Assassin's Bride
Page 15
“You are to be presented to the unmated of the Ak-hal,” she explained. Clara was strangely silent. We reached the end of the hallway, opening into a cavernous room, lit by a large fireplace at one end, and many large taper candles set in sconces along the walls.
I was unsure as to whether the Ak-hal wanted to be medieval or high tech. They seemed to be somewhere in the middle, utilizing medieval customs and etiquette, while employing extremely developed technological items. At the side of the room directly across from the fireplace, there was a large dais, on which sat two chairs. One was large and ornate, sculpted from mithrim, while the other was small, simple, and made of a bronze material. The room glowed with a warm, orange-red light. I looked upward to find that an abundance of red lanterns hung from the ceiling, accompanied by streamers and bunches of the haunting blue flowers, so that the plainness of the mithrim was obscured entirely.
All about us, women dressed in colorful dresses were grouped. Some looked pale, worried, while others seemed untouched. It appeared that I wasn’t the only newcomer. There were no Ak-hal to be seen. I turned to Sarita to ask her about this.
“How many of us have they taken?”
“You sound so accusatory,” she remarked, not deigning to look at me as she said this.
“They took us. Against our will,” I snapped. She looked at me and the emptiness of her gaze was terrifying.
“Someday, you will learn to thank them.”
“I doubt that,” I whispered. She looked away from me, her chin raising proudly.
“This is where I leave you,” she said with a cold smile and walked toward the dais. I looked around me. Clara had disappeared, and I hadn’t noticed. My heart fluttered nervously, and I looked back toward where Sarita had disappeared into the crowd. She was gracefully ascending the mithrim steps of the dais. She walked confidently, sitting down in the simpler bronze chair. She looked down over the crowd, as though she were queen. She is, I realized as I beheld her unreadable gaze. She looked at me from across the room. How I was so important as to have been waited upon by the queen, I didn’t know. I stood alone, mystified and frightened.
An Ak-hal dressed in crimson entered through a door beside the dais, his tawny breeches almost a golden color. His boots were tall, shiny black leather. He had a long, crimson train, edged in what looked like Kamani pelt. He had long, pale hair and vibrantly blue eyes. His features were perfect—nose straight, cheekbones prominent. His chin was sharp, and his eyebrows were high and arched. He wore a crown, golden, and spindly like Argaram Castle. He took Sarita’s hand without looking at her. The two of them made a fearsome pair with their twin blank gazes and erect postures. I presumed, correctly, that this was their king.
“Welcome, newcomers,” the king said. “By now, you are familiar with our custom. You have been chosen for your beauty among women of your race. You have all the attributes that the Ak-hal prize the most: looks, intelligence, and a calm demeanor. You have two weeks to find your mate among the Ak-hal. If, by the end of two weeks, you haven’t been mated, you will be executed.” There was a cold stone in the pit of my stomach. His voice was affectless, flat. “The unmated Ak-hal shall enter now.” As if a signal had been given, the Ak-hal entered through another door beside the dais, on Sarita’s left. They entered in military fashion, in lines of three, with frightening precision.
To me, they all looked the same, with small, ornamental differences. They marched in on silent feet. They wore their hair long. Some, like the king, had pale, almost silvery-blond hair. Others had raven black hair. They had that strange, inhuman beauty to them—their features were perfect, as though carven from stone. Suddenly, my body moved—betraying me again. I moved in unison with the others. We all moved into formation—three lines, mirroring that of the Ak-hal.
We stood, facing them, almost a mirror image. My face was arranged without emotion. I didn’t look to my sides, but I knew that all the other women beside me looked the same. I was in the front line, facing the Ak-hal. I wondered, for the first time, why the only race that they abducted were those of the human race. Out of the whole universe, how were we so unlucky as to draw their attention?
Suddenly, music started, my arm lifted, hand raised gracefully to accept the hand of the Ak-hal facing me. I looked from side to side. I could see no musicians. Other women moved around me to meet the lines of the Ak-hal. Everyone was in motion, as though choreographed. My posture was straight. I looked blankly into the bright eyes of the Ak-hal holding my hand in his. He didn’t smile. I had once seen a video of a machine kept in a museum—they had been all the rage in the 1700s. They moved mechanically, with a strange amount of grace. They were known as automatons, and they could draw pictures with strange flourishes. He moved just like that machine. His hand went to my waist, a slight pressure. I felt nervous, unsure. My body knew what to do, but I had no idea what I should be feeling. How would I know that I had been chosen as a mate?
At an embellishment of the music, the Ak-hal placed his other hand on my waist, lifting me in time to the music. My skirts swirled gracefully. I would never have been able to do this on my own. The innate training that had occurred while I was in stasis was contrary to my true nature. My body had gone renegade from my mind, in a flurry of confusion. I could smell the skin of the Ak-hal; it was masculine, clean. His hair was worn short. I couldn’t see what it looked like, exactly. My heart hammered nervously in my chest. I wanted to look up and study his face, but my gaze remained trained downward, my eyes staring at his chest.
With another trill in the music, I felt myself twirled about, and deposited in the arms of another Ak-hal, this one blond. His scent was so similar to that of the other. He had a crimson sash that crossed his chest. It was all that I could see. The dance seemed to go on for ages, and at irregular-seeming intervals, I found myself with a different Ak-hal partner. Other than the music, silence reigned throughout the hall, aside from the sound of the steps, something akin to a waltz, if I had learned anything from Disney movies.
I was unsure as to whether this was part of the Ak-hal mating process. If I had to guess, it was. I had read enough Austen to know that dancing was considered to be a significant step. As I thought about it, even in my own time, dancing was still a part of the process, even if it had degraded to nothing more than one person grinding up against another.
The music ended as abruptly as it had begun. I found myself staring at the chest of a raven-haired Ak-hal, a deep emerald-green sash worn over his tunic. He clasped my hand within his own, his other coming away from my waist.
“Is it over?” I whispered, finding myself speaking the musical tongue of the Ak-hal.
“Yes,” he responded. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Oh, yes,” I responded, although, in my mind, I screamed in the negative. This whole situation was bizarre and laced with poison. My life hung dangerously in the balance, and I knew not how to sway it in my own favor.
“Are you thirsty?” he asked me, tucking my hand gently into his bent arm. I found that I was able to look him in the face. Was he allowing it? Was there some mental manipulation occurring here?
“Quite,” I responded delicately. He smiled, although it didn’t reach his eyes. They glittered coldly. He led me to the side of the room, along which there was a banquet table, laden with food and drink. I looked upon the excess. Enormous roasted birds, bigger than a turkey, approximately the size of an ostrich. Elegantly decorated cakes, lush with icing. There were what appeared to be cut fruits, but their colors were far more vibrant than those of Earth. I could identify none. No one ate. If anything was taken, it was a beverage. Towers of champagne flutes, filled with liquids in many shades of gold, rose, and platinum. It almost appeared undrinkable. I wondered if they were poison.
“What is your name?” he asked me.
“Shay,” I replied, but found myself unable to ask his. With his free hand, he plucked two champagne flutes from the table, both filled with a rose-colored liquid. I t
ook the one that he handed me. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he responded with cold formality. I took a sip from the champagne flute—it was cool and sweet, slightly carbonated. It had a bite—it was some sort of alcohol. It burned my throat as I swallowed.
We approached another woman-Ak-hal pair. She had blonde, ringleted hair beneath her headdress. Her face was pale, frightened, her blue eyes looking from side to side. I gave her a small smile, trying to impart some comfort to her, but found myself switched off to the Ak-hal who had been holding her arm. I watched, confused, as the Ak-hal who’d had me walked off with the frightened woman. She looked at his chest, confused. I glanced toward the one who now held my arm. His grip was tight. I felt that I understood why the other woman had been frightened—he seemed rough.
I stood beside him silently, waiting for him to speak. He sniffed, inhaling deeply, as though smelling me. I clutched my glass nervously. He exhaled sharply, grunting. I shook with fear. Where the other Ak-hal seemed to hide their monster side, this one seemed to ooze with danger. I could feel him ready to shake off his humanoid shell and burst forth with fiery abandon. A deep rumble thundered through his core. I fought to keep my breathing under control as I felt him willing me to look at him. Slowly, I complied, my gaze raising to meet his bright crimson eyes. Two twin wheels of flame in his perfect, Italian renaissance-sculpture face. I fought to contain my terror.
“Shay,” Sarita’s voice came from behind me, and I whirled to see her in relief. She stood behind me, smiling a little. Her hands were clasped before her. “Come with me. Rakharo, there are others.” I found myself released from Rakharo’s vicious grasp. My glass, which had been clasped in my hands, was taken from me. Sarita placed her small hand on my arm, guiding me toward the dais. The king stood beside it, speaking in low tones to another Ak-hal, this one with Sarita’s caramel-toned skin and dark hair, and the king’s bright green eyes. He was half human half Ak-hal, I realized as he glanced at me. His face had a more human expression to it, yet it maintained the coldness of the Ak-hal. His red-brown, glowing eyes glittered with the same danger of the king. I then realized why I had been “acclimated” by the queen. I had been chosen for her son.
“Moranen,” Sarita said, warmness seeping into her voice as she addressed her son. “This is Shay.” He bowed low, taking my hand and kissing it.
“My mother has told me about you,” he said. It came out without any effect. “She has chosen well.” My stomach dropped as I glanced at Sarita. She smiled coldly.
“What?” I wanted, desperately, to glare openly at her, queen or not.
“When I saw you, at the party,” she explained, “talking to that hideous, odious man, with such grace, I knew that you were destined for my son.” I realized that I had seen her. She had been watching me talk to Greg at the party. She shrugged. The king took her hand, and they disappeared into the crowd, leaving me on my own with Moranen. He looked at me, hungrily.
“You no longer have to worry,” he assured me, taking my hand and tucking it into the crook of his arm. “We will be mated at the end of two weeks. And then we can spend all eternity together.” My stomach roiled sickly.
He led me out of the cavernous hall, and into a courtyard. Above us, the night sky was ink black, and the stars were small and luminous. I wondered if one of them was Earth—where the grandchildren of everyone that I had ever known were living out their lives, blissfully unaware of the horrors that existed in the universe. I exhaled, my breath a cloud in front of my face, and I shivered in the cold, despite my thick cloak.
The courtyard was tiny, and the hedges of blue flowers were thick. In the center, water spilled from a fountain. At its center was the carving of a woman, her hand holding an urn, which poured out a continuous stream of water. Standing, entwined around her was carven the shape of a dragon, its body long and sinuous, its triangular-shaped head gazing down at her downturned face. I reached out a hand.
“How is it possible for the water to flow?” I asked. The air was freezing. Moranen smiled.
“It’s heated,” he said, as though I were a child. “Feel it.” I sat on the stone lip of the fountain and dipped my hand into the pool, feeling the heat of the water. It burned my skin.
“And the flowers?” I asked.
“What about them?”
“How do they grow?” I looked at them. “On Earth, when it’s this cold, nothing can grow.”
“It’s never warm here,” he replied. “It’s always what you call winter. We are too far from our sun. Things must grow here, to support life. Their chlorophyll moves very swiftly, to circulate it through their systems.”
“The Ak-hal didn’t make it, then?”
“No. The plants were here before us.” He studied them, his head cocked to one side. “It does look like something that we would make, though. They are… beautiful.” That word again. It seemed that they knew nor had any other adjectives.
“Do the Ak-hal make things that are only beautiful?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied evenly. “There is nothing that we make that is ugly. What would be the point?” I thought of their use of the Kamani’s pelts. That was ugly, but in moral, not in look. I got the feeling morality was a concept that would be foreign to Moranen. He placed a hand on my cheek, and I looked up at him. He looked at me, possessively, and a confident grin spread across his face, that cold look in his eyes—it was psychopathic in nature. It chilled my blood even more than the climate.
“We make things which are beautiful,” he explained. “As you are beautiful, Shay.” A compliment. Nice try, I wanted to say, but my body was still a slave to the training and the will of the Ak-hal.
“Thank you, my prince.” It came from my lips, unbidden. My emotions were at war with each other within the prison that my body had become. On one hand, I was relieved—I wouldn’t die in two weeks. On the other, for the rest of my very long and healthy existence, I would spend it with this being, whose core was made of ice and mithrim. He leaned in, his glittering eyes close to my own. He kissed me on the lips. I found myself responding, no, not myself—my body responding. Inside, I screaming in fear and loathing. The Ak-hal had created a cage, and I was helplessly trapped within it, like a bright bird, desperately beating against the bars.
Chapter 4
The next morning, I had just returned from the communal bathroom and stood before the mirror in my room, putting my hair up. At the soft knock at the door, I turned to find a small girl came to the dormitory-style bedroom where I had been placed. Because I was to be a crown princess, I was given my own. It had white walls of mithrim and a blue stone floor covered in a thick purple carpet. It had a small, soft bed, piled with thick, woven blankets. There had been a Kamani pelt, as well, but I had folded it and placed it on a side table.
The night before, it had been heaven to find myself alone. It gave me time to think, and to be quiet within myself. This morning, it had been awkward. All of the other women shared one large room. They had all gone quiet when I had entered the communal bathroom.
“The queen requests an audience,” the girl said softly. She was a beautiful child—obviously the product of a human and Ak-hal union. She had the cold features of the Ak-hal with the darker skin of a human. Her eyes were like the Ak-hal—empty of emotion. She was dressed in white with gold ribbons at the collar and sleeves. I wondered at the thought that I hadn’t seen any children. I wanted to ask her where she was kept, but I felt like I wouldn’t get a forthcoming answer from her.
“Can you show me the way?” I asked, unsure of where to go. Everything within the palace, so far, had appeared uniform. If she gave me directions, surely I would become hopelessly lost. She said nothing, merely nodding. She waited until I walked to the door, then she walked away in silence. I followed her, trying to mark the passages. They all looked the same—mithrim, no decorations, same blue stone floor. Even the placement of the windows seemed the same. I had no time for a better study of them;
the girl walked so quickly, her tiny feet not making a sound. I had to hurry to keep up.
At last, we came to a door made of mithrim, with ornate carvings etched within the surface. The girl knocked, then a call from within. She opened the door and stepped aside to let me in.
Sarita sat inside on a large black velvet armchair. Her feet were placed on top of a large paisley ottoman. The walls were painted a deep, blood red. It seemed out of place. Here, Sarita showed her humanness—a need for color, pattern. A fire roared in an elegantly simple fireplace. Tapestries hung on the walls. From a brief glance, I could tell that they depicted the Ak-hal. I would now recognize that straight-backed form anywhere. I stood in front of Sarita, silently waiting for her direction. She looked up from the needlepoint that she held in her lap. She frowned at me, her expression twisting in anger.
“Kneel,” she commanded, and my captive body obeyed instantly. I felt the full weight of her authority as I looked up at her from the floor.
“There are things that you must know as crown princess.” She didn’t look up from the needlepoint.
“I didn’t learn everything while in stasis?”
“You must not speak unless spoken to,” she snapped. My mouth clamped shut, meanwhile I seethed inside. “We had to be sure that Moranen would take you.” She paused a moment, letting the idea that Moranen was my savior in this matter sink in.
“If the king dies in the upcoming campaign against the Kamani, then you will take my place,” she said. “This may never happen, as immortality can only end with grievous injury. The king is well protected.” She paused. Dramatic pauses seemed to be her thing.
“Your job is to produce an heir.” She looked at me, and my head nodded of its own accord. My stomach flipped sickly. I was to be a brood mare.
“You will accompany my son around the castle on business. We have many things that need to happen prior to our campaign against the Kamani. Rumor has it that they want to make an alliance. We will grant it, but we will use it to betray them. It’s most important that we take over rule of the Kamani.”