by P. J. Fox
Kisten grumbled noncommittally.
“In any case,” said Ceres, “it’s nice to know that you’ll have intelligent children. I must admit, the addition of characters like Zerus—and that awful stick in the mud your sister Sabihah married—has had me a little worried. You, my dear,” he told Aria, “have arrived not a moment too soon.”
Aria flushed—the idea of children was terrifying—and Kisten laughed.
“You know,” Kisten commented, “I’m surprised he didn’t bring that up.”
And that was when Aria learned that Kisten’s great-grandparents had been brother and sister—and their parents before them, and their parents before them. Indeed, House Mara Sant had a strong penchant for intermarriage that went back millennia. There were numerous tales of brothers marrying sisters, cousins marrying cousins and, for good measure, people marrying their adopted relatives as well. Some oddballs frowned on this heritage, Ceres pointed out. One such oddball was Zerus, who blamed his son in law’s insanity on inbreeding.
“Insane is a strong term,” Ceres commented. “Your father is eccentric.”
“My father was, growing up, the most frightening father on Brontes.”
“Oh, nonsense.” Ceres chuckled, pouring himself a glass of the cloyingly sweet wine that had been served with dessert. “You only think that I’m such a delightful old marshmallow because I’m your grandfather. But I beat your father far more often than he ever beat you.”
They beat each other? Aria paled. What kind of abyss had she fallen into?
She couldn’t believe how cavalierly these two men were discussing physical violence. Their acceptance of outright abuse was yet another slap in the face, evidence she couldn’t ignore that these people were very, very different from her own. And that, as hopeful as she’d felt earlier, she had reason to be afraid.
She poked experimentally at her dessert, ice cream molded into an exotic shape by an enterprising pastry chef that tasted of rose and pistachio. And was, astonishingly, really quite good. As was the accompanying sauce of pureed berries.
Pouring herself another glass of wine and leaning back into the cushion behind her, she found herself being lulled by the conversation. Her good mood began to return, as the twin stresses of Zerus’ remarks and her worries about her newly adopted culture waned under the influence of alcohol. Until, eventually, she began to have a really good time. Kisten and his grandfather were both excellent dinner companions, and they took turns entertaining her with various stories—about how Ceres met his consort, Udit, about how Kisten’s parents met, about court life on Brontes and any other manner of things calculated to make them all sound a bit cracked. Aria laughed and laughed, had a second helping of dessert and drank quite a bit more wine.
“You know, I’m going to tell the man to go study a toilet, preferably by drowning himself in it.” Kisten gestured with his glass for emphasis.
“And your humor has always been such a success.” Ceres’ tone was saccharine. “What was the name of that cleric?”
Kisten pretended offense. “Imahd Abbas.”
“Ah, yes,” Ceres said, smiling at the memory. He turned to Aria. “The delightful man who is now your lord and master—the responsible man—had such a complete disinterest in religious education as to make his parents the laughing stock of parents everywhere.” Ceres, to be honest, seemed approving. “This one cleric made it his life’s mission to reform his dear young pupil into a sterling example of religious zealotry.”
“I disapproved,” Kisten added.
“Imahd Abnormal, as I believe the twins called him, had a rather affected habit of always using paper to write scrap notes and he used to wad them up and toss them into the wastebasket next to his desk until it overflowed. He never actually emptied it, just skimmed off the top a bit—or so I was led to believe, when I intervened on Kit’s behalf with the headmaster. Imahd Abnormal had the revolting habit of using his foot as a trash compactor.
“Kit snuck in before class, emptied the wastebasket and filled it with water…and Caecilian biting newts. He floated several wads of paper on top as a decoy, and sat back to await disaster. Which came soon thereafter, shortly before Imahd Abbas was rushed to the hospital.”
“His intervention was a bit ineffective,” said Kisten.
“This is at which school?” asked Aria.
“The temple school I attended before I went to boarding school. My brother and I were educated at home by tutors; religious education was supposed to socialize us.”
“Yes,” agreed Ceres. “I may have slipped and called the man Imahd Abnormal to the headmaster’s face.”
Somehow, Aria didn’t think it had been much of a slip.
“That’s not even the really good story,” Kisten said. “When I was at Ceridou, one master in particular decided that it was his life’s mission to ruin mine.” Kisten laughed, remembering his own stupidity. “He had an uncanny ability to catch me doing anything and everything—drinking, sneaking in girls, revenging myself on my classmates. It was awful.
“So for several weeks, on a near-constant basis, I let him find me curled up on a window seat in the restricted section of the library—which was on the sixth floor. And of course, since I wasn’t supposed to be up there, he’d drag me downstairs and cane me. I made a point, whenever I heard him approaching, to hang my head out the window so I’d look as irresponsible as possible. After a week or so, it became nigh on impossible to sit down—but I was determined.” Kisten’s lips twitched in a smile. “Then, having gotten him used to the idea, I left my books on the window seat and, knowing he’d look out the window, arranged myself on the ground below just before I knew he’d be arriving and did my best to look dead.”
Aria almost spat wine across the table.
“He did in fact look down—but not before he found the note I’d left, explaining that the rules were just too stifling.”
“You didn’t.” Kisten, serious, duty-bound Kisten had done this?
“I did!” Kisten seemed to be enjoying himself. “Now, of course, this hypocritical ogre suddenly gave a damn. He rushed downstairs, weeping. After that, no one took him very seriously and he resigned shortly thereafter. But not before I got a good laugh at his expense, and another caning.”
Aria laughed, delighted with this glimpse into Kisten’s childhood, and they shared a private smile.
“And now,” said Kisten, taking Aria’s wine glass and putting it down, “I think it’s time I entertain you in private.”
Aria blushed scarlet, but Ceres didn’t seem to find anything untoward in Kisten’s remark. Opining as how he’d had quite enough dinner for one night and missed his bed, he wished them both goodnight and disappeared. Kisten helped Aria to her feet, and she was disappointed to discover that she wasn’t nearly as drunk as she’d hoped to be by this point. Looking at her new husband, she felt the pleasant lassitude of dinner begin to evaporate. As he touched her hand, she felt the last shreds blow away like cobwebs and she was suddenly stone cold sober.
She’d been dreading this moment now for—oh, she didn’t know how long. That he’d claim her eventually had been a foregone conclusion, even before she’d agreed to marry him. Any man who’d kiss her like Kisten had didn’t think of her as his sister, and would only take no as an answer so many times. She’d kissed him back, to her shame, but still—that had been one thing and this quite another. She couldn’t even explain why, but she couldn’t bear the idea of him seeing her naked—of being so vulnerable in front of him. And then….
Before Kisten, the only man she’d even kissed was Aiden and he hadn’t touched her the way Kisten had. She was very inexperienced. She knew what happened, but in general terms only; she’d never discussed it with anyone, being far too shy, and she had no idea what to expect.
If you weren’t a virgin, she thought crazily, you couldn’t ride a unicorn anymore. On Solaris, virgins were almost as rare as unicorns—or it seemed that way, to a girl who’d always been deathly afraid of letting
a man touch her because even the brush of fingertips on her neck gave her flashbacks of her father. She associated sex with…bad things. Everyone at school assumed that she’d had sex with Aiden, seeing as how they’d been a couple their entire lives, and since there were no unicorns to throw a wrench in the works she’d let them believe what they wanted.
Kisten put his arm around her and, leaning down, kissed her on the cheek. “This has been, without a doubt, the most entertaining wedding I’ve ever attended—with the added bonus of it being my own.” He tilted her chin up and, turning her head slightly, kissed her again. She felt rooted to the spot, unable to respond and unable to escape. She did not want this.
“Let’s go to bed.”
She nodded.
FORTY-EIGHT
Aria was plainly panic-stricken and Kisten, pondering this, was half-bothered and half-amused.
It had occurred to him earlier, as it had several times over the past two weeks, that no one had ever been particularly kind to her. She didn’t expect people to be, or know how to respond if they were. Earlier, when she’d made that offhand comment about the rain, she’d tensed as though she thought he might strike her. Which had told him a great deal about the environment in which she’d been raised. There was nothing offensive about remarking on the weather, per se; she’d been afraid, because she’d allowed herself an unguarded moment.
He’d seen that hunted look before, in the prison camp. The months he’d spent as a prisoner of war had been the worst of his life, and he preferred not to remember them if at all possible. But once in awhile some noise, or some smell would arrest him in mid-sentence and then he’d end up thinking about the past like he was doing tonight. People developed strategies to survive; those too weak to fight back made themselves invisible, controlling an uncontrollable situation by avoiding it altogether. Desperate prisoners and sadistic guards only bothered the targets they noticed. Aria, likewise, had taught herself to guard her tongue.
And later on, when he’d suggested actually helping her, she’d looked almost as panic-stricken as she looked now. It wasn’t him she was scared of, not really, although she was scared of him as well. She was still a prisoner of her parents, and of how she’d been taught that people treated each other when they had power over each other, and of her fear of being hurt.
Kisten’s father had indeed beaten him senseless a number of times, but never for no reason. Regardless of one’s opinion on the appropriateness of corporal punishment, he’d always had the security of knowing that logic was on his side. He’d never been the scapegoat for a passing rage, or some disappointment of his father’s. He’d trusted his father, and still did. Aria, he suspected, had been made both focus and explanation for every one of her mother’s perceived disappointments. If Kisten ever met Georgia Hahn, he would cheerfully kill her.
Aria was a sweet-natured girl, and neither mentally nor physically capable of defending herself. That she’d acted with such courage, from the night she’d left home until right this minute, said a great deal about her character. Looking down at her as they walked along, he was struck again by how beautiful she was and how achingly badly he wanted to possess her.
The hall was dimly lit and a hard, driving rain battered the windows. They could have been the only two people in the house. “Don’t mind Zerus,” he said, hoping to distract her. “He’s disagreeable but he’s harmless. He cherishes his pet theories like most men cherish their women, and doesn’t understand that they’re not real—that ideas, however beautiful, are only as good as the actions they inspire.”
Aria bit her lip. “But he’s cruel.”
“He’d call it moral instruction.”
“He’s in no position to give moral instruction,” Aria countered, “if he’s defending would-be murderers.” She spoke with unexpected vehemence.
They reached the door to their bedroom and Kisten stopped. He smiled slightly, amused. “I believe you’re defending me,” he remarked, his eyes on hers. The suggestion brought her up short and she blushed, flustered. Her pulse beat in the vein at her throat and he thought about how much he wanted to kiss it. “You can, you know.” His tone was soft and faintly mocking. “I am your husband. We’ll have to start getting to know each other eventually and I’d prefer you to have a positive opinion of me; although that’s not strictly necessary.”
He opened the door and led her inside. The room was dark, except for the pattern of silver squares cast through the window by a waxing moon. He could see perfectly and she couldn’t, which he enjoyed. Sympathy for her as a scared, lonely child warred with a purely predatory instinct to consume what he wanted. She took a few steps forward into the gloom and turned, watching him. The moonlight slanted across her face, casting her features in sharp relief.
He stilled. The urge to throw her down on the floor and take her right then was almost overpowering. She was so fragile, so little, so breathtakingly lovely and she was finally his. She moistened her lip, just the tip darting in and out, and waited.
“I’m going to change,” he said, more shortly than he’d intended, and left.
He’d never understood the convention of separate bathrooms, but he was glad of it now—even though there was no danger of his bride following him, wherever he went. Being neither a fool nor a romantic, he was under no delusions as to why Aria had married him. Nevertheless, the fact remained that she had and she’d act the part whether she wanted to or not.
He washed his face, relieved to see himself reemerging from under the mask, and stepped into the shower. It had been a long day. Tomorrow promised to be even longer, as would every day after if the situation on this accursed planet was really as bad as he was coming to believe. He stood for a minute, eyes closed, absorbed in the sensation of hot water beating against his skin. Gradually, the tension in his neck and shoulders began to ease.
Stepping out of the shower, he toweled himself off and looked in the mirror. The same thought occurred to him again: what are you doing? He’d pursued more than a few women in his time, who’d displayed varying degrees of—feigned—reluctance. Most of them had been married and all of them had known exactly what they wanted. None of them had been ingénues, although one or two had enjoyed playing the part. He’d never been, or wanted to be, any woman’s first. Virginity was unpleasant, and painful, and too much responsibility.
Meeting Aria had forced him to admit that he was jaded. The night he’d come to her in his cabin, he’d seen himself through her eyes and the experience had been at once discouraging and hopeful. As helpless as she’d been, she’d trusted him not to hurt her—and he, in turn, had surprised himself by being a gentleman. A role of which, a month ago, he wouldn’t have thought himself capable. Or, if capable, then not willing. But in confronting the man he wasn’t, he’d also seen something of the man he might still become.
Aria was right to call him spoiled and high-handed, because he was and he always had been. He saw no need to change that. He was a prince, and he’d dedicated his life to command—of himself as well as others. But his obsession with forcing her to love him had also awakened something else, something he hadn’t known was part of him even that morning.
Now if only he could keep them both alive long enough to discover what it was.
FORTY-NINE
He emerged from the bathroom to find her sitting on the low bench in front of the window. Her back was very straight, her hands were clasped in her lap and her eyes were fixed on some far point. He knew she’d heard him, but she didn’t turn. The rain cast odd shadows on her face.
He’d changed into his robe, and the lining felt pleasant against his bare skin. He watched her for a few minutes without speaking, and then came over and sat down next to her. At first she didn’t respond, so he waited. Almost imperceptibly, the air of strain began to ease.
“Your grandfather doesn’t seem terribly retired,” she commented.
“He’s not,” Kisten said matter of factly. “He’s my great uncle’s spymaster. His so-called re
tirement is a ruse; and a common one, too, although no one ever seems to catch on.”
Aria smiled slightly, her eyes never leaving the window.
Kisten reached out and began to unfasten her veil. His movements were slow and deliberate and she tensed again, turning toward him. She stilled, and her eyes widened fractionally—almost like she was seeing him for the first time.
“You look like yourself,” she said. She flashed him another tiny, nervous smile.
“Of all the things I dislike about being a prince, formal court dress tops the list.” He draped her veil over the seat of a nearby chair and, trailing his fingertips up the side of her neck, removed first one earring and then the other. He didn’t understand how women or, for that matter, some men stood the things. The gold, pearl and garnet confections he was holding right now appeared to weigh about a pound each. She waited as he removed her necklace, and her bangles, saying nothing but watching him intently. Her chest rose and fell with each shallow breath, and her eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Her beautiful, unusual eyes.
It seemed to have helped, giving her a few minutes alone. He didn’t want to force her, but facing her quiet resignation would be worse. He didn’t think he could bear that. He wanted her to give herself to him, but because she wanted to—because they wanted each other.
He wanted her to scream his name; he wanted to drive all thoughts of these other men out of her head forever. He wanted her to be his, and his alone, and for her to crave his touch and submit to him, not because she had to but because she trusted him to lead her and care for her and because she wanted him to be her lord. Yes, he wanted to bend her to his will, but he didn’t want to hurt her and she was so very, very fragile.
With deft fingers, he removed the tikka resting on her forehead. The oldest forms of his religion taught that a woman should worship her husband as he worshipped God, and the small pendant represented the vestiges of that belief. To have Aria worship him would be the most exquisite thing in the world.