“I hate you,” she whispered.
“And now you have lied to me again, Miramiku.” Roark took her hand in his and started for the bedroom. “Come, let’s see if your shower skills have improved.”
“Improved?” she asked indignantly as she was dragged along behind him. “I didn’t hear any complaints from you last night.”
He looked back at her and smiled, but the smile wasn’t a pleasant one. “I didn’t own you last night.”
Mira’s whole body stiffened. Her face hardened into an outraged mask and her voice became laser sharp. “You don’t own me tonight, either, and you never will. Been there, done that, not going there again. Just ask the last guy who tried it. And if you’re talking the real thing, think again. I happen to know the Godan don’t keep slaves and even if they did, you wouldn’t.” She tried to pull away from his grasp.
Roark gave her hand a yank that sent her flying into his chest. His smile was gone. “Wouldn’t I, Miramiku? I am a warrior without honor, a man not to be trusted, an alien creature no different from the Hahnshin. I would do anything that pleased me no matter how base.”
“That’s not true,” she cried without thinking.
“It must be. Why else would you let me think your sister was a whore rather than a good woman who cares for abandoned children while you risk your life to feed them? What did you think I would do, roast the babies over an open fire and eat them?” He held her chin between thumb and forefinger and growled into her face. “Knowing he was walking a dangerous path, you led me to believe your brother was a young and petulant boy. Had you trusted me with the truth, I might have been able to interfere before it was too late. Or did you know what he was doing? Maybe he had your approval.”
“No, please, it wasn’t like that.” She put her hands to his chest to plead with him, but he pushed her away. She stumbled back and fell onto the bed where she curled into a ball, afraid of his anger.
“Wasn’t it? How would I know? You couldn’t even tell me the truth about where you lived. Yes, I know that, too, and do you know how I found out?” He turned away and walked to the window where he stood, staring out into the night. “I came back here to find you gone. The first bomb went off and I thought of nothing but you; not my men, not the base, and not the damned Hahnshin. Just you, Mira Donazetto. I raced to that address you gave as your home. Only one wall was left standing. That building fell with the first blast and I thought you fell with it. I thought my heart was crushed beneath that pile of brick and metal.”
Mira’s fear of his anger turned to fear of something else. He’d gone looking for her out of concern for her safety. He thought his heart was crushed. Now that he knew that wasn’t true, he thought she’d done much worse. She pushed herself up to look at him.
“How did you find me?” she whispered, amazed that he’d still come looking for her.
“Ollie. That’s your driver’s name, isn’t it? The one who takes you to and from work every day? Mohawk hired him to watch out for you and see to your safety,” he told her, still sounding angry. “The man told us where you lived. Foolish of me not to have checked beforehand since I already knew you lied about other things.”
“I never meant to,” she began, but stopped before she lied to him yet again. She hung her head in misery. “I’m sorry, Roark, sorry about everything. My heart said to trust you, but I couldn’t trust my heart. It’s been wrong before. I wanted to trust you, but I didn’t know if I could. I couldn’t take the risk.” Mira turned away and wiped at her eyes with the bed covers. “You don’t understand.”
The mattress sagged as Roark settled his weight behind her. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her body into his.
“Then make me understand, miku Mirasha,” he whispered into her hair. “Tell me the truth. All of it. From the beginning.”
All of it. From the beginning. Where was the beginning? The day her parents died? Or was it long before?
“After my parents were killed, I was left in charge,” she said. “I’m not just the clever one or the practical one. I’m the strong one and the oldest. It’s always been my job to take care of the others. While Wynne was numb with mourning and my brother cried for what he’d lost, I gathered up what little was left. I found a place across town, as far away from the memory of that day as I could. That’s the address where you went and that’s where Wynne started collecting our kids.
“You don’t know what it was like, Roark, watching my sister go through the motions of living, not talking, not smiling. Bitsy was the first and I knew from the moment I saw Wynne smile that losing that little girl would kill her. She kept bringing them home and I couldn’t say no. That meant they were mine to take care of, too. Wynne’s the soft and loving one. I’m the one who puts food on the table.
“Some of the neighbors threatened to turn us in. The kids were unregistered, but they were ours, so we moved and moved again and again. I never reregistered. I was afraid they’d come and take the kids. I taught them to be careful. I taught them where to hide. I taught them how to scavenge when we weren’t getting enough in rations anymore.”
“Registration is for ordering ration supplies, Mira, and for digging through the rubble for the missing.” Roark’s arms tightened around her when she stiffened at his words. “We don’t randomly take children away. We open special schools, homes for those who have no one to care for them. I don’t know your word for it.”
“Orphanages. Where are they, Roark? Why won’t you tell us where they are? Why are these children never seen again? Why do you send armed soldiers to sweep them up off the streets like criminals?”
“We don’t do that to children, Mira.”
Mira rolled to her hands and knees, and scrambled to the head of the bed, cowering away from this man she didn’t know. How could he be so angry with her for lying when he was lying to her now?
“You do! I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I thought it had stopped. Ahnyis swore you were a good man and I believed her when the raids stopped. But they didn’t stop, did they? Those soldiers sweeping the streets last night were Godan. So don’t tell me you don’t do that.”
“They were not my men,” he insisted.
“They were! They wore Godan armor. The children call them helmet heads because they never see their faces. Do you know how frightening that is to a child? How frightening it is for all of us? They called for Matias by name. They wanted Dorrie, too. They had other plans for her. That’s what they said, Roark. What kind of plans could they have for a fourteen year old girl? Is that old enough for your bride market? Or are the young ones used for something worse?” She was sobbing openly not only for the children but for her own broken dreams. Tears poured down her cheeks unchecked. “Everyone knows about it. They have from the beginning. Miklos knew about it, too, and knew it was wrong. Wynne swears that’s why he had to die.”
Mira slapped her hand over her mouth as if she was trying to keep the words from flowing out of it. She knew the gesture was too late, and the look of fear that came with the knowledge tore at Roark’s conscience.
From the moment they’d entered his quarters his intent was to throw her off guard and keep her there. Smile one minute, show anger the next. Never let her know what was in his mind or where he was headed. He wanted her in a position where she couldn’t think, couldn’t plan what to say or do. If he was to help her and her family, he needed the truth and not some polished version of it. What he hadn’t considered was how much pain telling the truth would cause her.
She’d said he wouldn’t understand and she’d been right. Roark had known fear, all warriors did, but he’d never known the kind of fear Mira and her family had lived under for the past six years. To him, fear was a good thing. It coursed through the blood and made soldiers hypersensitive to the sights and sounds around them. It added strength to their skills with weapons. He’d always defined courage as the honing of fear into a sharp and useful tool with which to fight. Training was the wheel on which the tool was sha
rpened.
Without weapons or training, Mira had been thrown into a different kind of battle, a relentless and never ending one and her courage came not from using fear, but from keeping it under a tight, but fragile control. He was shattering that control. Watching it happen was shattering him, too.
He wanted to reach for her, to hold her, and kiss away her tears. He wanted to tell her she no longer needed to be the strong one, the practical one, the one who stood against the fear. He would serve as her shelter and her strength. She need only be the loved one, his loved one.
But he couldn’t do or say these things. He was the First Commander. It was his duty to discover the truth and her role in it, regardless of his feelings for her. No blood marking he’d ever earned had caused him this much pain.
“Who was this Miklos and who killed him?” he asked, forcing all emotion from his face.
“A Godan warrior, a new recruit, but I didn’t know that then. I only knew that he was young.”
Roark watched as more tears poured from beneath her closed lids. Those tears tore at his heart, but it was worse, so much worse when she opened her eyes to him and he saw the agony in them. He’d seen that look in soldier’s eyes before. He knew what she was about to say.
“I killed him, Roark. It was my decision not to take him to the base. He begged us not to. Those were the first words I learned in Godan; please don’t take me back and I figured them out by the way he gripped my arm and the desperation in his eyes when he said them. He was afraid to go back and that was my excuse, but it wasn’t my reason. I was afraid of what they’d do to us when they found us carting him through the streets, a soldier riddled with bullets from a very human weapon.”
Liked the bombed out building, her body shuddered and collapsed in a heap. She howled her anguish into the bed and gripped the covers in her fist. “I killed that poor boy with my fear as surely as if I’d held the gun.”
Roark could stand it no longer. He crawled up the bed and opened his arms to her, unsure of how she would react to his offer of comfort. She threw herself into his embrace and clung to him, sobbing uncontrollably into his neck until his chest ran wet with her tears. He let her cry and he held her tightly to him while he stroked her hair and back.
Through the windows beyond them, he watched the sky lighten with the coming dawn. Mira was finally quiet, so quiet he thought she might have fallen into exhausted sleep. The sun rose, casting its blood red mantle across the rain filled clouds.
Reaching around her, he gathered the blankets in his fist and pulled them over her, covering her nakedness. He was ashamed of what he’d done to her and what he had yet to do.
She was no traitor. Her shock and disbelief at her brother’s involvement was genuine. She was a guilt ridden casualty of war, but certainly no murderer. There were still questions that needed to be answered, however, and it was his duty to ask them.
When she awakened, he would be gentler in his questioning. She would not lie to him again. Mira’s defensive barriers were broken. Roark prayed to the Goddess that he hadn’t broken her spirit as well.
An hour later, he felt her breathing change and knew she was awake. She didn’t pull away from him in anger or in fear, but settled more comfortably against him. Her fingers traced the blood markings that slashed across his chest and side.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Those words should be mine, Mira.”
She lifted her head to look at him, but not for the reason he thought.
“No Miramiku?” she sniffed, “No miku Mirasha? I’ve lost that, too, haven’t I?”
For a moment, he thought she might cry again.
“What is it you think you have lost?”
“You.”
The heartbreak in that whispered word moved him in a way he’d never felt before.
Roark had seen his father cry only once. It was years ago when his mother hemorrhaged after losing a stillborn son and was told she would have no more. At the time, Roark had thought his father’s tears showed a lack of courage. He saw them as unmanly. Now, he understood. His father cried not for his own pain, but for the pain he had caused his wife.
Roark buried his face in Mira’s hair and had to clear his throat before he spoke.
“I’m much too big to be so easily lost. You touched my heart, remember?”
“What exactly does that mean?” she asked cautiously. “You never did explain it when I asked before.”
“It means you hold my heart in your hand and the only way you’ll lose it is if you cast it away.”
“Holy crap,” she said and her eyes went wide. “When I asked God for a little help, I didn’t mean bring out the silver polish.” She sighed resignedly. “I’m so screwed.”
Not the reaction he expected, yet her words made him laugh. “More idioms I fail to understand. Sanctified shit sounds oxymoronic.”
“So is a Mr. Macho guy like you using a word like oxymoronic.” The last of her sadness was abandoned in favor of a smile. “It’s an expression of surprise or wonder. Holy shit, holy cow, holy moley; the list goes on and on.”
Roark nodded, pleased that his words caused her wonder and surprise. “Why does your god bring you silver polish? My goddess brings me things like courage and victory.”
“Because you have a silver tongue. You speak charming words,” she explained and then laughed. “Though sometimes your compliments don’t sound very complimentary until I have time to figure out what you meant. Like my fetching a good price at the Bride Market. I didn’t understand what it meant.” Her smile turned playful. “What about screwed?”
Roark looked down at the breasts exposed when she sat up to face him. He traced the pale brown areola encircling one of the nipples and then took the tightening peak between his thumb and forefinger and tugged.
Her breath caught on the tiniest gasp and her abdominals clenched.
“I think I’ve mastered that one.” He leaned in to kiss her, but she turned her head away.
“I’m a mess. I slobbered all over everything, didn’t I?” Her shoulders sagged. She pressed her lips together and sucked them into her mouth as she closed her eyes.
He cupped her face and ran the pad of his thumb over her sticky cheek. “I’m a warrior. A little mess doesn’t bother me.”
“Yeah, well I’m not a warrior and it bothers me.”
“Ah, but you are a warrior, miku Mirasha. The battles you’ve fought were for the best of reasons and you’ve fought them with strength and courage. You fought for your family, and now you need not do it alone. You need never again be alone.”
“You mean that, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of trust.
“I do.”
He watched as her face and body transformed. Her shoulders straightened and her chin came up. She shook her honeyed mane of curls and smiled. Her spirit was not broken. Her strength was still there.
“I don’t know how you manage to do it, First Commander, but you always manage to say just what I need to hear.” She raised her hand to stop his advance. “No kissing or anything else until I clean up. Why don’t you kick back and relax while I go do that? Or you could join me in the shower?” she suggested with a wink. “You can see if my skills have improved.”
“Mira, I...”
“Did what you thought you needed to do,” she said. “Like your compliments, I just needed a little time to think about it.”
He grasped her hand as she slipped from the bed and said as gently as he could, “Miramiku, we still have to...”
Again, she interrupted him with a finger to his lips. “Talk. I know, Roark, but can we do it after I’ve showered?”
Chapter 18
She could have used the sanitizer stall. It was a quick and efficient method of cleaning the body. Several strategically placed red lights came on and a warm rush of air coursed over and around your body while you spread your legs and lifted your arms. A few minutes later, the rush of air stopped and the lights went of
f. Voila, you were clean.
Mira wanted more than clean. She wanted the luxury of the heat beating against her body. She wanted the massage the pulsating water offered to soothe her aching muscles. She felt like she’d run a marathon. She was sore, and exhausted, and yes, a little triumphant. She hadn’t won the race, but she’d finished it and was still standing.
Her grandmother strongly objected to the Church’s decision to allow silent confession. She insisted her grandchildren visit the confessional each Friday to say their sins aloud. Mira hated going into the dark little closet of the confessional with its sliding screen, beyond which sat their parish priest. She hated repeating her long list of transgressions. Now she wondered if Nona hadn’t been right. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.
“It’s more than a cleansing of the soul,” Nona said. “It’s a cleansing the body and spirit, too. Confessing your sins aloud helps release the guilt you store inside you. If you don’t let the guilt out, it will eat away at your health and body as surely as your unrepented sin eats away at your soul.”
Maybe Nona Donazetto knew something after all. After confessing to Roark what she’d never told anyone else, Mira felt as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Roark’s quiet acceptance of what she’d done helped her to see the truth of it. She wasn’t responsible for that young man’s death, but someone was and that someone should pay.
She heard the door open and Roark entered the bathroom. He hadn’t taken her advice. He’d made her coffee instead. He opened the shower door and passed the mug to her. She gulped down half of the hot and heavenly brew, passed the mug back, and grinned.
“Thank you. Have you changed your mind and come to join me?”
Roark leaned back against the vanity counter and crossed his legs at the ankles. “No. I thought I’d kick back and relax right here.” The words sounded odd when Roark said them and they made Mira smile. “The view here is better than the one from my bed.”
Roark (Women Of Earth Book 1) Page 17
