It is finally, after the warmest September on record, Fall here in North Dakota. Today’s high was 70, and when I got up it was delightfully cool. The only bad thing about fall is that it is followed by winter.

Here is a health update: I went today to get my blood work done in preparation for chemo tomorrow. I am getting awfully tired of chemo. Only three more months to go! I should be done by Christmas. I had a CT scan done on Friday but the results aren’t in yet. Hopefully it will show the spots in my lungs have shrunk. We’ll do it again at the end of December or the beginning of January. I have been very tired, which is completely normal. I do have a few side effects but they are generally mild.

Now that the weather is cooling down I am about ready to do the Reader Quilt & Goodie Bag Giveaway. This quilt will be part of the giveaway. Check your email at the end of this weekend for my next newsletter which will have the entry form. Wouldn’t it be nice to lounge around on a couch under this quilt with a good book, a hot beverage and a bag of chocolate?

But now it is time for the next chapter in the Storm King. Enjoy!

Chapter Eight

It was long after what Ashley’s stomach thought should be suppertime when they stopped to make camp. When she climbed out of the saddle she could barely stand. Just like yesterday, her knees refused to touch, but this was much worse. Lord Bodiel kindly supported her to a tree stump and kept her company until her tent was set up by another pack of teenagers. Clearly, the boys were the grunts of this army. They also took Auriela away and brought Ashley another bowl of stew. The healer came and checked her elbow. It was feeling much better. Ashley opened her mouth to mention how saddle-sore she was but closed it. What could he do? Bandage her inner thighs? They weren’t bleeding, just very, very sore. Finally, when her tent was ready, Lord Bodiel bid her good night and she waddled with no dignity whatsoever into her tent and fell, fully clothed with her cloak still fastened around her throat, on the bed.

Ashley didn’t know how much later it was when she was woken by a hand smoothing her hair.

“Ashley,” a low voice rumbled.

She twisted around, choked by something pressed against her throat. She gurgled, twisting wildly to escape.

“Wife,” the same low voice said firmly.

Jerriel. As soon as Ashley realized that she also realized that he wasn’t choking her. Her cloak was bunched under her chin and the hard metal clasp was pressed against her windpipe. She sat up, yanking it away. Since her arms got tangled up in the cloak, she flailed ineffectively to free herself.

“Here, let me.”

He gently pushed Ashley’s hands aside and unfastened the clasp before tossing the cloak to the end of the bed. A lamp was on the table, sending mellow light through the small tent. He sat in one of the chairs he’d pulled away from the table and positioned beside the bed. Ashley sat up, feeling rumpled and bleary, her whole body aching. Everything in the tent was exactly as it had been this morning: bed on one side of the center pole, table on the other, and the wooden chest at the foot of the bed. Ashley hadn’t done a thing to help set it up. When she’d moved to go help Lord Bodiel had stopped her. Which was fine since she’d been stiff and sore from riding all day.

The stiffness hadn’t gotten any better with her nap. Right now, her thighs and butt ached with the fiery pain of a thousand burning suns. She had to grit her teeth to keep from groaning. On the plus side, her elbow barely hurt at all.

Ashley didn’t think Jerriel missed her discomfort. He twisted in his chair to reach behind him and pick something off the table. He held out a little jar to her.

“Salve,” he said. “It will help your saddle sores. You need to apply it to your skin in the area you are sore.” His thick lashes swept down and back up and he gave me a little smirk. “Would you like me to help you?” he purred.

“No!” Ashley sputtered for a few seconds before she saw his grin. “You’re teasing me.” The Storm King, who had sat in that throne on a stage above the blood he’d shed, would never have teased her like this. Even yesterday, he wouldn’t have been like this. “Aren’t you?”

“Just a little.”

Ashley searched his face. It was relaxed in a smile. “You’re more like the Jerriel I wro—remember from before.”

His lush mouth straightened for a moment before curving again. “I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to feel like this. Relaxed. With you I can be that Jerriel. But not with anyone else.”

Ashley nodded, kind of liking the idea that this side of Jerriel was reserved for her. “What time is it?”

“Midnight. Are you tired?”

Duh. She couldn’t keep a yawn back. “I guess I’m not used to traveling like this.”

He picked up her hand and kissed the back. “There is no more comfort I can give you. No maidservants travel with my army. When we are home, you will have a dozen maids to help you bathe and take care of your clothing and wait on you.”

Ashley had never had a maid in her life. She didn’t know what she would do with one much less a dozen.

He went on. “When your woman from Grimstaborg arrives she can wait on you.”

Ashley suppressed a smile at the thought of telling Maya she was now a maid even as hope rose in her. “Is she here yet?”

“No. It may take Maksil and Colir some time to find her and then bring her to us. Be patient, wife.”

Ashley swallowed a sigh. “Right. You called me Ashley when you woke me up.”

“Yes.” He mouthed the name now, looking like he was trying to decide if he liked it. “I have thought of you as Valdis for so long I may forget.”

“That’s okay. I never knew you were called Rodir.”

There was no humor in his smile when he said, “I told many Thessians I was Prince Rodir of Erabir. They told me my name was Nobody. I was No One. From that day forward no one called me by my name. You were the only person I asked to call me Jerriel.” He leaned forward and stroked a finger from the outside tip of her eyebrow, over her cheek, and down to the hollow of her throat. “You were the only one worthy to call me Jerriel.”

Oh, boy. Ashley swallowed. This is how she’d imagined Jerriel being. Handsome, tender and sweet. For a moment she forgot that she was rumpled from sleep and sore from ten hours in the saddle. “Is it playtime?”

As soon as the words were out, Ashley bit her tongue. The violent Storm King touched her gently and she was ready to fall into his arms? Am I insane? Maybe. But she’d like to know what it would be like to kiss him.

He chuckled, his teeth gleaming white against his brown skin in the lamplight. “Playtime? Are we children?”

“We were, when we first met.” She looked at him through her lashes, nerves dancing with curiosity in her belly.

He slid his cheek along hers. “Even at thirteen I knew I would love you.”

“Love,” Ashley began, but he kissed her, a warm open-mouthed kiss that quickly grew hot as his tongue glided against hers.

Holy wow. Ashley had been kissed before, but none of the guys she’d dated was even half as good looking as Jerriel, and none had made her feel this good with just one kiss. She hadn’t noticed that his hair hung loose until she fisted her hands in it.

Too soon he lifted his mouth away and sat back, but not enough to release her face. His hands cupped her cheeks, his thumbs caressing her temples.

His eyebrow hooked up. “What were you going to say?”

“What?” Ashley’s mind was completely blank. “I can’t remember.” When his lips curved, she shook a finger at him. “You don’t have to look so smug!”

“I think I have reason. I kissed my wife senseless.”

Ashley trembled as she touched his face with the fingertips of both hands. She traced his slim, straight eyebrows and moved lightly over the curve of his high cheekbones. His mouth was soft, and his straight jaw was hard. She smoothed over his throat to his collarbones and then his shoulders. I’m touching him, she thought with amazement. But who am I touching? Jerriel or the Storm King? She followed the bulges of his biceps to his forearms. He let go of her face to catch her hands in his.

“I like you like this,” Ashley whispered. “When I first saw you, back in the city, I was afraid of you. Even this morning you weren’t like this. What changed?”

He lifted her hands one at a time to his lips and kissed them. “You. I’ve lived with bitterness for many years. Even before I was made a slave, I’d learned that trust is dangerous. Oniel was favored by our father. If he could have, he’d have made Oniel his heir and set me aside. It made things difficult for me.” His lips quirked in a humorless smile. Ashley remembered that Oniel was Lord Vatir. “Aside from my cousins Iriel and Jabril, you are the only person I’ve completely trusted.”

“But you didn’t seem too happy to see me yesterday.”

“Ah, yesterday.” He sighed, his face hardening for a moment before smoothing into regret. “It was a disaster. I was furious to find that you were with the criminals. And you didn’t seem happy to see me either.”

Well, duh. He had been a stranger, one who didn’t seem to have an ounce of gentleness or kindness in him. “You were, uh, pretty scary.”

He shook his head and kissed one of her hands again. “Didn’t you wonder why you were treated like a prisoner instead of my promised wife?”

“Well, yeah, kind of. I mean, I could have been killed or raped.”

Jerriel lunged to his feet and dragged her up with him, crushing her against his chest. Ashley bravely ignored the twinge from the saddle sores because he seemed almost frantic to hold her tight.

“Exactly.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Before the battle began, I gave orders that you were to be found immediately and brought to the camp. My uncle Bodiel led a troop to Governor’s House to find you and escort you back. I gave him your name and a description of what you had looked like ten years ago. Not many Thesswomen have hair the color of yours. He did not find you. A servant told him you and your maid had gone to the market to purchase silk for new garments.”

“What kind of an idiot would go clothes shopping when an army was right outside?” she mumbled into his chest.

“I wondered that too. My brother suggested that perhaps you were trying to hide from me.” He paused for a moment. “Possibly I allowed his words to poison my mind. When I saw you and you seemed reluctant to accept me as your husband, it enraged me.”

Ashley stirred against him, wondering how she could bring up the truth. He wasn’t her husband and Valdis was just a character in a story. But in exchange for his help in finding Maya she had promised to not talk about it. She didn’t want to piss him off again, not when he was actually talking, so she kept quiet.

 He let his head drop so his cheek rested against the top of her head. “Bodiel sent me word that you could not be found, but the message was received by Oniel, not me. He sent out several messengers to the various troop commanders, but his orders were garbled. He said any woman with brown hair should be detained for me to question.”

“Oh.” That explained why the brown-haired women had been in the pen. “Did he know why you wanted me found?”

Jerriel’s eyes chilled. “Oh, yes. He knew that I had accepted your bridal pledge. It suited him to have me married to a distant Thesswoman but married to a woman who could give me heirs is not what he wants.” He pulled back to look into her eyes. “That is why you must be careful to never be alone with him.”

Ashley’s heart fell to her toes before leaping up to her throat. “Did he send the wrong message on purpose?” She swallowed. “Do you mean he would kill me?”

“I don’t know that he would go so far as to assassinate you. But if you were to die in an accident that could not be traced back to him, I don’t think he would hesitate.”

“So if I was killed by an Erabiri soldier it wouldn’t have made him cry.” Her heart was reluctant to go back to its usual place in her chest. Suddenly being followed by two guards at all times seemed like a marvelous idea.

“No,” Jerriel agreed.

“But Lord Bodiel said he wasn’t your heir, so he couldn’t inherit the throne even if you didn’t have kids.”

He released her with another light kiss to her hair and guided her back down onto the bed while he took his seat in the chair. “Legally, he cannot inherit. He does have a large number of friends who support him, though, so it is possible that he could put himself on the throne illegally.”

A coup. Ashley nodded, remembering several incidents in history when something like that had happened. Hatshepsut in Ancient Egypt, Mary and William in the Glorious Revolution in England, and a whole slew of Roman emperors had taken power that wasn’t meant to be theirs.

“I didn’t write any of this,” she muttered.

Jerriel gave her an odd look but didn’t say anything about that. “Let’s go back to your original question of why I am different now than I was yesterday.”

She nodded, wanting to know.

“The further away we get from Grimstaborg, the more relaxed I feel,” Jerriel told her. “And the more you smile at me and talk with me the happier I feel. A man doesn’t need to guard himself when he is with someone who makes him happy. You make me happy, V—Ashley. With you I am not King Rodir. I am Jerriel.”

“I like Jerriel a lot better.”

He smiled and stood up. “Me too. I will let you get some sleep. Tomorrow is back in the saddle for another day of travel.”

She couldn’t help it; she groaned.

“Poor wife.” He nodded at the salve she’d abandoned on the bed. “Don’t forget to use that.” His smile turned devilish. “Even if I hadn’t agreed to keep my hands above your waist, I wouldn’t torment you with my touch in such abused areas.”

Her mouth fell open. “Jerriel!”

He laughed. “And remember, in two days we will stop at Herzborg and stay a couple of nights. You can have a hot bath then instead of washing up in a basin of cool water.”

That sounded like heaven. “I can’t wait,” she told him. Maybe Maya and the two men he’d sent to find her would have caught up with them by then.

“Rest, wife.”

“Good night.” She paused for a moment before adding, “Husband.”

Have a wonderful week!!