by Cara Bristol
What did that mean?
“Perhaps we should begin with the examination.” Meloni motioned to the tree stump. “Please…”
Reena sat, and the healer knelt before her. “Your color appears much better, and it looks like you’ve put on a few pounds.”
She flushed. She’d been ravenous, even eating more than Garat, the hulking brute—which he’d noted, watching her with a smirk.
“You’re hungry all the time, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You will be for a while. Your body is trying to return to stasis. Listen to it. Eat when it tells you to. Rest when you’re weary. He examined her fingernails then peered into her mouth. “Excellent. The lesions have healed.” He rolled up his sleeves. “May I touch you?”
She nodded, and the healer pressed the tips of three middle fingers lightly to her temple. A little zap of electricity caused her to jump.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “Occupational hazard. It comes with the job.”
Nothing like that had happened when Honna touched her.
“Relax,” Meloni said.
Reena took a deep breath and released it slowly. The healer closed his eyes. Other than the little zap, she didn’t feel any different, other than her eyelids grew heavy. Thoughts drifted like dried leaves on the wind. Despite uncertainty, her vexation with Garat, calm settled in her gut and then expanded in rings like ripples on a pond, widening and spreading until even her fingers and toes felt languid. Her breath flowed steady and easy.
Gliding. Like being in the palace pool.
Across the quiet rumbled Meloni’s voice. “Open your eyes now.”
Reena blinked.
His hands were at his sides. He peered at her. “How do you feel?”
“Peaceful.”
“Good.” He smiled. “Tranquility speeds healing. Your recovery is remarkable, considering how compromised your health was. The sickness and evil have left your system, and all that remains is for your body to regain its strength. You’re well on your way.”
“I feel like I’ve been given life twice.” She didn’t doubt Garat’s assertion she was going to live—the changes were obvious—but it didn’t hurt to have confirmation from a healer.
“You’re fortunate yours and Garat’s paths intersected and he brought you here.”
“Because of the EID blast.”
“Because of the poison and the malevolent intent attached to it.”
“I wasn’t poisoned!”
Meloni remained silent.
“I wasn’t poisoned,” she repeated. “And I’d already started to recover. That’s how I was able to come on the journey.”
You improved after you stopped the treatment. Maybe you were poisoned.
No! Honna would never do that. He’s trying to plant ideas in my head. Because he’s one of them. A Lahon. Reena rubbed her temples.
Meloni’s eyes narrowed. “This causes you stress.”
“You’re saying my own cousin, my best friend, tried to kill me.”
“But you believe me when I say the sickness is gone.”
His comment was similar to what Garat had said. Did they convene and plan this? She scowled. “Did he send you here?”
“Why would he do that?”
“To convince me my cousin is…evil.” The word tasted dirty in her mouth.
“I would not attempt to sway your opinion or your heart.”
Contrarily, that didn’t sit well. Reena sprang to her feet. “Why not? If my cousin was trying to kill me, wouldn’t you warn me?” As Garat had tried to do. What kind of healer are you?
“Because you have the proof to reach the correct conclusion. But it isn’t about evidence.” Meloni tapped his chest. “The heart always knows the answer.”
Her heart knew her cousin was innocent! She was almost sure of it.
“That’s why you haven’t run,” he said. “Because you’re safe here.”
“I remain because I’m never out of Garat’s sight.”
“All the time?” Meloni’s eyebrows arched. “You’re never alone?”
“Not for very long,” she muttered. Long enough. There had been a few short stretches when she’d been unattended. Why hadn’t she made more of an effort to escape? More? How about some? She lifted her chin. “He has you guarding me now.”
“I’m not your guard. I came to follow up on your health. You were very sick.”
Reena planted her hands on her hips. “So if I were to make a run for it, you wouldn’t stop me?”
Meloni laughed. “Oh no, I would stop you.”
“You encouraged me to leave.”
Another chuckle. “No, I commented on the fact you had made no move to do so. I believe your life is in peril. Also, while I may not agree with his methods, I would never defy our leader.”
She blinked. “Garat is the leader of the Lahon? But he lives in a…a...” A dwelling only slightly larger and better appointed than a mating hut. Which his dwelling has turned out to be.
“One leads by the strength of character and mettle, not by a grandiose display of power or wealth. We Lahon are an uncomplicated people of simple needs and means.”
His tone insinuated no censure, but she flushed. The Sharona relished luxury. Fine linens and tapestries, precious metals and jewelry, dwellings constructed if not of chyros then marble or other stone. They enjoyed such an abundance of water they treated it as disposable, using it without thought or conservation. She studied her feet. Gilded rings adorned her second toes. She wore jewels on her feet, and the Lahon didn’t have water.
“To the Sharona, we might appear to be barbarians, but we know who we are,” Meloni said.
Reena’s head snapped up. Her cheeks warmed.
“Yes, we’re aware of what you call us.”
“I don’t think that,” she denied. “Nor does my mother, the queen.” It was the best apology she could offer. Honna, Carinda, and many, many others did consider the Lahon to be barbarians.
“If you did, you wouldn’t be here.”
Reena kicked at the dirt with the toe of her sandal, rough leather footwear Garat had cobbled to protect her feet. “My biggest fear is my mother will be distraught with unnecessary grief and worry. If only she had word of my safety.”
An emotion, intense but unreadable, flashed in his eyes before he banked it. “I’ll have a word with Garat and suggest he deliver a message to her.”
“Thank you,” she said. “It would do no good for me to ask him since he hardly speaks to me.” Perhaps she presumed too much from Meloni’s friendly compassion, but misery sought release in confidence. After using her body, her captor refused to offer a “good morning.” She paid for a night of ecstasy with a day of despair.
“He wages a battle, but not with you—with himself. He is torn between choosing what is right for his people and serving his own needs.”
“Aren’t they one and the same? The Lahon need water.”
“We require water, this is true. However, Garat needs his heartmate. And that is you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Garat tarried long enough to allow Meloni to complete his examination before returning with the log-splitting wedge. A scowling Reena stomped away. He barred her path. “Where are you going?”
“To the hut. If it’s okay with you, your highness.” She stared at some point over his shoulder.
Look at me! He almost snapped, but caught himself. Her hopeful, sometimes hurt looks had attacked his conscience all morning. Perhaps if she avoided him, he’d be better at avoiding her. Could get his desire under control.
“It is, if you stay there.” He stepped aside to let her pass then watched as she flounced across the field to their hut. He heard the door slam and imagined the windows rattling as well. What had angered her so?
For both their sakes, he’d done his best to limit their interaction, a difficult undertaking since his hostage required supervision. So he compensated by speaking to her as little as possible. He vowed to tou
ch her as little as possible, too—a promise he’d broken every night.
He empathized with her confusion over his mixed signals. But she hadn’t been this mad when he’d left to retrieve the tool.
He rounded on Meloni. “What did you say to her?”
“I told her you and she were heartmates.”
Heat flooded his neck and the tips of his ears. “How did you come up with that?” No wonder Reena had stormed off. He was of a mind to join her.
“The truth cannot be denied because one does not want to hear it.”
“It’s not the truth.” He slammed the axe into a log.
“Then you two haven’t been mating?”
Thwack! He split another. “What business is it of yours?”
“Have you noticed her crystal?”
He checked her for signs of fever when she slept, when she brushed her hair off her face, when she lifted a ewer or a mug. Her amulet remained transparent. But it begged the question, how could they be so consumed by carnal passions if she wasn’t in fever? “No, what about it?”
Meloni pierced him with a knowing look as if his lie came heralded under a banner proclaiming it as such.
Garat tossed the logs he’d split into the pile. If he’d foreseen an interrogation, he would not have asked Meloni to watch Reena. Who knew what else the healer had said to her! Heartmates? What manner of flummery was that? He wasn’t quite sure what a heartmate was, but coming from the healer, it didn’t sound good.
“She is not exuding the pheromone, and her crystal hasn’t turned cyan,” Meloni stated.
You wouldn’t know it from the way they’d been acting—fucking like the fever had them by the gonads. Fucking like the sand in the hourglass was running out with no tomorrow. Her womanhood clutched at his cock as tight as the arms she wrapped around his neck. She sucked him off with a skill as old as the Goddess herself, yet with an innocence that caused his head to reel. “So her crystal is normal.” He shrugged.
“I didn’t say it was normal.”
Garat struck another log. Thwack! “Look, I’m no healer, no sensate, no oracle. All this cryptic nonse—nuance is flying over my head. You’re going to have to explain it so a lout like me can understand.”
“Males and females are fire and water. Yet reproduction requires cooperation. So the Sharona produce a hormone causing lust and excrete a pheromone that enraptures the males around them so mating can occur.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” He was being rude to the healer, but he couldn’t help it. Heartmates? Ridiculous.
“It is written that each Lahon and Sharona have a heartmate—the one he or she is supposed to be with for eternity. When two heartmates join, the fever cycle ceases, and the mates are drawn only to each other.”
“I’ve never heard that!”
“Have you read The Goddess’s Tome?”
“Well, not all of it.” Garat prayed he wouldn’t be struck dead by a thunderbolt for lying that he’d read even some it. Part history, part prophecy, the tome’s importance to their people could not be denied. However, it was written in an archaic form of their language and was boring enough to cause a loss of consciousness. Had anyone read it cover to cover? Like most people, he drew awareness of its teachings from what he’d been told, not what he’d read himself. Maybe if you read it, it would help you keep your hands off Reena.
“I guess you didn’t get to that part,” Meloni said dryly.
Garat picked up a log too thick and knotted to split with the axe, and positioned it atop a tree stump. He inserted the sharp line of the wedge into an existing crack then hammered it in with a short-handled sledge. One. Ping! Heart. Ping! Mate. The log cracked in two. “Have you witnessed a heartmate pairing for yourself?” He set one of the halves on the stump. This could be split with the axe. He grabbed the tool, raised it over his head, and swung.
“I’ve experienced it.”
Thunk. The axe blade embedded into the stump, missing the target completely. “You have a heartmate?”
“Yes. I met her many years ago. She was in her second cycle of the fever; she already had a daughter.”
“So what happened? If she’s your heartmate, aren’t you supposed to be together?”
“She had responsibilities to the Sharona; I had mine to the Lahon, but not a dawn breaks that I don’t think of her, remember our short time together. I’d hoped our mating would have produced a child, but it did not.” Meloni expelled a breath. “Consider the ramifications before you let your Reena go.”
“She is not my Reena. And neither is she my heartmate.” Garat paused. “What if she was? Would that explain why her crystal has not changed, and she exudes no scent to attract other males?”
“About the latter, yes. The former? No. ‘She who is pure shall be hidden in clarity. While she who is evil shall be revealed by darkness.’”
“Huh?” What kind of mystical gibberish was Meloni spouting now?
“It is written in the tome that the one who is pure does not change, and her crystal shall remain true, while the false-sayer shall be revealed by her blackened gem.”
“You’re saying…Reena is pure?”
Meloni nodded. “She could not have survived her cousin’s evil otherwise.”
“And her cousin is the false-sayer?”
“Without having met her, I can’t say for certain, but there’s a strong chance. Did you happen to notice her crystal?”
“No. Everything happened so fast, I never got a good look at her. Maybe I’ll ask Reena.”
“You’ll have to talk to her to do that.”
Garat sighed. “I have been a bit…terse. I’ve feared becoming too attached because I need to send her home.” So why mate with her?
Because I can’t be in the same room with her and not touch her.
Heartmate.
Garat set up another log for chopping. Swung his axe at it. She’s not my heartmate. Couldn’t be. Because he had to do what was right for his people. Whether he exchanged Reena for water rights or allowed her to leave on her own, she would not stay with him. She wasn’t any Sharona, she was future Shara. Had the earthquake that diverted their water occurred a few decades in the future, he might very well have been negotiating with her for the water.
She would give it to the Lahon no questions asked. The one who is pure does not change and her crystal shall remain true. How apt description of her kindness and generosity. He, however, was the barbarian her people assumed.
“How long are you going to keep her?” Meloni asked.
For as long as possible. Or maybe he’d take her tomorrow. That’s what he should do. Get rid of her before the fucking and Meloni’s talk of heartmates further weakened his resolve. Every passing day made it harder and harder to contemplate returning her. Losing her.
“If you keep her much longer, perhaps you should send word to the queen her daughter is alive.”
He’d wanted Ellynna to worry, but he didn’t want her to think her daughter was dead. He couldn’t be that cruel. He’d experienced a parent’s pain of losing a child. “I can do that.” Garat nodded.
“I would be happy to deliver a message.”
“I’d be happy to accept your offer.”
Chapter Sixteen
They ate dinner without conversation or eye contact. Her tined utensil clinked delicately against her metal platter while Garat made no sound at all, using his knife to spear his food. Finally, he set it down. “I am sending Meloni on the morrow to tell your mother you’re unharmed.”
Reena raised her head, her mouth parting on an oh. “Thank you,” she said. Two husky words and a too brief glance were all it took to send the blood rushing to his cock. This was why he avoided her. He squeezed a hand into a fist.
Healthy color bloomed in cheeks no longer hollowed by illness. Although she needed to gain more weight, she was no longer an emaciated waif. But what would happen when he delivered her to the wrathful evil of her cousin? He had to delay, allow her to build strengt
h, impress upon her the danger she faced. If the Lahon continued to ration water, they could live fine for a while.
Which meant he and Reena would remain in close quarters. They couldn’t continue acting as if the other didn’t exist, not looking at one another, not speaking. He’d erected the wall of silence—it was his responsibility to tear it down.
He stabbed a piece of meat, bit off a piece, and chewed. And chewed. His moccasins would have been more tender, less dry. More flavorful. Had she used any seasoning? The queen’s daughter couldn’t cook, but she’d tried. He’d arrived home to find her occupied at the wood stove. He grabbed for his water and gulped a mouthful to choke down the lump.
He coughed and pounded his chest. “Thank you for preparing supper.”
“You don’t have to be polite. It’s not very good.” She pushed the food around on her plate.
He could spare her feelings, lie and say it was excellent, but he was afraid she might cook again. “I’m appreciative of your attempt. You have other…gifts.”
Color flared in her face.
“I didn’t mean that!” he said, but yes, she had a natural talent for the carnal arts.
She ducked her head, and poked at a charred morsel. Garat placed his knife beside his plate. “I’m sorry it has to be this way,” he said.
Her utensil clattered. Her gaze glanced off his nose. “I’m sorry the Lahon don’t have water. I would help, if I could.”
“I know you would.” He sipped from his mug, letting the clear liquid slide down his throat. Once he’d given water as little consideration as the ground he trod on. Had given the Sharona little thought, too. He reached out and covered her hand.
“What are you doing?”
“Perhaps the problem isn’t that we…engage…each other at night, but that we don’t connect during the day.”
She shifted her gaze from her hand to the window. Outside, dusk had fallen. “It’s night now.”
“You know what I mean.” He still questioned whether anything like heartmates existed, but he couldn’t pretend Reena didn’t affect him. Could no longer deny that he craved to be enraptured by her. With his thumb, he stroked. “Meloni thinks we’re heartmates.”