Free The Fire Mages' Daughter by Pauline M. Ross Page A

led me to a well-lit alcove with a seat curved around the interior. As with everything she did, the setting was deliberately chosen. No matter where I chose to sit, my knees almost touched hers, and she could read every movement of my hands, every nuance of my expression. There was nowhere here to hide, no possibility of prevarication.
    “Now,” she said, settling herself on the seat, and arranging her skirts. “Tell me all about it.”
    So I did. I told it baldly, without embellishment, but not hiding anything. There was no point. There could be no privacy in a skin tent with my bodyguard standing not ten paces away. She would have reported to the guard commander and he would have sent a message rider ahead to the Drashona with all the gory details.
    Besides, if Yannassia thought badly of me, that was to my benefit. She might finally realise that I could never be her heir, that I was entirely unsuitable.
    She sighed as she listened, but made no comment, and eventually my voice trickled into silence. Still she said nothing, not looking at me, her face pensive.
    When the silence began to unnerve me, I said, “Are you disappointed in me?”
    She looked up, puzzled. “Disappointed? Oh… no, not really. You are very young, and you have always been… hmm, more aware , shall we say, of the opposite sex.”
    I suppose she was thinking of my handsome bodyguard, and there had been a couple of occasions before that – a fellow pupil at the scribery, and the son of a baker at my favourite pastry shop in town.
    “Now, Vhar-zhin is quite different,” she went on. “She has never taken any interest in men at all. And Zandara approaches the matter with her usual well-planned efficiency.”
    A cold fish, Zandara. She had already taken her first drusse and was newly pregnant, as part of her strategy to become heir by producing more children than the rest of us.
    Yannassia sighed. “She is too like me, unfortunately. And as for Axandor…”
    She didn’t need to say any more. If he failed to distribute his seed in every noble house in the realm, it wouldn’t be for want of trying.
    “No, I am not disappointed,” she went on. “It is not ideal, of course, and by no means discreet, but you are an adult now, and there is something to be said for getting things out of the way in this tidy fashion, with someone who will not be crawling round your feet for evermore. Shall you wait to see if he has left you a child?”
    “Oh no,” I said. “No, I took the herbs. I asked Cryalla.”
    “Cryalla? Oh, your bodyguard. Well, that is probably for the best. But now that the wine is out of the barrel, so to speak, you might wish to think about the future. Taking a drusse, perhaps. A child or two, in time. There are several of the higher-ranking nobles who have intimated to me that they would be more than happy for one of their sons to oblige you in that way. You could take your pick, you know. I find Zandara odd in several ways, but planning such matters is very sensible and avoids any unexpected… um, accidents .”
    She grimaced, and I couldn’t help smiling. My scheme to prove my incompetence hadn’t quite worked out, but now I had another idea. Zandara wasn’t the only one who could plan.

7: Seduction
    For a while, I felt very strange. The warmth deep inside me slowly faded away, but it also seeped through my whole body, leaving me tingling and sensitive, as if every pore of my skin and every hair were alive. And I felt amazingly well. It was not just the absence of weakness, I positively glowed with health. For a sun or two, I even wondered if I were pregnant, despite the herbs, but then my bleeding time arrived as usual to set that idea to rest.
    Was it normal to react to sex in that way? I’d read many books covering the topic, from oblique references to fanciful poetry to scientific detail, but none described the fire I’d felt, or the strange sensation of falling, or the way Ly-haam and I had been drawn together, almost