with sybaritic warmth and my heartbeat accelerated into the habitual tempo it always assumed when my husband was near me — a chronic disorder that I had presumed would lessen the longer I knew him and the more I became accustomed to his presence. On the contrary, I had come to realize that he affected me more so now than he ever did before, notwithstanding the fact that we had now been married almost a month.

"You are wrong. He is completely enamored with my touch and has never surfeited on anything more to his liking." I grinned brazenly.

"Are we still talking about my horse, Aria?"

I could feel Lucian at my back now, though he did not touch me. I shivered visibly as his whispered innuendo rolled deliciously over the skin behind my right ear. He did not need to touch me, for the hairs at my nape came alive suddenly and reached out toward him of their own volition, alerting me to his nearness, as though a thunderstorm were brewing. However, instead of cold air, the likes of which are always prevalent before a tempest unleashes its chaos, I was inundated with heat.

"You look tired, Aria. Are you not sleeping well of a night?" he said in a droll timbre.

"Verily I am not. Would that I did not have such a nocturnal sleeping partner." My smile grew all the more wicked at the thought of what I next would suggest. "Mayhap I should ensconce myself elsewhere tonight, so that I might better enjoy my slumber undisturbed." I turned in his arms to face him, bringing my arms up around his neck and threading my fingers through his thick, unruly curls. "And unmolested..."

"Unfortunately for you, madam, I can find no rest unless you are close by." With that, he brought his lips down and pressed them hungrily onto my own, pulling back only briefly to conclude, "Therefore, where you go, I too must follow."

Without further ado, Lucian pulled me into Hagan's stall, barely relinquishing my mouth, and when he did allow me breath, it was only to assure me that he had sent everyone away. I took him to mean that he had dismissed the farriers and grooms because of his planned seduction of me. I grinned as he angled my head back gently, using my long braid as a pulley, and grazed his teeth lightly over the base of my throat before he moved on to kiss me avidly behind my ear. He then swept his left thumb torturously over the hardened peak of my breast, drawing my breathless shudder for it was no less intense — and no less effective — for all the layers of cloth that lay between us.

"Lucian!" I heard Caine shouting from the stable entrance and gasped at the intrusion, swatting at the hand that was still lifting my gown and kirtle out of the way.

Lucian gave a frustrated growl as his brother called to him again, and then another when Carac's drawl was heard the next moment.

"Methinks he has trapped himself a little dove and seeks to gentle it whilst we assume his duties for the day," Carac chided.

He tsk-tsked with a shaking head and mock disapproval as he appeared at Hagan's stall door, peering over the top with naught but amused apathy. Fortunately, I had, by this time, tidied the disarray that Lucian had wrought with his ravishing fingers.

"Father awaits outside, should I erm... advise him of your delay?" Caine had now also popped into view. "Well, well! hello, Aria." He winked at me and I blushed all the more; if such was even possible.

Godwin and Carac had been gone for over a fortnight, a score and one day at least, and — having only just returned to Nørrdragor — it was his habit to inspect his estate and visit the tenants after any length of absence. I had not, till the moment he was gone, appreciated the extent to which I would miss him; his calming, stalwart presence was ever a reassuring force. I had since dreaded the meal times, where Fendrel ruled supreme, in a hall gone tangibly awry. It had been devoid of Godwin's sagacity and steady reserve. Carac too had been missed and Nørrdragor itself had seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when its master returned.

"Out!" Lucian shoved them on their way, the both of them crowing lewdly as they departed. He then turned around with a long-suffering sigh. "Thwarted again by my brother. I shall have to tie a bell around his neck. Perhaps a little tighter than he will feel is comfortable," said he testily.

Leaning in for a last, chaste kiss, he finally left me standing on unsteady legs, my hands gripping the stall door for support as I watched him go. I turned toward Hagan who was eyeing me with pious disapproval, but the censure — obstructing his stolid brown eye — did not impress me in the least for he was masticating his feed rather diligently, jowls moving in opposite directions as he ground his horse-bread into a soggy pulp. That act alone, as of a stolid cow, dispelled most of the reproof that he wished to convey.

"Not you too!" I laughed as I began running my hands through his long, silvery mane. A few short minutes later, I heard Cadeyrn grunt in displeasure ere I noticed a set of footsteps approaching again, and I grinned with alacrity for I was sure it was Lucian come to take once last meed from my lips.

"Back so soon?" said I coyly.

"Aria?"

I whirled around, my smiled instantly expunged. Instead, a scowl immediately etched its way across my brow as I pressed my back against my palfrey's solid flank.

"What do you want!" I demanded crossly.

"I wish only to apologize!" Thomas held his hands up in supplication, his woebegone expression easing the austerity from my glare a small degree. "Please listen to what I have to say," he beseeched and I nodded for him to enter.

What can there be left to say? I scoffed internally, but said naught aloud for he seemed nervous to be here, as he well should be.

If Carac found him so near me... but that did not bare thinking of! I still thought of Thomas as my brother, albeit he did not obviously see me thus, and my heart softened toward him still further. He stepped inside, his manner agitated and tense. I was not used to seeing him this way and wished fervently that we could turn back time and be as we once were — best friends and confidantes. I did so miss my friend.

"Thomas, if you are found here..." I let the statement go unfinished, but it was enough; the threat weighed heavily enough. I would let him use his own imagination and hopefully it was prolific enough to fulfill the rest of my warning.

"There is no one about. We are quite alone, I assure you. We will not be caught," he reassured me, or himself more likely. Either way, I did not like the sound of that one bit and now regretted Lucian sending the servants away.

"Thomas, say what it is you came here to say and then go." His demeanor changed slightly to that of petulance as I hastened him to speak.

"You speak as though you are not happy to see me." He studied me thoroughly, a calculating glance sweeping over the length of me from my head to my slippers. In hindsight I suppose I should have considered the cagey set of his shoulders and the erratic darting of his eyes as he scoured my body — all these signs, I would realize later, might have been considered a harbinger of what was yet to come.

"You loved me once, Aria. Do you not love me still?" He looked rearward again to assure himself the stable corridor was yet deserted.

"Of course I do, Thomas-"

However, before I had a chance to explain the manner of my fraternal regard, he pounced on me, his lunge knocking me to the hay-covered floor with an agonizing jolt and causing Hagan to back away with a whinnied fright.

Ere I had a mind to scream for help, or shout vengeful anathemas at him, he shoved his hand over my mouth roughly; a look of desperation in his once beloved eyes.

"Shhh, Aria. Lucian will never know! You have already lain with him. We can be together now; it shall be our secret."

I despised the direction whither his mind was bending. His lascivious intimation shocked me fiercely into a combative state. I bucked furiously, but he was larger and heavier than I — his manic recklessness adding an edge to his strength and, although I might have beat him when we were still children, his steely hands yielded not to my hysterical struggles.

Thomas fumbled ruthlessly at my skirts, his urgency spurring my panic-stricken heart into my throat, and I became like a woman possessed, writhing and convulsing in terror. Of a sudden, I felt something forceful and terrible rise up from some primitive depth within my center. A keening roar vibrated soundlessly through me as though I were a berserker and fueled, at once, with a dangerous bloodlust that yearned for violence.

As Thomas groped at my breast and grappled with the uncooperative ties at his braies, I gave an almighty shove that sent him flying violently into the door at the opposite end of the spacious box stall. I blinked, confused, and then looked down at my hands as if to assure myself that they were mine and no one else's.

The groaning brought me back to myself. Thomas had hit his skull against the hard wood and was now slumped on the floor amid the rushes, clutching at his head. I watched, as one disconnected from her own body, as the blood dribbled down the side of his face. He too blinked in confusion, endeavoring to compel the dimness from his dwindling vision, and focused a tortured, grief-stricken pair of eyes on me, before throwing himself onto the floor to weep.

The need to charge at him viciously was still fogging my rationale and it was all I could do to hold myself back instead of ripping Thomas apart, but his keening soon dispelled my wrath.

At length the appalling desire to kill receded, into the black depth whence it had surged, as though it had been nothing more than a cool wave, erasing my beastly essence from the present as it retreated back into the foam.

"Have you completely lost hold of your senses, you oafish bastard!" My voice seemed not my own, it was deeper and laced with a feral bite. These were the least of the curses I would heap on him, but I was too furious to speak further.

"I did not wish to hurt you, Aria," he sobbed into his hands. "I love you, I swear it! I could never harm you, believe me!"

"Well, isn't this an interesting development."

I jerked my head up as Fendrel moved into view, from where he'd been evidently concealed outside Hagan's stall. Thomas' face had turned white with the horrified realization of what this meant for him. "You there!" Fendrel signaled to someone, an overdue groom perhaps, with an imperious wave towards the other end of the hallway. "Fetch your master here at once." He fastened his hateful glare back onto Thomas, a slow, insidious smirk transforming his jaded physiognomy into something preternaturally hideous.

"Uncle, let me explain-" I begged helplessly, yet his next words forestalled what I might have said.

"I believe," he drawled, "we have a problem, don't we Thomas. Is not rape punishable by death in the north?" That said, I watched in horror as Thomas sobbed anew, collapsing to floor as he did so.

"He did not rape me, Your Grace!" I shouted over my friend's vociferous weeping.

"Be that as it may, he is guilty by reason of intent."





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