"I almost killed you."

Saying the words released the tremors locked inside. Shaking uncontrollably, she clung to the only sane reality in the whole situation.

"It's all right."

"Nothing's all right, Nhaille. I can still feel its touch upon my mind, and Rau--"

"He got away."

She scrambled to her feet. "We can't let him get away, he's too dangerous.""We have the Sword, Riordan. We will deal with Doan-Rau, later."

"But he'll just be lying in wait for us. We'll never be safe from ambush."

"I don't think so. Rau has an army to command. Having lost this attempt at the Sword, he'll likely make haste for Kholer and try to strengthen his position on the coast before we catch up to him."

"And how are we going to stop him? Sure we have the Sword, but by the time we make it to the coast, Rau may already have conquered it."

Nhaille looked nervously around, as if Rau might have his ears to the very walls. "Come, Your Majesty. We can't stay here. It's far too dangerous. We need to put some distance between us and the mountains. And then," he uttered a weary sigh. "There are many, many things I must teach you."

# Wind played the crystal peaks like a series of pipes. High thin notes fell upon each other forming a disturbing melody. Nhaille would have liked to have traveled farther before the sun set, but Riordan looked as if she'd tumble from the saddle if they went but another foot. Sitting stone still on her horse, her pale hair unbound and tumbling over her shoulders, the Sword of Zal-Azaar slung across her hips, she looked like a Shraal painting straight out of the history books.

And when she glanced at him, he noted an emptiness in her gray eyes that hadn't been there before. Worries crowded together in his mind. Would bearing the Sword be the thing that unhinged her completely, or would it change her irrevocably until he didn't recognize the haunted woman riding beside him. He longed to reach across the brink between them, touch her, to take her into his arms like he had when she was a child. But the eyes that stared unblinkingly back at him were most definitely not the eyes of a child. The eyes of a Shraal, he thought and shuddered. After she'd nearly driven the Sword straight through his heart, the thought of being in close quarters with her gave him pause.

She hadn't uttered a word of what had happened between her and Rau. Had he made good on his threat to defile her body as well as her soul? Traitorous thoughts of her body pressed against his in the Sword's chamber sprung unbidden to his mind. She is your Queen, his conscience warned him. Nhaille forced his attention to the safer topic of war.

# The wind's incessant whine sliced through morbid thoughts. Ever since the Sword had touched her mind, Riordan felt the cold vacuum of the space it had occupied in her mind. Sheathing the Sword only quieted its voice, but never quite silenced it.

She hadn't expected to come this far. First she'd doubted the prophecy, then she'd doubted they would make it to Zal-Azaar alive. And now the fabled blade was strapped across her hips, she doubted her own ability to wield it.

Vividly, she envisioned a multitude of victim's voices, all shouting for prominence in her mind. Would it be like that? Would she spend the rest of her life haunted by their souls?

A sudden desperate need for human contact stirred inside her. She craved warmth, touch, anything that would fill the cold void the Sword had left inside. Riordan glanced over at Nhaille and debated how to ask.

But Nhaille had been decidedly quiet on the ride away from Zal-Azaar. She caught his sideways looks of concern, but he remained silent, immersed in his own dark thoughts. He feared her, she realized with a pang of regret.

Well, what was I expecting? I nearly skewered him to the wall. Sorry somehow didn't seem sufficient.

Still, he'd held her in the chamber, even after the episode with the Sword. As if he wanted to comfort her but was unsure how to proceed. Acknowledging those feelings shook loose an avalanche of risky thoughts.

Riordan stared into the mug of steamy tea."Now that I have the Sword, I'm going to have to do the rest of it, aren't I?" Carried aloft by the wind, her words drifted across their campsite to where Nhaille tended the horses.

His head came up sharply. "Regretfully, I believe you will."

"At first I was afraid of failing," she said. "But if I succeed, what then? I have no idea how to do what the prophecy says I will."

Riordan struggled to find the right words to express this nameless fear. "I'd have to rebuild a kingdom take a husband, beget heirs..."

Nhaille stilled, regarding her shrewdly over Strayhorn's back. "You would have nothing to fear from a husband," he said at last.

"I may die before I have the chance to take one." The words hung between them, her meaning plain. Nhaille looked away.

"Riordan, I assure you--"

"Kayr, I don't want to die without knowing what it is to love."

Never in nineteen years had she called him by his given name. She knew it had been even longer since anyone had.

Nhaille swallowed uncomfortably. She watched longing battle with duty before he gained control of his expression. "Riordan, there isn't anything I can do to help you."

"There is."

"That would be treason," he said and went on to rub down Stormback.

"Treason! Who would prosecute you? I decide what is treason. And I wish you'd stop calling me Your Majesty."

He looked at her painfully. "It is your title, Ma'am."

"Fine," she snapped. Another thought occurred to her. "If I were to order you, would you obey me, Nhaille?"

He stared at her, mouth open in shock. "Do not play games with me," he snarled and stalked off.

Tears of embarrassment burned in her eyes. She had needed him so desperately, it never occurred to her he might refuse. Out of duty, or lack of desire, it didn't really matter.

So much for my heavy handed attempt at seduction.

Riordan stared off into the darkness, resigned to enduring more embarrassment to mend matters. With a sigh, she started off in the direction he'd taken.

She found him perched atop a low ledge, staring at the heavens.

"I'm sorry. What I said was unkind."

He nodded curtly.

"It's just that I'm afraid I'm going to die before I have a chance to experience some of the kinder things life has to offer."

"It was unfair," he said, quietly, "to send you away the way he did. I told him that."

"And you? Were there not other things that you wanted for yourself?""I am only human," he said simply. For the first time she wondered who Nhaille had been before the prophecy and what he had wanted for himself.

"Yet you obeyed my father's wishes."

"He was my king, and I his most trusted friend."

She put a hand on his shoulder. "Nhaille--"

He pulled away gently. "I have thought of you as a daughter. It wouldn't be right."

"But I want it to be you."

"Your Majesty," he used her title to put distance between them. "You don't know anyone else."

"I may not live to know anyone else."

"You mustn't believe that. According to the prophecy, you will have a very long life."

"Prophecy be damned," she said.

He looked at her helplessly. "Riordan, I can't do this."

"Then you abandon me, just like my father," she said, and returned to the cold fire.

"I am old enough to be your father," he called after her. "Think about that, Your Majesty."

Love, she decided hugging her wounded pride close, was a great deal more complicated than war.

In her mind she could still feel the Sword's cold kiss. The wind that had been a mere annoyance now chilled to the bone. Nhaille returned to the horses, putting the physical distance between them that he had not attained with words.

Riordan hunkered down against a large boulder of quartz that did little to cut the wind. Just as she was certain her feet and hands had turned to blocks of ice and there was no other alternative but to raid their packs for a blanket, she heard the whisper of his boots against quartz. A blessed warmth covered her shoulders.

Nhaille pulled the coarse blanket around them and pulled her against him. But his closeness only twisted the cruel blade of embarrassment inside.

"Am I so undesirable?" The question escaped her lips before she could call it back.

Regret flashed across his face, tangling with unmasked desire. "No, Riordan, you must never think that."

"Then what is it?"

"It would be...improper. I took an oath."

"Nhaille--" She was afraid to call him by his first name again, to be the cause of that strange look of pain. "My father is dead. Of the Khun-Caryn line there is only me left. And I want it to be you."

He dragged in a breath. "Riordan, I--"

"In all this time," she asked gently, "have you never thought of it?"

"Of course I have. I lost my heart to you long ago. But what you're asking...""You misunderstood." Why was it so hard to find the words to express this new feeling? "It isn't because you're the only man I know, it's because I care. And..."

He gazed down at her, his eyes glittering against the dark sky. "And?"

"I want to know what it's like to be a woman." She paused, then blurted, "Before I have to become something else in order to wield the Sword." There, she'd said it. Uttered aloud it still made no sense.

But Nhaille caught her meaning and nodded grimly.

"I can still feel the Sword in my mind. And Rau--"

His expression darkened to murderous. "Rau what?"

"He touched me." Her hand flew to her breast. "And it felt awful, but I kept thinking that with you it would feel nice."

Nhaille swore under his breath. "I will kill him for that."

Her arms tightened around him. "Help me forget it all, Nhaille. Rau, Kanarek, the Sword. Just for a little while."

Damned if she'd beg and risk rejection again.

He read the plea in her words and let go his breath in a rush. "It's not that simple, Riordan. What if we were to create a child?"

"It isn't my time." She tilted her head to face him, and in doing so, her lips brushed his. "You told me about that, remember? You were embarrassed."

"I was."

"Are you embarrassed now?"

"No," he said quietly. His lips moved against hers. She felt his resolve weaken.

"Kayr, I wouldn't ask again--"

"No, Riordan, don't ask. In the name of the Seven Heavens stop talking."

As if to stem the tide of words, he kissed her. Not chastely the way his lips had always brushed her forehead, but a deep probing kiss that warmed the coldness inside.

"Forgive me Arais," he said, uttering a prayer to her dead father.

His fervent whisper trailed off into silence as he loosened the straps of her armor. She felt the warmth of his hand between shirt and leather as he traced the swell of her breast. He cast one last urgent glance around them.

"This is dangerous. We can't be caught in the open like this."

"My whole life has been dangerous. It has ceased to matter."

She fumbled with the laces of his vest. Spreading his shirt, she buried her face in the soft hair that covered his chest. Then, continuing her exploration, her fingers located the laces of his breeches.

His hands found the tender buds of her breasts, followed quickly by the hot pull of his mouth. A torrent of unfamiliar sensation poured through her. Wholesome, natural, unlike the cold probing tendrils of the Sword. She arched against him, toward warmth and the refuge he offered her.

Calloused hands drifted lower, caressing her buttocks as he slid the leather over her hips. She gasped aloud as his questing fingers located the tender spot between her thighs.

Gently he maneuvered her until she felt him pressed against her moist opening. For a moment she was afraid and almost called out to him to stop.

No, she thought desperately. This one act of love I will claim for myself. Riordan pressed herself against him.

The brief pain was less than she anticipated. Letting her eyes drift shut, she followed his gentle movements.

Sensation rippled through her. She gripped his shoulders.

Yes, this one thing will be mine. Before I have to do the rest of it.