"I do." he answered at once without taking his eyes from her.
"Then let it be witnessed," Keeler said, "That what was parted is rejoined. Two souls always meant to be one have found each other at last."
Amranth bent to kiss her, and Lily felt a strange rush that started in his lips and ran down into the soil through her feet like roots of light. She could almost see it, the network of interconnections, hers and his, merging and intertwining until they could no longer be told apart. She could feel him, distantly, as though he were a part of her. She could feel her own hand in his.
It was dizzying but it somehow felt natural, as though she'd always been meant to feel this way. Like she'd been half blind all her life and now suddenly she could see.
As they parted from the kiss, Lily looked into his eyes and saw herself reflected back like infinite mirrors, their reflections no longer distinct. Lily had never been so happy, nor loved anyone so much. She couldn't imagine her hand without his in it.
Keeler brought them to a meadow where he'd prepared a celebratory feast. Lily, now properly adjusted to the planet's allergens, was at last free to eat something besides dusty rations, and she indulged gratefully, feeling her strength beginning to return at last.
Drunk on Keeler's homemade wine and flush with happiness, Amranth kissed Lily in the grass and she felt it more deeply than she ever had, the sensation made all the more intense by their new connection.
It wasn't long before they snuck away, finding their way down to the waterfall pool that had become such a landmark to their souls. Beside the water, he surged into her, and Lily felt as though the top of her head had opened and the universe was pouring in, filling her with so much light and sensation that she almost lost herself. They held each other, trembling in the revelation of their new closeness, and then threw themselves in again, craving more.
When their energy was spent, they lay in the flowers, Amranth stroking Lily's hair as she lay against his chest.
"When we leave here," he said, his voice a soothing rumble under Lily's ear, "I'll take you back to Earth. Your village should know what happened to you. But don't stay there. Leave with me when I go. We'll run from Turlabon together and find a place that's safe for both of us."
Lily thought about it for a long moment, guilty about how instantly her soul cried out to agree. She didn't want to be separated from him, ever. But she'd dedicated her life to her village, to their quest to revive the planet. Could she really turn her back on them after all this?
He sensed her hesitation and kissed her forehead.
"You don't need to answer now," he said, shifting to stand and help her to her feet, "Take your time to decide. I love you, Lily. More than life."
"I love you too, Amranth," she replied, smiling, then frowned as she saw the sudden distressed look on Amranth face. He was frozen, like an animal that has sensed a predator, staring past her into the dark forest.
"I think we-"
He never got to finish the sentence. Something moved in the trees and, wrapping his arms around her, he threw them towards the ground. Too late, a blast of light, laser fire, struck him hard, knocking them apart, throwing him towards the edge of the pool and her towards the tree line.
"Amranth!" she shouted in terrified distress, scrambling to her feet to go to him. She could feel his pain, the burning agony of it flaring through the entire right side of her body. Despite the pain, she could see him struggling to get up, looking at her with wild eyes.
"No! Run!" he cried. Men, Turlabon's hunters, were bursting from the trees, weapons raised. Before Lily could obey or refuse, someone, one of the hunters, had grabbed her from behind, dragging her towards the trees.
She shrieked, struggling, and reached for Amranth, only to see one of the hunters stand over him and fire his weapon. She felt the hideous pain blooming like fire in her chest and couldn't tell if it was his pain or her own, couldn't hear anything over her own screaming.
He lay perfectly still on the bank as she was dragged away, kicking and struggling to get to him, and something hit her hard in the back of the head and darkness swallowed her up.
Chapter Twelve
"You are without a doubt the worst purchase I have ever made."
Lily's vision returned slowly, streaked with darkness at the pain she was in. The first thing she remembered was Amranth's body lying beside the water and the thought brought such a stab of pain to her chest that she groaned.
"I don't know. That cravat you're wearing was clearly a pretty big mistake."
"Silence, weed! I should have had your vocal cords cut decades ago. Maybe I'll make it a birthday present to myself this year."
Lily realized the dark lines across her blurred vision were not caused by the head injury, but were in fact bars. She was in a cage. Slowly, her vision resolved itself. King Turlabon stood just beyond the bars, grinning cruelly.
She was back in the Garden of a Thousand Flowers, in the grove of Turlabon's caged brides. Dahlia was in the cage beside her, baring her teeth at Turlabon defiantly.
"Do your worst!" she hissed, "As though I need words to insult you when you make a mockery of yourself just getting dressed in the morning."
"You ugly little aphid!" Turlabon seethed, "If I wasn't so set on watching you wither, I would strangle you myself."
"As if you could!" Dahlia gave a bark of rough laughter, "You mean you'd have one of your lackeys do it! I doubt you'd have the strength to crush a dandelion."
He snarled and surged towards Dahlia's cage.
"Amranth," Lily demanded, interrupting their fight as she sat up, clinging to the bars of her cage, "Where is he?"
Turlabon curled his lip in disgust at the name.
"Dead," he answered bluntly, "I had him killed on sight. I didn't become king because I'm an idiot you know. Do you think I'd bring him in alive, knowing what he can do?"
"King Turdblossom would rather imprison helpless women." Dahlia interjected. Turlabon struck the bars of her cage hard enough to shake them.
"Silence, insect," he hissed, "I've tolerated enough insolence from the both of you. But you!"
He turned on Lily, who tried to muster Dahlia's defiance but couldn't quite manage past the dragging sorrow that had seized her heart entirely.
"Never have I been so disrespected, not even by this weed!" Turlabon said, pointing at Dahlia, "I paid an exorbitant amount for you! More than any concubine should command! And not only to reject me, you seduce my best soldier into running away with you and force me to put him down!
Do you have any idea how much time I spent training that disgusting cross breed? And then you have the audacity to bond with him. Don't try to deny it. Anyone could smell it on you.
Why anyone would bind themselves to a weed like that is beyond me. Unless your purpose was to ruin yourself for me. I could never bind myself to the mate of a cross bred weed. You've succeeded in making yourself completely useless. Congratulations."
"Then why am I still alive?" Lily asked, leaning her head against the bars as her heart throbbed with pain, "Just kill me and get it over with."
"Oh no," Turlabon shook his head, laughing, "I won't give the luxury of a quick end to someone who's disrespected me this way. You will remain here, to wither slowly in this cage.
Maybe I'll even let my men make use of you. I don't usually share what's mine, but since I never properly laid my claim on you and you've proven so useless anyway, I think I'll make an exception. You're going to die in that cage, human. And you, weed."
He turned back to Dahlia with a nasty grin.
"You are going to watch it happen. Maybe that will teach you a lesson about defying me."
With that, he turned and swept away out of the grove, leaving Dahlia and Lily alone. Lily sobbed, curling up around the hole in her chest. Amranth was gone. She'd known it was a possibility, but it had been so sudden, and she had been left alive without him. How was she supposed to bear that? Surely, she would die of heartbreak long before starvation.
>
"Do you really want to die?"
Lily looked up as Dahlia spoke, tears hot on her cheeks.
"No," she sobbed, "I want him to be alive and here with me again. But what else am I supposed to do?"
"Fight," Dahlia hissed, shaking the bars of her cage, "Defy him! If you roll over and die now, you'll have let him win. Never let him have his victory over you. If you do, die still spitting in his face. Die your own person."
"What's the point?" Lily asked, "You've been defying him for a hundred years. It means nothing to him."
"What it means to him doesn't matter," Dahlia scoffed, "He doesn't matter! I don't defy him because of anything I want from him. I defy him because of what it means to me. It means I still haven't given up hope. As long as I'm alive, as long as I'm still fighting, anything could happen, anything could change. You never know what might happen tomorrow, but once you've given up you can't take that back. So don't give up!"
Lily bowed her head, wishing she could believe Dahlia's words. But she did know what would happen tomorrow. She would be in this cage, slowly starving, possibly being used by Turlabon's warriors, a thought which made her shudder with more horror than the thought of dying.
At least if she was dead, she would be where Amranth was again. She leaned against the bars of her cage and pulled her knees up to her aching chest. She wished she could put down roots like the other caged women, and sleep forever...
Lily soon learned the rhythm of the days for the women of the Garden. She was woken in the morning by a misting like a fine rain. Not enough to soak her, but enough to make her damn and uncomfortable and certain that there would be mildew eventually.
This was breakfast, she supposed, sucking moisture from the fabric of her dress. The other women didn't need food, and this was all the water they required. Lily realized she might die of thirst before she starved. She found it difficult to gather the energy to care too much about that fact.
"Are you awake? I saw you move."
She raised her head from the bottom of her cage and saw Dahlia staring at her keenly.
"Humans don't go dormant, do they?" she asked, "I don't know much about your species."
"We don't." Lily answered tiredly, "We just die. I'll probably be gone in a week."
"Unacceptable." Dahlia replied, "Doesn't that bother you? Just laying down and dying? Where is your spirit? Would your Amranth want this for you? He would want you to fight! To live!"
"There's nothing to fight for." Lily said, rolling to turn her back to the other woman, "All the insults and anger in the world won't open this cage."
Dahlia let the subject drop and things were quiet for a while longer. Singing soon filled the silence, the distant sound of the wives and concubines waking and greeting the day. All Sahrians sang as part of their daily rituals. The women sang a dozen times over the course of the day, having little else to do but tend the silent flowers of the Garden.
Around the middle of the day, the sun reached the shaded grove and Lily was left feeling uncomfortably baked, unable to move away from the light which Dahlia soaked up so eagerly to fuel her photosynthesis. How little she moved probably helped it to sustain her, but Lily imagined it still must be a little like constant near starvation. She couldn't imagine how Dahlia endured it.
The singing grew louder and, suspicious, Lily sat up, as a retinue of wives paraded through the trees, led by Cabbage Rose.
"Good day, Lily." Rose inclined her head to Lily in a curtsy that was mostly implied, "Such a shame to see you here. I had very high hopes for you."
"Very sorry to disappoint you." Lily replied, too tired to be more than mildly annoyed by Rose's condescending tone.
"And you, Dahlia," Rose's saccharine expression turned sour as she looked at the cage next to Lily's, "I see you're still refusing to accept dormancy with any dignity."
"And miss seeing your smiling face every day?" Dahlia's laugh was ripe with bitter contempt, "I would surely wither."
Rose turned away from Dahlia with a scowl.
"We've brought you some things to make your internment here more comfortable." Rose said gesturing the other women forward, "The girls were very concerned with how short your stay is anticipated to be. We hoped to decrease your suffering as much as possible."
Dogwood and Aster brought embroidered decorative pillows and a blanket, pushing them through the bars. One of them handed her a datapad.
"It's not connected to the internet of course," Rose said, "But there are a number of excellent books on it to help you pass the time."
"You know if you brought her food, she might last longer." Dahlia pointed out. Rose ignored her.
"We will come to see you every day." Rose said, "When we come to tend all the dormant ones. If there's anything you need, simply ask and we will be delighted to help. Within King Turlabon's restrictions, of course."
"The only thing I want is to be out of this cage and back with my husband," Lily replied, "And you can't bring me that. So please just leave me alone."
Rose huffed, muttered about ingratitude, but she left Lily alone, guiding the other woman as they made their way around the other cages, pruning the overgrowth and checking for mold or parasites on the dormant women, keeping them as beautiful captive trophies for the king. Lily felt nauseous.
"Madame Rose!" Dogwood called as she examined one of the dormant women, "I'm afraid this one has root rot."
"Uhg," Rose shuddered, "She always was an unhygienic one. One of the lower families, you know."
She swept over to the cage, pulling a set of brass keys from her dress. She unlocked the dormant flower's cage and she and the other women carefully uprooted her, disentangling her roots from the soil with gentle fingers. They carried her out in solemn silence, and Lily wondered if she would ever come back, or if this was the final fate of the caged women.
"It's good to see that there's still some spark in you." Dahlia said once the other wives had gone, "You haven't completely given up yet."
Lily rubbed at her chest where her heart still felt like there was a cavernous hole in it. Maybe that was just what it felt like when half of your soul was dead. She wanted to give up. She wished that she could.
She worried about when Turlabon might send men to break her, but it didn't come the first day, or the second. By the third, she was too weak to care. Maybe he'd changed his mind and decided to keep her jealously to himself after all.
She lay on the bottom of her cage, too hungry and desperately thirsty to move. She'd never felt so empty. And she knew it would only get worse. The ache in her chest persisted, this absent place where Amranth should have been. She would see him again soon, she reminded herself. She wasn't going to last much longer here.
She closed her eyes, feeling the little energy she had beginning to fail her already. In that spinning blackness, she could almost see herself somewhere else. Back in Elder Keeler's cabin, when she'd been recovering from her allergic reaction. She could almost see the ceiling above her as though she were still lying on her back in that bed.
God her chest hurt. It burned like fire. And it felt less now like an absence in her heart and more like a ragged hole in her torso. Keeler's cabin was so clear around her. She could almost hear the Elder's voice.
"Hang in there, sapling. She's still alive. You can feel it, can't you? She's calling out for you. So don't go yet. Stay here for her, Amranth!"
Lily's eyes shot open as the pain in her chest rapidly receded to just a dull ache again.
"He's alive," she rasped, her voice weak and her throat dry as she struggled to sit up, clinging to the bars of her cage.
"I thought you were gone for good that time," Dahlia said from her cage, her expression creased with concern, "You can't keep going quiet for so long."
"He's alive," Lily said again, fire in her eyes for the first time in days, despite her haggard exhaustion, "I can feel him. He didn't die."
"Your Amranth?" Dahlia asked, eyes widening, "You think he still lives?"
&nbs
p; "I know he does," Lily gasped, "He's hurt, but I can feel him."
"Then you had better stay alive," Dahlia said with a fierce grin, "You'd better fight, escape this place, go to him!"
"I have to," Lily wheezed, almost too weak to move, clinging to the bars of her cage, "I have to."
"Can you reach me?" Dahlia asked, stretching her arm out through the bars of her cage, "Just your fingertips are enough. Come on, reach for me!"
Lily, confused, obeyed, her arm trembling as she stretched to reach the other woman. As their finger brushed, she felt a jolt like being shocked. Energy rushed into her, making her skin tingle in its wake as she was all at once woken from her near stupor. Her hunger and thirst were still present, but they faded all at once, giving Lily the strength to sit up.
"What was that?" she asked, baffled. Dahlia was shaking her head like she was dizzy.
"A gift," she said, "I've given you a bit of my energy. It'll keep you going a little longer. In return, I want your promise that you're going to fight. That you're going to help me escape this place."
"I will," Lily, awed, didn't even hesitate, and her determination grew as she saw Dahlia's grin, "I will! We're going to get out of here!"
"That's the spirit!" Dahlia cheered, "I knew Turlabon would mess up and put someone with some courage in the cage next to me eventually. Here's what we're going to do..."
Chapter Thirteen
It took several days to plan, through which Lily weakened again. She struggled to stay conscious and fight even as her hunger and thirst dragged her down.
Rose and the other wives came by around midday for their usual check of the other women. Lily, weak with hunger, leaned against the bars and trembled with exhaustion.
"Please," she begged as Rose drew near, reaching out for her, "Just a little water. If I don't get some soon, I'm going to die. Please, I'll do anything, just don't let me die like this. I have to stay alive. I have to..."
Rose, who had been staunchly ignoring Lily's begging, finally turned as Lily fell silent, collapsing against the bars.
The Warrior's Proposal (Celestial Mates Book 7) Page 26