* * * * *

Valentine Rousseau’s eyes opened and she stared at the dark ceiling.

Then she slid out of bed, leaving the young, slumbering, firm, naked, male form in it.

Bending gracefully, her red-tipped fingers tagged the slip of green silk and lace off the floor. She pulled it over her head and the soft material slithered down her body.

Then she moved out of her bedroom, down the hall and to the room with the salmon-colored walls. She did not bother herself with turning on a light but glided across the room and stood at the small, round table on which the large, clear, smooth, round crystal sat on top of a bed of jade green silk.

The tips of her fingers skimmed the ball and instantly a wisp of jade smoke curled inside the crystal.

She stared at its glow through the dark and felt her mouth grow tight.

Just as she thought.

What she didn’t understand was why she cared. Cared so much it woke her.

“Annoying,” she murmured as the smoke twisted, coiled and curved. “Why are lovers so… very… obtuse?” she asked the ball, it had no answer so she went on, “Especially men.”

Valentine took in a delicate, displeased breath.

Always misunderstandings, never enough communication, expectation, pride, blind faith.

Not to mention, making life-altering decisions without even considering whose life it would be altering.

It was ridiculous.

Valentine studied the smoke, sighed and thought of Seoafin, her goddess of love.

Really, she should simply let it play out, wash her hands of it; there was nothing she could do. The magic binding Seoafin there was so strong, even Valentine couldn’t break it and, unusually, she expended some effort to find an answer to this dilemma, though, admittedly, not much. Valentine Rousseau rarely expended effort on anything someone didn’t compensate her for, except, of course, one of her toys.

She definitely expended effort on her toys.

And anyway, Seoafin Wilde meant nothing to her.

She meant nothing to her.

And yet, not once but too many times these past nearly five months, Seoafin Wilde’s adventures reached across the worlds and tugged Valentine from her slumber.

She stared at the smoke and while doing so it came to her that it had been quite some time since she herself had an adventure.

And even longer since she’d delighted in the pleasurable pastime of meddling.

And truthfully, this Raider, Valentine thought, had it coming.

Though she had to admit, she did wish such a specimen would be open to her penchants. A toy such as him would be… she drew in a wistful breath… delicious.

Alas, such as him, she had found, didn’t tend to like the way Valentine played.

She stared at her crystal ball deliberating.

Then she decided she’d give him time, not much but perhaps enough to rectify his mistakes and she did this having little doubt that gorgeous creature could do it.

If he didn’t…

Well, Valentine would.

Every girl deserved true bliss.

No, this was not true. Many of today’s tedious girls did not. The mere existence of boy bands proved this fact irrefutably.

But girls like Seoafin Wilde did.

Valentine sighed as she shook off her uncharacteristically soft, romantic thoughts.

She was losing her touch.

She needed to find it again.

Her thoughts moved to the young, naked, firm, male form asleep in her bed and, in the dark, Valentine smiled her cat’s smile.

Then her fingertips skimmed the cold crystal again and the smoke vanished.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Measure of a Princess

Three weeks later…

With our usual posse of Frey’s men, Tyr galloped through Snowdon as I sat on the steed held tight to my husband’s front, watched the city go by and realized I was wrong.

Bellebryn was not the most beautiful place I’d ever seen.

Snowdon was.

Snowdon, the capital of Lunwyn and where my mother and father lived, was a city like Sudvic, huge and sprawling. But it was not skirting a bay and nestled in hills, it spread across a valley and up the sides of white, snowy mountains. Its tall, densely built buildings were made of white stone capped with snow covered roofs dripping sparkling icicles, their doors painted in dove grays, creams or the lightest blues or lilacs. Its winding roads were cobbled in creamy stones that, like Sudvic, had been cleared of snow. As we rode through the city, we passed many snow-blanketed parks from large and rambling, to small and square in which there were twinkling fountains, white monuments, grand cream-colored statues of the gods, dragons or past kings, queens, Drakkars or Freys and in one I saw an iced over pond where people were skating.

Frey told me (and I noted he was right as we rode over four bridges) there were three rivers snaking through the city. And as we rode over them or beside them I saw their water was glistening and clear, their banks shimmering with ice, their rock beds glittering as if covered in fairy dust. Over these rivers were arched, ornate, cream-colored bridges with tall white-painted streetlamps rising from the balustrades. One river was much larger than the other two and flowed from a valley between two mountains fed from, Frey also told me, the Winter Sea.

Unlike Sudvic, which seemed working class from what I had seen, and Fyngaard, which was entirely cosmopolitan, Snowdon had working class areas and the pubs, shops and businesses that tended to those classes as well as posh areas with the cafés, restaurants and shops that catered to the more affluent. You could easily assess the status of those who lived in the dwellings in the different areas, the tall, narrow buildings that were likely apartments or row houses of the lower classes and then, as we rode from the outskirts to the more elite inner city, the stately, extensive homes and even mansions with the crystalline frost on their windows and window boxes filled with carefully tended miniature evergreens.

And best of all, built into the side of the mountain and overlooking the entirety of the city was Rimée Keep, a frost-colored castle that somehow shimmered in the sun. It had an abundance of conical roofs that had long, thin, red and gold diamond-patterned pennants drifting across the sky attached to short flagpoles. These were over circular turrets of which there was also an abundance. The façade had stone-balustrade balconies and blinking, diamond-paned windows with shutters painted a gray so light it was almost indecipherable from white. The front of the Keep was landscaped with tall white-painted lanterns and taller, lush, long-needled fir trees. Leading up to what had to be three-story, arched, double doors was a sweeping staircase that looked to be carved from ice and up both sides were green, tapered miniature pine trees. And at the front of it all, even from far away I could see the massive, twinkling, five-tiered fountain with flowing, crystal clear waters.