Though his lips responded and drew pleasant sensations from every possible nerve in her body, he did not touch more than her mouth and his pace was slow, tasting her in a way that made her press her thighs together. She was dazed, but he was controlled.
Raeche stepped away from him, her chest heavy, but when she felt his Spirit envelope her and saw the green storm in his eyes, she knew he had buried his desire, not tamed it.
“It is not unnatural for a woman who has known the pleasure of a man to desire it again.”
“Is that all you have to say, Lanus?”
“I know what you have been feeling, little dark one. I know the thoughts constantly raging in your mind, the things you are curious about, the desire. It is natural.”
“Natural. Yes, I suppose wanting my husband is natural.”
“You want your husband?” His laugh held no humor.
“I would have believed that to be obvious, Lanus. I know you pick thoughts from my head at will. You must know that I desire you.” This answer clearly did not please him.
“I know well what you desire. You are not welcome in my bed, Raeche.”
“We did not use a bed, Lanus. However, that matters little. You are certainly welcome in mine.”
Lanus squinted and the expression was a new one for Raeche. She did not know what it meant.
“I will not come to your bed, either.”
Anger chased heat over her skin. “If I cannot have you, then I must be granted someone else. Where is your Personal?”
“My brother would fall on his sword rather than come to you while I lived–”
“Yes, he hates me–”
“As for someone else–would you have the blood of yet another man, ten more men, a thousand more men on your hands? Are you comfortable with their deaths because you will not wield the sword?” His eyes lazily roamed her body, setting her afire from embarrassment and desire. “Is the ache there so deep?”
Raeche considered possible answers. None of them seemed as if they would satisfy her husband, so she told the truth. “Yes it is. I thought to be rid of it by lying with you and reminding myself of the pain of coupling with you. Yet it has grown and the pain ebbed soon enough this last time. Perhaps it is perverse of me but sometimes when you are angry with me, I am…darkly affected. I ignore your words preferring to watch your mouth. I forget your message and feel like touching your hair or your arm. I feel like walking behind you, climbing onto your back and going where you go until you pay attention to nothing but me. I have never felt this for another man. I cannot imagine I ever would.”
“Lies have always come so easily to you. You did feel it for another man.”
“No, Emperor, I did not. I betrayed you with this fantasy of Galan, but I never felt for Galan or Galan the Impostor what I feel now.” She clasped her hands to the sides of his head, demanding a Lock of True Eyes.
Lanus grabbed both her wrists in the swipe of one hand, refusing her gaze.
“What are you afraid of, Lanus?” she asked. “What is your greatest fear?”
He squeezed her wrists then growled before dropping them and stepping away from her.
Raeche advanced, feeling the stir of dark courage that came before she did something truly stupid. “Once your greatest fear was that, even with an Empire as dowry, I did not want you. I no longer dwell in the Spirit of Fear, Lanus, so I see.” She put a finger to her eye above the red splotch. “I wonder what it is now…your greatest fear.”
“My greatest fear is for my daughter. Perhaps that is where you should concentrate your energy.”
She did not want to let go of her slight advantage, yet his mention of Rucha halted her. She pressed a hand over her heart. “What is wrong?”
“What has been set into motion in the Empire cannot be stopped. At least, not yet.”
“Lanus?”
He shook his head, chewing his lower lip while he flexed his fingers.
She came to him, and he no longer studied the tension between them, so he allowed her to run her hands over his arms. “Tell me.”
“I wish that I could, Raeche. I am not always sure of what I sense. Sometimes it is like the low register of a timra playing in the air around her.”
“You have said much the same of me.”
He actually smiled. “Yes, there is something about you, sharp like a poisoned sword. Like the tongue of the timra. But it is different with our daughter. Hers is a live timra and it hisses and waits to strike. You rarely use the Spirit you have harnessed but I must ask if you have felt this.”
She shook her head fast, blinking to stop the feel of acid in her eyes, swallowing to stop the feel of acid in her throat and chest. “I have not, Lanus. But I am not as strong as you think. I have no control over the Spirit inside me. You know I was never a good student.”
“But always a beautiful one,” Lanus said softly.
Her heart sang even as it broke. “Beauty is insignificant.”
“So casually said because you have always had it. Beauty has never mattered to you.” He reached out and stroked her hair behind her ear. The touch was gentle and certainly born from the Spirit of Impulse. “I am called a fool for my inability to look away from you.”
“None would dare call you a fool, my Emperor.”
His lips parted in a hard smile as he continued to stroke her cheek. It seemed as if he could not stop touching her. First her hair, then her cheeks and jaw, her shoulder, her hair again, her chin. He pulled her into a close embrace. He smelled of the East Forest, though he should not have. Raeche knew he chose the scent and his smell was of her home. Sometimes it made her sad. Now, her sadness, their sadness, was constructed from worry over what this omen her husband spoke of meant for their beautiful daughter.
“The Spirit chooses to hide her fate and neither of the Codices speak of her yet,” Lanus confided. “They will not speak of her until her ninth birthday.”
“This Spirit Timra you sense, is it coiled to strike now?”
“No.” He coughed, clearing his throat. “I sense that it does not strike until she is ready to become the Empire. But it is strong and it laughs at me. It taunts me in the way of the Death White Border.”
Tears dotted Raeche’s cheeks because to laugh at Lanus was to laugh at the Empire. Not even the Spirit mocked the Empire. Only one entity did. The South, the Poachers and Riddlers beyond the Death White Border. “Lanus, I love her, and you love her. We will use that love to hold the Spirit of Protection in our hearts until the Codices do speak of her.”
Lanus nodded but did not speak.
“Come with me to the altar, then. If I cannot see it for myself, you must share this burden with me.”
“No, Raeche, I can carry this–”
“You have told me that I am the Empire. Do not forget it now.”
Rather than answer, the Emperor capitulated with a bow of his head meant to show respect absent of deference.
She grabbed his hand and covered the avla eggshells. The room grew dark as she led him to the tall window facing north. They stood before it, hand in hand, and Lanus whispered to the Spirits to allow him to share his premonition with Raeche without harming her or drawing undue attention to his daughter.
In minutes, the transference was done. Raeche’s heart had been branded with an iron of dread and her body wrapped in ice. She let Lanus draw her to the long tufted seat near the window. Lanus sat and allowed her to climb into his lap where they held each other and watched the stars dance through the sky to the sad ballad of their Spirits.
“Do not go to the South,” Raeche whispered. “Leave the border to your brother for a while.”
Lanus nodded and before long began to drift off to sleep. His eyes opened when Raeche spoke softly into his ear.
“I do not know why there is such darkness within me,” she confessed.
“Darkness lives in us both.”
“Yours is not like mine. Taritana and Valor are right to want to protect you and Rucha from me.” When
Lanus started to argue, she plunged forward. “There are some moments when I feel as if I am not even of the Empire.”
“You are–”
“No, please, you must listen to words I have never had the courage to speak. I am not unaware that my way is strange amongst the controlled and powerful royalty of the North. Sometimes I thirst for confusion and conflict. Mayhem.”
His eyes were on her lips as she spoke. Those invisible sparks rolled off him like lava. His body grew hard against hers and Raeche wanted to take him into her, to consume him–her desire and love were so strong.
“Thirst for me,” he rasped.
She did. The Emperor took her into his arms. He let his lips ravish hers, a low groan at the back of his throat signaling his failure at resistance. When Raeche believed she would choose death over ever being parted from Lanus, she broke the kiss and clasped his hand. She appealed to him: “Place your hand here.” She drew his large hand to her chest. “Perform the Amu’Wey.”
Lanus jerked his hand back as if burned. “Are you insane, Raeche? Spirit curse me but I already knew you were. I will not.”
“Say it.” She grabbed for his hand again.
“You are taken with the Spirit of Madness. No one has performed that primitive rite for more than a thousand generations. If I say it and you do not love me you will die. If I say it and I do not love you, I will die.”
“Other-Spirit! You think I am trying to kill you.”
“And yourself, Empress.”
Raeche pushed away from him then stood, drawing her gown around her shoulders. “The Amu’Wey has been said. Taritana told me. In secret, couples have said it. They have survived when they loved.”
Lanus clasped her shoulders, shaking her a bit before pulling her down to his body once more. “What you and I feel is not love, Raeche. Your tantrums and pranks are bids for attention, but they are not love. My inability to resist your considerable charm is not love. It is the Spirit of Folly, of Lust, of Obsession.”
“You are speaking again and your words are meaningless to me.” She pulled at his neck until his eyes were level with hers. She pressed her lips to his once more then reached to place her hand against his belly, beneath the loose waist of his soft chamber pants. His hand snapped tightly over her wrist before she could claim her prize, but Raeche pressed forward so their hips collided and she found the thickness that proved the stakes had been elevated.
So fearful he would not respond or, worse, send her away, Raeche held tight, reveled in the feel of his hard body against hers, of the intoxicating shards of heat showering over her.
“Shhh, little one.” He kissed her softly and shifted her on his body. “Shhh. If you do not slow, you will make me repeat the mistake I made with you nearly five rings ago. You must–”
“No! Please do not send me away. I do not know what is wrong with me but I cannot stop thinking about you, about this. I ache for you, Lanus. Spirit help me, I do. Tell me what you like, what you want me to do. I cannot go on like this. I am burning, Lanus.”
“But do you truly burn for me?”
“Yes.” She rolled him onto his back and sat atop him. “Yes.” She had done this once with Galan, aroused at the thought of being on top, but then she had worried she was too heavy for him. Had found that, yes, her knees were too close when they touched either side of his hip. With her husband, her husband in his form, she did not worry. She laid a hand on his chest. Felt his heart beat.
When Raeche lifted her eyes to his, she felt drawn in, spellbound. Anxious in her belly. Unsure. Like less-than clinging to more-than. She knew that greater bowed to lesser this day and it overwhelmed her. “My Lanus,” she whispered. She had been bound by those eyes so long. She wished, not for the first time, she could scry his thoughts the way he divined hers.
In a moment she felt him stroke her skin with his thumbs. In a tone softer and gentler than she had ever heard from her husband, even when he spoke to their daughter, Lanus asked, “Do you love me?”
In truth, she did not know how to answer. In truth, Raeche did not know what love meant. So she asked her husband, the man to whom she had belonged all her life, “How can I tell?”
“Do you love Rucha?”
Without hesitation, the Empress assured him she did.
“How do you know?”
“It is different.”
“Most assuredly,” Lanus said.
“Do you love me?” Raeche asked.
Lanus did not have an answer. He did, however, have a proposal. “Come with me to the West and South.”
“To Whrennal?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“So that we may have a time together as husband and wife. So that we can make ourselves ordinary and learn what we learn about our new situation.”
“Our new situation?” Raeche crossed her arms over her chest. “You are doing this for Taritana, are you not?”
“I am doing this for two reasons. The first is to determine whether we can truly coexist with one another without the Spirits of Violence and Lust riding us. The other is indeed out of guilt. Not often does that Spirit finds its way into the Empire.”
“I have not met her sister.”
“Ina is the Spirit of Gentility.”
“So…not like her sister.”
“Indeed.”
“What will you do when you find that she has been mistreated by Praytor, because that is most certainly what you will find?”
“Perhaps you will help me discern the answer, Empress.”
Raeche raised an eyebrow.
Chapter 13
Tawny locks waved down her back, catching the light from the window, shining like the daystar on the edge of his sword. He had always loved the long trail of fine waves.
Valor gave a little push of Spirit and watched her shoulders go up when she felt it. Taritana turned slowly and released a deep breath. She rubbed her hands over the tops of her arms, which were covered in a tight material. Tiny, almost imperceptible fibers rose from the material, indicating that it had come from the skin of the glabba bush, a rich material in that it was thin and light but kept the body warm. Her white dress conformed to her body down to her knees, where it flared wide. A simple winter dress for an important woman of the court, yet Taritana wore it as if it were fit for a coronation…or a bedchamber.
She licked lips painted blood red, the stain probably left over from the celebration dinner. Valor considered not for the first time that she should not have looked so beautiful. Her features were handsome. Her skin was as white as the great daystar-scorched rib bones of the centuries-dead aurus.
“What happened?” Valor asked, lightly touching her arm, sending a quick Spirit of Heat through her so that she dropped her hands.
“I have never been good with heat,” she confessed shyly. Even when she blushed, her skin remained pale, not a blemish or even a fragile blue vein to betray that she was real.
Valor prodded her again.
“I discovered that my beloved Empire is peopled with fools.”
Valor felt the side of his mouth quirk. “Tell me.”
“The Empire chose to ride west and south to Whrennal.”
“I know.” Valor nodded. “They were of a mind to get to know each other.”
“After more rings of being in each other’s presence than not, they needed to get to know each other? Ludicrous.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“The Empire was not awarded its wish to be alone for this trip. Upon learning that they would travel with Rucha, the king and queen of Innov were honored to accompany the Empire with Eynow and the rest of their horde. As you are well aware, Rucha has not taken to Eynow. Which may not have mattered but that the family is long in the memory and favor of the Empire. Your brother and sister have ignored the Empire in favor of pursuing each other. Add to those things that Rucha has openly denied and humiliated Eynow at every turn.”
“That was a very long string of words, Taritana. I am
not sure I followed them to any coherent conclusion. Calm yourself.”
The Empress’s Personal huffed.
“So, the entire troupe traveled to Whrennal.”
“Yes.”
“And you went as well.”
“Yes.”
“And my brother and sister pursued each other.”
“As always. They played children’s games, but the Empress was unsatisfied until the stakes were as high as life itself. She bedeviled him. He laughed and hung on her every noxious action. I believe he would happily let her drive a dagger through his heart.”
“And…”
“And we never even saw my sister. Praytor said she was ill and not receiving.”
“And my brother allowed that?”
“Yes.”
“And his wife?”
“Was embarrassingly preoccupied. As usual.”
Valor swallowed. This was a time to be careful. He had seen the hard set of the Personal’s jaw. “How so, Second Empress?”
She winced at the archaic title. “Raeche was garbed in red and registered like a bright spot of blood in the eye.” Taritana pointed at her eye. With a tiny spark, she created the illusion that it clouded with blood. The illusion died as quickly as it had come. “Wherever one looked, she shone there in the corner like a pulsing beacon of the Spirit of Vanity.”
Valor’s lips twitched, but Taritana kept going, barely seeming to notice.
“Of course she did not perform any of her duties, though I admit she seemed genuine in her attentiveness to the Innov and its brood. Even Praytor seemed desperate to please her in exchange for naught but a winning smile.”
“And?”
Taritana stood, nearly growling in frustration. Valor would push her sometimes when it was best not to.
“She sat there in Dahouina’s place, all brightness–”
“She sat in the place of honor wearing the color of honor. Red honored the king and queen,” Valor offered levelly.
“As well as he who hosted the Empire.”
“Yes, it would have honored their host and hostess as well.” Valor stepped closer to her. “Tell me what has upset you.”
The Empire (The Lover's Opalus) Page 7