“Do you know why I wanted this marriage?” he asked.
I looked at him, shaking my head a tiny bit.
“My people need peace,” he said softly. “And hope. And I think that settling things with the desert will help, but having a queen, having children—it will show my people that we are not meant for war now. We are for family and peace.”
His eyes watched me, and I thought I needed to respond somehow, but I didn’t know what to say.
“You—watching you today, dancing with your family, you can become those things to me, Shalia. A king … a king has little place in his life for emotion, for weakness. But I believe that you will make me stronger. I believe that you will save my people.”
So many thoughts stuttered and stopped, tripping over one another in my mind. I wanted to save my people too. I wanted family and peace. But how could we have family without emotion? Was emotion the same as weakness? I had never known it as such.
Before I could say anything, he caught a bit of my hair and tugged me gently forward. He pressed his mouth to mine, slowly, and petted my hair. He opened his mouth, and I mimicked him.
I didn’t feel love, or lust, or heat. I felt frightened and far too aware of where my hands were and how to move my head.
He stopped kissing me as he took off his clothes. “It will only hurt once,” he said. “And then we will have a family together. And our peoples will have peace.”
I wanted all those things. Family, children, and peace. I nodded, trying to want this. To want him.
When he got into the bed with me, to my utter shame, I cried. His hands touched my arms, and a sudden, desperate instinct to flee rose up in me and I tried to push him off.
“Stop,” he said, holding me fast, his hands gripping my arms. I froze, feeling tears slide out the side of my eyes. He sighed, and his hands gentled and rubbed the skin on my arms until I could take a breath. “Stop,” he said again, even though I was already still, panicked beneath him. He swallowed, his throat bobbing and moving, and he sat up, backing away from me. He turned from me and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, the first words I’d spoken since he’d come into the room.
He didn’t look at me. “Maybe this was a mistake.”
Even as a tiny flutter of hope lifted my heart that perhaps I wouldn’t have to do this, my stomach felt like lead. “If we don’t consummate the marriage, it will be invalid.”
He turned and looked at me with an edge of suspicion. “Is that what you want?”
Silently, I shook my head. No. I had come this far, and I couldn’t fail now. It will be wondrous, my mother had said. The most loving, intimate act two people can share with each other. I clung to her words.
“Tell me about your home,” he said, and I drew in a breath, confused.
“My home?” I repeated.
He gave a ragged sigh. “Yes,” he said. “Or ask me a question. Talk to me of anything until this doesn’t seem quite so frightening for you.”
I both appreciated his kindness and also felt a sting in his words that made me feel like I was failing in my duty, but I drew my knees up, hugging them. “Was that the only reason you wanted to marry me?” I asked softly. “For peace?”
He looked at me, his eyes sharp and assessing. “I want to embrace the desert with friendship instead of arms,” he said, but the answer still felt coy to me. “Why do you ask?”
“You want to send your men to the desert,” I reminded him.
He nodded, leaning back on the bed. “Yes, my quaesitori gather knowledge and intelligence. We know so little of the desert. And of course, it’s rumored that your brother is gathering Trifectate dissenters to the desert.”
“What is it you wish to know of desert ways?” I asked, ignoring the part about Rian. He would never endanger us by bringing his rebellion here—Father, if nothing else, would never allow it.
He drew a slow breath, and the suspicious edge was back in his eyes. “Can I trust you, wife?”
“Of course,” I told him, frowning.
“I’m searching for something. Something infinitely precious to me.”
The lake. “What is it?” I asked, my heart beating faster.
“What do you know about sorcery?” he asked me.
“Do you mean the Vis peoples, the islanders?” I asked, averting my eyes from his. “I know they’re gone.”
“They are no longer one and the same,” he told me. “The Vis may have disappeared, but their foul magic has spread—we have seen it even in the Trifectate.”
I looked at him, unsure how to respond, unwilling to betray how much I knew about such magic. “Foul?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” he said, shaking his head. “Their power deceives and destroys. It can burn a house to ash and take the air from your lungs. It is truly the darkest threat of all. Because of that, I’m searching for an elixir that renders their powers useless,” he said. “It is the only way to ensure peace and safety for my kingdom, my family.” He looked at me a moment. “Our family.”
“But couldn’t the powers also be used for good?” I asked. I had never known Kata’s power to hurt us—in fact, her ability to find water in the desert often meant the difference between life and death.
He didn’t look at me, and he was still a long time. “There’s a prophecy,” he said quietly, “that an Elementa will be the one to kill me. My father thought he prevented that prophecy from coming true, but now …” He stopped, then sighed and shook his head. “That power has taken everything from me. Everything I ever cared about. It is the single most vicious, dangerous thing in this world. And if I don’t get that elixir, it will take my life.”
Heat flushed my cheeks at the finality of his words. “And you believe this elixir is in the desert?” I asked. “Very little can survive in the desert.”
“I’ve been assured that it is,” he said. “Given to your people to protect.”
“I have never heard of such a thing,” I told him honestly. “Perhaps my father would know.”
“You cannot tell him,” Calix said, turning his face to glare at me, hard and serious. “If you do, I will know there can be no faith between us as husband and wife.”
“But why?” I asked. “He may know the answer.”
“We may have peace, but your father still knows me as his enemy,” he told me. “It has to be done carefully, and my hope is to find it without him ever knowing.”
Anger rose in my chest, tight and hot. “You mean because you believe he might not let you have it if you find it.”
“I do not want to be set up to oppose your father,” he said, touching my hand. “For both our sakes.”
Better between them than standing to the side as they burn another one of my brothers in the sand. I remembered my bold words to Kata the night before; I had never thought that they would come to bear quite so rapidly. “Why did you tell me?” I asked softly.
“Because you are not my enemy,” he said, tugging my hand to his mouth so he could kiss it. “You are my wife. And keeping this secret will prove that I can trust you as I so desire.”
He continued to apply gentle pressure to my hand, making me come toward him in the middle of the bed, and he stopped when I was right in front of him. I licked my lips, still frightened, but it wasn’t as paralyzing as before. “Can I trust you?” I asked, but I knew the answer before he said it. I could never tell him about Kata, or about the lake, or everything I knew about the elemental powers.
He nodded, his face grave. “Always,” he told me, coming closer and kissing me again. My heart thudded against my chest, but I swallowed down the fear that rose up with it. I could take a little pain—I was a queen now. I could do this.
Everything felt strange—his mouth against mine was slick and intimate, and I couldn’t stop from jumping every time he touched my skin. As the barriers between our skin disappeared, I felt vulnerable and exposed, my muscles tense and unsure.
When the worst
of the pain struck, I cried out, and he told me it would be better after that. I bit my lip and tried not to let him see me cry, but I couldn’t help but feel tricked by my mother’s words and my husband’s promise—instead of some wondrous act, it felt like he had betrayed whatever delicate trust he had just spoken of. Instead of two people made whole, I felt like I had fractured.
The Dragon on the Wall
The next morning I woke with the sun, and my husband was asleep in the bed beside me. I stared at him for barely a moment, and I inched my way to the bottom of the bed, trying to get out without waking him.
The sheet pulled away from me, and I cringed at the rush of cold air. I wanted something to cover myself with, and more than that, something to curl into and never emerge from, something to help me forget the night before. Shame, I realized. I felt ashamed, and it was a foreign feeling in my breast.
I stood from the bed, shivering. My wedding robes were folded neatly in the corner, and I picked them up. It seemed strange to wear these clothes twice, but I had to leave and I didn’t care what I wore to do it.
My sandals were beneath the robes, and I left them there. I needed the sand and the stone beneath my feet to remind me that there was something unchanging left in the world.
Jitra was more quiet and still than I had ever seen it. The celebrations would have gone on late into the night, and now it left the walkways empty for me. Ducking between two rock-hewn homes, I found the narrow entrance in the rock that led below the city to the place I was looking for. I moved easily along the steep staircase despite the lack of light. Desert people could hear the whispers from the earth, and I had long since learned the language Jitra spoke.
The staircase ended, and it opened into a room. I lit the torch there, careful to replace the flint. It crackled to life and filled the cool room with sudden heat, revealing the secret of the chamber.
There were names carved into the wall, hundreds of names in small, cramped writing. I moved down along the walls, dragging my fingers over the names like I could call out to my kinsmen.
“Oh.”
I gasped at the voice behind me, dropping the torch and spinning to face my husband’s brother, then jumping away when I felt the heat of the fire on my legs.
“Easy,” Galen said, rushing forward. He caught up the torch and placed it safely in a cradle on the wall, immediately close to me.
I stepped backward.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. He shook his head, turning back. “Good day.”
Maybe it was the spirits of my family that made me bold, or maybe it was just that I wasn’t used to being poorly thought of, but as his foot touched the stair, I called, “I would like to know why you don’t like me very much.”
He stopped, his hands on the wall, making his shoulders hunch up. “What makes you think that, Shalia?”
His use of my name seemed harsh, but I remembered him looking at Calix and me and then walking away the night before. “You didn’t speak to me last night. You don’t wish to speak with me now.” I smiled a little. “I don’t think I’ve seen you smile yet.”
“I’m not much for words,” he said.
Was that all it was?
He pushed off the stairs and turned, his back against the wall, watching me. “Why would it matter, if I like you or not?”
I was about to be alone for the first time in my life, in his country, where I knew nothing and no one, but I couldn’t think of a way to answer that didn’t make me sound like a scared little girl. “You’re my husband’s brother,” I told him.
His eyes narrowed on me. “Family is more important to the desert clans than it is to the Trifectate.”
I wasn’t even sure what he meant by that, but it felt like a rebuke. Nodding to him in what I hoped was a dismissive gesture, I turned into the darker part of the cave, going to the person I was really saying good-bye to down here. I traced his name on the wall.
“This place—it was made by Elementae?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Jitra has been here since the beginning of time.”
Galen looked above him, suspicious, as if the walls could attack. “In the Trifectate, it’s treason to use such power now. Punishable by death.” He sighed, looking over the wall with my family’s names. “A great many beautiful places the Elementae built have been demolished to serve the pleasure of the Three-Faced God.”
“It is treasonous to remember their gifts?” I asked.
He looked at me, his eyes guarded. “Yes.”
“Why?” I asked.
His eyes moved to the stairs and back to me, and I felt a shiver of warning run down my spine. “You cannot question the will of the Three-Faced God.”
My chin rose, and I felt the familiar defiance of being a little sister to so many brothers rise up in me. “But I will be queen.”
“Especially when you’re queen,” he said.
Our eyes met in the flickering light of the cave, and I wondered if he knew how he looked—severe and looming, his shape made larger by the shadows cast off from the flames, his eyes staring into mine and turning black against the brightness of the fire.
“What are these markings?” he asked, touching the stone next to us.
My mouth was dry for a moment. “This is where we keep our dead,” I told him, looking back to the wall and the person I hadn’t said good-bye to yet.
He looked at the ground.
I watched him, amused. “They aren’t in the earth,” I said. “They’re on the walls.”
He looked at the walls, aghast, and I smiled.
“You fear death,” I said.
“Sometimes,” he said. He looked at me, his powerful stare hitting me. “You don’t?”
I went to the wall, tracing my fingers over the names. “For myself, I suppose. I don’t want to die. But I’m not afraid of death, or of the dead. When we carve their names here, they stay with us. They live in the earth beside us. And eventually, their names wear away and they pass on, with all their family around them.”
He came beside me, touching the wall. “These are names?”
I nodded.
“They look like little pictures.”
“Everyone has a symbol. For you, and then for your family.”
He ran his fingers over a line. “Some are much longer than others,” he noticed.
I traced one with a sigh. “Long means you’re further away from the head of the clan. You need more explanation.”
“Who’s that?” he asked, looking at my fingers. It was two symbols, a rabbit and a dragon.
“My brother Torrin,” I told him, pulling away from the wall.
“How did he die?” he asked.
I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against the rock, cold where I remembered the unrelenting heat of my brother’s body being burned in the sand, returning his life to the Great Skies. “You killed him,” I whispered. “His death was the reason my father finally agreed to talk peace terms with your country.”
“I didn’t kill him,” he said sharply.
“You are a part of the Trifectate. Your brother says you and your siblings are the Three-Faced God incarnate—whether you held the sword or not, you were part of it.” I felt his eyes on me, silent for a long time, and wondered whether it was wise to speak to him that way. I took my fingers from the wall and pressed a kiss to them, then brushed them back over my brother’s name.
I turned to face Galen. His eyes glittered in the torchlight and it was hypnotic, engrossing. “This border has been disputed for five years. The desert people have aggressed just as much as the Trifectate. It’s not as if I decided to attack your people on my own, on a whim.”
“But you started it. Five years ago, you came to the desert with death.” My cheeks felt hot, but despite knowing that criticizing his warfare would not endear me to him, I didn’t check my words.
“I did not. That wasn’t my decision.”
“You are what you represent,” I argued. “Yo
u know just what I mean. The Trifectate started this.”
“Only after the desert stood with the islands in the war,” he said, crossing his arms.
“But you crushed the islands,” I insisted. “There was no reason to come for the desert.”
“Ask my brother,” he said. “He’s the one who issued the order. I was not commander then.”
“And so you take no responsibility for it?” I asked. “You are commander now. You have been for a long time.”
“Would that make it easier?” he asked, and his voice was low, and harsh, and totally arresting. “You lost a brother. Your family sacrificed you in a marriage to buy peace. Would it make it easier to blame me and not my brother?”
My breath stopped in my chest. The light flickered over us, making our shadows move even though we were still. “I chose this marriage,” I told him. “I know why I did—and that has everything to do with the number of names on this wall,” I said sharply. “I didn’t come down here for company—or an argument. I wanted to say good-bye to my brother.”
The flame crackled on the wall as we looked at each other for a long moment. “Of course,” he said finally. “My queen. Forgive me if I spoke out of turn.”
I raised my chin and made for the stairs, hoping he wouldn’t follow me. I took a last look at the names on the wall and prayed that my sacrifice would leave blank spaces there where my kinsmen would live instead of die.
When I looked back, Galen’s head was still bent, and I liked the idea that a queen had replaced the pitiful girl from the night before whose courage had failed her when it came time to finish what she’d started.
Blessed Vessels
I returned to my rooms to find a storm of people there, women packing and men moving things, desert people and Tri guards alike. My husband should have been swarmed by people, given gifts and blessings by my clan, but he stood alone, his hands folded neatly behind his back.
“Where were you?” he asked as I drew close, kissing my cheek sweetly.
“Walking,” I said. “Saying good-bye.”
He nodded once. “In the future, I would prefer not to wake up alone.”
Reign the Earth Page 4