A Heart of Blood and Ashes

by Milla Vane

  The prince shook his head, a dull flush on his cheeks. “Now I do not. But when he arrived and sought an audience, it seemed fair to give equal weight and consideration to his story that I did to yours.”

  “Why? If you have bread in one hand and dung in the other, you do not have to give equal consideration of which to eat,” Yvenne said, and beside her, Maddek grunted in amused agreement.

  “That is truth,” the prince admitted. “But he was . . . persuasive. And consistent. Nothing he said contradicted what was known, and he never contradicted himself. Except he claimed Ran Ashev had murdered Lazen in her rampage. But he then told the commander it was you who murdered Lazen, after you angered him by showing the blade that killed Cezan.”

  That had not been her intention. Yvenne only meant to present evidence of the blade she’d stolen from Cezan. But seeing it—or perhaps seeing how happily Yvenne confessed to stabbing Cezan with it—made even the more experienced Bazir lose his sense in battle, too. “What will you do with him now?”

  “That will be a matter for the alliance council to resolve. In the morning, I will tell Gareth to return to Ephorn with him. For even though your brother is a council minister, someone who has attacked the character of a woman under my protection in such a foul manner is no longer welcome. Their purpose in coming was in search of you, who they believed had been abducted and were in danger at the commander’s hands; now they have found you under my protection. They can have no reason to remain in my city, and have no standing to compel either you or the commander to return with them.”

  Bazir would not return to Ephorn or wait for the alliance council to resolve this. What had happened here only made the attack in their chambers more certain—and Bazir more desperate to succeed, because he no longer had the Tolehi minister’s ear and would soon lose the legitimizing support of the council.

  Unease and uncertainty clutched her heart. She’d thought herself prepared to face him here . . . and for the Parsatheans to face an attack from his guard. But what if that was also only foolishness and arrogance?

  At the other end of the table, her brother climbed to his feet, holding a folded white cloth over his injured eye. Gleeful murder shone through moonstone when his uncovered eye focused on her—but only for a moment, when he was forced to avert his gaze from hers.

  Noticing her diverted attention, Cadus glanced behind. He looked down at the dagger in his hand, then to Yvenne, before placing the blade in front of Maddek—as if the prince feared she might attempt to use it again. In deliberate movement, Maddek slid the dagger nearer to Yvenne, the scrape of jewels and silver across the table’s marble surface loud and unmistakable.

  By Vela’s teeth, she was tempted to try. Instead she took another lesson from Maddek and picked a bite of fish from her plate, though she would not be able to choke it down while her stomach roiled.

  His face a picture of relief, Cadus stepped back and clapped his hands together lightly in satisfaction. “Ah! Bazir is on his feet, so it seems all is well. I fear the excitement has interrupted plans to celebrate this evening’s blessed event, however—and since the sun is nearly set, I believe the lovers must be eager to abandon us.”

  Not as eager as she had been. Not with the terrible storm of emotions raging inside her now.

  With lip curled, Bazir looked upon her as he might look upon a crawling slimeworm. “You are so hungry for your throne, Yvenne, that you will spend your life spreading your thighs beneath that hulking, grunting brute?”

  “No.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Maddek’s fist clench into a white-knuckled grip. The dagger was so near to her hand. She only flaked another bite of fish from her plate. “I suspect that for much of my life, I will not be beneath my grunting brute, but happily spreading my thighs to ride him.”

  Oh, the satisfaction of seeing Bazir at a loss for a response. Not nearly as satisfying as gouts of blood would have been—or as satisfying as Maddek’s fierce grin. Yet still better than all that had come before.

  His hot gaze upon her, Maddek licked his fingers, then shoved away from the table. Yvenne held out her hand, but he helped her not to her feet. Instead he gripped her backside in his brutish hands and hauled her up, her face to his face, and urged her thighs around his waist.

  “Then let us wait no longer,” he growled.

  Riding him already. Yet not straddling his hips, as he’d sometimes carried her before, so that she might feel the steel of his arousal between her thighs. Higher now he held her, and she understood why when he turned away from the table and said in low voice, “Give me warning if your brother practices his aim.”

  And throw a knife at Maddek’s back. With her arms wreathing his strong neck, her fingers tangled in his thick loose hair, she watched over his shoulder. Only after they passed out of the prince’s chambers and Danoh and Banek fell in behind them did she let go a shuddering breath and bury her face against his warm throat.

  His sword hand slid up her silk-covered spine to gently cup her nape, the brace of his forearm against her back holding her against him. “Strong allies we make, you and I.”

  That was truth. Though he’d angered her, he’d also seen that she was faltering and had waded in to help. Just as she’d frustrated him earlier that day with her decision to seek Cadus’s protection, but had also found a solution to stopping her brother that did not require his warriors to sacrifice themselves fighting two hundred soldiers.

  Yet Yvenne feared that any reply might be more sob than word, so she only nodded against his neck. He smelled of the same coconut soap that she’d used. Only the faintest scent of his sweat and horse that she’d become so accustomed to lingered on his skin.

  “You learn lessons more quickly than I. And in a cleverer manner, too.” A deep breath lifted his chest against hers. “I should have heeded your caution against underestimating him.”

  Embarrassment flooded her face. Ashamedly she admitted, “You were more prepared than I was.”

  “No. Will you not look at me?”

  She shook her head against his throat.

  His smooth stride hitched. “Are you hurt?”

  How to answer that? Did she tell him of the burning in her eyes, the hot lump in her throat, the rage that still felt like a blade in her heart?

  She could not. But she could give him partial truth. They had just seen battle, and she’d vowed to reveal a warrior’s wounds. “My pride has suffered fatal injury.”

  His silent laugh rumbled against her and he pressed his face into her hair. “It may seem fatal. But from repeated injuries to my own pride, I know that it quickly recovers—and often swells larger after the healing.”

  Her lips curved against his neck. Still she did not look up but tightened the embrace of her legs and arms.

  “I underestimated him,” Maddek said again, voice gruff against her ear. “Never did I think a man such as Gareth could be persuaded by your brother’s lies. He and Bazir have served on the council many years together. He well knows how sly-tongued the Syssian royals can be. Cadus, too, and I had perceived him as another reasonable man.”

  “He is,” Yvenne whispered thickly.

  “I am not so reasonable. This I know. So if I had not already set my cockbrained mind against him, he might have persuaded me, too.”

  Painfully she said, “It would not be the first time you doubted my motives and intentions.”

  “It would not.” The muscles of his throat worked as if he swallowed gravel. “Better that the only sounds I hear from your brother are screams from his tongueless mouth.”

  Yvenne nodded in agreement. She would like to hear those, too.

  His rough voice continued. “There is no shame in his provoking you. You are also no impulsive fool. You cleverly persuaded me to marriage even while my claws dug into your throat. But with family, it is not so easy to maintain reason. In that, Cadus spoke true. Every cut is de
eper, every pain sharper.”

  Whether she loved them or hated them. “That is so,” she said thickly, and he held her tighter.

  Also true was that every wound inflicted on an entangled heart bled more. For Maddek’s words had been a soothing balm, yet they also reopened another wound. All this day, she’d been so eager for her moon night, awaiting all the pleasure he’d promised her. But it was more than simple pleasure she wanted from him now, as he held her so tightly and tended to her warrior’s wounds after their battle. She yearned for the love and affection that Maddek already warned her that he would never give.

  But her would-be husband was a strong ally. And he would ease her need.

  She would be content.

  In the terraced gardens, she had no view of the moon peeking above the eastern horizon, but Vela’s full face always rose with the closing of Enam’s eye. Yvenne watched it sink into a fiery sea of red and orange. As the last glare of gold vanished, she turned her face against Maddek’s neck again and licked a hot path up his throat.

  His groan in response was such satisfaction, as was the possessive grip he took of her bottom again, squeezing her soft flesh with both hands. In full sight of the warriors, never did Maddek expose what he did to her. Yet Danoh and Banek walked behind and she was at his front, so they could not see how he tugged free her breechcloth, leaving her bare beneath her robes, or those brutish hands lifting and lowering so that her swollen wetness rode over the ridged muscles of his stomach. Yvenne panted at his throat, and when licking was not enough she sucked at his skin as he sometimes sucked on hers, with open lips and pressure that pulled at every sensitive part of her. At the first draw of her mouth, he grunted as if in pain, and she did it again and again, until it seemed not like sucking but kisses that she bestowed the length of his neck.

  At the spiraling walk that led to their quarters, he stopped the slow ride that rubbed her most intimate flesh against him, and she knew it was because they were nearing the other warriors. She hid her flushed face against his shoulder.

  He could not take her to bed now. Though Bazir was still at the prince’s dinner, and would likely wait to attack until he believed most of the Parsathean warriors slept, he might send his Rugusian guard ahead.

  Yet the bed was where Maddek seemed to be taking her. He passed Kelir with a gruff, “All is ready?”

  “It is,” the other warrior said.

  “Then douse the lamps and send our invitations.”

  In the dark Maddek carried her past the parlor, then through the vestibule that led to the bedchamber. From beyond the open balcony came the crash of waves. A cool breeze slipped through the chamber and rippled the curtains surrounding the bed.

  A bed where another woman waited, her small form covered in sheer robes, her long curling hair unbound. One of Vela’s consorts.

  Yvenne frowned in confusion. “What is this?”

  “A decoy,” Maddek said softly, setting her feet to the floor. “Your brother expects to find me distracted between your thighs. If we give the appearance that I am fucking—”

  Yvenne’s breath hissed out in fury. “You will not lie in a bed with another woman.” Not even in pretense or for the purpose of killing her brother. She yanked at the point of his beard so he could not mistake her warning, and when his dark gaze dropped to hers she told him fiercely, “If ever you touch another, I will boil the meat from your cockbone with asilor poison before slitting your throat. You will not.”

  “I will not,” he agreed with a sudden grin. “Toric is nearest in size and appearance to me.”

  As the woman was similar in size and appearance to Yvenne. “That he is,” she relented, releasing his beard and ignoring the snorts of laughter from the Parsatheans in the bedchamber with them. And now she understood the reason for the doused lamps. With curtains drawn, the shadowed figures on the bed would appear exactly as Bazir expected. “So we conceal ourselves in the dark and kill my brother when he appears?”

  “That is what I will do,” he said, and gestured behind her. “But you leave now for the bargeship.”

  She looked to see Banek holding her cloak and Ardyl with her satchel in hand. With a catch in her throat, she turned back to Maddek. “It should be my arrow. You were forbidden to kill him.”

  “The council can have no argument with my killing him if he attacks our bedchamber.” As if to block what argument Yvenne might have, he took hold of her shoulders and made her face him squarely. “I underestimated Bazir once. I will not again. And I will not risk you.”

  “Underestimating him is not the reason you send me away now. You made this decision before the dinner.” Or the warriors would not have already been prepared to take her.

  “I did,” he said. “Yet the reason is the same: I will not risk you. We assume Bazir only has the Rugusian guard with him. But although two hundred soldiers cannot come through the gates, perhaps two can. And two more. We cannot know how many we will face.”

  “So I will stay and help! Not reduce your numbers by sending Banek and Ardyl away to a boat.”

  “Yvenne.” The big hands that cupped her cheeks were gentle, but his voice and his expression were solid, immovable granite. “You told me to be a warrior who made use of a queen. So I did. Now you must be the queen who makes use of her warrior and the protection he offers.”

  With a stubborn lift of her chin, she said, “A warrior-queen needs no protection.”

  “You are not a warrior-queen yet,” he said gruffly. “And you are not prepared for this battlefield.”

  Chest heaving with every response she wanted to make but could not push past the knot of emotion lodged in her throat, Yvenne stared up at him. No relenting she saw in his dark gaze. If anything, his resolve seemed to harden with every passing moment, as if he continuously steeled himself against her desperate need to remain.

  She knew he spoke truth. And sense. Yet . . . “I wish to stay. I wish to kill him with my arrow.”

  “You are a warrior wishing for what you will not have.” His callused thumbs swept her cheekbones in a soft caress. “I will bring to you his head, instead.”

  Throat tight, she nodded into his hands. “This time his poisoned blade will not only be his tongue.”

  “I will be wary.”

  “But he still has his tongue. Do not allow him to use it. Or believe anything he has to say.”

  “I will be wary of that, too.”

  She could ask for no more. Yet still dread filled her. Dread and hurt and helplessness, which was the worst of all. But this was not only a night of battles. And she still had much to look forward to.

  “You will keep your promises to me?” Her voice sounded more uncertain than she wished, full of longing for what she could not have. “The three promises you made for this night?”

  Renewed heat flared through his eyes. “I will.”

  Then there was that, at least. He would see to her pleasure in bed. He was still an ally. Yvenne had hoped for more when she had persuaded him to marriage with his claws at her throat, but that was also wishing for what she would not have.

  She would be content.

  CHAPTER 27

  MADDEK

  From a darkened corner of the bedchamber, Maddek had a clear view of the open balcony and the sea beyond. The full moon hung low in the southwestern sky when, from beside him, Kelir asked quietly, “Do you think your bride was mistaken?”

  “No.” Many hours they had waited. But Bazir would come. Had Yvenne not already persuaded Maddek, then the sly tongue’s face as they’d left the prince’s quarters would have convinced him. Her brother meant to steal her back and to kill Maddek—and this would be his best opportunity to do it. “Do you think her possessed by a demon?”

  The other warrior’s muffled snort of laughter served as response. And it was the only response the accusation deserved . . . yet Maddek could not let it be the onl
y response given.

  “If you ever hear rumor that she is—even if spoken in jest—put an end to it. Calling her demon is how her family means to discredit her and prevent her from creating new alliances.”

  Kelir’s nod shifted subtle shadows behind his head. With moonlight shining into the bedchamber through the balcony, they were not as well hidden as before. Still concealed by darkness, but every movement would betray them. “I will tell the others, too.”

  Maddek grunted quiet approval.

  His friend said nothing more for a moment. Then he dryly observed, “Keen vision she has.”

  At that understatement, a silent laugh worked through Maddek. For indeed she did. Not her foremothers’ gift of sight beyond what was seen, but clearly seeing everything within sight.

  “Had you no idea?” Kelir asked.

  Maddek shook his head. “Nor does Yvenne, I suspect. She assumes everyone has vision such as hers.”

  For she had always been in her tower, surrounded by walls—no reason would she have to believe her sight better than anyone else’s. And in many ways, she had only begun to learn to see. So even what was clear within her sight, she did not always understand what she looked at.

  “Her eyes can be put to good use upon the sea. We will know if any other ships are friend or foe. And upon the Burning Plains, we will know who rides in the distance. Is her vision so keen even in the dark?”

  Maddek considered that—beginning with the first night, when the trap jaw had attacked their camp. Uncertain she’d seemed then, struggling to see through the shadows. “I think not.”

  “Still, it is a valuable gift.”

  “It is,” Maddek agreed. As Yvenne herself was.

  From the bed came a soft, feminine moan. As they’d prepared for Bazir’s attack, young Toric had insisted that the lingering weakness from the revenant’s poison would not affect his ability to wield his sword. That he’d well proven this night, for very little that Maddek heard from behind those curtains sounded like pretense.