Negotiation: A Twelve Kingdoms Novella (The Twelve Kingdoms) Read online

  “But you do want to live, don’t you, Uorsin?” She coaxed him with her voice, a minor power of persuasion, but a handy one. “Think of all that awaits you. You could be High King. Not bad for a simple fisherman from sleepy Elcinea. Nothing would be beyond your reach.”

  “One thing.” He fixed her with that obstinate stare. “Annfwn.”

  Yes. That was the reason for all of it. She would give anything to protect her sacred home. Would give everything. And the healthy babes he’d give her would return to Annfwn someday and keep it safe and whole forever.

  Uorsin didn’t need to know that they would be all girls.

  A nice little surprise for the future.

  “What do you care for a mythical paradise when you can have all the world?”

  His face changed and suddenly he looked like the youth, the innocent that even unconsciousness hadn’t brought to him. A yearning showed through him, released perhaps by the fever. His eyes brightened with unshed tears.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered it, almost to himself. “I just wanted to see it—at least once.”

  “It’s not for you.” She layered all her powers of suggestion into her words. “But you can have everything else.”

  “Have you seen it?” He asked her with near childish urgency. She would have to heal him soon, regardless, before the fever took him down much more. “I just wanted to see it!”

  Moved by a surprising stab of sympathy, she laid a hand over his. “No,” she lied. “Annfwn is a myth.”

  He sighed, disappointment creasing his face, eyes closing on his resignation. Then he opened them again, scrutinizing her with his familiar canniness. “High King, you say?”

  “Yes. High King of the Twelve Kingdoms.”

  “Plus three heirs and the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen as my queen? Along with my life?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve seen all this, in your crystal ball or your tea leaves?”

  “So to speak. For the third time—yes.”

  “I won’t be a kind husband. Don’t delude yourself of that. You don’t deserve that from me.”

  “I know.” Better than he did.

  “And there will always be other women. You won’t be enough for me. You, however, must be faithful, so I’ll be certain the babes are mine.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “You are a fool to agree to these terms.”

  Perhaps that was so. She’d always thought martyrs were fools. Now she understood—martyring yourself was what you did when you had nothing left. When you gambled the pitiful lot you had left hoping that your nothing life would at least mean something in the end.

  See, Tosin? I’m committing suicide too. At least mine will serve the Tala and Annfwn.

  *

  “I am a fool,” she agreed easily. Too easily. Every bone in his body told him that she had other motives. That she was using him. She didn’t care about being queen. Power recognizes power. He knew it in a man, selecting the ones to lead. And he knew it in women, watching for the ones who sought to use him. There’s a certain hunger that shows in the eyes. She didn’t have it.

  She hungered for something else.

  “What else?”

  She raised an eyebrow at him, pretending not to know what he meant. But, oh no, he wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t know there was something more.

  “There’s something you want from all this, Salena, and I don’t kid myself that you crave my cock and the throne beside me. It’s the babes, isn’t it?”

  Aha! He’d surprised her there. The flicker in those inscrutable grey eyes. She sighed a little.

  “One of the babes, yes, whichever bears my stamp. That child will return to the Tala.”

  “One of three, eh?” He mulled it over. “The witch child.”

  She nodded, prickled and he enjoyed that he’d gotten this upper hand. Then an unsettling thought occurred to him. “Will they be shapeshifters—like you? My children will be monsters?”

  Now she glared in truth, but didn’t rise to his bait. “One of them will carry my stamp and will have the gift of shifting. One will be your heir, nearly your mirror. And the third…”

  He waited, caught up despite himself. When she got that faraway look, seeing something beyond the walls of the cave, she looked like the goddess he’d first thought her to be. As if lit from within by some pure flame.

  Like he’d imagined Annfwn to be.

  “Yes?” He prompted her. “The third?”

  She started a little, gaze focusing back on this world. She lifted one shoulder in a shrug and smiled at him, the echo of affection for someone else still on her lips. “Something in between.”

  “You will not teach them your witchy ways.”

  She sobered. “You cannot command that.”

  “I can.” She’d tipped her hand all right. Her power might be great, but she’d never stood down a charge in battle. She knew nothing of negotiation, in the final analysis. It had been her fundamental mistake, to put him in this position, where he had nothing to lose and everything to gain. In the end, she wanted this more than he did.

  Because he had to give up the one thing, the only thing he’d ever really wanted.

  She dipped her chin, a bare nod of agreement.

  “Heal me then. Make me strong, Witch, and then you and I shall set our terms.”

  Though he commanded instead of begged, she set to work. He savored her submission to his will. Even this most powerful witch needed him and would do what he told her.

  He took that childish longing to see paradise and cut it from his heart.

  *

  She wouldn’t cry.

  All her tears had been shed already, for the babe she’d lost, for Tosin’s pointless death—and for her future.

  She’d gotten exactly what she’d wanted and that would have to be enough. One couldn’t have it all—not even Uorsin. Working over his broad torso, she repaired the body of the man who would be her last. That flesh, the toughened skin over warrior’s muscle and sturdy bones—it would give her strong daughters. The daughters the Tala deserved and could not breed on their own.

  Ironic that fate dictated it should be him. That the Tala blood running in his veins would be enough to give him the longing for—and the entry to—Annfwn. But that it fell short of giving him the nature to protect it. Not all with the ability to enter Annfwn were worthy of it. The magic couldn’t understand that.

  But she could.

  She regretted, on one level, denying him a chance to see it. Blood called to blood and she understood how powerfully he longed for the homeland he’d never known. Perhaps if he’d made it to Annfwn sooner, it might have mellowed him, bled that anger and cruelty away. But it was far too late now.

  He called her a monster, but the rapine was all in him. His nature was to devour. That could not be changed, only redirected.

  The loss of Annfwn would harden his heart more and she accepted the burden of that guilt. The lesser of many potential evils.

  Now, though—now the fragments reassembled into a new mosaic. The world she’d hoped for. Not perfect. The “peace” Uorsin would bring to the Twelve Kingdoms would be oppressive, but better than slaughter and chaos. Her own life would last not even twenty more years and would be a trial to her.

  Her daughters, though, they would be her joy. They would return to safe and sacred Annfwn for her and give the Tala what she could not.

  A future.

  One of infinite possibilities.

  About the Author

  Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author whose works include non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and novels. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including Redbook.

  Her most recent works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Fac
ets of Passion, and an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera. A fourth series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, hit the shelves starting in May 2014 and book 1, The Mark of the Tala, received a starred Library Journal review and has been nominated for the RT Book of the Year while the sequel, The Tears of the Rose, has been nominated for best fantasy romance of the year. A fifth series, the highly anticipated erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, released starting with Going Under, followed by Under His Touch and Under Contract.

  She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.

  Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular Word Whores blog, on Facebook, and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Connor Goldsmith of Fuse Literary.

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  Read more books from Jeffe Kennedy!

  Contemporary BDSM Romances

  Facets of Passion

  Sapphire

  Platinum

  Ruby

  Five Golden Rings

  Falling Under

  Going Under

  Under His Touch

  Under Contract (Coming July 13, 2015)

  Erotic Paranomal

  Master of the Opera E-Serial

  Master of the Opera, Act 1: Passionate Overture

  Master of the Opera, Act 2: Ghost Aria

  Master of the Opera, Act 3: Phantom Serenade

  Master of the Opera, Act 4: Dark Interlude

  Master of the Opera, Act 5: A Haunting Duet

  Master of the Opera, Act 6: Crescendo

  Blood Currency

  Feeding the Vampire

  Hunting the Siren

  BDSM Fairytale Romance

  Petals and Thorns

  Fantasy Romance

  A Covenant of Thorns

  Rogue’s Pawn

  Rogue’s Possession

  Rogue’s Paradise

  The Twelve Kingdoms

  Thunder on the Battlefield, Vol. II

  (contains prequel novella Negotiation)

  The Mark of the Tala

  The Tears of the Rose

  The Talon of the Hawk (May 26, 2015)

  The Pages of the Mind (Coming 2016)

  The Edge of the Blade (Coming 2016)

  Copyright © 2013 by Jeffe Kennedy

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  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This copy is intended for the purchaser of this ebook only, or sharing as permitted by your ebook vendor.

  Cover art: www.bookbeautiful.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or business establishments, organizations or locales is completely coincidental.

  Thank you for reading!