Wicked Harvest

by Anitra Lynn McLeod

  After bathing and eating, she drew him to his bed. She placed him on his belly and massaged him with soothing oils. No matter how deftly she worked, he only tensed more.

  She climbed off him and asked, “What can I do?”

  “Nothing,” he mumbled into the pillow. With a sigh, he rolled over and faced her. “I am trapped, Enovese, and as hard as I try, I cannot find an escape.”

  For such a strong man he seemed terribly defenseless. He had yet to open his thoughts to her and she realized he was not hiding something. He was protecting her from something. Whatever happened gnawed at him and he was afraid of hurting her with the truth. He would not let her see it, nor would he speak of it. However, keeping her in the dark wouldn’t help.

  She placed her hand on his leg. “You must tell me what happened today. Remember last night you said that only together could we triumph.” Her mind flashed on their bodies so deeply entwined that she could not discern where one ended and the other began. Much like the carving on the door. A flash of insight caused her to understand what the carving conveyed; two becoming one, two becoming stronger as one than in their separate halves. She did not think the ancients meant for it to apply to her and Chur but to the issue of the two Harvesters. Did the ancients somehow revere paratanists as the definitive joining of the ultimate male and female counterparts?

  After considering her hand upon his leg, he offered, “I was summoned by the empress today. She…” Chur trailed off and cast his face down. His handsome features turned stoic and harsh.

  Enovese waited for him to continue, but he simply shook his head. It took great strength to set her frustration aside. She desperately wanted to know but pushing Chur would only cause him to withdraw. What had the empress done to him? She remembered him saying Kasmiri had his sword, but tonight when he’d returned, the blade was on his belt. Her stomach sank. What had he done to get it back?

  Summer-sky eyes met hers, touching her with a tender vulnerability. Slowly, he opened the connection and showed her exactly what happened. She lived each moment as if it had happened to her. Enovese felt his shock at Clathia thinking he’d issued a claim to her, to his shame when the empress ordered him to strip, to his horror when she groped him. Her emotions surged, blending confusion, repulsion, and embarrassment. Now she understood why he’d held back, for if he’d hit her with everything all at once, she would have collapsed from the onslaught. Even with him trickling the information to her gradually, she still jerked with each new revelation, then the final crushing truth: He must kill her mother or die during the challenge.

  His words, that he felt trapped without escape, now made perfect sense. He must either murder her mother or die in challenge. Two choices faced him, and neither was acceptable. More damaging was that she had berated him for not being able to make decisions. Her harsh condemnation haunted her now. Enovese did not want her mother to die, but she did not want Chur to die. Speechless, she simply looked at him.

  “I did not expect you to offer a solution.” Chur moved away and rolled off the bed. “I have already made my decision.” He stood looking down at her. “I will not kill to protect myself. I would rather die honorably than commit such a foul act.”

  Her heart skipped a beat, then pounded ruthlessly in her chest. “Did you tell the empress that?” she asked, for he’d closed her off from the final moments of his time with Clathia.

  He turned his back on her.

  “Chur?”

  His chest lifted with his breath, tensing every muscle all the way to his calves. Nude, he was beautiful in his strength and power. Oil glistened along his body from her attempt to soothe him, but now it cast his form sleek and dangerous. He moved away from the bed, pacing across the floor. She didn’t know what to say. She cringed at asking him anything more for a part of her did not want to know. She could not ask him to kill her mother, yet she did not want him to die. How could they solve such an impossible situation?

  Horrified, Enovese realized she did not know her mother and her mother did not know her. Forced to choose, Enovese would pick Chur. Her stomach revolted that she even considered dismissing her mother’s life. What kind of a foul being was she to even think of killing the woman herself just to protect Chur? Gasping, Enovese pushed the thought away. How could she even contemplate murdering her own mother to protect Chur? Was she so desperate to possess him she would destroy any who stood in her way, even her own mother?

  Enovese watched him pace, her brow knitted in concentration. Turning her mind from the horror of her thoughts, she moved to matters that were more practical. “Why does Clathia wish death upon Arianda?”

  Chur missed not a step in his pacing. “I know not.”

  His tone only aggravated her for she sensed that he did know but refused to share. “I cannot make a decision if I do not understand all the facts.”

  Chur spun on his heel and faced her. “You do not need to make a decision. The choice is mine and I choose not to become an assassin for the empress.”

  His eyes blazed, searing her with intensity. He had not asked her for a solution, but she was the brain where he was the brawn. A wave of new anger surged inside her breast for again, she had no choice in the matter. Her life seemed ever determined by outside forces that cared nothing for her.

  Chur pulled back his still-damp hair and blew out a tense breath. “I honestly do not know why Clathia wants Arianda dead only that she does. If I knew, I would tell you. But not for you to decide if she is deserving of death. Whatever Arianda has done is none of my concern.”

  Enovese understood that Chur could not cast himself into the role of judge over another. Dispensing death without battle was not within him. Softly, she asked, “Why would the empress demand this of you? She has hundreds of dedicated servants and a multitude of palace guards who literally worship her.”

  Chur stopped pacing. “I thought on that most of today and all I can think is that she wishes to have something over me. Some secret that she can wield against me when I am no longer the Harvester. Perhaps she has a place for me carefully thought out, a position where I would be her puppet.”

  Political intrigues were not what Enovese studied, but she understood enough of the struggles between the elite to know they always sought power over one another. Every dance, every dinner, every tiny gesture could become a bargaining point. She doubted the empress would act rashly in choosing Chur. Clathia had weighed and measured people within her power and selected Chur over them all. The question was why. What did Chur possess that the empress wanted?

  “I see the wheels turning in your mind, Enovese.” Chur’s tone was cautionary.

  Irritation showed in hers when she said, “Do you expect me to stop thinking merely because you have made up your mind?” She let out a tense breath. “You and I both know I have no power to force you to do anything. Clearly, I have no choice in the matter, so at least let me have my thoughts.” She turned her head away, hiding her face behind the curtain of her hair. She felt his body sink into the bed beside her, but she refused to look at him. He pulled back her hair, draping it over her shoulder.

  “I do not wish to fight with you, Enovese.” He slid his fingertips along the back of her arm. “We have so little time left. I would rather spend those moments in almost any way other than surly silence or heated bickering.”

  Reminding her of that simple fact drained all the fight right out of her. She turned and lifted her face to his. “I do not want to fight with you either.” Pressing her lips to his, she kissed him softly, then drew back. “But I honestly cannot give up. My whole life has been a series of choices made by others and forced on me. This is no different. If I give up now, if I do not put all I have learned to task and struggle to find a solution…” she trailed off and strove to find the right words. “Giving up now would make my whole life pointless.”

  Chur nodded, sympathetic to her reasons, but determination stamped clear lines across his face. “I wish you to understand that nothing you say will sway me to mu
rder a woman I have no grudge against. Clathia’s rancor is not mine.” He twined his fingers with hers. “I long loathed being a tool wielded by the prophecy, but I will not become a tool wielded by the empress. For committing such an act would enslave me to her. Do you comprehend why I simply will not do this?”

  “Of course I do.” She gripped his hand. “But do you see that I do not want you to die for your nobility?”

  “There is no other way.”

  It frustrated her that a man who rose to greatness by fighting his way to the top would suddenly give up without any fight at all. If she didn’t know him better, she would think he wanted to die.

  “What happened in the last moments with Clathia? Why would you not show that to me?” Enovese hoped against hope that something in that last exchange would give her the sliver of an idea on how to change this predicament.

  “Because she made matters very clear. If I did not follow her wishes, I would not live past the challenge. I spared you from the ugliness in her tone. Clathia is beautiful but more ruthless and cunning than any I have ever met. To defy her demand is to condemn myself to death.”

  “Death before dishonor.” Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears. Every recruit knew well that code, and surely the empress knew the inculcation of the recruits. A new and more dangerous thought crossed her mind. “What if that is the point, that Clathia knew you would refuse such a dishonorable act and thus willingly die in the challenge?”

  Chur frowned, his scar twisting his lip. “What would she stand to gain by revealing the betrayal of Helton and Ambo? I can do nothing against either man, and they set the scheme into motion long before Clathia got wind of it. She is just using their machinations to her own ends.”

  Staring at their joined hands, she again thought of the carving on the door and chalice box. Two figures blending, becoming one, rising above the chaos below. “If you did kill Arianda, that means the empress has the power to alter the challenge. She could thwart the plans of Helton and Ambo. How exactly would she do that? One word to them and they rescind a plan it took them cycles to enact?” Enovese shook her head. “I do not think the empress has any say in the structure of the challenge.”

  Casting a gaze to the Harvester tome on the table, Chur pursed his lips, then glanced back to her. “Then why the summoning and all those ridiculous actions?”

  Enlightenment hit. “Because either way you die.”

  Chur’s uplifted brows asked the question.

  “Even if you did as she asked and killed Arianda, you would then die in the challenge that she cannot change. If you did not do as she asked, you still die and thus can tell none of her plans. Perhaps she thought she could use you to kill for her and then have you disposed of later. Either way you are silenced.”

  “Dead men tell no tales.”

  “Precisely.” Enovese nodded solemnly. Clathia was indeed a most crafty opponent. Another thought invaded her mind for she remembered witnessing Arianda drinking heavily at the Festival of Temptation. Perhaps her mother’s binge had another reason other than Enovese’s assumption that Arianda knew the truth of the paratanist selection ritual. Perhaps Arianda knew her days were numbered.

  “At the Festival, when you spoke to Arianda, what did you perceive about her state of mind?”

  “She seemed sullen and somber. When I remarked to her that we wore the same color, she laughed bitterly and said something about casting the vines to shadow. Before I could ask for an explanation, she glared at the empress and stormed out.”

  “Casting the vines to shadow?” Mentally, Enovese searched through all the texts she’d read but came up empty. She had never heard or read the phrase before. Picturing a vine cast to shadow, she then understood. “When you cast a vine to shadow it withers and dies.”

  “True, yet how are she and I like vines?”

  “Because you bear fruit.”

  Confusion twisted his face.

  “Arianda knows about the paratanist selection ritual. She knows that you and she are vines that provide fruit to perpetuate the paratanist class. Once they have harvested all they can, they cast you to shadow for they have no further need of you.” Enovese thought that was why only Harvesters wore black.

  With a shake of his head, Chur disagreed. “Prior Harvesters are not killed. They often rank high among the elite. They are encouraged to have many children.” A pained expression tightened his jaw.

  She knew he thought simultaneously of how he’d once thrown that bit of information in her face to hurt her and Clathia’s startling revelation that he was sterile. Enovese agreed with Chur’s assessment that the truth was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing that he had no children in the tanist house and a curse that he could never have any. Chur shrugged the thought away, and out of respect for his pain Enovese chose not to comment.

  “Do not laugh at my ignorance, but until I read it in your mind I did not know that various colors indicated rank. I guess I never noticed. If I had, I would have made some connections much earlier.” Idly, he traced patterns in her hair that streamed across the bedcovers. “So how then are Harvesters cast to shadow? It must be more than our color of black.”

  Puzzled, Enovese let her mind focus on the patterns Chur teased within her hair. She had discovered long ago that thinking indirectly often led to a direct answer. She thought of patterns, layers, shadows, and rank designated by color. Enovese let her attention wander and Chur respectfully held his tongue. She felt him within her mind, marveling at her thought process. Her mind felt chaotic to him where she found his mind carefully regimented.

  Murmuring almost to herself, Enovese said, “We know very little about Arianda’s life after her time as Harvester. Five seasons she held the title, then suddenly withdrew. The question is why. Did she find out what happened to her issue? Did she find a bondmate? If she did, how many children did Arianda produce, and what happened to them? There is a reason for her actions, just as there is a reason for Clathia’s wrath.”

  Chur grunted a short breath of frustration. “It matters little, Enovese. We concern ourselves with knowledge that will not help us.”

  Stilling his hand by placing hers atop, she forced him to look at her. “Knowledge is power, Chur. Uncovering the details brings focus to the overall picture. Everyone moves within this world motivated by their desires but bound by the laws and rituals of the ancients. It is not about discovering one man or one woman’s truth, for their truth may be another’s lie. What we must accomplish is the unveiling of the truth behind our culture.”

  He smiled then, lightening the chains around her heart. “You are very wise, Enovese. When I touch your mind I am in awe of the information stored there, and the connections you make that utterly elude me.”

  She preened under his praise, for he was the only person who had ever complimented her. Even the tanists, when she had performed well, offered no praise but only a surcease of verbal abuse. She thanked him with a lingering kiss.

  “So tell me, my wise and beautiful bondmate, what will we do?”

  Pleasure surged again for he did not call her his paratanist, but his bondmate. He elevated her status to match his.

  “The empress, Ambo, and Helton play a cruel losing game with your life. I think you should play the game back, but with far more skill. If devious machinations and promises that hold no value are the ground rules, then you would do well to do the same.”

  She sensed an immediate reluctance from Chur. He met her gaze with consternation. “I am not suited to games of intrigue. Again, I did not even know rank was designated by color or I would have realized your mother was a Harvester.” He condemned himself an idiot for not knowing a fact she took for granted.

  Enovese cupped his chin rather sharply. “How would you know such a thing unless you’d been told? I will not suffer you belittling yourself. For I finally understand the carving that graces your door.” She turned his face to look at the oversized Onic door. “Two figures entwine, they become one, stronger than each a
lone, and they rise above the chaos.” She turned his face back to her. “Just as you astutely surmised, we are stronger together. When we merge, we enhance one another and become profoundly powerful. The connection that we share, our ability to slip into each other’s minds, is not common. I believe it is a unique phenomenon. That is the one skill we possess that the other players in this game do not. They have more political sway and they have more minuscule details, but we have the power of two.”

  “Stronger together than apart.” He clasped her hand. “I exchange my power with the strength of your heart.”

  “You are a poet.” Before she became lost in the pleasure of his touch, she turned her attention back to practical matters. “When, where, and how does Clathia expect you to kill Arianda?”

  Chuckling wickedly, Chur pulled her against his chest and rolled over on his back, taking her with him. Her hair, still damp from their earlier shower, covered her back and trailed onto him. When she shivered, he yanked the bedcover over them. Simmering heat from his form infused her almost instantly.

  “Better?” Chur asked.

  “Much.”

  Snuggling her close, he kissed her nose, and said, “Since this season is the season of Kasmiri’s sacrifice, the empress is throwing an elaborate party at the beginning of the Harvest cycle. I think by royal decree everyone in the palace must either attend or at least celebrate her daughter’s sacrifice. Clathia impressed upon me that this party would outshine the Festival of Temptation. No expense would be spared to provide her daughter with the most grand pre-Harvest party ever thrown.”

  “I thought it was customary to celebrate after the sacrifice?”

  “Yes, but the empress wishes to commemorate the occasion before and after.”

  Enovese rolled her eyes. “The elite spend an obscene amount on celebrations.”

  “After my audience with Clathia today, I do not think she honestly cares about her daughter’s Harvest. I believe the party is strictly a cover for Arianda’s demise.”