TITLE: ORIA’S GAMBIT
AUTHOR: Jeffe Kennedy
FORMAT: e-book
PUB DATE: 2016
A Play For Power
Princess Oria has one
chance to keep her word and stop her brother’s reign of terror: She must become
queen. All she has to do is marry first. And marry Lonen, the barbarian king
who defeated her city bare weeks ago, who can never join her in a marriage of
minds, who can never even touch her—no matter how badly she wants him to.
A Fragile Bond
To rule is to suffer,
but Lonen never thought his marriage would become a torment. Still, he’s a
resourceful man. He can play the brute conqueror for Oria’s faceless officials
and bide his time with his wife. And as he coaxes secrets from Oria, he may yet
change their fate…
An Impossible Demand
With deception
layering on deception, Lonen and Oria must claim the throne and brazen out the
doubters. Failure means death— for them and their people.
But success might
mean an alliance powerful beyond imagining...
EXCERPT:
The golem’s glassy claws flashed,
arcing through the rosy light of the moon, and sliced open his throat. Blood
poured down his naked body, steaming in the chill desert air. Out it flowed,
sweeping around him like the bore tides of Bára. So much of it pooled around
him that he began to drown in it. He strained to lift his battle axe, to cut
the golem down with cold iron, but found a flower in his hands instead.
A white lily,
luminescent and fragile, somehow escaping the blood that drained his life away.
The golem struck
again and he shouted at it, no sound escaping. Because he had no throat left.
Because he was dead.
How could he still
be standing?
The golem’s claws
dripped crimson and its black maw yawned, glistening with glasslike fangs. It
wouldn’t ever die, forever coming after the Destrye until every last one of his
people were dead, unless he managed to cut it down. Out of its mouth, sickly
green fire blew, a lethal wind of flame that burned the crops and aqueducts.
Not a golem then, but one of the Trom. Skin over bones, a humanoid spider, it
grinned, lips red as the claws, hand reaching to turn him into skin without
bones, nothing but pulped flesh. No, they were fingernails, enameled and
jeweled. Natly’s elegant hands slicing across his throat again, lips curving in
a lascivious smile. With that third swipe, his head tumbled to the ground, and
as she reached for his cock with those scarlet daggers of her nails, he finally
managed to shout his anguish and fury.
“Your Highness?”
Lonen jerked in
the hot water, the nightmare shredding around him with the spray of droplets.
The servant boy gave him a wide-eyed look. Bero. The Báran lad had attended him
his last time at baths, too. He was in Bára, again, cleaning up after the
journey. No Trom or golems here.
Except in his
tortured brain.
“Did you need
something, Your Highness? You called out, but I didn’t understand the words.”
Bero carried a stack of the much lighter colorful clothes that men of Bára
wore. Silk, Oria had called the
fabric, another thing apparently made by insects. Despite its disturbing
origins, and like the addictive and tangy sweet honey she’d also introduced him
to, the cloth had an exotic loveliness, more refined than anything produced in
his homeland.
Like the sorceress
herself, both unsettling and compelling.
“No, I’m fine.” He
cupped his hands and splashed water on his face. Sloppy of him, to have fallen
asleep in the city of his enemy—and then failing to awaken at Bero’s footfalls
as he approached. Too comfortable in the soothing waters. Too many months of
short sleep. Ion would have slapped him upside the head hard enough to have his
brain ringing for the carelessness. But his brother was dead and gone these
many weeks, reduced to boneless pulp at the simple touch of the Trom’s evil hand.
“Would you care
for wine or food now, King Lonen?” Bero asked in the trade tongue, setting out
the soaps and oils. “Princess Oria said you’re to have anything you ask for.”
Luxurious baths,
booze, and fine food—an excellent strategy to lull him into meekly doing the
sorceress’s bidding. The nightmare had served as a timely reminder of his
purpose here—to save his people from destruction, not to indulge in Oria’s
gifts or seductive presence. He might have agreed to her startling proposal of
marriage, but he’d proceed on his terms, not hers. For the sake of the Destrye
and his sanity both.
“What are the
chances of a decent steak?” He meant it as a joke, though the boy wouldn’t know
that. The Bárans didn’t eat meat as a rule and, though the Destrye did, the grave
losses to their livestock and wild game meant Lonen hadn’t had anything worth
calling a steak since before Battles of Bára.
“Princess Oria
said to tell you she sent some of the hunters to find meat for you, Your
Highness. It might take a few hours, however. Until then the best she can offer
is some meat kept to feed the animals, and our usual fare.”
Him and livestock—both pets of the Bárans.
But his stomach growled, cramping with hollow pain, so he told Bero to bring
whatever, enjoying the quiet when the boy went to fetch it. It seemed like
years, not weeks, since he’d last visited the baths. That evening he’d washed
himself clean of the ashes of too many dead before negotiating the peace treaty
with Oria. Short-lived as that peace had been.
Then, as now, the
elegant beauty of the underground chambers both enchanted and intimidated him.
Built of carved gold and rose stone like the rest of Bára, the baths were pools
of still water, several of them at varying temperatures, going from shallow to
deeper than a man could stand. Elaborately carved pillars and arches supported
the shadowy ceiling, the subtle light of the sconces not quite enough to
illuminate it or the far corners of the room.
For a man who’d
learned to jump at shadows, he found it surprisingly lulling. As evidenced by
his falling asleep deeply enough to dream, though the nightmares were nothing
new. The cursed things plagued him most nights. Odd to see Natly in this one,
though, rather than Oria stalking him. A facet perhaps of his dramatically
changed reality—exchanging one fiancée for the other. It appeared that by
agreeing to marry Oria, he’d now have Natly haunting his sleep.
At least no one else had heard him cry out. He
had the place to himself on this occasion. Probably the Bárans didn’t bathe in
the middle of the day. The baths simply remained filled, awaiting their
convenience.
A shocking waste
of water.
Bero returned,
setting down a platter of food and a jug of wine, along with a tray of shining
instruments. “Would you like me to shave you before you eat, or after, Your
Highness?”
Reflexively, Lonen
clapped a hand over his beard. He had no doubt he looked scruffy from his
travels, and in comparison to the Báran men who were all clean shaven that he’d
seen, but...
“Is that another
of Princess Oria’s edicts?” He asked, not bothering to disguise the sarcasm.
Bero ducked his
head, clearly chagrined. “I apologize, Your Highness. Please forgive me. I did
not mean to offend. When I serve the prince and folcwitas at their baths,
they—”
Lonen held up a
hand to stop the increasingly penitential torrent of explanation from the
already nervous boy. “No apologies. I am short-tempered.” He rinsed himself one
last time, then rose from the water.
“Your Highness, I
did not mean to abbreviate your bath.” Bero sounded even more contrite.
“You didn’t. I’m
clean and I don’t need to lie about, indulging myself.” Especially not while
his people could be dying by the Trom’s dragon-breath while he luxuriated in
deep water and napped. Oria had said she’d stop the incursions, but she’d also
promised him that very thing before this. He had no reason to trust her—and
plenty of evidence otherwise. Better to be ready to fight whatever battle
presented itself next.
Jeffe
Kennedy is an award-winning author whose works include non-fiction, poetry,
short fiction, and novels. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received
the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson
Doubleday Memorial Award. Her essays have appeared in many publications,
including Redbook.
Her most
recent works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the
contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion, and an erotic
contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera. A fourth
series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, hit the shelves
starting in May 2014 and book 1, The Mark of the Tala, received a starred Library Journal review
was nominated for the RT Book of the Year
while the sequel, The Tears of the Rose was nominated
for the RT
Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2014
and the third book, The
Talon of the Hawk, won the
RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2015. Two more books will
follow in this world, beginning with The Pages of the Mind
May 2016. A fifth series, the erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, started with Going Under, and was followed by Under His Touch and Under Contract.
She lives in
Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards
and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.
