It didn’t take long before the relief of being home in the mountains gave way to Liv’s frustration at just how long it took to recover from her injuries. It didn’t help that Arjun lost no opportunity to remind her just how much worse it would have been without magical healing.

  “A month and a half after the surgery,” he repeated, for what must have been the tenth time. “And then at least that long rebuilding your muscles with an exercise regimen. And you don’t have just one injury, Liv - all four of your limbs were dislocated.”

  “Which is why it’s a good thing I have you,” she told him, with a grin. “Because if I had to do nothing but sit on a pile of pillows and sort paperwork from now until summer, I would go absolutely and utterly mad. Now, when can I walk? I’ve been circulating mana to my hips every night since we got back.”

  “You can walk when I say you can,” Arjun shot back. “Lie back and let me test your legs.”

  Anyone else, Liv knew, would have had to be wheeled down to the hospital at the foot of the mountain, if they weren’t simply staying there for the duration of their recovery. There were things that went along with being queen that she didn’t enjoy, but having her own personal healer attend her in her rooms was not one of them.

  For the next half a bell, she laid back while Arjun manhandled her legs, pushing first one, then the other, back toward her chest so that her knees bent. Liv was told to push back, with one leg at a time, while Arjun tested out just how much pressure he could exert against her healing limbs. With both legs extended and held together, she had to use her stomach muscles to try to bring them back to a center line while he gently threw them side to side. By the end, she’d resolved that every healer in the world must have a streak of cruelty in them to enjoy inflicting such torture.

  Liv was, to her own embarrassment, soaked in sweat from the effort. It might have helped her to feel better if she could have gotten her own body off the bed and into her wheeled chair, but she’d prioritized her hips over her left arm, and as a result it was in the worst shape out of all her limbs. Arjun called Keri in from where he’d been waiting, outside in her sitting room, and together the two of them got her settled into the chair.

  “I could have used magic for that,” Liv grumbled.

  “And if it's an emergency, you can,” Keri told her. “But it's a weakness to fall into the trap of using a spell for absolutely everything, all of the time.”

  “You just want me to suffer the same way you had to,” she complained.

  “You’ve caught me,” he whispered, in Vakansa. But when he pressed a kiss to her forehead, she couldn’t hold the teasing against him.

  Truthfully, Liv knew that in many ways Keri’s recovery had been worse than what she was going through. Nearly all of her friends and family were at Bald Peak, or only a short carriage-ride away at Whitehill, and they made certain that she was never alone for long. If Triss wasn’t visiting with the baby and helping her supervise magical combat classes down at the college, Liv’s mother was cooking her favorite meals in the new kitchen which had been built into the keep.

  Sitting in the wheeled chair, a sheaf of parchment in her hands while the room filled with the scent of apple slices simmering in Dakruiman cinnamon, watching Margaret Brodbeck roll pie crusts with flour on her hands, Liv couldn’t help but smile.

  “What are you thinking about, smiling like that?” her mother asked, with a grin.

  “How lucky I am,” Liv answered. “I’ve got you here to fatten me up with sweets, and Thora and Miina to help me. Arjun’s a better healer than old Master Cushing ever was, or Mistress Trafford ever will be. Triss comes by with the baby every chance she can get. And I was just thinking how it must have been for Keri, when I left him in Whitehill. None of our friends were with him, he was all by himself. He didn’t even really have his family.”

  Her mother slipped her hand under the cheesecloth she’d laid down beneath the pie crust, lifted, and then flipped it, with practiced ease, into the pie plate. Her fingers moved with quick, strong assurance, smoothing the crust into place so that it could be filled with soft, gooey apples.

  “And here I thought you were going over tax numbers,” Maggie said, with a smile. “Can’t keep your mind off that young man?”

  Liv blinked, and felt her cheeks getting hot. “No, I was trying to find the last person to help re-enchant Ghveris’s armor. Anyway, I was just making a comparison,” she said. “I can’t imagine how much worse this would be if I was stuck here all by myself, while all of my friends were off fighting and maybe dying.”

  Maggie paused, leaning on the counter with both hands spread to either side of the pie plate, and simply looked Liv in the eye. “Don’t think I can’t see how he’s always there to help you in and out of the chair,” she said. “He keeps the kisses to when you both think I’m not looking, but neither of you are as subtle as all that. Anyway, you brought him over to meet Gretta and Archie and I, before running off across the ocean. You might as well have planted your flag on him right then and there.”

  “Was it that obvious?” Liv thrust her stack of parchment off to the side, putting it up on the long table where the servants took their meals.

  Her mother nodded. “You never took anyone else just to have dinner with me.”

  Liv looked to the door, and the window. The moment they’d arrived and she’d declared that her mother was going to use the kitchen to cook for her, all of the cooks and kitchen maids and scullions and hall boys had made themselves scarce.

  “Cade and Rose both came after me,” she said, after taking a moment to gather her thoughts. “It was nice to be wanted.”

  “It always is,” her mother agreed, with a grin. “Even if you don’t do anything about it.”

  “I like him,” Liv said. It felt liberating, somehow, to say it. “I’ve known him on and off for years now, since we met in Freeport, and he’s never let me down yet. He’s a fighter, like I am, Mama. I don’t have to worry about whether he can keep up with me, and I don’t have to worry about Keri getting old and dying, and leaving me behind.”

  “He has a son already,” Margaret pointed out. “I’ve known a few women who wed a man with children – usually after the first wife died in childbirth. It isn’t easy. Sometimes they think you’re trying to replace their mother.”

  “I like Rei, too,” Liv said. “Not in the same way, of course. But he’s a good kid. We took him to the theater in Freeport, and swimming at Coral Bay. I don’t think there will be any problems.”

  “Those are all fun things,” her mother warned her. “You’re a playmate, not a mother. You’ve never had to discipline him yet. If you wed Keri, sooner or later, you will have to do that. And then you aren’t just the fun one, anymore.” Margaret sighed. “I’m not trying to talk you out of anything, dove. But I do want you to go in with your eyes open. Do you love him?”

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  Liv saw, once again, his face cracking and then splitting open, as Keri’s body crumbled away to frozen dust. The cold, northern wind on her bare skin, and his face in her hands, his lips on her lips. I never chose anyone before. The relief that he was real, that he wasn’t gone. She thought about lying on the mattress in Freeport, looking into his eyes, just before Rei had come running into the room and bounced on the bed. How’d he’d reached out to her when she was nothing but a storm, and she’d followed him back – just like he’d followed her back, when she was lost.

  “I think I do,” Liv admitted. “I can see it, Mama. I can see how it would work. I think Rei would love a younger brother or sister. I trust Keri to tell me what he thinks, especially when I’m doing something wrong. I trust him to support me. All through Freeport, he was at my side when I needed him.”

  “Not many men would be satisfied being the husband of a queen,” her mother pointed out. “Rather than a king themselves. Unless you’re planning to share your power with him.”

  “We haven’t really talked about that,” Liv admitted. “I left him as regent while I was in Varuna, and I’ve trusted him to build the beginning of our army.”

  Margaret Brodbeck shrugged, stepped over to the iron skillet of apples, and poured the entire thing into the pie crust. “I’m no queen,” she said. “But you might want to get all that clear before the two of you get up in front of a priest, Livy. Nothing is going to be simple for you.”

  ?

  The stonemasons of House Isakki had finally managed to spell their way up to what would become the fourth floor of the keep. The single staircase they’d made, to this point, was rough, and the first corridors unfinished. No ornamentation had even been started, yet, and there were no wooden doors hanging where rooms would one day be, nor even any hinges bolted into the stone to support them.

  At Liv’s insistence, she and Keri had left her wheeled chair with two personal guards, at the foot of the steps. A week of circulating mana through her hips every night had finally taken her recovery to the point that Arjun would allow her short walks, so long as she had someone close at hand to make certain that she didn’t fall. She hadn’t thought that she’d grown all that weak, but by the time the two of them made it into the first, rough cut chamber at the end of the corridor, it was all Liv could do not to collapse in the stone dust.

  “I can go run and get Arjun,” Keri offered, once he’d helped her sit. Her skirts were already gray from making their way through the excavation, and they could hardly get worse from sitting down now. An orb of sunlight, no larger than a candle flame, bobbed above their heads, illuminating the stone.

  Liv shook her head. “No. I just need a moment to catch my breath,” she gasped.

  Keri turned around, then settled onto the stone floor at her side. “Now we’ll both be filthy,” he said, with a smile. “This is where your chambers are going to be?”

  “I think everyone else is sick of having me downstairs, in rooms that were meant to be used for something else,” Liv admitted. “Now that they’ve cut a stairway up to the fourth floor, I’m told my suite will be finished before they even begin anything else.”

  Together, they looked around at what had been cut out of the rock. At the moment, it was little more than a cave. It reminded Liv of how they’d lived at Feic Seria, before making the journey across the high desert to encamp the army at the base of Nightfall Peak. There, they’d excavated rooms out of sandstone, while here they were surrounded mostly by speckled, multi-colored granite, with veins of white mana stone running through it.

  This first room was cut in a square perhaps twenty-five feet on each side, and currently only eight feet tall. The outline of a second door had been chiselled - or, more likely, spelled - into the wall opposite the outside corridor, which Liv imagined would eventually lead into a bed-chamber, or a dressing room.

  “This will be the sitting room,” Liv said, doing her best to picture it. “There’s supposed to be windows along that wall, eventually.” She pointed to their right.

  Keri leaned over to squint at the stone. “How thick do you think it is, right now - if windows are going to be cut there?”

  “It can’t be more than a foot, can it?” Liv speculated. “Anyway, there’s going to be a hearth – four of them, actually, all built into the same central flu. And a private stair up to the fifth floor, which will be the highest point of the keep, with another four rooms. I’ve got all the drawings.”

  “Eight rooms. That’s a lot of space, for one person,” Keri said, after a moment’s silence.

  “It’s not meant for one person,” Liv said. She shifted at his side, so that their hips and legs were pressed up against each other. “It’s designed for a family.”

  Keri turned toward her, and Liv met his eyes.

  “Liv,” he began, clearly hesitating over the words, finding each one like a climber slowly making their way up a bare rock face, grappling for each handhold in turn. “I never wanted to press you into anything. My aunt –”

  “Your aunt has nothing to do with it,” Liv assured him. “I told you at the Hall of Ancestors. I never chose anyone, before. Now I do.”

  “You’re certain?” Keri asked. “What if Rose came back tomorrow, looking for you?”

  Liv was surprised to find the pain of the other woman leaving was now dull, like an old broken bone throbbing at the coming rain, rather than a stabbing, piercing ache in her gut. “I cared about Rose,” she said. “But I lost the chance of being with her when I decided to do this –” she waved a hand at the stone. “To be a queen. She was right; I can’t see her fitting into this life. And it wasn’t fair to ask her to. But I think you can, if you want to.”

  “Of course I want to,” Keri said, reaching out and taking her hand in his. “I think I’ve been half in love with you since the moment I saw your eyes. I didn’t even know who you were, and I wanted to wrap you up in my arms and hold you.”

  “Wait. Just – wait,” Liv said. “It isn’t just me. I know that you know that, but – are you really going to be happy? I’m not going to stop being the queen, Keri. I could hardly find time in my day to sneak off here alone with you, right now. And that’s not going to change. I’m going to use you, you know? I’ll leave you as regent if I have to, send you at the head of an army when I can’t go myself. I’ll use you to bring Mountain Home into the fold, eventually. And I need you to give me children.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Liv talking,” Keri said. “It sounds like the queen.”

  “I don’t think I’m always going to be able to separate them,” Liv admitted. “There are thousands of people – over a hundred thousand people, spread throughout the north, from Whitehill to Kelthelis to Al’Fenthia and all the other towns and cities. I told my brother I was going to be their sword and shield. I can’t make choices that won’t protect them, because that’s what they’ve trusted me to do. So yes, if you – if you wed me – then you’re getting the queen, maybe even more than you’re getting Liv.”

  “Is it just the queen who wants me, or Liv, too?” Keri asked.

  “Of course I do,” Liv murmured. “Couldn’t you tell?”

  Next to her, Keri nodded. “So what – I’d be your king?”

  “I was thinking prince,” Liv said. “There needs to be no question which of us is the ultimate authority. I don’t – I’m sorry to talk about it like this,” she said. “I wish I could just be romantic about it. But I can’t.”

  “I’ve been a soldier for almost thirty years now,” Keri said. “That part is easy. I don’t mind leading your army into battle, though we have Soile for that, as well. I don’t have any need for a title. We never had kings or queens in the north, anyway. Having children with you though – that’s quite a burden.”

  Liv blinked, looked at his face, and saw that Keri’s lips were curving upward, as if in spite of his efforts to fight off a smile. She gently slapped his shoulder. “Oh, I’m that much of a burden, am I? Are you going to need a blindfold to force yourself through the task?”

  “No,” he murmured, reaching out to wrap an arm around her waist. “I don’t think I’ll need that. You’ve been clear about what you need Liv, so let me do the same.”

  Liv met his eyes, and nodded. It was her turn to listen.

  “I told you in Freeport,” Keri said. “If we do this, I need to know that you won’t ever go behind my back, that you won’t abandon me. I don’t think you would,” he said, hurriedly, as if afraid that she’d be angry. “But I never thought that Rika would, either. And if it happened again – if you threw me aside like that – I think it would break me, Liv. I don’t think I have a third try in me.”

  “I won’t,” Liv said. She pushed aside the urge to stab Rika that she felt, at the obvious pain in Keri’s voice. “I would never do that.” She reached up to run her fingers through Keri’s hair, and turned her face toward his, until she found his lips.

  “We’re doing this, then?” Keri asked, his breath brushing her face, a moment later.

  “Yes.” Liv closed her eyes, and leaned into him. “Let’s see about planning a wedding.”

  volume nine is off and running!

  here. I am more available there than I am here.

  Dramatis Personae

  Livara T?r Valtteri Kaen Syv? - Archmage, former scullery maid at Castle Whitehill, the bastard daughter of Maggie Brodbeck and Valtteri Ka Auris. Mountain Queen, and Lady of Winter. Getting married. [38 Rings of Mana, not counting mana stored in items.]

  Arjun Iyuz - Journeyman Guildmage from Lendh ka Dakruim; his jati specializes in healing magic. Might be just a little sadistic when it comes to physical therapy. [19 Rings of Mana]

  Inkeris "Keri" ka Ilmari k?n B?lris - A young warrior of the Unconquered House of B?lris, father to Rei. Might have a little emotional damage, still. [21 Rings of Mana.]

  Margaret Brodbeck - Mother of Liv, Cook at Castle Whitehill. Making certain her daughter knows exactly what she's getting into.