“And yet you’re here.”
“Yes, well… it might take a while for me to give up, even so.” Tristanne shrugged. “It’s rather my way, if you’re not aware. I tend to simply be that way. When I want something, I don’t give up easily. So, you’ll have to put up with me for quite some time.”
“This is your argument? Truly?” Mairli’s posture changed and she adopted a remarkably similar facsimile of Tristanne’s voice. “Well, raven, it’ll likely be less trouble just to give in to me, because I’m going to badger you relentlessly else.”
Tristanne winced. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “If you really don’t want me, don’t want me at all, then I obviously…” Her shoulders slumped.
“Just because we’re both women doesn’t mean it’s not monstrous when you don’t listen when I say no.”
“Have you said that?” Tristanne thought about it.
“I believe I’ve made myself quite clear.”
“True,” said Tristanne. “Apologies.” She turned and started out of the stables.
“Why didn’t you ever make some dreadful bird-name for me, hmm?”
Tristanne turned back around. “I don’t know.”
“You do it for all your other girls.”
“You were never like that,” said Tristanne.
“Is that supposed to make me swoon?”
“No.” Tristanne shook her head.
“It does a bit.” Mairli shrugged. “It shouldn’t, but it does. I really do want to hate you, and you really do deserve it.”
Tristanne’s pulse picked up speed. She stood up a little straighter. “But?”
“Oh, to the blazes with you.”
“I want to buy you horses,” said Tristanne. “Or… or, um, I think we could go about rescuing them, you and I. You’re always going on about the horses out there being badly used, and we’ll just buy them away from all the bad horse masters in the entire country of Briganne, and we’ll start a horse farm on my country estate, and you can spend all day with horses and do whatever it is you like with them.”
Mairli was struggling not to smile. “A horse farm?”
“I don’t have to be part of it, I suppose. But maybe you’d let me help you buy some of the horses if you want to do it yourself. Just to make up for—”
“Your upper lip is some kind of sorcery.” Mairli’s voice had gotten a bit hoarse.
Tristanne touched it, self-conscious.
“The way it just curves in that perfect arch under your nose,” said Mairli.
Tristanne ran her tongue over it.
Mairli shook herself. “Well, here’s what I think, Tristanne. I think you have to prove yourself.”
“Oh, of course.” Tristanne nodded. “Yes, I’m quite willing to do that.”
“Good,” said Mairli. “So, a trial period then, during which we, er, we try it.”
“Yes,” said Tristanne. “That’s quite reasonable.”
“Before we start living together on horse farms.”
Tristanne’s heart was pounding very fast now. “Of course. That sounds very rational.”
“Yes,” said Mairli. “And we should likely keep our hands to ourselves during that time, and not touch each other or kiss each other or share each other’s bed.”
“Of course,” said Tristanne again.
Mairli fixed the other woman with a glare and then she stalked across the stable to stand in front of her, inches away, close enough to touch.
Well, this is a test, thought Tristanne. She’s just got done saying we shouldn’t touch, so I won’t—
Mairli was kissing her.
The kiss was like the eruption of a storm cloud, full of power and fury. It overwhelmed Tristanne. It shot through her like lightning. It stirred her core like thunder.
Mairli ripped her mouth from the other woman’s, gasping. “I’ve never been good at doing what I should do when it comes to you, Tristanne.”
“I’VE BEEN THINKING,” Pairce said from the doorway of the inn. Cadon was loading up their luggage to take to the carriage, so that they could all be on their way. “And I’m still angry with you for not telling me what you were up to last night, mind, but I don’t see why we should keep traveling with the others if you agree.”
Cadon set their bags on the bed. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t we travel with them?”
“It’s only…” Pairce spread her hands. “Well, Madigain’s dead, of course, but there were so many other people there when you spoke to him, and they all know that you used to be a cownt. And I know you don’t want to be a cownt, and if we go back to Briganne, I think you’re going to have to deal with it in some way. And furthermore, I have all these negative associations with the city of Laironn, since I was forced to sell my body there. If we’re making a fresh start, I thought we might make a fresh start elsewhere.”
He regarded her. “You want to stay in Rzymn.”
“Well, why not? It’s as good a place as any to open our businesses. We need only get our portion of the take from Haid, and… well, I do like it there.”
He smiled. “You like the jilato.”
“Amongst other things,” she said, laughing.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” he said.
“You do?” She beamed. “I thought maybe you’d wish—”
“No, a fresh start,” he said. “Just so. And Rzymn is a magical city.”
She bounded across the room and threw her arms around his neck.
He kissed her.
She shut her eyes against the kiss. It engulfed her in warmth and safety and the promise of everything they could be together. Cadon was her everything. He was her home. He was her family. She wanted to kiss this man forever.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“SO, WE’LL NEED three rooms,” Haid was saying to the innkeeper as Tristanne stood behind him. They had traveled all day long and they were now somewhere in Dumonte, so they’d seen nothing but red clay and rocks all day. There wasn’t a lot of vegetation in Dumonte, after all. Tristanne was tired of travel, but she’d been gratified that there was more space, since Cadon and Pairce had decided to stay in Rzymn.
“Two rooms,” Tristanne spoke up.
Haid shot her a glance and a small smile. “Two rooms then.”
“Oh, and something for the servants,” said Haid.
“Of course,” replied the innkeeper.
After they were paid up and had been given their keys, they ascended the steps to their rooms. Food was being sent up for them to eat, and Tristanne told her servant that she need not worry about coming to help her undress, that she would fend for herself that evening.
“You with servants helping you dress and undress,” Mairli teased her once they were in their room together. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
“And you without any servants,” said Tristanne, giving her a smile. “Perhaps we’ve merely switched places with our stances, and our arguments can continue with unabated passion.”
“The passion sounds all right, but not the arguing,” said Mairli, settling herself at the table and chairs that were set up in front of the fire. She yawned. “I would honestly be quite happy with everything settling into a decent spat of boredom from here on out.”
Tristanne sat down with her. “Boredom? Truly?”
Mairli yawned again. “Yes, boredom. How long do you think it will be until the food gets here? I’m falling asleep in this chair. Why is traveling so exhausting? All we’ve been doing is sitting all day.”
“Well, I had been worried you’d think I was being too forward to secure us just one room,” said Tristanne. “But now I see that you’re going to simply fall asleep upon having eaten, so I needn’t have worried.”
“Yes, I’ll sprawl out right there, on the bed,” said Mairli. “Where will you sleep?”
Tristanne slowly shook her head. “You’re punishing me, aren’t you? You’re going to punish me for a while.”
Mairli only chuckled. “Why don’t you g
o and check on the food?”
Tristanne left the room and poked around downstairs, asking so many questions about the food that she somehow found herself wheeling the cart of their dinner up to the room. When she opened the door, Mairli had already crawled into bed and turned down the lights.
“Well, I found food,” said Tristanne. “But I suppose you were too tired to wait for it.”
“I do think we’ll have to wait,” said Mairli, sitting up in bed. When she did, the blankets fell away, revealing her perfect, pretty breasts.
Tristanne’s lips parted. She was speechless.
Mairli gave her a wicked smile. “Will you join me?”
“Is this part of the punishment?”
“Yes,” said Mairli in a voice that had gotten rather throaty. “This is the part where we spend an hour or two with our hands on each other, bringing each other right up to the brink before easing off, until one of us eventually bursts and takes the other with her.”
“That sounds… punishing indeed.”
“Then we’ll eat a cold dinner,” said Mairli. “It will be a trial, I think, but we’ll have to face it together bravely.”
“Mmm,” said Tristanne, who was unlacing her bodice. “With your help, I suppose I may endure it. But it will be trying—don’t you dare lift that blanket and cover yourself.”
Mairli giggled, doing exactly that.
Tristanne dove onto the bed.
Mairli burrowed under the blankets, still laughing, and Tristanne tore through them until she uncovered every bare, beautiful part of her, like unwrapping a present.
When she kissed the other woman, when her hands found her secret, sensitive places, she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt quite this happy in her entire life.
WHEN SEFONI GOT into her room in the inn, she immediately threw herself face down on the bed. But she knew she should try to save some energy to ask Haid about his reaction to Madigain’s death because she hadn’t been able to do so earlier.
The first night in the inn, she’d spent the entire time talking about how she felt about losing to Madigain, which bothered her more than made any sense. She didn’t want it to bother her, and she felt embarrassed for being so childish about it all, but she couldn’t seem to let it go.
Haid had been quite patient with her, listening to her rail about it for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and then she’d begged him to distract her, and he’d been quite agreeable about that as well. They’d made slow, deliberate love on the bed in the inn, both lying on their sides, Haid curled around her back, entering her from behind and keeping one hand between her legs to tease her there and one to dance back and forth between her sensitive nipples.
When she’d climaxed, she’d felt as if she released the stupid shanj game somehow, putting the loss behind her.
Nothing mattered about that.
The job was finally over, and she and Haid were free of it.
Now, everything could be good. At least she hoped so.
“So, I just want to remind you that if you want to get our marriage annulled, it’s likely doable,” said Haid.
She pushed up on the bed, sitting up straight and gaping at him. “Why would you say such a thing?”
There was a knock on the door.
Haid turned lazily to open it. It was their food.
Sefoni seethed as the inn’s servants came in and left the tray behind for them. After the door was closed and they were alone again, she exploded, “I know what this is all about. You’re trying to spare me from the burden of being with you, because you think you’re so very, very awful, but I hate to break it to you, Haid Vortinen, but I am in love with you, and I’m not going anywhere.”
He gave her a small smile. “I’m sorry if I made you angry. I obviously want to remain married to you, but I realized we’d never actually talked about it. So, officially, I can assume you’re pleased enough with our arrangement?”
She let out a noise that was something like a growl and threw herself across the room to sit down and begin eating. “If I don’t kill you first, we will remain married indefinitely.”
He chuckled. “Apologies.”
“Oh, and you sound amused, you cad.” She shoved a piece of bread into her mouth.
“Apologies,” he said again, sitting down with her. He sounded even more amused.
She chewed and swallowed. She pointed at him. “I was going to ask you about your reaction to Madigain’s death, but you know what? I don’t even care. I’m too angry with you to deal with your deeply scarred and wounded psyche, so you can just eat and take yourself to bed, and if I have the energy, I will deal with you tomorrow.”
“All right.” Now, he was fully laughing.
“It’s not funny.” Her eyes flashed.
He squelched the next laugh but barely.
She shoveled stew into her mouth, glowering at him.
He bowed his head, and slowly seemed to get himself under control, his laughter fading. He didn’t look up at her. “I wanted you to know, though, I don’t hate myself.”
She raised her eyebrows. “What? What are you talking about now?”
“Months ago, we had this conversation, and you said it to me. You said that I was tormenting myself because I hate myself, and you might have been right. When I met you, I certainly did. But the more and more I was with you—”
“The closer and closer you got to your job, you mean?”
“No, no,” he said. “The job was very satisfying. I can’t deny that it felt very good, and that I was disappointed when I knew that Madigain was dead, because I would be robbed of all that time with him displaying a fake tiara. It was…” He sighed. “A bit of a dampener on my triumph, I must admit.”
“That was the reason for that reaction?”
“Yes,” he said. “But, um, the job isn’t what changed me, it’s you. You…” He blew out a noisy bit of air, surveying her. “I don’t quite know how to explain this, I find. I think it started when you, uh, when you said that thing about the Cowntess violating me.”
She shook her head. “What? Back then? But that was even before we got Cadon free.”
“And then, later, the night we killed her, you said something else, something about how it wasn’t either of our faults, the things that had happened to us, that they were the faults of others.”
“Yes,” she said. “Which is why I killed her.”
“But I didn’t quite believe that I wasn’t at fault,” he said. “You know, I felt I had to atone, that was the purpose of the job.”
“Yes, but I told you that you didn’t have to atone.”
He leaned forward. “I think it’s a form of protection that a person does for themselves after a very bad thing happens. I think, your mind does it for you, telling you that they’re your own fault.”
“How does that protect you?”
“Because… if I caused them, I had some measure of control over them, you see? So, then I could be sure that they wouldn’t happen again, because I wouldn’t do that to myself again. That way, I had, uh, power, I suppose. Because, otherwise, I think, if I’d recognized the truth of it, that I had been so very, very powerless in the wake of my family’s death, so very vulnerable, then I might have just curled up and died.”
She bit down on her bottom lip, because maybe she understood what he meant, and maybe she’d done similar things.
“But then you…” He let out an embarrassed sound, casting his gaze away again. “The way you are with me, it made me feel as though maybe I wasn’t so awful, and maybe I wasn’t responsible for destroying my entire life. And the more I was with you, the more I would see myself the way you saw me, the more I realized I didn’t have anything to prove. That maybe I really didn’t need to atone.”
“Well, you don’t,” she said.
He lifted his eyes to look at her. “So, anyway, for some time now, it hasn’t been about that. I should have told you that, I suppose, but I wanted to wait.”
“Until after the job.” Sh
e glared at him. “Always the job.”
He gave her a wry smile. “You know me so well, love. I could have let Rzymn go, I suppose, but… well, I don’t know. So much was in motion, and I… like I said, it was quite satisfying having done the job.”
She smiled. “I feel satisfied too.”
“Even though you didn’t beat him?”
“Yes, even though I didn’t,” she said. “I did pick the lock all on my own. I’m quite proud of that.”
He chuckled. “Yes, you’re magnificent. I think I’ve told you that before.”
“Once or twice.”
“But now, the job is done,” he said. “My thieving days are over.”
“Are they really?”
“Really and truly. I promise. I could never top this, anyway. Best to go out on top.”
“So, what are we going to do now, husband?”
“I’m obviously going to convince you to stop drinking that tea so that we can start filling the rooms in our massive country estate with very tiny little Sefonis.”
“I do want children,” she agreed. “Someday. But I think we’re still quite young, Haid. I’m not even one and twenty. And since when did you change your opinion on children?”
“I believe I said that I wanted to make you very pregnant after the job was over,” he said, reaching for some bread and a knife to spread butter on it. “I have a distinct memory of saying this, in fact. It was right before you burned the Cowntess to ash.”
“Oh,” she said. “Yes.” She had to admit that her stomach leaped when he said the thing about making her very pregnant. Why was that so affecting?
“And afterwards, I was quite moved in that regard. You will make a tremendous mother.”
“Watching me burn someone to death convinced you of my suitableness for motherhood?”
“Such a maternal trait,” he said. “One need never worry about one’s children being protected, after all, not when you are so very fierce.”
She laughed. “I’m not ready to have children yet, I’m afraid. Can you abide waiting a bit?”
“If you can think of something else for us to do, love.”
“Well, we’ll rule the criminal underworld of Laironn, of course,” she said. “We’ll set people impossible tasks to win our favor, and be capricious and terrible and… and magnificent. Together.”
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