Naamah's Kiss (Moirin's Trilogy #1)

Prince Thierry swore. I hunched my shoulders together.

Raphael half rose. "Jehanne, you don't have the right!"

Her gaze was icy. "She'll come willingly."

He gave a harsh bark of laughter. The other guests watched the drama unfolding with unprecedented delight. "I hate to be the one to destroy your fondest held beliefs, but there are people in the world who don't find you irresistible, my lady."

"Are there?" Jehanne seemed to find the notion amusing. "Luckily for her, Moirin isn't one of them." She gestured and her Captain of the Guard came around the table, bowed, and offered me his arm.

"Don't." Raphael glowered across the table at me, his eyes full of stormclouds. "Name of Elua, Moirin! What earthly reason do you have to trust her?"

I looked at Jehanne.

"I kept my word," she reminded me. "/ never gave you cause for regret."

"You damned, conniving, cuckolding bitch," Thierry said in a low voice. "What did you do?"

I didn't stay to hear the answer or the firestorm of gossip and speculation it was likely to ignite. I turned my head away from Raphael's furious gaze, took the captain's arm, and let him escort me from the hall.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

After being examined by the royal chirurgeon, I fell asleep in a luxuriously appointed suite of guest-chambers, and slept like the dead.

I awoke to sunlight and greenery.

Plants.

The bedchamber was full of plants.

For a moment, all I could do was stare, disbelieving my own eyes. There were plants I recognized from the glass pavilion— palm trees and enormous ferns. There were orange and lemon trees breathing a citrus fragrance into the air. There were hastily planted evergreens in large pots complaining at the braziers that warmed the room. It was as though the entire outdoors of some unlikely clime had been transported into the chamber. I laughed aloud for sheer pleasure.

Beyond a giant fern frond, a figure squatting by the door stirred. "You alive, huh?"

I sat up and squinted. "Bao?"

"Uh-huh." He rose with careless grace, staff in one hand. "I go get Master Lo."

I looked around. "Am I still in the Palace? What are you doing here?"

Bao shrugged. "Master Lo ask me to stay, I stay."

"How did he know I was here?"

He shrugged again. "You ask for him."

"Oh." I had a vague memory of begging the royal chirurgeon to send word to Master Lo Feng. "How did….." I gestured around at the plants.

"Good, huh?" Bao looked smug. "Master Lo's idea. You need wood energy, earth energy. That White Queen, she say bring them all. Fill the room."

I flushed. "Jehanne was here?"

"Uh-huh. Lots of people in and out. You sleep like dead girl. Is it true you and the Queen….. ?" He made a lewd gesture.

"Um." My face got hotter.

Bao grinned. "I think she like you."

He left to fetch Master Lo Feng. I collapsed back on the pillows, wondering if it were true. One thing was sure, whatever her motives, Jehanne was right. I'd needed someone to save me from myself.

I breathed in the wonderful green-smelling air and dozed for the better part of an hour until Bao returned with Lo Feng.

My mentor shook his elegant head at me. "Foolish girl." He felt my pulse up and down my wrists and made me stick out my tongue for him. When he was finished, he beckoned to Bao, who twirled his staff with a flourish and deposited a silk-wrapped bundle on the bed. "I've prepared a tonic for you." Master Lo Feng untied the bundle to reveal a multitude of sheer muslin pouches filled with dried herbs. "You will steep one pouch in hot water and drink it twice a day. I will speak to the kitchen regarding food that is healthful. Now." He folded his hands into his sleeves. "Will you listen and heed?"

"Yes, my lord," I said humbly.

"Very good." He gave me a sharp nod. "You have a gift, Moirin. But you pay a price for using it. When you draw energy from the earth and give it back to the earth, it is like"—he withdrew one hand from his sleeve and described a rotating circle in the air—"a wheel powered by the stream to grind grain."

I'd seen such a thing. "A waterwheel."

"Even so." Master Lo Feng inclined his head. "The stream's energy makes the millstone turn, but the water is taken and given back. In the end, nothing is lost. All is in accordance with nature."

"I understand."

He raised one finger. "Understand this. The stream is your vital chi. When you draw energy and spend it in a manner unnatural to you, it is as though you spill your water on barren soil instead of returning it to the stream. In time, the streambed will run dry."

I sighed. "I understand, I do."

"You wish to do good," Lo Feng said gently. "And you wish to find your place in the world. Those are very fine desires. And yet desires are encumbrances. It is wise to let go of them. You find yourself in a place of refuge. Rest and be grateful."

"I will," I promised.

He folded hand over fist and bowed. "When you are ready to resume your lessons, Bao and I will be waiting."

I rested in my green-scented chamber filled with plants.

I was grateful.

And for a while, a little while, I let go of the urgent sense of purpose that had driven me across the Straits. I ceased to fret over what the Maghuin Dhonn Herself intended for me. Quiet, efficient servants came in and out at intervals, asking if there was aught I required. My few possessions and increasingly larger wardrobe arrived, transported from Raphael's townhouse. I forced myself not to think about Raphael and how furious he must be. I slept intermittently. I ate the rich and spicy foods Master Lo Feng had ordered the kitchen to make for me. I steeped his muslin pouches and drank his tea. I let myself drift.

Although desire…..

Well.

I was told that Queen Jehanne had stopped by that first day, but I was sleeping and she left me undisturbed. When she came the second day, I was awake. She stood in the doorway surveying the indoor jungle, then regarding me with an inscrutable look.

I didn't know what to say. "Thank you, your majesty," I managed at last. "This is very, very wonderful."

"You like it?" Jehanne smiled a little. "It suits you. You're looking much improved."

"I'm feeling much improved." I took a deep breath and asked the question foremost in my mind. "Why are you being so kind to me?"

"Oddly enough, I've been asking myself that very question." She dismissed her attendants and bade the guard to see that no one bothered us, closing the door behind him.

"And have you answered it?" I asked.

Jehanne sat uninvited on the end of my bed, curling her legs beneath her gown like a girl. Sunlight filtering through leaves made green shadows on her fair skin. "You know, my motives may not have been admirable, but I had fun with you that day at Cereus House," she said candidly. "It reminded me of younger, more carefree times." She tilted her head. "I was born into the Night Court. Many of us are. Both my parents were adepts of Cereus House."

"I see," I said, although I didn't.

She made a face at me. "Oh, let me talk. Growing up in the Night Court, we learned early. The Dowaynes like to begin training us young. Long before we're allowed to study the arts of the bedchamber, we're trained to be perfect attendants and companions, to serve and entertain. But, of course, we stole into the library to study the sacred texts, we hid in the wings to watch the Showings. By the time formal bedchamber training begins, we knew all there was to know about Naamah's arts, at least in theory. That's true of most adepts."

"But not all?" I inquired.

"No." Jehanne shook her head. Light scintillated from a pair of diamond eardrops adorning her delicate lobes. "Betimes a House will take on a promising young man or woman with no training whatsoever." She smiled. "Some gorgeous unlikely creature from a backwoods hamlet too poor to own a single copy of the Trois Milles Joies, with no experience of aught but crude peasant rutting and a hunger to learn more."

I didn't think it was a particularly flattering description, but I bit my tongue on the thought.

She saw it in my face anyway and laughed. "You don't understand, Moirin. As a full-fledged adept, it was part of my job to train them. And that was one of my favorite things in the world to do." She shivered with remembered pleasure. "All that untutored ardor! So eager to please, so ready to be delighted by unimagined pleasures."

I made a noncommittal sound.

"You think I'm mocking you." Jehanne eyed me shrewdly. "I'm not. Innocence fades, you know. And at Cereus House, we're taught to revere the ephemeral nature of beauty. That's why our adepts were sought after for training raw recruits. What they were….. it was a transient thing. So poignant. We took joy in them as no others could."

"Joy," I echoed softly.

"You made me remember," she said simply. "And then you even showed me a piece of magic when I asked. It seemed such a gentle, lovely thing. Despite everything, I liked being with you. And then I began to watch you fade. Far too soon and far too fast. It offended my sensibilities. I tried to make Raphael let you go, and he wouldn't. Aside from making a name as a miracle worker, I don't know what in the seven hells he's been up to with you. Whatever it is, you, apparently, were too besotted to refuse him. So I intervened, and here you are."

My eyes stung. "Jehanne….."

"Elua, don't cry!" She sounded cross.

"I'm not." I blinked, rubbed away my tears, and smiled at her. "You should be nice more often. It's very pleasant."

The Queen of Terre d'Ange shrugged one slender shoulder. "Everyone falls a little bit in love with me when I'm nice. It's tiresome."

"I'll try not to add to your burden, your majesty," I offered in a cool tone.

"Oh, please." She glanced sidelong at me. "You fell a little bit in love with me the moment you laid eyes on me."

I opened my mouth to deny it, and couldn't.

Her blue-grey eyes danced. "Don't worry, you're far too intriguing to become tiresome. But I should let you rest. Are you wondering if I mean to kiss you before I leave?"

I laughed. "I am now."

"I do." Jehanne suited actions to words. She ducked beneath an overhanging frond of a giant fern and kissed me, gently at first, then with a measure of passion, her tongue darting past my lips. Her intoxicating scent enveloped me.

It felt very, very good.

I kissed her back, slid my arms around her neck. I didn't want her to go. I wanted to see her naked with fern shadows painted on her skin. I wanted to taste her again. "Don't leave," I whispered. "Not yet."

If I'd said such a thing to Raphael, he would have patted my cheek and told me I needed bed-rest. But Jehanne was Naamah's child twice over. She merely gave me one of her sparkling looks. "Well, it's a good thing I told the guard to see we weren't disturbed, isn't it?"

It may not have been a benediction, but it was the nearest thing to it I'd known in love-making. It was slow, languid, and healing. And I knew that whatever else transpired, I would always be a little bit in love with Jehanne, and I would always remember her best as I saw her that day in my sunlit, plant-filled bedchamber, green shadows dappling her fair skin and the pale night-blooming flower of her marque.

"I have to go," she said at last when the shadows were growing long. "I'm dining with Daniel this evening."

"Ohhh." I'd quite forgotten about the King. "What does he, um….." I gestured vaguely at the tangled bed linens. "Think of this?"

Jehanne smiled. "His majesty is highly amused."

"Truly?"

She reached for her gown. "Oh, yes. He told me I had to choose between you and Raphael." I stared at her. "I'm very angry at Raphael," she added, stepping gracefully into her gown. "Lace my stays, please?"

I obeyed silently.

"Moirin." Jehanne turned and took my chin in her hand when I'd finished, forcing me to look up at her. "This isn't some ploy in a game, if that's what you're wondering. I haven't told you a single falsehood."

"So what am I?" I gestured again. "What is this?"

She cocked her head. "What do you want it to be? Would you like me to declare you my royal companion? Court witch, mayhap?"

I had to laugh. "I don't know."

"Then don't worry about it." Jehanne kissed me. "As a scion of House Courcel, you're welcome to stay here as long as you like. And you're here under my protection because it pleases me to have you here. Rest. Recover. I'll come see you on the morrow. And when you're stronger, you can return to your lessons with that delightful Ch'in gentleman, and you and I can have a good long talk about exactly what Raphael and his coterie of arcane scholars are up to in the countryside."

The latter, I didn't relish. "You thought Master Lo Feng was delightful?"

"Quite." She twisted her hair into a lover's-haste knot. "He's very modest, but Daniel says in his own country, he's known as the Ninth Immortal."

I hadn't known that. "Who are the other eight?"

Jehanne laughed. "I haven't the faintest idea." She stooped and kissed me again. "You be sure and tell me when you find out."

"I will," I promised. "Jehanne….. thank you."