“It wasn’t me I was thinking of,” the savage replied with a small shake of his head. “If I send half my force along as your escort you won’t have any trouble getting back to your father’s palace, but what if some of those accomplices follow you? If even one or two assassins get into your father’s palace with the intention of hurting me by hurting those close to me, your father, mother, and brother could become targets. The assassins won’t know, you see, that our marriage is over.”

  Elissia was so appalled that she nearly dropped her teacup.

  “But that means if I go back now I could cause the deaths of my entire family!” she blurted. “But wouldn’t the assassins go after me alone rather than anyone else? In their eyes I’d still be your wife and therefore the best target they could choose.”

  “In their place I would kill your family and leave you unharmed,” the savage said, clearly having considered the point. “After last night you would know that the deaths came about because of me, and I would be the natural one for you to blame. Even if our marriage was nothing but a political arrangement, your hatred and disgust would accomplish more for my enemies than your death would. After all, a man can’t be at his best when the woman who shares his bed can’t abide the sight of him.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Elissia moaned, a hand to her head in an effort to stop the dizziness swirling her around. “Obviously I can’t go home now, so where can I go? Back to Ramsond, possibly?”

  “And lead the assassins to my brother?” the savage asked with a sound of ridicule. “Again, they would most likely leave you alive, this time with a different purpose in mind. I would naturally be expected to blame you for my brother’s death, a contention that would be spread far and wide. Then they would be able to kill your family and blame the deaths on me, as a retaliatory gesture in revenge for my brother.

  Outrage and fear would spread through the common people of two kingdoms in addition to the ones in Arvin. The hatred between us would also be two way, making for an even more chaotic situation.”

  “This is a nightmare,” Elissia whispered, wishing she hadn’t eaten anything. Nausea was beginning to rise inside her, right next to fear and desperation.

  “It looks like you’ll have to continue on to Arvin with me,” the savage said after a moment, sounding less than happy about the prospect. “The only problem is, I promised myself that your punishment would continue for as long as you were with me, until you learned the lesson I wanted you to learn. I really hate to break a promise, even one to myself… “

  Elissia hadn’t thought it possible to be even more appalled than she was, but the savage’s words showed her it was perfectly possible. If she tried to leave all alone rather than with an escort, those assassins would have no trouble capturing her. With her to stand behind, they would find it easier to gain entrance to her father’s palace. Killing her family and then blaming the deaths on the savage would do the same harm as in any of the other scenarios he’d mentioned, and that horror would be no one’s fault but hers!

  But to agree to let him continue with that terrible punishment! She could picture how the savage would put her over his knees, pull up her skirt and lower her drawers, then put that bead into her bottom. She would start to squirm immediately, of course, the bead giving her no other choice, and then the savage would start to spank her. The feel of his hand as it smacked her bottom hard, over and over until she wanted to scream like a mad woman, until no other thought filled her mind but the need to have him inside her, stroking hard and fast despite the ache in her seat

  -!

  No, she couldn’t allow that to be done to her again and not for the reason the savage might think. Elissia knew she’d never be able to bear wanting the savage’s body again, desperately needing the lovemaking of a man who felt nothing of actual love for her. It was lust that he felt, nothing but physical desire, and Elissia knew she’d rather be dead than settle for anything less than the kind of love she’d secretly dreamed of. And that, of course, was her only remaining option. If she died right now it would be pointless for the assassins to go after her family. What a fortunate thing she’d kept possession of that dagger…

  “On the other hand, if I break a promise to myself I can always forgive myself,” the savage said just before Elissia spoke the first words of her refusal. “Since you won’t be staying in Arvin any longer than it takes to find out who sent the assassins, you don’t really need to learn any lessons, do you? If you’re ready we can leave now.”

  “Yes, I’m ready,” Elissia said at once, fighting not to show how flustered she felt. She hadn’t expected the savage to change his mind about what he wanted to do to her, and being pulled back from the edge of violent death so abruptly was an unsettling experience. A final ending was still her major aim, but death would be easier to accept and accomplish if it was gentle…

  As soon as she was in the coach and the savage was mounted, their procession headed back for the road they’d been following for days. Elissia fully expected to be bored after a short while had passed, but as soon as they were actually on the road she made an unsettling discovery. Even with the bead nowhere close to her bottom, her body began to … hint that desire was growing anyway. Rather than be bored, Elissia spent the ride silently shouting at herself not to be a fool. Herself, unfortunately, didn’t pay anything like complete attention…

  Chapter 8

  Derand breathed a voiceless sigh of relief after closing the coach door behind Seea, then went to mount his stallion. He’d actually come up with a counter to every protest Seea had made relating to leaving him, but he’d nearly lost the game when he tried to push it too far. He really enjoyed having his wife burn as high for him as he did for her, so he’d tried to maneuver her into continuing with the punishment that would keep putting her into that state.

  But he’d left himself a just-in-case bolt hole, and it was a good thing he did. He’d been able to see that terrible depression about to weigh her down again, so he’d quickly reversed his position. She was now going to Arvin with him willingly, which would hopefully give him enough time to make her change her mind about wanting to leave.

  “How did it go, my king?” Listan asked softly as soon as Derand was in his saddle. “Did the story work as well as we hoped it would?”

  “It certainly did,” Derand agreed, letting himself smile just a bit. “My wife now believes she doesn’t dare go home or anywhere else, or those ‘assassins’ will follow and kill everyone she cares about. I don’t feel particularly good about using her feelings against her, but desperation makes us use whatever tools are available. Have you told the men that we’ll be stopping at my father’s palace rather than going straight to mine?”

  “Yes, the men have been told, my king,” Listan agreed as he urged his mount to pace Derand’s on the way to the road. “And they’ll all be very much on the alert, not against mythical assassins, but against any ambushes that may have been set up. May I suggest that you wait to take lunch until you’ve reached your father’s palace instead of stopping at another inn? We should get there only a short time past noon.”

  “I’d wait even if we arrived a long time past noon,” Derand said with a grimace.

  “Seea’s family may be safe from my enemies, but my own family isn’t. Skallin and his fighters will be fully alert in Ramsond for quite some time yet, but my father and other brothers need to be warned that someone has decided to move against me. Until I find out who that someone is they’re all in danger.”

  Listan nodded without speaking, so Derand touched his stallion with a heel to increase his pace. The faster they reached his father’s palace, the happier he would be.

  Once they crossed the border into Arvin Derand’s fighters closed up around the central party, but they still made really good time. Thanks to their early start they reached Meersond, Derand’s father’s city, even before noon and were immediately allowed through the gates. Another few minutes saw them at the palace, and Derand left Listan to escort Seea inside while he went looking for his father.

  At that time of the day Derand knew where his father probably was, and the guess turned out to be right.

  The door of the small room next to the kitchens was closed, and the kitchen girls went busily about their chores without looking in the room’s direction. That room was used when one or more of the kitchen girls needed punishing, and Derand’s father, King Almis, was the one who gave that punishment.

  Years earlier, Derand’s father had discovered that the girls working in the kitchens were whipped if someone decided they deserved to be punished. Using a whip on mere girls had outraged King Almis, so he’d replaced the practice with one of his own. Every day before noon he went down to the kitchens, and all the girls who merited punishment were brought before him. If the offense was insignificant or an accident, King Almis usually let the girl off with a warning. If the offense was serious, though, the king provided a good, hard spanking.

  As soon as Derand opened the door to the small room he heard the howling as a backdrop to the sound of smacking, and stepping inside provided the picture suggested by the sound. His father sat on a chair with a girl draped over his lap, her skirt raised high and her underdrawers down around her knees. Her pretty round bottom was well-tinged with red, and tears rolled down her cheeks as she howled. The spanking had obviously been going on for a while, so Derand closed the door behind him and stood near the wall until his father was free.

  King Almis had sent his son a surprised smile when Derand first walked into the room, but his big hand hadn’t stopped smacking that round and squirming bottom. The sound produced by his hand coming down showed that there was considerable strength behind each smack, and the girl’s seat got another ten or twelve whacks before Almis finally reached to her underdrawers and pulled them up. Once the underdrawers were secured her skirt came down, and then she was set back on her feet.

  “For your sake, Faela, I hope this session finally teaches you to mend your ways,” Almis said sternly to the girl, who bounced and mewled where she stood but made no effort to rub at her bottom. “If you’re caught bullying the smaller girls a third time, it won’t be my hand warming your bottom. I’ll take the wooden rule to your stubbornness for three days straight, and you won’t be allowed to take your lunch standing up. You’ll have to sit on your aching bottom on the bench with the other girls, and I promise you won’t enjoy the experience. You may return to your work now.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” the girl gasped out, some of her bouncing trying to turn into a curtsey. “I won’t do it again, Your Majesty, I promise I won’t!”

  Derand joined his father in watching the girl hurry to the door and then disappear through it, and then they looked at each other instead.

  “Obviously they’re still not allowed to rub until they’re out of this room,” Derand said with a grin as he moved closer to his now-standing father. “It’s good to see you again, Father.”

  “And you, Derand, or should I say, Your Majesty?” Almis replied with his own grin as he joined Derand in a mutual, back-slapping hug. “I heard that you sent for Skallin, but I still don’t know why you needed him. Didn’t you have enough fighters of your own with you for a simple visit to Sollera?”

  “That simple visit developed some serious complications,” Derand answered as he stepped back. “If you have no other plans I can tell you all about it over lunch.”

  “Done,” Almis agreed with a clap to Derand’s shoulder. “Your mother is off lunching with friends, so we’ll be able to speak privately.”

  “First, I think, we both need to pass along some orders to our people,” Derand said, no longer amused.

  “If Mother is out of the palace her escort needs to be alerted. An assassin tried for me last night at the inn we stopped at, which has to mean that one of my loyal kings isn’t as loyal as he should be.”

  Almis’s amusement died with Derand’s, and he quickly led the way up to the main part of the palace.

  Listan waited with the men of Derand’s personal escort, so Derand took Listan aside and gave him instructions about Seea. Derand had finally become aware of how badly Seea had been eating, and she needed more than this morning’s breakfast to stay alive. Listan agreed to stress the point with Seea that he, Derand, would need her help to find the person responsible for sending out the assassins, an effort that would assure the safety of her family. If that didn’t make the stubborn mule of a woman start to eat properly again, Listan was to tell Derand at once.

  With all matters of security taken care of, Almis led Derand to his apartment and the small, private dining room it contained. Fresh tea as well as a number of covered plates already waited for them along with servants ready to give them whatever they wanted. Almis acknowledged their bows and then dismissed them before gesturing Derand into joining him at the table. Derand sat down and then poured tea for them both.

  “I thought your purpose in going to Sollera was to collect your bride,” Almis remarked as Derand poured. “If Elissia is with you, she ought to be here eating with us.”

  “Elissia is with me, but things aren’t going well between us,” Derand admitted after no more than a heartbeat worth of hesitation. “That’s why I wanted this time alone with you, to talk about her as well as this new problem. Let me tell you the whole story from the beginning.”

  Derand started from the time he first got to Sollera, then took the tale all the way through to the night before. He left out nothing in the way of detail, and his father listened quietly until he was through.

  “So Skallin is now King of Ramsond and you have a wife who doesn’t believe you love her,” Almis summed up then. The food hadn’t been touched, and Derand wasn’t sure he had anything of an appetite left. “Even when Elissia was a little girl I had the feeling that she would be special, and that’s why I agreed to having you married to her. You do understand what you did wrong, I hope?”

  “With her involved, everything I do seems to be wrong,” Derand answered glumly, toying with his teacup.

  “She has to learn that I’ll punish her if she does something she shouldn’t, but every time I do punish her she seems to fall into that life-eating depression. And she seems to think that if I punish her I can’t love her. I suppose I should have waited until I got her home this last time, but I was trying to anticipate the trouble instead of simply waiting for it to happen.”

  “You were trying to make her into a sweet, obedient wife, the most foolish move I’ve ever seen you make,” Almis corrected with a small headshake, partially echoing something Seea had said. “You fell in love with the woman as she actually

  is, seeing her differences and strengths and appreciating them, and then you promptly tried to erase both things. If you truly mean to keep her as your wife, you have to let her act as her nature demands and save the punishments for the times she overdoes it. I’m willing to bet she’ll give you more than a few chances to punish her, and if she deserves the punishment she won’t resent what you do. She may not like it, but she won’t resent it - and she won’t become depressed.”

  “So now all I have to do is figure out a way to get close to her again,” Derand muttered, aware of how glum he sounded. “I acted cool and distant this morning to keep her from seeing that I’d changed my mind about letting her go, but I don’t want to be cool and distant. I want to take her in my arms and make wild and passionate love to her while she joins me in the same way, but I can’t think of how to accomplish that.”

  “Let’s have our meal and we can think while we eat,” Almis suggested, reaching over to the serving cart for the first of the covered dishes. “This food is still hot, but it won’t be for much longer. You can’t expect to think constructively on an empty stomach.”

  Derand smiled faintly at that and accepted his portion of the meal, and then the two of them ate in silence.

  Derand chewed through ideas as he chewed the food, and by the time he finished he’d actually come up with a plan.

  “I may have something that will work, Father, but I’ll need help from you and Mother,” Derand said when he finally looked up. “It’s risky in that Seea may figure out what I’m doing, but it’s probably my only chance.”

  “Then you have to try the plan,” his father answered, obviously having finished eating some time ago and now only sipped tea. “If you’ll tell me what parts your mother and I are supposed to play, I’ll pass along the word as soon as your mother gets back.”

  Derand explained his idea in detail, and his father nodded as he listened before making a suggestion of his own. The suggestion was a good one so Derand adopted it at once, then sat back to finish his own tea.

  Now all he had to do was try the plan on Seea - as soon as he got up the nerve to make the try?

  Elissia let Listan help her out of the coach while she wondered where they were. The fighters around them had dismounted, but they looked more alert than at home.

  “I’ve been asked to tell you, Your Majesty, that we’ll be staying here in Meersond until tomorrow morning,” Listan said as soon as she was on the ground. “My king needs to warn his father about the assassins, and staying the night here should be safer than stopping at an inn. This city is, in a manner of speaking, out of our way, so detouring here just might ruin our enemy’s plans.”

  “Yes, he does need to warn his father,” Elissia realized aloud. “And it might even be a good idea to warn my father, if your king can do it without letting any watchers know it’s happening.”

  “His Majesty will probably ask King Almis to send a rider who won’t be noticed,” Listan responded as he put a hand to her arm to guide her up the steps and into the palace. “Sending a messenger in black leather would defeat the purpose.”

  That made sense to Elissia, so she simply let herself be shown into the palace. Everything, including the city, looked very much like her own father’s city of Sollera, a revelation Elissia hadn’t been expecting.