“This is a waste of precious time,” I groused to Lia.
She paid no more attention to my complaint than she had any of my previous gripes—which meant that instead of studying the currents of the Bay of Cradysica as the evening tide turned, or fine-tuning the battle plans, I was riding up a hill, dressed in bright-gold cloth, playing Sawehl to Ejarat.
Serenely riding beside me on a bay mare through the golden light of the sinking sun, Lia managed to resemble a painting of Ejarat as maiden. The blue dress she wore cascaded over the horse’s rump, overlaid with an elaborate lace veil in golds and browns. She looked mind-numbingly gorgeous, as she always did, whereas I looked like a court jester.
I understood why folk always wanted to dress up Sawehl’s chosen to look like the sun, but the shining silks made me feel like I had a big target on my back. Nothing like being the brightest person in a crowd to make a guy easy to pick out. It wasn’t my first stint playing Sawehl for the priests. Whatever it took to make them happy and get them behind the cause, but the god knew better than I did what a blackened, corrupt spirit occupied my scarred body. No one who truly knew what kind of man I was would pick me to represent Sawehl. Sure, I’d gone along with various—very short—rituals, but this one felt too serious, too important. I didn’t expect Sawehl to strike me down for sacrilege—He hadn’t so far—but even I had limits to my presumption.
“You could’ve asked me first,” I pointed out.
Lia gave me a sidelong glance, her eyes bluer than usual with the framing of the dark lashes and the wig in the colors of the sea, just like her sparkling crown. “I likely would have, if you had been anywhere to be found.”
“I was busy,” I muttered.
“So you mentioned,” she replied smoothly. “Any number of times.”
“We’re here for a specific reason. You know that. Anure’s fleet is on its way and I need to be preparing the trap, not participating in a costume drama.”
“Zsst,” she hissed, eyes flashing. “Lower your voice. Show some respect for what the people believe, even if you don’t. This won’t take long, then you can go back to staring at the water like you’ve been doing all day.”
“Aha.” I nudged my horse closer to hers, so our knees bumped. She gave me a glorious smile, but her gaze spat the warning of a snake ready to strike. “So you did know where I was.”
“Yes. And I gave orders that you shouldn’t be troubled until the timing made it absolutely necessary. You’re welcome.”
“And you decided this was absolutely necessary.”
She fixed me with that granite gaze. “Yes.”
I put a hand on her knee, not able to feel much through all the layers of her skirts, but liking the tremor that went through her. Lia might control her face with the artistry of a master, but her body gave her away. I let my own gaze show my desire, and then dropped it to her bosom, remembering the taste of her naked breasts. It hit me with sudden force that tonight might be our last night together. Kara had sent word that Anure’s fleet had departed Yekpehr. I’d been watching for the second bird with more details on that fleet’s size, composition, and heading when Lady Calla had retrieved me at Her Highness’s insistence, and with the oblique threat to drag me back unconscious, if necessary.
Having no desire to be put out for the night and wake up past the morning tide with a skull-cracking headache, I’d gone with her. For this.
Also, I knew I should tell Lia the news, but she would want to move her people and it was too soon for that. So yeah, I’d delayed going back to face her because I knew I was a shitty liar and she’d see right through me. Unless I could distract her with sex or arguments. Either worked.
“Conrí, darling?” Lia murmured through lips curved in an adoring smile.
“Yes, sweetheart?” I murmured back in the same tone.
“Get through this ceremony, treat it with appropriate reverence, and I won’t cut off your balls in your sleep.” She lifted a hand to caress my cheek, the orchid ring fluttering and glass-sharp nails trailing along the skin over my beard, murder in her eyes.
I burst out laughing—not a pretty sound, more like a dog’s pained howl than anything—and turned my face to kiss her palm. “You’d do it, too, wouldn’t you?”
Her eyes glittered with a hint of real amusement. “In a heartbeat.”
“I won’t be getting heirs on you in that case.”
With a careless shrug, she tapped my lower lip with a pointed nail, then nudged our horses enough apart that I lost my grip on her. “Heirs are for the future.”
The finality, the sorrow in her voice, as she spoke of the future as an impossibility hit me like a blow to the head. Suddenly I didn’t want to think about war or the battle the next day would surely bring. Here I was, in the brilliant gloaming of a tropical paradise, married to the most beautiful and fascinating woman in the world. I should savor that. “Do you suppose Ejarat and Sawehl fight like we do?” I asked her.
She raised a brow. “Why do you suppose He works so hard to appease Her with His golden light? Sawehl spends all His time circling Ejarat, lavishing Her with warmth so She can be rich and fertile.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“See? You should take a lesson from Sawehl’s wisdom.” Her smile remained lovely and closed-lipped, but her laughter rippled beneath.
We reached the peak of the hill, crowned by the truly impressive temple, and surrounded by a solemn crowd holding unlit candles. To my surprise, Ambrose waited within, standing with several priests. I dismounted, then went to Lia to lift her off her horse. I could nearly span her waist with my hands, and with her bracing her hands on my shoulders, she seemed to weigh no more than a spray of orchids—and that was probably mostly her gown. As I set her on her feet, she squeezed my arm muscles, lips curving in a sensual smile just for me.
Tempted to kiss her senseless, I kept my head and offered her my arm, escorting her sedately up the steps to the temple. It was a simple space, as Sawehl’s temples and shrines tended to be, with smoothly polished pillars holding up the curved roof. That dome, though, was unlike anything I’d ever seen. The underside was silver—a surprise with the top being gold—and seemed to radiate light. I frowned at it thoughtfully. I’d been up here a couple of times already, but my attention had been on the surrounding countryside, my thoughts all on the trap we were laying, piece by piece. I hadn’t noticed how truly unusual the dome was until this moment.
“The metal bilayer is so thin the sunlight shines through,” Lia murmured under her breath.
Ah. Bilayer, though—gold and silver melded together? I hadn’t known that was possible. I lowered my gaze to find Ambrose’s delighted and dancing one observing me. He probably knew all about how this thing was made. Alchemy and magic, no doubt.
Besides the magnificent dome and plain pillars, the temple stood open to the environment, as everything on Calanthe seemed to be. Smooth tiles glittered on the floor, a mosaicked pattern as in the map tower. Colored arcs denoted the range where Sawehl’s sun rose and set, bounded by darker arrows at the solstice points, and a glittering star of gold at the summer equinox, a silver one for winter.
Was the weather any different between the two? I supposed I’d never find out.
Frowning at it, I noticed something else I hadn’t before. The central pattern, which I’d taken for an abstract of spiraling colors, resolved into a replica of what I’d been looking at all day. A vast spinning whirlpool. In the sunset light, another form seemed to emerge from the pattern. As soon as I tried to focus on it, I’d lose it.
Was it … a monster? The memory welled up again of that book from my childhood. Rhéiane holding it on her lap and pointing to the images. The woman like Lia, with her bicolored eyes. And on the next page … shrines? Temples to the old gods overlooking the sea …
“This is no Temple of Sawehl,” I muttered to Lia, as the priests intoned a chant, the people outside taking it up in low tones, the rhythm of Sawehl’s journey, even and reliable.
“This place is sacred to both Sawehl and Ejarat anyway,” she replied in a low voice, eyes gleaming, deep as the sea. “And the ceremony is all Theirs. Shh.”
The long rays of sunlight dipped below the dome and streamed straight at us. A shiver of something ran down my spine. A touch not of this world.
I’d never been much for religion. I hadn’t had any interest in it as a boy, and in the mines nobody worshipped anything but survival and revenge. I supposed I’d made Vengeance my personal goddess, though there was no such being in the pantheon I knew of. She’d have sharp, bloodied teeth and claws, a cavern of a chest with a burning coal of a heart within. Kind of like that monster I’d glimpsed in the tiles beneath our feet. An image that had disappeared again.
Though I’d never seen this particular ceremony, the steps were easy enough, and I circled Lia slowly to the beat. She pivoted in place, her face always to me. The face of Ejarat, beautiful, wild, serene, and ruthless as all life is. I’d chosen the wrong goddess to worship, perhaps, but that choice had been made long ago.
As I completed the first circle, higher voices chimed in, overlaying the deep rhythmic chant of Sawehl. Ejarat’s song filled the gloaming, a sweet and sorrowful farewell to Sawehl for the night. She would sleep, the voices sang, until He kissed Her awake.
Lia held out her hands to me, facing the setting sun, her expression an image of longing. Drawing me to her, she lifted her face for my kiss. It was meant to be a ritual kiss of parting, but as I touched my lips to hers, the scent and flavor of her, soft as a flower petal, fierce as the jungle, full of the grace of a life that might have been, it all drew me in and I groaned, gathering her close.
She didn’t resist. Far from it. Her arms tightened on me, her lithe body pressed so close to mine that I could feel every line of her taut thighs and hardened nipples, the bones of her corset and framework holding out her skirts like an extension of her skeleton. I drowned in her, drinking from her and feeding her in turn. The emotions rose to choke me. Maybe Sawehl did exist and somehow gave me a glimpse of His all-encompassing love for Ejarat. Inside my chest, that burnt coal of my heart flickered with something like living flame.
I understood something profound in that moment: Without the world, the sun would continue to shine, but there would be nothing to receive its rays. Only the cold, vast darkness. Somehow, somewhere along the way, I’d lost the thread of vengeance. My focus had slipped and Lia had become the center.
The music rose to a swirling crescendo of joy as we kissed, and it felt as if the temple, the world spun around us. The hot light of the setting sun vanished, my back cooling, and I imagined the quiet hiss of the sun as He whispered, Fare well, My son.
We broke the kiss, reluctantly. Lia stared up at me wide-eyed, and startled—like when I woke her from the nightmare. One blue eye, one green, a flush of flower petals fluttering over her high cheekbones, bright enough to show through her makeup. I kissed her once more, lightly. “Your eyes,” I murmured, knowing she’d want me to, though I hated for her to change them.
The priests intoned the final blessing, and the crowd sent up a joyous cheer, pelting us with flowers. Of course.
For once, I didn’t mind.
I remained at the temple while Lia rode down, leading the parade of dancing, singing people. That’s part of the ritual, too, that Ejarat departs and Sawehl remains. Ideally the man playing the part of Sawehl holds vigil all night until just before dawn, when he slips into the bed of the woman playing Ejarat and wakes her in the most delightful of ways.
Lia had told me straight off she’d spare me the all-night vigil—as a nod to more pressing needs, and as sneaking into the queen’s bed was a great way to get killed by guards. I’d accepted that for the concession it was earlier. Now I nearly regretted it. That touch of the numinous, the voice that had sounded like Sawehl’s blessing … If I held vigil, awake and fasting all the night, would the god speak to me again?
Though what useful advice He could give, I didn’t know.
“That was lovely,” Ambrose said to me, standing by my side as we watched Lia ride down the winding trail, the sky full of sunset light and evening birdsong. Merle croaked an unlovely agreement, and I grunted an acknowledgment, sounding much the same. “Well?” Ambrose asked, expectantly.
“Don’t you know already?” I replied, though without rancor. The solace of the ritual made me feel well disposed even to the wizard. When he pointedly didn’t reply, I answered him anyway. “Kara says Anure’s fleet has departed. The trap is being laid, but we need the fleet to arrive at the right time. The timing needs to be exact. Can you help with that?”
He shook his head. “That’s not how magic works.”
“Of course not.”
“It is, however, how an elemental works,” he offered, thoughtfully. “Have you asked Her Highness?”
No. It hadn’t occurred to me, but the stuff about the weather, reversing currents … I guessed I should. “I don’t want her involved in this,” I said. “Not more than necessary,” I amended.
“Ah.” He was silent a moment, the song of Ejarat floating up to us. It reminded me of something to do with Rhéiane. Maybe only because I’d finally spoken her name aloud again, maybe from that memory of the book and the stories in it. I suddenly and viciously wished I’d made myself look at her face in the painting. I might never make it back there, which meant I’d lost my chance forever.
“It’s a dangerous game you play with Her Highness,” Ambrose observed.
For a moment I thought he meant the teasing and ferocious sex, then I realized he meant using Lia as bait. “We won’t let him have her,” I vowed. “She’ll be protected.”
“Then you’ll stay with Her? Stand staunchly by her side to defend the Queen of Flowers from the one who might pluck Her?”
I laughed, a hoarse chuckle. “You know as well as I do that our rose has the sharpest of thorns, and plenty of protection.”
“Then you won’t stay with Her?”
“I can’t. I have to lead our forces.”
“Hmm.”
I rounded on him. “What aren’t you telling me? Don’t play enigmatic wizard.”
“My dear boy.” He patted my cheek. “I am an enigmatic wizard. I don’t have to play at it.” He held up a hand to stop my retort. “I simply think your place is by your wife’s side, holding the hand you claimed.” He sighed. “Though I also know you won’t.”
“How am I to direct the battle if I’m hiding in my wife’s chambers?” I demanded.
Ambrose laughed, Merle flapping his wings and cawing. “How do you plan to force Queen Euthalia to hide in Her chambers? You have such grandiose ideas of your ability to affect the forces of nature in the world around us.”
I barely managed to avoid snarling at him. “She’s a woman, not a force of nature.”
“Are you sure?” Ambrose sobered instantly. “Seems to me that She could be both. You’d do well to respect the forces of nature in your life, Conrí.”
Turning to look down the hill path again, I caught a last glimpse of her shining horse and sparkling crown, before they disappeared beneath the canopy of hand-sized, waxy green leaves. Orchids, pale as Lia’s flesh, gleamed in the last of the light, studded the darker foliage like stars.
“Why don’t you help us more, Ambrose?” I asked.
“More than what? One needs a metric—”
“No.” I rounded on him, unexpectedly angry, full of dread, as if I stumbled blindly in the dark toward some terrible … monster. “None of your riddles. Anure has four wizards helping him. I’m sure they don’t mock him and refuse to give straight answers.”
Ambrose didn’t smile. He and Merle regarded me with stern expressions. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Conrí,” the wizard replied, and his voice had a resonance that made me want to bow and apologize. “The king who believes he controls a wizard finds his belief is exactly what the wizard wants him to have. That is how magic works, my dear Conrí.”
I stared at him, unable to muster a reply.
“I am helping you, Con,” he said, much more gentle and human sounding. “More than you can realize at this point. I’m simply … keeping a light hand on the rudder.” He broke into a smile, amused at himself, and Merle cawed in apparent appreciation.
“I’m not a ship to be sailed, wizard,” I growled, doubting its truth as I said it.
“Aren’t you?”
I didn’t have a good answer. “Why didn’t you at least tell me that Anure had wizards? That would’ve been helpful to know.”
“How so? You, yourself, can vouch that wizards are unpredictable assets.”
True. The absurdity of picturing Anure arguing with intractable wizards hit me, and I nearly laughed aloud. “You still could’ve mentioned it.”
“Would you have come this far if I had?”
Good question.
“A storm?” Lia gave me a sidelong look when I asked the question. Her ladies had undressed her for the night, and she wore only her sheer silk robe, the pretty scarf from this morning knotted around her head. “Though your confidence in Me is flattering, I cannot control the weather.”
“Oh, come on, Lia,” I said with considerable exasperation. “I understand your need to keep secrets from me. No, wait—I don’t understand that, but I accept it.” Sort of. “But we’re on the same side of this battle. I need to keep Anure’s fleet from reaching the mouth of Cradysica’s harbor until tomorrow morning. Can you do that? Ambrose thinks you can.”
“Does he? Hmm.” She poured two glasses of the fantastically excellent brandy her people kept her supplied with. Easily the best liquor I’d ever tasted. Handing me one, she clinked her glass against mine. “I can hold them off once they reach Calanthe’s waters, yes.”
I sipped, the delicious zing of the brandy filling my head like the subtly floral fragrance of her skin. “With a storm?”
She laughed, the amusement lighting her gorgeous eyes. “Nothing so dramatic. I can simply ask the waters to slow their progress, flow in the opposite direction, as it were.”
“If you can do that, why not hold him off indefinitely?”
“Because Calanthe’s seas are connected to the oceans of the larger world. I can only work against the greater forces of nature for a short time, in small ways. We are, all of us, subject to the vast flows of the world.” She looked saddened by that. Before I could ask, though, she shook off the thought. “But yes, I can slow them that much. You can tell Me when you want them to arrive.”
I frowned, thinking. “We could set a time. Or I can send a message.”
“A message?”
“Maybe a signal of some sort.”
“I’ll be right beside you, so you can just tell Me.”
Uh-oh. “No, you won’t be with me. I’ve made arrangements for you to stay in a…” I trailed off at the incandescent anger flooding her face. “… a bunker, of sorts.”
“Conrí. I will not cower in some windowless room while My people die for Me.” With that final pronouncement, Lia turned her back on me and strode into the bedchamber. Even with no crown or elaborate makeup, she still managed to be intimidatingly regal, wearing the scarf like it crowned her Queen of All the Damn World.
“We discussed this,” I ground out, determined not to give her the last word on this argument.
She whirled on me, that flower-petal pattern I’d glimpsed in Sawehl’s temple brightening on her cheekbone like a blush. “Did we?” she asked in a cool, arch tone. “Oh no, my dear Conrí, we did not.”
I set my teeth. “I thought you understood that Anure’s objective will be to seize you and hold you captive so he can destroy Calanthe while you watch. And my objective is to protect you from that.”
“I understand that.”
“Then fucking listen to me.” I came close to shouting at her.
Far from flinching at the volume, she leaned in. “I have no wish to be seized, but I cannot shirk My duties to Calanthe and My people. A queen leads. That’s non-negotiable.”
I could throttle the woman, I really could. “They’ll have a plan,” I explained as clearly as I could. “They know about your abilities, how your ladies can and cannot defend you. I brought you with me so I could keep you safe, not leave you out in the open, vulnerable to abduction.”
“Oh? And here I thought I brought you with Me, and that the point of Me being here is to be the bait in your trap.”
“None of that matters.” Even as I said the words, I knew I was wrong. As Sondra had caustically accused me, I was losing my ruthless edge where Lia was concerned. I didn’t want her to be the bait. I only wanted her safe.
“If I’m in plain sight, it will be all the more difficult to spirit Me away, and I’ll be more visible bait,” she countered with infuriatingly cool logic.
I threw up my hands, no longer caring if I shouted. “Don’t you understand? You could be hit by an explosion. A misguided arrow could kill you by mistake. This won’t be some garden-party game. You could die, Lia!”
“So could you,” she replied quietly. “So could any or all of My people.”
“Well, I will not allow you to put yourself in danger.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to haul them back. She didn’t jump on them, however, didn’t coolly remind me that I had no power to command her movements and decisions.
Instead she smiled at me, closed-lipped, that sorrow back in it. “I’ve always been in danger, Con. All My life. I appreciate that you care to try to stop that—I don’t think anyone else ever has, at least not for Me, rather than to safeguard the throne—but you simply can’t. I was born to be queen of Calanthe, and that has always meant that Calanthe’s welfare, and that of all Her denizens, are more important than Mine. I cannot hide while we are attacked. It’s simply not possible.”
All the anger drained out of me, replaced by quiet despair. “Please listen to me on this,” I said, sounding ragged and desperate, not at all the forceful warrior I’d been in my head when I planned this argument.
She came to me, threading silken arms around my waist. I’d stripped down for the night, too, and wore only the pants I’d leave next to the bed, where my rock hammer and bagiroca already waited, in case I needed them in the night. In case Anure tried to abduct Lia.
“What if I asked you to stay back with Me?” she asked. She tilted her head, eyes gleaming in the light of the few candles, her body heat burning through the thin silk, fingertips soft and bare of their wicked tips caressing my back. “Would you give up being at the forefront of springing this trap, to stay by My side?”
I dropped my head to hers, encircling her in my arms, wishing I could keep her there like that forever. I’d even given it thought, staying back by Lia’s side, after Ambrose suggested it. But Kara’s messages affirmed that it was near certain Anure had left his citadel to voyage to Calanthe, so he could lay personal claim to Lia. At last we’d found something to pry him out of his fortifications, and he would be within reach. I’d bet on this, and I’d won.
My area of greatest expertise: I understood exactly how the need for revenge gnawed at the heart and mind, how it led a man to make crazed decisions and finally expose himself. Anure and I … we were alike in too many ways now. Including the insatiable desire for the woman I held in my arms. But even for her, I couldn’t give up being there to gut Anure myself. Too much could go wrong. I had to be there. If something went wrong because I was hiding …
“I can’t,” I admitted, realizing that Lia and I shared that need to be at the front.
“I know,” she whispered back. “This is what you need to do. I’ve always understood that. It might have been the first thing I understood about you, before I even met you in the flesh. I’m asking you to understand that I must do what I need to do, also.”
Unfortunately, I did.
“Lia.” I said her name on a groan of longing that had nothing and everything to do with the sensual glide of skin through silk against mine. With the raging need for her, the way my heart flamed in her presence. She lifted her mouth, fitting her lips easily against mine, the kiss long and languid and painfully sweet.
“I know,” she said again.
“I never thought I’d feel this way about anyone,” I told her, driven by some need to confess. Something about the emotion in the ritual at the temple, Sawehl’s undying love for Ejarat filling me, that tender flame that flared in the burnt coal of my heart burning only for her. My Lia. “I—” I broke off, unable to say the words.
“Shh. Enough words.” She led me to the bed.
As I sank into the yielding succor of her body, as that elemental, essential well-being Lia brought suffused me, I wondered at this strange pass I’d come to. I should never have fallen in love with the Queen of Flowers.
But I had.
A final joke from the gods who’d abandoned me. It changed nothing that my heart had come to life. It only meant I’d bleed more when I died.