The Penwyth Curse (Medieval Song 6)

“I haven’t either.” Her fingers closed around his wrist. “How do you feel, truly?”

“I am strong again. I am myself. Why?”

She sighed, dropped her fingers from his wrist. “I have always believed that a man or a wizard should die when he harms another, but not when he is arrogant, because he believes all the way to his big feet that he can overcome all odds. No, that is not such a bad thing. And your arrogance, prince, it is such a deep part of you. It pleases me.”

He liked hearing that. “What did you do to those assassins?”

“I tangled them all together, arms around legs and legs around necks, all crisscrossed and wound through and about. As for that man, Branneck, I left him in the air, unable to fall to the ground, and he was howling. I don’t know how long the spell will last. Perhaps if they free themselves, they’ll be able to pull him down.”

“They were from Mawdoor.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I believe he was testing for weakness. He didn’t care about any of them. He probably believed you would simply kill them, but the way in which you did it, aye, he would have learned more about you, and perhaps he would have seen a weakness.”

He started to say that he didn’t have any weaknesses, and instead he sighed. “He found it.”

“Aye, this time he did.”

“If Mawdoor was watching what happened, then he saw that I was also a fool to challenge them as a mortal. Mayhap he believes me dead. It is very possible, you know. A wizard cannot follow you in here, can he? With his mind?”

Slowly she shook her head. “You came into my forest at great risk. I believe the sacred oaks flatten a wizard’s powers, I suppose you could say, since they are my oaks, since they are filled with my own power. I am very well protected.”

“Then I was smart to have Callas lead me to you.”

“Aye, you were.” She smiled at him, lightly touched her fingertips to his chest. “We both survived.”

“Aye, through no skill of mine. I wanted to make you laugh, Brecia, to make you admire me. I wanted you to see how I could reduce those miserable sots to wallowing pigs, but I failed. Damn you, you saved my life.”

“Touch me again,” she said. “My breast.”

If there was a wizard’s heaven, he knew he was there. He couldn’t believe what she’d just said. He looked down. Her breast was white, all the blood gone. He kissed her, took her nipple into his mouth. Ah, so warm, her warmth filled him. He raised his face, breathed in her flesh. She brought him back down to her. He said against her warm flesh, “No one has kissed you, Brecia?”

He’d said something, she knew that, but what it was couldn’t matter as the wild feelings crashed through her. She felt as though she could fly—she could even carry him whilst she flew. She wanted to shout, wanted him to kiss her until she was unconscious.

What was happening to her?

She’d never felt anything like this in her life.

Whatever they were, these feelings were pounding and digging at her, bringing near pain in her belly and her breasts, aching, making her want to gasp and laugh, and yell, all at the same time. And here he was, at his ease, stroking her so gently it could have been the wings of a hummingbird, not a wizard’s fingers. What was wrong with him? Didn’t he feel anything that she was feeling? Was he a block of oak?

She reared up and pushed him over onto his back. “Prince,” she said, and began ripping off his clothes. He lay there, unblinking, wondering what was happening to her. Whatever it was, he wasn’t about to do anything that would stop her from this incredible madness. Lust was turning his innards molten. Did a witch feel such lust? Evidently so.

In an instant she was naked, straddling him, and he felt her belly pressing against his sex. She was rubbing her hands down his chest to his belly, and then she was moving down on him, sliding between his legs, and he knew this was going to be a close thing all around.

“Brecia, slow down. You must slow down. I am not like you, I—”

“No,” she said, and closed her mouth around him. He rose six inches off her bed, her on top of him, and stayed there. He sucked the blue smoke close and breathed it in. It tasted like an aphrodisiac. He laid his hands on her.

He hadn’t imagined anything like this. Then he didn’t have any more time to imagine anything. She was clutching him between her hands now, and he was so hard he could have thrust through time itself. And then she was straddling him again and she was bringing him into her, slowly, and then she cried out and shoved down on him, taking him all the way to her womb.

The pain was something she hadn’t known about. It was sharp, deep, and she screamed, but it wasn’t just pain that sent her scream through the oak forest, it was mad joy and possession—her act of possession, of him, a wizard of her choice, a wizard whose blood she now shared. She was apart from him, driven by powers that had overwhelmed her.

He’d never before seen such lust, such incredible strength and intensity in either a woman or a witch. She wanted him and she was taking him.

The witch was taking him. The instant he thought it, he moaned deep in his throat. He grabbed her, brought her down to kiss her. She was frantic, kisses not enough, she

was moving on him, and moaning, her witch’s eyes wild and vague. She was pressing down on him, but he felt the power of his own lust lifting him even more until he could feel the sweep of sweet air on his naked back and buttocks. And he said, “Brecia, I will give you all that I can.” He eased his fingers between their bodies, and found her. He stroked her, felt the softness of her, the frenzied desire, the explosion of her power, all mixed together and he wanted to weep that she was his and would remain his forever.

His fingers pressed, stroked, and pushed her closer to something she knew was there but didn’t yet understand. The heel of his hand was pressing against her, his fingers dancing on her flesh, and his sex, probing deep inside her. She saw it all in her mind, felt every breath he took all the way to her soul. She stiffened over him, threw her head back and yelled to the heavens themselves. He watched her in that instant before he took his own release. By all the gods, it was fine. He held her close, knowing they were together in the madness, and then they both flew upward into the blue smoke, out of the fortress, and took wing into the skies above them.