Page 21 of The Kingdom of Flames

Encarmine carried her, his circlet upon his brow.

“You’re alive,” Celestine whispered. If this was a dream, she didn’t want to wake herself.

Encarmine nodded and carried her down a grand hallway of sigils and coats of arms. Around his wrist was the torn banner she had dabbed his brow with.

“Forgive me, for leaving you. But I am that which war brings and takes.” His red eyes stared down at her, terrible and majestic in his true form. “And selfish. For in my selfishness I sought to prove myself worthy and feel what so many had felt in their last moments. The caring hand of Celestine upon their fevered brow. Before slipping from this world, your hand was the last thing I felt.”

Celestine felt a surge of unrelenting hope but feared this was a trick.

“I saw you die.”

“You did. Many have. Many will. I could not tell you. Forgive me. I have won your touch, the touch of the wounded, and I bear my prize gladly. It is not finery or grand keeps that I wanted to win you with, but to know the true courage of you. The courage of a woman to face the horrors of war, because that is what they do. Men vanish, and the pain and misery endures among women to carry alone.”

Celestine wanted to cry in anguish, but he was here. Grateful he was alive. Grateful he had won her favor in the Court of Calendar.

“Now you know, I am the most terrible lord. When the snows melt, when the rivers deepen, I come. For misery follows all conflict where men slay one another.”

Celestine embraced his neck.

I should strike him, for such anguish. Yet the relief is such salve to me.

“Where are you taking me?”

“It is my turn to tend to you,” Encarmine declared. His eyes were a dull glow, and his circlet of black metal shifted to silver daggers, melted together. His eyes laid upon hers. “I have been paid in touch, and now I will pay in kind.”

A chamber opened, a grand bathing room with wooden tubs. Nothing soft lived in his keep, she saw now. But the call of hot swirling water sang to her. Encarmine set her down, looking down at her, over a foot taller than she.

Celestine leaned forward to kiss him, but he stopped her. His strength was absolute. “It has not been earned to taste you, Final Bride.”

To hell with your rules. Now kiss me, you living and dying god.

But she said nothing. Because the control and oaths he dictated; he also served. It was his very being. Celestine trembled under his touch, and he regarded her, never looking away from her eyes as he undid her dress, sliding it down.

Encarmine’s hands were warm through her chemise. He touched the ties of her shift, drawing the strings away. The knots fell, and Celestine felt her heart flutter as the undergarment fell away, like towers falling under siege, crumbling at her feet in satin folds.

The Lord of the Red Banner drank her in.

Everywhere his hand touched, goosebumps followed. Along her arm, her shoulder, her neck. Her skin was stained with his dried blood. He touched patches of it lightly. She was nude, exposed. His for the taking. Her stomach quivered, her quim responded, pulsing and readying for the first touch of a man.

But he is not a man. He is something else.

Encarmine traced her flesh with his hand and eyes, along her neck, up to her jaw and chin.

“No finer prize worth fighting for,” he whispered. His eyes glowed red. A needful lust and fervor stirred within her.

It’s him. It must be his touch. It infects me.

“It lives within you,” Encarmine whispered. “Fury, exertion… challenge… conquest. My essence lives within all people. Whom is braver than the bride on her wedding night? The shield that knows it must be broken?”

Encarmine reached down to a chest and produced a silken robe so thin it appeared as if it had been spun from glass. He reached around her, draping it over her shoulders. Steam, cedar, and sandalwood infected the air in the bathing room.

The cloth was finer than any silk she had ever worn. He tied it around her waist and led her to a bathing table.

“Remove my tunic,” he commanded. Red eyes glowed and bore into her. Within his steely firmness, a dark tyrant stared at her, seeking conquest. Seeking challenge, conflict.

Seeking everything.

Celestine did as he asked.

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