“Good. I don’t want to. Are you sure that you will live to see her again?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“I hope you do see her again. If you do, it’s up to you to tell her of the evening you spent making love to a black-skinned snake woman. Or not.” Anira smiled. Her teeth shone wonderfully white in the moonlight, like little jewels. They looked so smooth and clean and cheerful. “You are part of my destiny, Dariel Akaran. Making love with you is part of that. Anyway, you made your decision when you took my hand to come down here. Can we stop talking now?”
He felt her hand take hold of his sex. That did it. He could well imagine that Wren would box him bare knuckled when she found out, but what Anira said was true. He had already consented. Being with her already felt necessary in a way he could not explain. He pulled her closer. He touched the tip of his tongue to the enamel of her teeth. It was as he had thought. They were smooth and clean and cheerful. When her lips pressed full against his, he responded with more hunger than he knew he had felt.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Delivegu folded himself into the chair. He managed to do nothing overtly indecorous, and yet he pushed up close to the line with every gesture: the manner in which he leaned back against the plush backrest, the way his fingers brushed the open collar of his white shirt, the cast of his long legs, parted just enough to invite eyes toward his virility.
Corinn watched him from the far side of her desk. With his trace of a smile and the way he seemed to shift his focus from one eye to the other and back again and the way his lips stayed parted, moistened by his tongue before he spoke, Delivegu acted as if there were no space between them at all. They might have been plastered together after lovemaking. Such was the sensual excess that dripped from him like sweat.
“Did you do it?”
“I saw to it, Your Majesty. I timed it to cast no blame upon myself. Or upon you. It’s done. Soon you’ll hear wailing coming all the way from Calfa Ven.”
Corinn let nothing show on her face, but inside, her heart caught for a moment on the thought of Dariel—wherever he was—hearing that wailing. Perhaps he would not hear it. Perhaps he was dead and gone, and would never know what she had done. Am I such a monster, she asked herself, that I would kill my brother’s lover and his child—and then look to my brother’s death with relief?
Worse things had been done by her ancestors, and for less reason. Reading through the Akaran royal archives had shown her that. By comparison to the secret crimes of her ancestors, Corinn’s acts were small wrongs done for larger goals. Who but other monarchs could understand the decisions rulers must make? Not even Aliver had carried such a burden. Not Mena. Not Dariel.
“None but my ancestors could judge me,” she said.
Delivegu dipped his head. “It was a small thing, Your Majesty.”
You’re right about that, Corinn thought. It had not seemed like a small thing when she gave him the mission, but so much had changed. The palace hummed now with energy for the coming coronation. She had been hosting the flood of dignitaries arriving from all over the empire for several days. Banquets and dances, speeches and parades and performances in the Carmelia. It was all hastily prepared. A good portion of the empire also mustered for war, but there was a giddy vibrancy to everything. She felt like a child, as if she believed again that the world could be as she wished. She was not sure that she had truly felt that as a child, but she knew a princess was supposed to feel that way. Now, because of her own hard work, she did.
Rhrenna appeared in the doorway. Standing framed within it, she reminded Corinn that Aliver would be along soon to escort her to the meeting. Corinn watched Delivegu appraise the secretary as she turned on her heel and moved out of sight. She was lovely in a thin-featured, Meinish way. Under Corinn’s critical eye, Rhrenna had developed a fine fashion sense, wearing clothes that flattered her slim figure.
Corinn wondered if Delivegu had slept with her. Rhrenna was discreet in her romantic life, but she had recently admitted to Corinn that she could not have children. She had never yet gotten pregnant. By her own estimation, she should have by now, if it was possible for her. Corinn made a mental note to advise her not to be seen with Delivegu, not if she wanted a chance at being an Acacian queen. And why shouldn’t she become queen? Rhrenna had been a more faithful servant to her than anybody. Hers was a disgraced people, but allowing such a marriage would be seen as an act of benevolence, forgiveness. Considering that she could not bear children … well, there would not be that complication to Aaden’s inheritance to deal with. It would not be so hard to weave an attraction to her into the binding spells around Aliver. She decided to begin to do that, slowly, at a pace that would bloom right around the coronation.
Delivegu found Corinn’s eyes still on him when he swiveled back to her. “With this behind us, what more would you have me do? You know I wish to serve you in any manner you require.”
The queen lifted her chin. “Enjoy it while it lasts.”
Delivegu bowed. “As you order. All I wish is to fulfill whatever you desire.”
Delivegu, you musky animal. As if it’s my desires you concern yourself with, Corinn thought after he departed. You will never have me. Nobody will.
“Nobody after me, you mean?”
The voice entered Corinn’s ear as if the speaker’s lips were just beside it. At first it was just a voice. She recognized it, though. She could not have mistaken the superior tenor of it, so smooth and confident, the speaker as pleased with himself as a pampered cat. By the Giver, she knew that voice!
“Because I certainly had you. Body completely. Soul … almost.”
She had heard it in so many variations. Giving speeches, rallying crowds, barking orders. She had heard it jesting over a banquet table, telling tales, poking fun at her. She had heard it panting her name in passion, and had lain entwined as it spoke softly, breaths against the nape of her bare neck.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”
Then she felt the physical presence that came with the voice. He was there in the corner. She did not turn to look directly at him, but she saw him at the border of her vision. Just barely physical, so near the edge that with a step he could have slipped back around the corner of her mind, out of sight. He leaned against the wall, watching her with his gray eyes. She knew they were gray. Beautiful and gray, more at home in the face that displayed them than any eyes she had ever seen. She knew when he swept a hand up over his blond hair, combing it with his fingers. She did not look. For some reason it felt very important that she not look directly at him.
“Look at me, lover. You haven’t forgotten me. How could you when I left you proof? A proof that you love more than anything else in the world. Which, in a way, means I still possess you, Corinn. That’s why you’ll never take another man.”
“No, that’s not why.”
“No?” He shifted. She imagined the curious purse of his thin lips, the way he would lift his eyebrows and fix her with all his charismatic attention. “Then why have you never been with another man?”
“Because none are worthy.”
Hanish laughed. “So after me, no other man is worthy of you? I have ruined you. The pity for the world of men!”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” She still did not wish to talk, but the words came anyway. “You were not worthy either. You were all weak, treacherous. Every man I … Every man who loved me failed me. My father died. He said he would protect me. Instead he died. There, that’s one. Igguldan—”
“Oh, that’s right. He died, too.”
“He spouted love and promises, and then went off and died, yes.”
“Who else?” Hanish taunted. “Your brother, don’t forget him.”
“Aliver died. Dariel disappeared—”
“You can’t hold that against him! He may still be alive.”
“And you …”
“So you’ve been shaped by the failures of men?”
“No, you don’t understand me! None of you shaped me, but all of you taught me to trust only myself. Only myself. You most of all taught me that.”
“I know.” Hanish’s tone changed. Just two words, but they instantly filled with regret, with a sincerity it was hard to doubt. “About me you’re right. I knew what I was doing was vile. I hated it, and yet I went forward. But, Corinn, don’t pretend you don’t understand the pressures of leadership. Didn’t you just have your beloved younger brother’s lover killed? Forgive me if I misunderstood the exchange, but that’s what it sounded like. I know why you did it. I’m not sure you had to, but I understand that you were protecting our son. I can’t fault you for that. I want him safe, too.”
It was so hard not to look at him. It took all her control to keep her eyes pinned to a spot on the wall opposite. “You tried to kill us.”
“If you had a chain of undead ancestors demanding blood, you’d kill for them, too! Besides, I didn’t know you were pregnant. That would have been … complicating. Corinn, if I had known, I would never have tried to go through with it. You know that, don’t you? You must believe me on that. If you had only told me, I’d have turned on the Tunishnevre instead. You and I would still be together. Still in love.”
“No.”
“Let me prove it.”
“No,” she said again. It was hard to make the word, and she got no further.
“You know it’s true. Look at me. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“No, you’re not.”
“Well, not completely,” the apparition conceded. “You almost brought me back. It could have been me instead of Aliver. I was that close. You wanted someone to trust. Someone to help you. Despite everything, Corinn, it was nearly I you brought back to life. Think of that.”
The pipers began to play the hour. Their crisp notes cut short the moment. Corinn stood. “I have another meeting,” she said. She felt the figure move as she did. He reached for her. She quickened her step, out into the hallway and then down it toward Rhrenna, who had risen from her own desk as Aliver arrived. She did not need to look back to know that the figure that had been Hanish Mein fell into vapor as she moved away.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
The summoned group awaited Aliver and Corinn in the assembly kitchen that the servants used to keep food warm and drinks chilled on banquet nights. Corinn chose it, she had explained, because its exterior door opened onto the Terrace of First Light, a semienclosed space near Edifus’s original hold. With the door to it closed, none of those milling around in the room likely even knew of it. Aliver knew little more about what awaited them on the terrace than any of the others, but Corinn had thought it best that he see her work revealed at the same time as the others.
The members of the Queen’s Council jockeyed for position just inside the room. Balneaves Sharratt greeted her first, with Baddel beside him. Talinbeck and General Andeson bowed their heads, and Sigh Saden received them with a thin smile meant to demonstrate the patience he was showing for her benefit. No doubt they all wanted to know why she had gathered them.
The two Akarans acknowledged the other senators and nobles in attendance. They kept their exchanges clipped until they reached the cluster of men standing with Jason. Aliver had met them for the first time only a couple of nights before: Ilabo, a slim Bethuni man wearing the long, intricately stitched robe of his people, and a Candovian called Dram, who looked more Meinish with his pale skin and high cheekbones and gray eyes than he did like the sloe-eyed people he claimed.
Corinn faced the crowd. “You may have guessed that you were not summoned here just to enjoy my company.”
Baddel piped that that was enough of an enticement by itself. Polite murmurs of assent.
“There’s more to it than that,” Aliver said, remembering the lines Corinn had given him. He grinned and lifted his slim glass of wine. “These two are the best horsemen to be found in the empire, or so we’ve been told. Is it true?” Neither of them boasted, but Dram’s involuntary chin lift could have spoken for both of them. “Dram of Candovia is so skilled he rides without reins! He talks to his horse through his legs, while above he launches arrows with a master’s speed and accuracy. And we have Ilabo of the Bethuni.” Aliver released the imaginary bow he had used to demonstrate Dram’s prowess. He set a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “I’m sure everyone here knows that the Bethuni have kept up a horseback riding tradition that faded in most of Talay. Ilabo has, since his early teens, been his nation’s champion at the games. Those games, mind you, can be deadly.”
Having named them both, Aliver stood smiling. Corinn brushed past a servant offering her a drink from a silver tray heavy with wineglasses. She asked the two men, “Do you know why you’re here?”
“To ride,” Dram said.
“You’re correct,” Corinn said. “You will ride. I’m offering a way for you to carve a place in history for yourselves. I want for you to be the arms and legs and wings of the empire, as Aliver is the heart and I the head. Do you wish to know what I’m inviting you to ride?”
She walked briskly out the door. A servant opened it just in time. The others followed, looking at one another, and then squinting as they emerged into the bright afternoon light. They came through singly or in pairs, so it took some time for the entire party to emerge, especially as some paused in the doorway, stunned by what they saw. They had to be pushed forward by the weight of curiosity behind them.
Aliver felt it as much as any of them.
There they stood, Elya’s children, preening within the high walls that hemmed in most of the terrace. The young were not as they had been only days ago. All four of them lifted heads bigger than river crocodiles’, with snouts as long as those reptiles’, frightening in their length. Their eyes were each the size of a man’s fist. Po’s golden orbs studied the group with cold indifference. What had once been soft-feathered plumage now looked more like spiny plates. They still held the shape of feathers, but when Tij’s crests flared, they rose like blue sword blades. Thaïs stretched her head up high and chirruped a greeting to Corinn. It was no longer the high, light sound it had been. Now it thrummed out with bass notes that Aliver felt as vibrations tossed through the air.
He nearly rushed forward to pull his sister away and shout the beasts back, but he knew that Corinn would not want that. His mouth only opened enough to inhale. His legs only moved forward a few steps.
“Behold my winged children,” Corinn said. She descended the stone stairway that brought her down to their level. “Mine. Not Elya’s. Not Mena’s. These children belong to me and to the empire. Mena may have been the first to ride a flying mount, but these are not feathered lizards, as you can see.”
She reached Tij. The dragon lowered her head toward Corinn, causing gasps from watchers. Po growled in response, his crest plumes spread. Corinn rubbed Tij under her snout. “They are war mounts, fit for the bravest men the empire has to offer. They will be your mounts, if you are men enough to strap yourselves on them and fly. Doesn’t that sound enticing?”
“Your Majesty,” Dram said. “They have no … wings.”
“Of course they do,” Corinn said. “Po, show them your wings!”
As if knowing that he was to make the most impressive show he could, the dragon stretched its neck toward the sky and roared. He shook his black, scaled torso furiously. His shoulders gyrated for a few awful seconds, until the protrusions on his back audibly cracked open. Wings erupted out of either side. Each section snapped into place with concussions of sound like tree trunks breaking. Kohl followed Po’s lead, with Tij and Thaïs just behind her. In jolting, sinuous waves of motion, each dragon bellowed wings into existence. Where there had been nothing moments before, mighty frameworks of bone suddenly blocked out the sky. They hung, glistening, moist from their creation, with flaps of skin the same various hues as their bristly plumage.
“Now, you may have noticed that there are two of you and four mounts,” Corinn shouted above the dr
agon cries and the peoples’ gasps and confused babbling. “Two of these mounts—Tij and Thaïs—are for you. The other two are for Aliver and me, so that we may join Mena in the skies. Perhaps one day Dariel will fly with us as well. I pray that will be so. But now, if you are ready to be legends, I offer you the reins to ride into them.”
She grasped for the leather cord attached to Tij’s harness. The slim length of hide hung from her fingers, swaying, waiting for someone to step forward and take it.
Aliver felt tremors ripple across his cheeks, the precursors to an expression that could not manage to form itself. He was not sure what the expression would be. He could not make up his mind. This was wrong. For a moment he knew it. Whatever Corinn had done to Elya’s children was a mistake. A crime. Whatever goodness there had been in them—and there had been much—had been twisted. That could not be good. Just like Elenet, Corinn was creating things that should not be created. He knew this with a burning intensity that he almost pushed past his lips into words.
But when Corinn turned to him and smiled and dipped her eyes toward Kohl, Aliver felt his chest swell. Yes, he thought, why not fly above the world? It seemed a wonderful idea.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Midmorning of the day on which he would first see the Sky Isle, Dariel dropped behind the others and stood ankle-deep in a narrow little brook, one of many that flowed toward the Sky Lake. He welcomed the cool touch of it on his feet. He was here. Those were stones beneath his feet. The water brought an icy chill, cleansing. Bashar and Cashen both crashed through the underbrush nearby, filled with exuberant energy. He was here, and in just a few minutes he would see the man he had come all this way to meet. Would their interaction be as profound as the days he spent with Nâ Gâmen? That hardly seemed possible.
“Dariel?” Anira came toward him. “Are you ready? You can see it over the next rise. The others are waiting. Come. The Sky Isle awaits. Take my hand.”
The Sacred Band: Book Three of the Acacia Trilogy Page 23