The Artistry of Love

by C. J. Scarlett

  “A lovely night, isn’t it?” he said after a few minutes of silence had passed.

  “Hmm,” I responded, for lack of anything better.

  He tugged at my arm again, to stop me now, and came around so that he stood in front of me. I froze, acutely aware of the look on his face. It was eager anticipation now—more than just a bachelor enjoying a moment alone with a lady. Suddenly, a million thoughts rushed through my head, and none of them happy.

  “Mister Horne…”

  “Clara,” he said quickly, before I could finish what I was going to say. Then he kneeled on the ground before me, looking up, eyes glimmering in the lantern light. “I have spoken to your father and your mother, and now I am speaking to you. There is no girl more beautiful in London—no girl with a sweeter disposition. And so, I must ask… I am inclined to take you as my bride, if you will have me.”

  Oh. And there it was. I looked down for a long moment. Then, before I knew what happened, I pulled my hands from his and I ran. I ran far, and fast, as quickly as I could, away from Reginald, and away from the ball. It was unlike anything I had ever done before in all my twenty-one years—I had always been one to follow my mother’s rules, society’s rules—but now, facing down the prospect of marrying Reginald Horne had struck such displeasure into me that I had simply begun sprinting, as quickly as I could, doing the best I couldn’t to trip over the flowing skirts of my ballgown.

  “Clara!” Reginald called out from somewhere behind me, but I didn’t stop. There must have been others too who turned and looked as I continued on down the path, but I didn’t even look to see them. The only thing on my mind was getting away from there—finding some sort of freedom. I knew, beyond a doubt, that I wouldn’t find the life that I wanted being trapped with a man like Reginald Horne, forced to be his silent partner for the rest of my days.

  I don’t know how long I had been running when I first saw the lights. They sparkled up in the sky above me, like shimmering stars, but they were bigger than stars. Then I realized that they were coming closer and closer, until they were at the edge of the garden, enormous lights pulsing bright blue.

  Freezing where I stood, I stared at the lights for a long moment, transfixed. I didn’t notice the footsteps behind me, not until a hand touched down on my shoulder. Then, when I turned, a beautiful woman with dark skin smiled at me.

  “Clara,” she said. “I have been watching you.”

  Shrieking, I almost started to run again, but my legs failed me. Instead, I sank down into my skirts, and the woman leaned over me, taking hold of my chin and tilting it up so she could look down into my eyes.

  “Yes, I have been watching you,” she said. “And I can tell that you don’t want this life. It isn’t the life for you. Don’t you want something better? A life where you can be surrounded by strength and beauty?”

  Staring up at the woman, I felt my head go funny, as if I were being put under some sort of spell. All I could do was look into her eyes as she continued to speak to me.

  “I know a place like that, Clara. A place where you can find a strong mate, unlike the weak men of this world. Men like Reginald. Wouldn’t you rather be in a world like that?”

  The words surrounded me. They transfixed me. Yes, it seemed so wonderful, I thought. I had been running away from Reginald, but to find someone who could provide me with the strength that I wanted… the beauty that I wanted… Slowly, I nodded, my eyes sliding shut. The woman’s face was the last thing that I saw for the next eighty years.

  Chapter 2

  The ice floes stretched out as far as I could see. Standing there, it was almost easy to forget everything that had happened to me. Almost. I could be at peace for one brief moment. The silence enveloped me as the light glimmered down on the snow and the pale blue of the ice shimmered on the horizon line. However, that peace was short lived.

  “Clara! Come on!” I turned around and saw Shay waving at me. Just the sight of her was enough to bring out a smile on my face—a rarity, admittedly. She stood next to a deep-skinned, broad-shouldered Kamani. Her mate, Khofti, who at present had his arm possessively slipped around her waist, as if he was telling the world that he would ensure that absolutely nothing would take her away from him.

  Of course, after what had happened with the Ak-hal, it was clear to everyone that Khofti would never let anybody or anything take Shay from him, special gesture or not. The two of them had become something of living legends amongst the Kamani and the human women who lived among them. After all, they were our saviors. Had it not been for Shay and Khofti, the Ak-hal would still hold Gorodrim.

  No. Aman, I reminded myself. Gorodrim was what the Ak-hal had called it. Aman was this planet’s true name. The mental slip-up made me wince, even though nobody had been aware of it but myself. It had been many long years now since I was in the clutches of the Ak-hal—since I had been freed—but it was still difficult to separate myself from the time that I had spent under their control. Under the control of my mate, Kypher. Just the thought of him stopped me in my tracks, as it did every time he came to mind.

  I hadn’t seen him since the day that the Kamani brought down Argaram Castle, but he still lingered like a ghost at the back of my mind. How could he not? Thinking back, I remembered the days after I first awoke on the Ak-hal’s ship after Sarita offered me the chance to leave my life back home in England—a life I had detested, feared, wanted no part of.

  Argaram Castle, in all its glory, had been strange and beautiful, a welcome respite from the well-trodden cobblestone streets of London. The shining mithrim had entranced me, as it was so different from the ash-covered red brick of the buildings I had grown so used to back home. I had gazed on it all with childlike wonder as I was clothed in regal gowns adorned in alien flowers of rich burgundy, as gems were draped around my neck and my blond hair was curled with alien technology that I couldn’t hope to understand given the world that I had come from.

  And the Ak-hal themselves… I had never told Shay this… I knew how strongly she had felt from the first moment that she had arrived on this planet about her impending mating with the Ak-hal, but on seeing them, I had been filled with a strange desire. The world around me was strange and beautiful, but so too were the Ak-hal, and when I was told that one of them would choose me as his mate there, I felt not a hint of fear. Instead, I was driven by a need to be the best mate possible for the Ak-hal that would choose me.

  And then there had been Kypher. In the Ak-hal mating ritual, there is a first dance. I had danced with many gentlemen in my time on Earth so I hadn’t expected much of this ceremony. But I felt something when our hands first touched, and then once the dance was over, he allowed me to look up into his face—allowed our eyes to meet—and it was then that I knew he would choose me to be his mate.

  “You are a beautiful human,” he told me, eyes burning like fire as they bored into me, seeming like they could blaze their way into the very core of my being.

  “I cannot thank you enough for the compliment,” I replied, trembling—but not out of fear. Because we were touching, I knew that he could feel this, and wondered what he would make of my reaction, but his cold demeanor gave nothing away. He simply stared down at me passively, and all I could do was continue to look at him, taking in his pale skin and white-blond hair.

  “Give me your name.” It had been a demand—not a question. But I was more than ready to fulfill this request either way.

  “Clara.” I allowed a small smile to touch my lips. Another partner stepped up, prepared to take me away, but Kypher raised his hand to stop him. The Ak-hal stared from me to Kypher coolly, and then walked away with the young redheaded girl at his side, who gave me a pleading look as she was swept away. I didn’t quite understand that—what could have distressed her so much? Back in that moment, I had thought that the others had chosen to be here, the same way that I had chosen to be here. But I was only briefly distracted, because Kypher reached out to me and pulled me to him.

  “Come.
We will walk in the garden,” he said, and then pulled me away with him. We left the room, and made her way out underneath the stars. “What do you think?” he asked me as we stepped out.

  “It’s wonderful,” I gasped, thinking again of the garden back in London and how different it was to this place—how much my circumstances had changed and how lucky I was to have been granted a new life.

  “Clara.” Kypher turned to me, rigid in his stance. “I have decided. You will be my mate. I have seen many women come through here, but none has impressed me so much as you.”

  My heart fluttered in my chest. “I will be a good mate to you,” I said. I wanted to say many other things, but I felt a hold on me that kept me from saying them. Instead, I simply smiled again and bowed my head as Kypher reached out and touched my cheek. Around us, the flowers bloomed beneath the stars, and the castle rose up, the mithrim glinting all around us. It was beautiful, but cold, and I didn’t yet know what lay in wait for me in the time that would follow the mating ritual.

  “Hey! What’s up with you?”

  I started and turned. Shay stood right beside me, staring into my face.

  “Oh, sorry.” I’d gotten caught up in memories for a moment. Letting out a small laugh, I stepped down off the cliff’s edge and followed Shay down as we made our way back to the compound. “Did Maggie say why she wanted to see us?”

  Shay shook her head. “Nope. Just said we should all get together, so who knows what she’s got in mind?”

  The thought of Maggie brought even more old memories to my mind. Though she looked like an older woman now, when I first met her, we were both young, or at least looked it, even if I was older by quite a few years due to the immortality granted by my mating with Kypher. However, by the time Maggie arrived on Aman, I had learned the truth of my relationship with Kypher, that it wasn’t everything I had dreamed it would be.

  It had been torture. It had been a nightmare that I couldn’t wake from—no matter how much I wished I were only dreaming. In those days, the only respite I had from that agony was the friendship I’d forged with Maggie. We spent hours together talking about our lives back home and what we would do if we ever managed to escape the Ak-hal. To me, it had never been anything more than simple fantasy, but for Maggie it had been more than that.

  I could still remember the day that Maggie disappeared. The Ak-hal had been furious—their rage shook Argaram Castle to its core. However, all I could do was sit in my room and weep. On the one hand, I was glad that she finally found her freedom. On the other, how could she have possibly survived the freezing arctic wilds? I thought of her often over the years and when I found out from Shay that she had indeed lived, it had been a small miracle—a bright point in what had become an otherwise dim existence.

  “There you are, girls,” said Maggie as we came upon the entrance to her home. She rose from what she was doing—knitting something—and came to greet us.

  “You can leave me here for a while,” Shay said to Khofti, reaching up on tiptoes to kiss him.

  “I will return for you later,” he said, before ducking back out of the house, leaving the three of us alone.

  Maggie chuckled as she watched him leave. “As watchful as ever, isn’t he?” she said. Shay grinned and the two of them shared a knowing look. Maggie was alone now, but for a time, she’d had a Kamani mate herself. He had been killed by the Ak-hal before they were finally brought down. It was a show of her character and her strength that she managed to continue with all that she had been through. I hadn’t been through so much and some days I still felt like I could hardly get out of bed.

  “So, what’s up?” said Shay as she settled down beside the low fire that burned in the center of the room. I followed suit as Maggie did the same and we all got comfortable.

  “That’s what I wanted to know. Clara,” she said pointedly, turning her eyes on me pointedly. I sat up sharply under her gaze, surprised and uncomfortable with the attention that she suddenly directed my way as Shay’s attention focused on me too. “You recovered well after the Ak-hal fell, like most of the girls who came here. But the last year or so, you’ve changed. I wanted to know if something is wrong?”

  “What?” I squirmed. “N—no. Nothing is wrong.” There wasn’t, was there? Nothing I could really think of. I had been going about my normal routines, working with Maggie as usual and helping around the Kamani compound whenever necessary. Shaking my head to emphasize my point, I hoped that this would be the end of it, but Maggie just hummed to herself and continued to stare at me; her blue eyes fixed on my face as if she could somehow psychically ferret out whatever the problem was inside my soul.

  “You know, come to think of it…” Shay frowned.

  “This isn’t really necessary, ladies,” I said, hoping against hope that I could put an end to this right then and there. I loved Shay and Maggie, especially after everything that they had done for me—for all of us—but I didn’t want to be the center of their attention like this.

  Maggie sighed. “All right. Then just know that if there is anything wrong, you can talk to me, Clara,” she said.

  “That goes double for me,” added Shay quickly, with that particular spark that she had about her.

  They didn’t let it go right then. They continued to fuss over me for another hour, going through the past couple of years and everything that had happened. When they finally let me go, my head was a mass of confusion and I didn’t really know what to think. The only thing I did know was that I felt like something changed in my world, though I didn’t know what that something was.

  Chapter 3

  When Argaram Castle fell, the Kamani took a great number of Ak-hal prisoner. Maggie and I had been among the few willing to interact with those prisoners. They had been put to work restoring the broken Sky Jewel—a task that would no doubt take ages, something that the Ak-hal and the Kamani both realized. But as both races were immortal, they had nothing but time to complete the task.

  Walking through the wing with the daily meal for the prisoners with Maggie, I watched the Ak-hal prisoners go about their work and thought again of Kypher despite myself, wondering what he was doing. The Kamani hadn’t managed to capture all the Ak-hal—a great many had gone free and still wandered somewhere on Aman, no doubt biding their time, plotting some other attack against the Kamani. But at present, the Kamani had the upper hand. The Ak-hal had been left without their castle, without their ships, and without their mates. I would almost feel sorry for them if it weren’t for all that they had done to me and the other human women in the time that they had enslaved us.

  It was only because of the nature of the Kamani that the Ak-hal had been treated with such kindness in their imprisonment. They certainly received much better treatment than I had received in my time as Kypher’s mate. Though I had been bedecked in fine gowns and jewels, I had been little more than an ornament at my mate’s side—something to warm his bed at night. The thought made me shiver. Perhaps the jumpsuits that the Kamani wore weren’t beautiful, but they were comfortable and warm. The Kamani made sure to provide their prisoners a comfortable and safe place to sleep, and they even allowed Maggie and I to give small lessons about the outside world to those who were open and willing to learn.

  This was another thing. Though some remained loyal to the old ways—the old ideals—some of the Ak-hal seemed to change after their time spent amongst the Kamani. I didn’t know whether it was just forced modesty due to their position, or if it was simply because it was impossible not to become kinder when someone showed you so much kindness. Either way, it had given Clara back a little of her faith to see that even the Ak-hal weren’t inherently evil. At least, she hoped this was true—that what she saw wasn’t simply an act put on by those prisoners until such a time as they could fight back against their captors.

  “Are you finished down this way?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, picking up the pot I’d been carrying. I hauled it back down the path toward Maggie’s voice, turning wh
en I spied the older woman and making my way toward her. We followed this routine every day without fail. On this particular day, we were a girl short—one of our regulars had recently found a mate amongst the Kamani, and though she’d promised to come back to work with us among the prisoners, we ler her enjoy a ‘honeymoon’ period with him.

  She wasn’t the first to find a mate amongst the Kamani—in fact, many of the women who had come with us from the castle had found mates. Shay used to tease me that it was only a matter of time before I found mine, but it had never happened. Eventually, the teasing had stopped. I didn’t mind, though. I was content, and after everything that had happened with Kypher, the idea of having another mate honestly scared me. The Kamani may be kinder than the Ak-hal by far, but a lot of expectations still went into being a mate—at least, there were in my mind. So, living my life on my own terms was good enough for me.

  Even so, it did make me happy when one of the girls found her own personal ‘Barbearian,’ as Shay called the Kamani. It was an appropriate term given their uncivilized nature, though I hardly missed the luxuries of castle life after the things that had happened in my past. I had found it easy enough to trade in silken sheets for woven blankets and the soft, furred jumpsuits of the Kamani in exchange for the luxurious gowns I used to wear if it meant having my freedom handed to me.

  Why was it that I felt so strange lately, then? After Shay and Maggie had pointed it out, I had realized it myself, and felt it weighing on my heart. It wasn’t sadness, exactly. It just felt that something was missing from my life, and I didn’t know exactly what it was. I told myself that it couldn’t be loneliness, or that I wanted a mate after all. I had decided that this was something I didn’t need way back when I first left the Ak-hal. My friends and my freedom were good enough for me. And yet the strangeness lingered, and I couldn’t shake it no matter how much I tried.