Beneath the Thirteen Moons Read online

  Mahri grimaced. That she’d Bond with anyone, much less a Royal, was laughable. She’d given up her freedom once, and although not Bonded she’d given her heart to her lifemate and her soul to little Tal’li, and lost them both. If she thought that there was even the slightest chance that this physical attraction could develop into something more—she’d never risk that kind of despair again.

  She shook her head, stood and splayed her legs on deck, Saw into the water, the strings and bits and dots, and cradled her craft along the surface of the froth. Scanned the channel for a pale head, an even smaller brown one, and noticed with alarm the several odd humps that weren’t rocks.

  They’d stumbled on an entire nest of skulkers then. She shuddered with a moment of weakness at the fear that she’d been too late for Jaja and Korl. That they’d already gotten sucked into one of those powerful maws that waited just below the surface, were sliced and flayed by the rows of jagged teeth that encircled the mouth of the beast.

  Mahri couldn’t even curse, the terror swelled so strongly within her. She frantically Saw into the water, kept the boat steady, Looked through the skulkers for the Patterns that meant Jaja and Korl. And realized the fear for the one was as strong as her fear for the other… but of course, she needed Korl to Heal the village.

  The boat listed to the side and she swayed with the movement, glimpsed the hand that flailed at the rail before disappearing again. Shifted her sight to norm and saw them; Korl struggling to get a hold of the boat, his silk collar clutched in a death-grip by Jaja’s fingers. With a mental heave Mahri used the water to fling them onto the deck. She watched with anxiety as they both lay gasping and choking up enormous amounts of the channel, but seemingly unhurt.

  Jaja shook the water from his scales, crawled to Mahri and slowly climbed the braid of her hair, curling his tail around her neck and huddling on her shoulder. Korl sat back, head bowed, arms slung atop his bent knees, and just breathed. With profound relief she switched to the Sight to use the Power to steer around the humps of skulkers, through the white rapids until they reached calmer waters.

  Mahri Saw where one body of water mingled with another, knew they traveled far from any mapped passages or any of her own routes. Currents flowed and shifted in opposing directions; she could glimpse other channels within a stone’s throw of their own through the massed trunks of the sea trees, yet still recognized nothing.

  If I can find one familiar passage, she thought, I’ll know the way to the village—but how long before that happens when I know only the general direction to go? A full night and half the morning gone, and a journey with unknown hazards ahead. While the fever spreads through my village.

  The water gentled to a blue mirror and Mahri had to churn it to move the boat along. She couldn’t pole, had locked her joints just to keep her standing upright, using only enough Power to blunt the pain in her body.

  She felt Korl’s eyes on her—how could she not? But took her time before she met them. Water still clung to his lashes, making them thicker, the pale green of his eyes even more vivid. By-the-moons, she thought with a groan. My body’s in too much pain to respond to that face.

  “You’re a Wilding,” he said, his deep voice making the title sound like an accusation. “No water-rat can chew as much root as you have and still be standing to wield the Power. How much did she pay you, anyway?”

  “Who? What do you mean?”

  His eyes narrowed. He looks incredibly sexy, thought Mahri helplessly, when he’s angry.

  “Don’t play stupid,” he snapped. “It doesn’t suit you. How much did S’raya pay you to kidnap me? Enough to buy a whole lot of root, apparently.” Korl gestured towards the pouch at his waist. “And why bother to save my life—unless you intend to try and ransom me back. Hate to disappoint you, but…”

  Mahri’s eyes widened with surprise. How many enemies does a prince have anyway? But she asked the only question that mattered at this particular moment. “Who’s S’raya?”

  “She didn’t tell you she’s my sister, did she?” he asked, and then did the most extraordinary thing. He pulled the thong from around his head and shook back the hair from his face. Shimmering droplets sprayed about his feet and the move whipped the curled strands of hair away to expose his throat. A gesture that surely many a man had made, but by-the-thirteen moons he turned it into the most provocative thing Mahri had ever seen. Her lower half throbbed in response and she gripped the bone staff until her knuckles showed white.

  She’d have to stop doing this to herself. Focus, she thought. S’raya isn’t a scorned girlfriend, which could be a good thing. But his sister? What kind of family did he have, anyway?

  “This has nothing to do with politics,” she managed to say. “I needed a Healer and I just happened to pick your door.”

  He reached up and tied the thong of mosk-leather back around his head. “You expect me to believe that?”

  Mahri felt the root’s Power ebb from within her. Blast it, she’d need his help if they were going to make it to the village. She needed to rest.

  “Believe it!” she snapped. “I had no intention of kidnapping a Royal. I would’ve dropped you over the balcony of the Healer’s Tree if I’d have known it.”

  Prince Korl stood, the thin material of his spider-silk sleeping clothes still wetly clinging to every part of his body. “If I remember rightly, that’s precisely what you did.”

  Mahri tried not to smile at his words or pant at the ridges of his body. “I… I couldn’t think of anything else.” She shrugged. “Sorry.”

  He steadily advanced toward her and she tried not to admire how quickly he’d gained his sea legs.

  “Why exactly,” he asked, “did you need to kidnap a Healer? Couldn’t you have knocked on the door and asked for one or is that too easy for you?”

  You patronizing, thought Mahri, arrogant, ignorant… Prince! How her lust for him turned to anger. “Tell me, Healer. Had I come to your door and asked you to travel in a rootrunner’s boat to a village in the swamps, to cure a virulent fever, what would’ve been your response?”

  His mouth dropped open. He had even white teeth, she noted. Of course.

  “You’re a smuggler?” he asked, with a hint of wicked admiration. He stepped back and eyed her up and down, as if seeing her for the first time.

  Mahri fisted hands on hips. Why did people who lived in luxury think that those who didn’t made them somehow exciting? She had no false illusions about what he looked at. Her vest of snar-scales with its matching calf-high leggings exposed most of her dark, freckled skin. Although impervious to water and of rugged endurance, she couldn’t imagine that snar-scales would be the fabric of choice for most of the women at Court that he’d be used to seeing. He slept in spider-silk himself!

  Mahri knew she had a nice face, heart-shaped, with slightly slanted olive-green eyes and freckles across the bridge of a narrow nose. She stood tall, lean, and too muscular; her biceps bulged from constant poling. Her dark golden-red hair refused to be tamed by the long braid down her back, constantly escaping its fetters and flying around her face. Her feet had never known shoes.

  And although her lifemate, and recently that rascal Vissa, marveled at the expanse of her chest, she knew it would be too… much for a cultured Royal.

  Yet when she stared defiantly at him the look on his face told her he liked what he saw.

  Oh sure, thought Mahri, something different. A peasant water-rat that had dock-side language and fish clothes. If he’d passed her in the street, he’d sweep his robes aside to keep them from getting sullied. Well, she was just as good as any silk-attired, powdered-faced court lady, whether he knew it or not.

  He stepped closer and she could smell him again. That indefinable scent that made her want to crawl into his skin.

  With a gasp of surprise she sagged to the deck. The root in her veins had spent itself and the pain from her injuries, and the overdose, made her whimper. Jaja had hopped down when she collapsed and chattered up at K
orl in accusation.

  “I’ll take care of her,” he assured her pet.

  Mahri gritted her teeth. “I don’t need taking care of,” she ground out.

  Korl ignored her and picked her up, which set the boat to rocking and almost capsized them into the channel. Mahri would’ve vented her disgust at him but her traitorous body had already responded to his arms around her. She instinctively snuggled her face into his neck, remembering the sight of him shaking his hair. The muscles in his arms tightened shellhard but his skin felt soft and warm, radiating a spicy scent.

  She melted into him and would have been horrified if he’d recoiled from her reaction. But he didn’t. Korl just froze with her in his arms, the boat gliding down the narrow channel, the soft swish of the current and their harsh breathing the only sound in the sudden stillness of the morning.

  “I believe that you don’t know S’raya,” he whispered in her ear. “But I definitely don’t trust you.”

  Mahri groaned inwardly at the sound of his voice when it gentled. The hair rose on the back of her neck at the feel of his breath against her ear. “Nor I, you.”

  “But we need each other,” he continued. “Even if you’re telling the truth, S’raya will take advantage of my absence. She’s enlisted a Master Seer—I felt his filthy Touch from that warrior’s ship—and she’d be stupid if she didn’t try to make her move now.”

  “Mmhhm,” agreed Mahri, not knowing what he spoke of, not particularly caring as long as he continued to hold her and this feeling that shivered through her went on.

  “I don’t suppose,” he mused, “That you’d return me to the city—get another Healer?”

  She went rigid in his arms.

  He sighed. “I didn’t think so.” He took the few careful steps over to the narwhal tent and gently laid her in it. Their eyes met, pale to dark, and his hands lingered on hers. “I know I’m right about one thing—you are a Master, aren’t you?”

  Mahri shrugged.

  “Why don’t you heal your own people?”

  She bit her lip then sighed. “All the Power, all the zabba, but none of the knowledge.”

  “Of course,” he replied, all arrogance. “A Wilding! Amazing though, that the Seer Tree Masters haven’t captured, er, discovered you before this.”

  She feebly pushed his hands off her own. “Yes, amazing isn’t it?”

  And how long, she wondered, is it going to take you to realize that I can’t ever bring you home? That I could never trust you enough? Even if you didn’t remember the location of the village, you could still describe me to them, a Wilding with non-Royal blood that can tolerate the root to a Master level. They’d hunt me down and kill me, for not only must they control the supply of root but those who can use it as well.

  Then an alien voice sounded in Mahri’s mind, something about the Prince of Changes… that he must rule and she had to help make that happen. Stop it, she told herself. It was only a dream.

  Korl rose to his feet, fished some of her zabbaroot from her pouch that still lay down his hip. “The quicker we get to your village, the quicker I can heal your people and return to the Palace Tree, right?”

  She nodded up at him again, watched in fascination as the tiny curls at the corners of his mouth fleshed out into a full smile. A shallow cleft appeared in his cheek, his nose tilted up even more, and small wrinkles radiated from the corners of his eyes. When would she stop noticing every little detail about him?

  “I can help Heal you again,” he said, popping a small piece of root into his mouth. He hesitated a moment. “Or I can hurt you even more, force you to tell me the way out of this maze of a swamp, back to the city.”

  Mahri felt her heart stop. A skilled Healer could inflict creative types of pain, with little damage to their victim. But only a Dark Seer would dare such a thing, and she’d thought—no she knew he wasn’t of that ilk. Besides, she’d endure whatever it took to save what was left of her family from the agonies of the plague. Again, she really had no choice.

  “Hurt me,” she said, her gaze locked on his, challenging him to do it. His eyes flashed with sparks of Power and a quick rage. He leaned over her and she couldn’t be sure what he intended to do, yet still when he ran his hands over her body she responded, arching her back towards him, groaning at the shafts of pain that resulted from the movement. The anger faded from his face to be replaced with that indefinable something that existed between them.

  And the pain ceased, to be replaced with the warmth of his touch. His large hands moved up her abdomen, across her ribs, slowly inched higher with the definite absence of a Healer’s dispassionate touch. A moan rose from the back of her throat. She thrust her breasts at him when she felt the warmth of his hands cover them and heard him gasp in response.

  His fingers trembled up to her neck. He traced the strong curve of her jaw and the sweep of her nose then plunged his hands into her hair, jerking her face up to meet his. This time when their lips met, it wasn’t a slow, gentle touch. Hot, soft flesh met her own with a fierceness that left her weak, aware that she’d wanted to taste him in this way, but unable to match his strength. The root, and his touch, combined to sap what remaining stamina she had.

  And he did hurt her. His mouth ground into hers with numbing force, his tongue plunged into her mouth again and again. Mahri tried to respond, frustrated that she couldn’t, for she wanted to hurt him back. It felt incredibly good.

  Korl let her go so abruptly that her head snapped backwards. She would’ve taught him a new dockside curse but for the look on his face. A drowning man coming up for air. He sat back on his heels, let that mask of arrogance he constantly adopted fall back over his features.

  “That shouldn’t have happened,” he said, avoiding her gaze. Korl rose to his feet, hands fisted at his sides. “And won’t again—I promise.”

  Is that right? wondered Mahri. The High Born Prince shouldn’t have lowered himself to kiss a filthy water-rat? As if it weren’t already hard enough to resist him, now he’d thrown a challenge like that at her! As her body gave in to exhaustion, she vowed to see how easy it would be to break the promise of a prince.

  Chapter 4

  MAHRI BECAME AWARE OF KORL’S WHISTLED TUNE and pretended to continue sleeping just so he wouldn’t stop. She’d never heard such a melody before, the rise and fall totally unlike a dockside chanty, the low tones of it making her shiver. The soft splash of his paddling blended with the rhythm of it, and although she felt the urgency of her task she hurt all over, and didn’t open her eyes until she felt a soft brush against her cheek.

  She blinked when another gentle something fell across her brow, attempted to flick it away but her muscles were still too weak. Mahri lay still while clouds of white petals rained from the branches above, covering her with a blanket of soft perfume.

  The whistling stopped. “What kind of flowers are those?” asked Korl.

  “How should I know,” replied Mahri. “I’ve never seen anything like them before.”

  She studied the vines overhead, the way they twisted and snaked from one tree to another, creating a tunnel out of the channel they drifted through. Thousands of large buds hung from every lavender vine, pulsing out balls of pure white which exploded into flowers that dropped their petals before they could hit the surface of the water.

  The faded sunshine that filtered through the branches told Mahri that she’d slept most of the day, and since the flowers didn’t seem to pose an immediate threat she concentrated instead on just standing up.

  “Jaja,” she muttered. The little monk-fish scampered to her side, batting at the petals with obvious delight. “Root,” she told him. He splayed his empty webbed hands in front of her face.

  Mahri frowned. “What d’you mean, you can’t find any?”

  Jaja spun and pointed an accusing finger at the prince.

  She looked at him and he raised an eyebrow. “You’re not getting anymore,” he said, and patted the bulging pouch that still hung at his hip. “I’ll
get us to the village, you just show me the way.”

  “Nobody gives me orders,” snapped Mahri, and with a surge of anger managed to lift her upper body off the deck, tumbling a pile of whiteness into her lap.

  Korl regarded her as if she were some rude courtier. “I just gave you a command and expect you to follow it. If you won’t respect that coming from your prince, then consider it advice from your Healer.”

  “I don’t need your advice. I don’t need anyone telling me what to do.”

  He laid down the paddle and crossed his arms over his chest, catching petals of white in their crook. “Everyone’s got someone telling them what to do, even a prince. What makes you think you’re so special?”

  He’s patronizing me, thought Mahri, like I’m some kind of spoiled brat. And her anger at this man who’d grown up with everything she lacked loosened her tongue. “I grew up on the water, had only my father to guide me until I was ten. Then even he left me and I was on my own. With no one to tell me what to do.”

  Korl looked taken aback, his arms fell loosely to his sides, scattering his own bounty of flowers. “What about this village? Don’t you have family there?”

  “My lifemate’s,” she murmured. “For a time, I did have someone who cared enough to try and tell me what to do.”

  But not for long, Mahri thought. Not long enough to get used to that sensation, to appreciate it. So that when it was gone she could only feel relief at being free again. And a terrible guilt because of that feeling.

  Korl’s face reddened and the curls at the edges of his mouth turned downward. “I’ve had plenty of people telling me what to do, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they cared. In the palace everyone has a hidden agenda.”

  Mahri’s arms trembled and she sank back. This conversation had become dangerously intimate and she’d end it now. “I can’t even move. I just need enough zabbaroot to stand and pole.” She truly hated justifying her actions to anyone. She blew petals away from her mouth. “You have to save your Power for Healing the village. I’ll make sure we get there.” It was absurd, really, that he thought she’d put her trust in him. He’d never even been in the swamps much less navigated through their dangers.