Axis went back to his tent. He knew that his father wanted to see him, but he was too tired to brave either StarDrifter or Salome and their happy, happy pregnancy.
He didn’t want to be reminded of the family he’d lost.
Yysell, his body servant, was in the tent, setting out a tub of water and a cold meal on a table to one side. Axis thanked him, then waved him away.
He wanted to be alone.
As soon as the man had gone Axis stripped off his filthy clothing and sank into the hot tub. He scrubbed his body and hair, combing it out with his fingers, then lay back in the soapy water, thinking.
Not of what he and Maximilian had discussed, but of Inardle.
And Azhure.
He’d barely thought of anything else on the ride to rejoin Maximilian.
Since his return from death Axis had been tempted by women, but had never taken the opportunity to surrender to that temptation. He’d been attracted to Ishbel, and to a lesser extent Ravenna and Venetia, and there had been many opportunities from willing courtiers at Isaiah’s palace of Aqhat whom he had waved away with a smile. But all these attractions and temptations had been intellectual. Axis had realized that he had the opportunity, and he had turned those opportunities over in his mind, but he never once came close to thinking, Yes, I will take that woman.
He had remained faithful to Azhure.
Then he had met Inardle.
The attraction had been there instantly and Axis had supposed that like all other temptations over the past two years he would mull it over in his mind, smile at the thought of succumbing, and then walk away. The attraction would fade.
Instead, it had grown stronger, and was overlaid with other emotions: irritation, anger, fear.
Irritation, anger, fear. Everything a man felt when he was falling in love, and fighting that love tooth and nail.
Love? Inardle?
A half Skraeling?
She was so very different from Azhure. Inardle was so very different from Faraday. She wasn’t someone he had ever thought he’d be attracted to—damn it, she was half Skraeling!
Perhaps that was the attraction. The feared, forbidden fruit, packaged in such loveliness.
“Shit,” Axis mumbled, rubbing a hand over his face, getting soap in his eyes, and trying his best to rid his mind of the image of the Skraeling mounting SummerStar.
What was he going to do? Should he remain faithful to a woman who was, to all intents and purposes, dead?
“What should I do, Azhure?” he murmured, but she didn’t answer, and eventually Axis rose from the bath, sending water cascading over the floor of the tent, dried himself, and fell into bed.
It took him hours to get to sleep, but when he did, his mind was made up, if not utterly easy.
Azhure was dead, and Axis did not want to spend the rest of this new life yearning for what he had lost.