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“We can’t possibly accommodate two hundred more people at this late date,” Stella said to her mother, nearly pleading with her. “Not with the wedding only weeks away.”
“No,” Ami agreed, losing not a whit of her victory glow. “That’s why we’re moving the wedding to the Feast of Moranu at midwinter. Just think! All of the festivities of the longest night, plus the glamour of a royal wedding.” She sighed dreamily. “We’ll have to totally change the color scheme, naturally, but having the Empress of Dasnaria in attendance makes the work and expense worth it. And the wedding ball can go all night! Perhaps we can have a special ritual with you two and the relighting at midnight.” She tapped her lower lip thoughtfully, then grinned like the imp she was at heart. “So many possibilities! I should have thought of this before. Moranu is much more your patron goddess, Nilly. You should be married on Her feast day.”
“I look to the goddess Danu, myself,” Jak commented, not at all surprised when Ami waved that off as irrelevant.
Stella gave him a sympathetic and rueful smile before turning back to her mother. “We didn’t think of it before because we haddecidedon Glorianna’s autumn feast. At no point did we consider or discuss a date three months later.”
“So you stay here at Windroven another three months.” Ami shrugged that off, too.
“We’ve already been here all summer,” Stella pointed out, her voice rising with strain.
“This is your home after all,” Ami replied. “In fact, you could simply live here after the wedding.”
Stella’s magic seethed with frustration. “Mother, we discussed this. Jak and I have plans.”
“Sailing!” Ami spat the word. “I don’t understand why you’d want to live on a boat—”
“Ship,” Jak corrected mildly, placing a fingertip on the Dasnarian missive and turning it so he could read the incredibly long list of attendees.
“—exposing yourself to pirates and unwashed, coarse sailors—”
“Present,” Jak commented, “though I wash regularly.”
“—and who knows what all!” Ami finished with a dramatic gesture at the sea hurling its waves against the foundation of Castle Windroven beyond the walls.
“My uncles are coming, too,” Jak said to Stella with a significant lift of his brows.
“Allof them?” she asked weakly. When he nodded, she turned on Ami. “Mother, have you discussed this with Auntie Essla? Because some of Harlan’s brothers are not necessarily friends of the Thirteen Kingdoms.”
“Nor of my father’s,” Jak noted ruefully. “This could be a diplomatic disaster.”
Ami pouted. “No, I haven’t discussed my wedding plans with Her Fucking Majesty. Essla can plan her wedding and I get to plan mine.”
“I thought this wasmywedding,” Stella replied tersely.
“I thought it wasourwedding,” Jak inserted, earning glares from both women. For all that Stella was as midnight and stormy as her mother was sunrise and blue skies, they were remarkably alike in the power of their stony stares, Stella’s beauty like the dark mirror of her mother’s bright one. Jak held up his hands in surrender. “Never mind. I take it back.”
Stella relented, sighing, and coming to him, running her fingers down his lapels as if to straighten them, her knuckles brushing his chest in a surreptitious caress that elicited a shiver of response. Her gray eyes held sensual promise as she gazed up through the lace of her black lashes. “Of course, it’s your wedding, too, Jak.” Her gaze sparkled with silver glints of annoyance with her mother. “We can still elope. Avoid all of this.”
“No, you cannot!” Ami put in with considerable alarm.
Jak ignored her, settling his hands on Stella’s narrow waist, so slim he could almost span it with his hands. “Shall I tie you up and toss you over my shoulder, the beautiful princess I’ve abducted?” he murmured. “I could keep you captive in my cabin and force you to serve my rapacious desires.”
Now she shivered, lips curving in a smile that did all sorts of erotic things to him. “The idea has merits,” she murmured back.
“Oh, stop it, you two,” Ami said with considerable irritation. “I’m standing right here.”
Stella smirked at him, pleased with scoring a point, then turned her back to him. “Mother,” she said, very seriously, “it’s time I was honest with you. Jak and I are having a sexual relationship. I’m no longer a virgin.”
Ami planted her fists on her generously curved hips. Her tenth child had been born at midsummer, and she looked as lush as a painting of the goddess Glorianna as mother. “You’re not funny, Nilly.”
Because Stella stiffened, Jak laughed, sheathed his blade, and drew her back against him. Stella had spent far too much of her life believing she had no sense of humor. Serious by nature and sensitive to the strong emotions of the people around her, Stella had always tended toward being far too serious. Discovering her very dry, often terribly wicked sense of humor, had been one of the great delights of carving his way through the considerable barriers she’d erected between them. Finding the sweetly, mischievously funny, and passionately sexual woman inside her thick shell—and having exclusive access to that vulnerable part of the enigmatic sorceress—remained one of the great honors of his life. He kissed the delicate shell of her ear, whispering, “I thought it was funny.”
She relaxed, leaning against him, glancing up over her shoulder.“I think we have to capitulate,”she said in his mind, something she did sparingly, unwilling to invade his thoughts more than necessary, though he always told her it didn’t bother him.
Do what you have to, my star,he thought, knowing she’d pick up his words. He didn’t have to think about it. He’d known marrying above himself—a lowly, if not exactly coarse sailor, son of a military scout and an exile—aspiring to wed a woman who was in line as heir to three thrones, including the highest in the land, meant prioritizing Stella’s duties over his preferences. When Stella smiled at him with that perfect love, trust, and appreciation as she did at that moment, it was all worth it.
“All right, Mother,” Stella said, not sounding like she was capitulating at all, “Jak and I agree to moving the wedding to the Feast of Moranu, if—”
