#must...keep...writing...

[josselinkohl]

25,178 words! I will finish this bang fic! 2 more chapters........

[nanoblogging]

Because the project actually hit 50k words. But the ending is still far from sight. I worry that I’m not going to have the motivation to finish if I don’t make it my goal to get to THE END by the end of the month and it will just languish again. So here I go, continuing to push on past 50k as I fiddle and poke and try to coax the plot to climax.

[josselinkohl]

I need some motivation to keep writing...so I am posting some more of my arranged marriage WIP.

The Veretian courtyard was nothing like home. The natural beauty of the garden was all tightly contained in small plots each of some precisely colored flower, and all of those neatly arranged behind rows of hedges.

Damen let Nikandros direct their path, and they wandered some distance into the hedge maze, far from any others in the garden, before Damen spoke.

“I have agreed to wed Prince Laurent.”

A songbird hopped from one branch of the hedge in front of them to another in some kind of small dance.

Nikandros nodded slowly. “You have been courting him. Though I thought you had quarrelled.”

The bird pecked at the ground for a moment, jumped to another branch, and then took off toward the sky.

“He accused Kastor of treason.”

Damen watched his friend’s reaction. Nikandros’s face was even and he did not seem surprised. “So you suspended your courtship.”

“I did not mean for it to be serious,” said Damen. “Auguste warned me that he considered eighteen too young for an engagement anyway.”

Nikandros nodded, taking this in. “But something has changed?”

“We were discovered in a compromising position,” said Damen.

Now Nikandros raised an eyebrow. “He tempted you despite your better judgement?”

“I was asleep,” said Damen, speaking slightly louder, and then deliberately lowering his voice again. “I came awake to realize someone was in my bed, only to have half of the Veretian council burst in.”

“Where were your guards?” said Nikandros, frowning.

Damen shook his head. “I only found Lydos later, it seems there was some sort of contrived distraction that pulled him and Pallas away.”

Nikandros was still frowning. “I’ll speak with them; they should know better.”

“It’s not their fault,” said Damen. “It’s Laurent—the whole episode was of his contrivance, I’m certain. Once we were discovered, he played at being surprised, and then when no one else was looking, he winked at me!”

Nikandros hid half a smile unsuccessfully behind one hand.

“Do not be too harsh on them,” Damen continued. “The prince may look like a buttercup but he is a snake underneath.”

They continued walking through the garden. On the far side was an artificial pond. On the first day of their arrival, a water entertainment had been arranged, and water had sprayed out of faucets in the statues in the pond in an amazing dance. It was done with an aqueduct and a system of hydraulics, Auguste had said, proudly explaining the physics to Damen.

Damen had marveled at it. Coming from a desert, it seemed overly extravagant, but at least it had not been as embarrassing as some of the sexual entertainments arranged for later days of their visit.

They walked along the edge of the pond. The faucets were not running and the water was still. A toad croaked somewhere on the far bank. Nikandros placed a hand on his forearm. “There is another reason that I wished to speak with you alone.”

“Go on,” said Damen.

Instead of speaking, Nikandros drew a piece of parchment from a pouch at his belt, smoothed it, and handed it to Damen.

Damen stopped walking to read, and they lingered toward the middle of the pond.

The letter was between Hestor and Meniados. Hestor was a friend, an Akielon lord with a lovely olive orchard and a good sense for horses. Damen had hunted with him before. Meniados was the kyroi in Sicyon, the region where Hestor was located. Couched among several paragraphs of business-like correspondence about the local weather and some horses Meniados was hoping to breed with Hestor’s stallion was the damning sentences.

The older prince has approached me about the king’s health and the future of our country. I should like to speak with you as well.

Damen had a new awareness of traps after the morning’s events. “It can’t be real,” he said. “This is some kind of Veretian trap.”

Nikandros stroked his short beard. “I did not want to bring something to you if I was uncertain,” he said. “I spoke with Hestor. I compared this letter to several others he gave me that he knew to be from Meniados. It is the same hand.”

“So Meniados has a favorite scribe, and the man took a bribe.” Damen gave the letter back to Nikandros.

“It’s his seal,” said Nikandros, turning the paper over to reveal the wax imprint. Damen inspected it; it was the seal for Sicyon.

“Then I am sure there is an explanation,” said Damen. “If it is not some kind of Veretian plot, then Kastor must have been misunderstood by Meniados, or--”

Nikandros tucked the letter away in the pouch at his belt. “I will burn it,” he said. “But I would ask you--as a friend, Damen,” he used Damen’s small name from childhood. “To please watch Kastor carefully? I have watched him, and sometime he looks upon you with such jealousy that I do not recognize the man I knew when we were boys.”

Damen started walking again back toward the palace. Nikandros reached out and grabbed his forearm and drew him to a stop. “Promise me?” Nikandros said.

“Yes,” said Damen, and Nikandros let go of his arm, and they returned toward the palace.

As they were walking, a blond head appeared on one of the balconies above the garden, then disappeared back within.

“I am sick of Veretian traps,” said Damen, wishing for a moment that he had never come to Vere.

Nikandros gave Damen a rueful look. “At least it will not be a hardship to bed him.”

Damen stared at his friend until Nikandros laughed gently.