Page 82 of Boudicca

Chapter XXVIII

“I should have gotten here sooner,” Maldwyn said as he strode into the tent. He was dressed in clean clothes. His long moonlight colored hair was still wet. There was a slash on his cheek that I hadn’t noticed before, and I wondered when he’d gotten it. He stopped just a few feet from me and crouched down so that our gazes were level. “Shhh,” he spoke softly in the same tone I’d often heard him use with a frightened horse. “I know. I know how it is after a battle, especially a first battle.”

I nodded and tried to stop my tears. I even wiped angrily at them with hands that trembled, but they kept coming. I was a well of misery that could not run dry. “I-I cannot seem to s-stop shaking.”

“You will,” he said.

“D-do you ever s-stop seeing them when you close your eyes? Do you ever s-stop hearing them?” I blurted the questions as I wrapped my arms around myself again.

“You will stop hearing and seeing them, but you will never forget them.” He stood. Moving slowly, he sat beside me on the bed. “And we shouldn’t. Killing should never be easy.”

“I don’t want easy, just bearable.” I put my face in my hands. “How do I bear it? I killed so many of them. And ordered the death of even more. Andraste would be ashamed to see me right now. This is not what her Victory should look like.”

“Oh, my queen, of course this is what victory looks like—human, compassionate, bittersweet. Andraste is a warrior goddess and a mother. Think you that she doesn’t understand what it is to mourn the necessity of battle and death? Think you that she does not weep with you?”

I dropped my hands from my face and fisted them in my nightdress to keep them from trembling. I met Maldwyn’s gaze and saw that tears were falling silently down his cheeks. “You do understand.”

“I do. As do Cadoc and Abertha, Briallen, and every warrior who is not dead inside,” he said.

“I wonder if being dead inside is better.”

“No, my queen. It is not. The death of spirit births men like Decianus. The world does not need more spirit-dead people.” His tears continued to fall as he spoke soothingly.

The cut on his cheek was weeping pink blood. I used the sleeve of my nightdress to blot it. “When did you get that?”

He smiled and then grunted as it pulled at the wound. “On the race from the city. I hardly noticed it.” He glanced at my bandaged arm. “Are you well?”

“Physically, yes, though even all of the months of practice did not ready me for how my spear arm would feel tonight.” Stiffly, I reached over to dip my fingers into the pot of salve on my bedside table and then began smoothing it onto his wound.

He sucked in a breath before relaxing under my touch as the salve began to numb the cut. “But all the months of practice made you strong enough to be able to get through the battle, and you did. You were magnificent.”

I continued to tend to his wound and didn’t meet his gaze. “I do not feel magnificent. I feel like a killer.”

He caught my hand by the wrist and lowered it. The other cupped my chin and lifted my face so that I had to look into his blue eyes. “You feel like a warrior who has just survived her first battle. You are not a killer.”

I turned my hand so that our palms pressed together. “Inside,” I whispered, “I am raging, shrieking in horror at what I’ve done. There is so much darkness within me tonight that I do not think I’ll ever feel anything but death and this terrible sadness.”

“Boudicca, let me help you find your way through the darkness,” he said. “Let me help you feel alive.”

I gazed into his eyes. I saw hunger there, and a fire ignited low in my belly as my body recognized that hunger and answered it in kind.I slid my arms up to rest on his strong shoulders and spoke one word: “Yes.”

Maldwyn’s lips met mine. There was no hesitation in him. He devoured me. I hadn’t been kissed like this, hadn’t felt the raw and beautiful strength of a man’s body, in almost one year, and my passion blazed. I ignored the pain of my wound and the weariness in my limbs and let desire consume me. Maldwyn pulled my nightdress over my head and pressed me back on the bed. His lips were hot and insistent as they traveled from my neck to my breasts. I moaned and arched my back, welcoming the scratch of his day-old beard and the sharp, sweet nips of his teeth.

I pulled at his shirt, and he lifted away from me long enough to wrench it and his leather breeches from his body, and then his nakedness met mine and we blazed together. I’d forgotten the delight that could be found in a lover’s touch, and when his fingers worked cleverly at my slick, hot core, I climaxed so fast that I shouted his name in surprise.

He smiled down at me, and then his smile shifted to a moan of pleasure and his eyes closed as I found the hard length of him and stroked, slowly discovering the smooth feel of his taut skin, of his heat, of his desire.

With a quick shift of my balance, I rolled him onto his back, and thenIsmiled down athimas I understood a new use for the close combat skills he and my other lead warriors had drilled into me. I pressed the length of my body against his, reveling in my strength. I wanted to taste him and hear him shout my name in ecstasy. I took his hardness in my mouth and licked and teased until he cried out and pulled me up to him. He tried to press me back into the bed, but I am a queen and choose to follow my own desire. I straddled him and guided his hands to the curves of my waist. We found our rhythm, and I reached another climax easily. Only then did I roll again, pulling him on top of me. His weight was delicious. As he slid in and out of me, my hands explored his arms, his chest, his shoulders. Our mouths met again and I lost myself in his heat and taste—and then I lifted mylegs, urging him on harder, faster. He raised himself so he could look into my eyes and drove into me.

My body responded, coming fully alive as Maldwyn’s passion chased the darkness from my spirit and tethered me to the land of the living.

He did shout my name—many times—that night.

When we were spent, Maldwyn wrapped his arms around me and covered us with one of the pelts we’d kicked from the bed. I nestled against him, warm and sated, as he whispered to me.

“Know that you will never be dead inside. You are mighty and fierce, kind and compassionate. You spirit is too strong to fade, to falter, to fail. You are Victory. You will always be Victory.”

When I closed my eyes I saw no dying faces. I heard no last screams. Still, I did not think I would find sleep, but it came for me gently and took me as easily into its dreamless embrace as had my lover.