As if on cue, his crown rustled and the thorns rearranged themselves even though the material it was made from appeared to be black metal.
“And the curse must be broken, for I can hear your voice speaking to me, though it is day,” I said, but though I felt shy to be speaking directly to him, I refused to pull back and break out of our embrace. The long days of him pressed to my back as a corpse had returned to my memory, and I was in awe now of how whole he felt — how warm and alive. I skimmed my palm down his bare chest, reveled in his shudder, and slid a finger — feather-light — around the edge of the wound in his side. His wet clothing soaked right through mine and I cradled my head to his chest and listened for his voice in my mind.
“No hold may bar me now,” he said aloud and it echoed in my mind, too. “And though you can hear my voice alight upon your ear, still my heart speaks to you as the moon calls to the sea. I will not give up this rare intimacy, even though we have leave to share in others.”
“Share in others?” I asked breathlessly.
I pulled back just enough to see his eyes and his quirking half-smile, and before I could demand that he confirm my suspicions, he had caught my jaw between finger and thumb, angled my face as he pleased, and pressed his lips to mine, sliding his tongue between them to open them, as if it were key to my lock.
“Do you choose to come away with me then, my one true wife?” He asked a little breathlessly when he seemed to be sated for a time. His hand was tangled up in my hair as he spoke and he seemed fascinated with it even though I was rolling my eyes. How did he always manage to untangle my braid any time I wasn’t watching?
“I do,” I agreed. “And will you tell me, then, how this curse was broken?”
He scooped me up before I could finish speaking and held me to his dripping chest, pausing only long enough to bite his lip as if concentrating, and then lean in to nip my cheek so that it bled his sign.
“The first Bramble King, when his rib was stolen —”
“I thought it was the creator’s rib who was stolen,” I objected, still a little breathless from the sting of his bite. My husband always made my head swirl with his unpredictability. Who would have expected a bite rather than a kiss? Not me.
“One and the same,” he assured me with a boyish grin. “He placed a curse on men and Wittenbrand alike to fall upon them in the last age — this age — unless one soul dared step up to take on the challenge of the curse. If he did, then the curse would fall on only him, but that man must risk all for the rest.”
“And you risked it,” I said, certain I was right.
“And I won,” he says, his grin turning cat-like.
“So you did. And will you answer all my questions now?”
“If I have a mind to do so.”
“Will you answer at least a few, my husband?”
“Say that name again, Izolda Savataz, Mad Princess of Pensmoore, wife of the Arrow, Lady Riverbarrow, darling Queen of our current Bramble King.”
And I did not need to guess what he wanted, not when I could turn my lips to the curve of his neck and whisper it so my lips brushed his skin and let me taste his shiver.
“Husband,” I whispered.
“My true wife,” he agreed burying his face into my hair, and then he spun quickly away.
Before I could catch my breath, he was once again the stomping water horse of the river, and he surged forward under me, catching me up upon his back. My fists sank into seaweed and froth when I tried to hold on, but he did not drop me as he reared, came down hard, and ducked into the river, dragging me behind him like an anchor.
It seemed I did not need to breathe as I usually did, or at least I did not need to breathe when I was with him, for I sank beneath the water and into the cold, clammy depths and I smelled the fecundity of creeks in spring, and the sharp tang of a river in autumn, the scalding ice of winter flows and the warm caress of summer streams, all at once without having to take a breath of air.
And when we emerged, it was not the mortal world we emerged into, but the sparkling, flashing, dance of the river that flowed through Riverbarrow.
I gasped.
“Am I not to be made mad then?” I asked him, as I plunged my fingers deeper into his watery mane and his fluid muscles bunched beneath me and sprang us across the width of the river to where the white pavilion formed of growing stone roots spread wide in welcome.
“Not when you are with me,”he spoke into my mind.
“And what of when we are apart?” I asked, probing, for though he was here with me now, I felt very uncertain.
“Forfend that it ever be so,”he spoke into my mind, and then he whirled again, scattering water in every direction and leaving me too dizzy to properly see the transformation from watery horse to half-naked, dripping man, though the one carried me on his back and the other in his arms. He ducked his wet head in close to me and when the tips of our noses touched, he drew in a long breath as if he were drinking me in and he whispered, “I journeyed through the folds of time and climbed across the tides of space to find you and pluck you out of your life and home and gather you up into my arms. What manner of thing could exist that would ever tempt me to leave you, love of my love, heart of my heart? Speak a new riddle and tell me of what villain could separate we two now, or what terror could part us. Tell me of what wonder or charm might steal your heart from mine, or what cataclysm rob from my grasp what has been bought by blood and bone, by sweat and cold death?”
“None,” I gasped and his lower lip trembled for a moment before his lips parted lightly, his eyes closed, and he tilted his face just enough to catch my lips in his and drink deeply of me.
I could never tell what had bought me such fortune as to be chosen by one like this, to be swept away into madness and sanity by so precious and powerful a … man? A king? A champion.
