A Heart of Blood and Ashes

by Milla Vane

  Choosing them carefully . . . because she must have first heard them from his mother. Yvenne had changed the words—his mother would have called it the price of practice—but now Maddek recalled the scars he’d seen on her forearm. This was not the first time she’d bled from a bowstring. And clearly his bride thought she must bleed until she mastered the skill.

  Perhaps in the tower, that had been true. Here it was not.

  He glanced up at Kelir. “She will need an archer’s brace.”

  “It will be ready by morning,” the warrior said.

  “A guard for her fingers, too,” Maddek told him, for the fingertips she used to draw the bowstring were blistered and raw. He’d known they would be tender until calluses formed, for that was the price of practice. But he’d not known when he’d given her the stave how relentlessly she would use it. And he did not believe she would ease up her practice now, simply because of blisters and blood.

  “As a queen, you do not cry when you are in pain, and I will not ask you to,” Maddek said to her in a low voice. “But if you wish to be a warrior, you must tell us when you have been wounded. A warrior has the duty and the honor of tending to a fellow warrior’s injuries, just as you have tended to Toric. Do not deny us the honor of tending to you.”

  Her moonstone gaze searched his features before she looked to the others. Kelir and Fassad gazed back at her with solemn faces. Even Ardyl sat up in her furs now, regarding Yvenne with a grave expression. He could well imagine what they felt now—shame similar to his, if not as deep for being the cause of her injury. For she had saved all their lives that day . . . and then had gone about untended and bleeding for the rest of it.

  “I will not deny you,” she promised softly, then louder again so they all heard. “I will tell you of it next time.”

  Maddek would rather there not be a next time, but her response would serve for this night. “I will tend to her,” he told the others, though they knew it would be he who did.

  She made no protest when he scooped her up, furs and all, only pausing long enough for Kelir to give her Ardyl’s bow and a quiver of arrows. No more practicing would Maddek allow before she had protection for her fingers and arm, but if threat came during the night, better she have the weapon within reach.

  Carrying her, he started off toward the statue’s hand, which lay southwest of the head. With Yvenne cradled in his arms, the poisonous ache in his chest began to ease. Another ache started lower, but that he would ignore until her injuries were seen to.

  Then he would ignore it no longer. He had not successfully lured Yvenne outside her walls. But although she was becoming his weakness, her desire made her vulnerable to him in return. So he would steal his way over those walls, again and again, until she finally invited him in.

  He felt her gaze upon his face for the first steps. When they passed beyond the statue’s ear, she made a soft exclamation of wonder. She had been too focused on Toric to make much note of their surroundings when they’d arrived. So although she’d widened her eyes at the size of the head and foot, she had seen none of the statue that lay behind those enormous ruins because they had blocked her view.

  Now the moonlight gleamed over the white marble, rendering it as pale and as bright as her moonstone eyes were in sunlight. Parts of the ancient sculpture had been buried by time, such as an arm mostly covered by an earthen hill. Other parts were completely bare, like the foot Maddek had kept watch upon.

  “This, too, was described to me, but I never imagined . . .” She trailed off, her face awestruck.

  Maddek hadn’t imagined the statue properly, either—and he still could not imagine it. Not truly. Hanan’s legendary statue had once stood beside the mighty Ageras, which the god had created with his tears and his seed. But the toe Maddek had climbed was three times his own height, so he could hardly fathom how tall the statue in entirety must have been. The Tower of the Moon in Ephorn could have served as the ankle and calf and still barely reached the knee—yet Maddek didn’t think that city’s tower would endure through the ages as this statue had. For the sculpture had broken and fallen apart, but the marble hadn’t crumbled. It was buried in places, yet no weeds grew from cracks in the stone. The surface hadn’t pitted and weathered, though the statue had been already in pieces when Ran Bantik had united the tribes, and the river on whose banks it once stood now flowed farther north, barely visible in the distance. Only the river road they traveled on was as ancient.

  “I had not known they built a tower, too,” she said now, her voice wondering and her chin tipped back as she gazed up at a shining column of marble. “Is the base uncovered? Can it be entered?”

  Maddek grinned. “That is not a tower. That is Hanan’s pride.”

  The god’s colossal cock—and perhaps more colossal than Maddek knew, for the lower part of the shaft was buried, too. Yet what jutted above the ground was nearly as long as the statue’s leg must have been.

  After a moment of stunned silence, a giggle shook through her slight form. “Even in ruins, he is upright.”

  Because Hanan was always erect. “At least we need not fear that it would soften and crush us.”

  “Surely he will never wilt,” she agreed, and eyed the tip speculatively. “Do you think it ever erupts?”

  Maddek could not speak again until they had reached the hand, and he had to stop laughing long enough to climb the fingers while carrying her. There she drew another awestruck breath, as she saw what Maddek had spotted from his perch atop the foot. A pool filled the statue’s palm, the glow of the marble through the clear water seeming as if the moon itself were trapped within its depths.

  “We must remove our shoes,” she whispered reverently.

  As if they entered a temple—and Maddek could not disagree. He set his bride on her feet and she placed her bow and quiver aside before bending at the waist, reaching for the ribbons of her sandals.

  Reaching with her blistered fingers.

  Maddek dumped the furs and knelt before her, catching her wrists. “I will tend to you, Yvenne.”

  Her eyes met his. The slightest hesitation passed over her features before she nodded and straightened again. Allowing him this warrior’s honor.

  Though it was not only honor, but pleasure, too. Her feet were small and soft and filthy from the hard travel that she’d withstood better than ever he would have believed at the beginning of this journey. Her silk robes hung to her ankles, the hem as dirty as her feet. He had but a glimpse of the linens wrapping her legs from ankles to thighs as he unlaced her sandals. Mindful of her shattered knee, he bade her to step out, offering support when she had to shift her weight onto that leg. As soon as her feet were bared, he began untying the leather strips that secured his own boots, watching as she drifted to the water’s edge and gingerly poked her toes in.

  Her pleasured sigh hardened his cock to stone, but it was the smile she turned toward him that bled away the last of the festering poison in his chest. “It is warm!”

  “Then we will make good use of it tonight.” As they would the furs he unrolled, layering them into a soft bed over hard marble. “When the others discover this pool is here, every moment tomorrow that they are not on watch will be spent bathing.”

  Her smile widened for a brief moment before furrowing into confusion. “We will be here tomorrow?”

  “Toric cannot ride yet.” Maddek joined her, fingers working at the fastening of his belt. “We could make a bedsling of his furs for his mare to pull, as we often do with injured warriors. But if there are revenants or soldiers behind us and the horses must run—”

  “Better instead to wait where we have an advantage of position.”

  Nodding, he tossed aside his belt and linens and stepped naked into the water. Her bold gaze ran from his shoulders to thighs, though he read the query in the arch of her eyebrows.

  “I cannot tend to your wounds without first w
ashing away the revenants’ blood.” Which he had wiped away as best he could after the battle at the stream but still was dried in the creases of his knuckles, beneath his fingernails, and in faint streaks across his skin. Did that foul blood infect her wounds, she might soon be muttering in feverish delirium next to Toric.

  Backing into deeper waters, he watched her eyes measure the hot steel length of his erection, saw the hungry pinch of her teeth into her plump bottom lip, and thought that he might lure her, after all.

  After he tended to her wounds.

  Though the pool was warm as a bath, Maddek didn’t linger. Instead he turned and swam to the deepest point, where he submerged himself, scrubbing at his hair and skin.

  Yvenne’s gaze was alight with wonder when he broke the surface again. “I have never seen swimming before. It was as if you were a bird, but underwater. How did you not sink?”

  He grinned, swiping the water from his dripping face. “It is also the same as a bird, but I flap arms and legs instead of wings.”

  “Is that how a fish swims, too?”

  “They have no arms and legs. More akin to . . . a snake.” For he knew she’d watched a constrictor undulating through the grass, as fascinated then as she was now. “Have you never seen a fish?”

  She shook her head. “Though I’ve heard they are tasty.”

  A laugh rumbled through him. Almost every animal she encountered, her foremost interest was whether they were good eating. “I think not as tasty as roasted dally bird or millipede jelly, but you will soon judge for yourself. We’ll likely eat fish for every meal when we sail the Boiling Sea.”

  “Did you often eat it while upon the river Lave?”

  “More often than I liked,” he admitted. But upon the Boiling Sea, Maddek thought he would take his pleasure not in the food itself, but in watching Yvenne enjoy hers. It would not be such a torment when she groaned and closed her eyes in bliss, because her moon night would be past and he could ease his hunger when hers was sated.

  As he would this night. His erection had subsided while he bathed, but his shaft was still a heavy, hot weight as he walked back to the shallows. Standing ankle-deep at the edge of the pool, Yvenne watched him come, her gaze slipping downward as he rose out of the water and more of his body was revealed. When the waterline dropped below his loins, there her focus remained until he was almost upon her.

  Rarely did she hide from Maddek’s eyes, and this time was no different. She tilted her head back. Though he could not read her expression, this near to her Maddek saw more evidence of their journey in the shadows below her eyes. The two braids that ran back from her temples had begun to unravel and fray. Her skin had darkened in these past days, but he was not certain how much of it was dust and how much from the sun.

  “Let me tend to your right arm,” he said quietly.

  Her tongue moistened her bottom lip in a hesitant gesture before she lifted her hand between them. She had tied her loose sleeves back behind her elbow, yet her forearm was still wrapped in her bloodstained linens.

  Maddek gently took her wrist and untied the ribbon that secured the wrappings. A quiver moved through her still form. He glanced at her face but her eyes were on his fingers slowly unwinding the linen, revealing soft skin yet untouched by the sun. Her breath moved quick and shallow through her parted lips.

  He had become more acquainted with her breaths and their meanings. These were not of pain. Yet they were not of arousal, either. Instead they seemed nervous and uncertain.

  “If the blood has dried to the linen, the wound might open again when I remove it,” he said to her softly. “But I will be slow and gentle.”

  A shrug lifted her shoulders. “Better to be quick and over with.”

  That response suggested that any coming pain concerned her not at all. Yet her tension seemed greater with every unwinding, and another reason for her nervousness occurred to him. Maddek had known she preferred to cover her skin as many southerners did. In the bed at the inn, she’d kept her front concealed with her cloak even as he’d rutted on her from behind. In all this time, he’d seen her feet and her face and her hands . . . and nothing else.

  Yet he could hardly think her modest or shy. Her mind was not. Her words were not. Her gaze was not.

  But perhaps in this one aspect, she was. “Have you ever bared your arm to anyone before?”

  She trembled and this time did not meet his eyes. A blush darkened her cheeks. “My mother has seen me,” was her reply before she added under a breath, “when I was a babe.”

  And since then only Maddek had laid eyes upon her skin. Only he had seen the delicate tracery of veins at her inner wrist, the faint blue streaming up the length of her forearm to feed her wounds. The bloodied fabric stuck to the first slash, and as he peeled it away from the scab her breath changed, sucked in more deeply through flared nostrils and hissing out through her teeth. Despite her suggestion, Maddek did not go quickly, because that would tear open the wound more. Silent he remained until each of the slashes had been uncovered and her breathing lost its pained hiss.

  The wounds bled only a little, small drops welling where the scabs had torn, but no redness or swelling surrounded them.

  Satisfied that they would heal again quickly, Maddek blotted the drops with her linens. “Leave these uncovered so they will dry. In the morning, before you wrap your arm, use the salve beneath the linens so the weave will not stick to the wound.”

  She nodded, and then her blush deepened as he reached beneath her silk sleeve, where another tie secured the linens at her shoulder. Yet she didn’t protest as he stripped the wrappings from her arm and dropped them into the water.

  He looked down at her, but this time she did not tilt her chin up to meet his eyes. Her cheeks blazed as she stood before him with her head bowed, naked from wrist to elbow.

  Yet he was naked from head to foot. Never had she averted her eyes from him or any of the other Parsatheans, and his warriors shared not a modest bone among them.

  He could make no sense of it, but he trusted that Yvenne could make sense of anything. Untying the ribbon at her left wrist, he asked, “Why do southerners wrap themselves up even during the summer?”

  Her gaze darted up to his face, her brow furrowed. “I have not—I . . .” Abruptly she blinked and her eyes unfocused as if she searched her memory for an answer. Slowly her full lips curved and she met his gaze boldly again. “It is so Parsathean raiders will not be tempted by our beauty and steal us away.”

  Maddek grunted. She teased him, yet he also thought many southerners likely believed it. “That is what you’ve heard?”

  “Only through my mother.” Her attention dropped to her arm. Not avoiding his gaze now, but because he had reached the wound. Her breathing tightened again as he began to peel the linen away from the scab. “And it was not what my mother said to me, but what she saw a weaver say to her son.”

  As they lived lives outside their tower. “Warning children to cover themselves or they would be stolen away to the Burning Plains?”

  A faint hiss and nod was her reply.

  “In Goge and Toleh,” he told her quietly, “they warn their children that if they do not cover themselves, the Farians will rape and eat them.”

  She made no response, yet he felt her solemn gaze now upon his face.

  He peeled away the last of the linen. This slash was deeper, the torn edges of the scab bleeding more. Bunching the linens, he held them against the wound and waited for the new blood to stop welling.

  “It is a fool’s warning.” He met her eyes. “The Farians will rape and eat their children whether they are covered or not.”

  “And the Parsatheans?”

  “They would rape and eat us, too,” he said, and her lips twitched with amusement, but only until she seemed to remember that the Farians had done so, and that Maddek knew too many Parsatheans—and southerner
s—savaged by the Farians during his time upon the Lave. But he had not meant to turn the mood sour. It was her laughter he’d sought. “Our most celebrated legend is of Ran Bantik stealing a king’s daughter from a tower after seeing her beauty. So perhaps there is some truth in the reason for the coverings. But southerners are fools if they believe it would have made any difference.”

  “It makes little sense,” she agreed softly. “If bare skin were the temptation, the raiders need never leave the Burning Plains.”

  So Maddek had once thought, too. Yet now bare skin from wrist to elbow was changing that view. “That is why they sought treasure, instead.”

  Treasure—or merely excitement and challenge, and seeking treasure brought those, too.

  “Yet it was not only treasure they raided,” she countered. “And Ran Bantik was not the only one who stole a wife. Many other men and women have been taken in Parsathean raids.”

  “So they were,” he agreed, and checked the wound beneath the bunched linens. Still bleeding, but barely.

  “Which means something else must have tempted those raiders. Because Parsatheans do not rape or keep slaves—or so my mother told me.”

  “She told you true.” Though persuasion was its own challenge and excitement. And this time when he reached beneath her silk sleeve to unfasten the linens at her shoulder, he heard no nervousness in her breath, and the color in her cheeks no longer seemed of embarrassment. “Perhaps the very coverings the southerners believed protected them is what tempted those raiders, instead.”

  She arched a skeptical brow. “So instead of stealing silk robes and linen wrappings, they stole the person?”

  Maddek would have liked to steal her clothing away, yet he suspected the arousal that flushed her skin now would retreat into nervousness again.

  “No,” he told her, and his own need roughened his voice, yet his fingers were light as they skimmed over the silk covering her shoulder. Her bare skin shivered beneath his fingertips when he reached the side of her neck and traced a slow path to the hollow of her throat. “I imagine those raiders could make no sense of these coverings. They would wonder what purpose could they have, except to hide treasures beneath? So they would look for an answer.”