A Kiss of Fire

by Jacquelyn Frank

  He turned on his heel and marched out of the door they had entered by.

  Fatima put down the loom’s shuttle and turned to face Ariana fully.

  “Come, let me look at you,” she said, holding out her arms. There was the ringing of tiny golden bracelets jingling on her wrists. She was wearing a peacock blue blouse and an emerald green skirt in the Kiltian style. There was a scarlet sash tied around her waist.

  Ariana stepped forward a little reluctantly, but the woman did not seem to notice her recalcitrance. She touched Ariana’s shoulders and drew her in closer. She eyed her critically.

  “Well, I suppose you’ll do for looks. Let’s see if you’ve anything to flesh out your pretty face.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Ariana asked, affronted.

  “Have you a brain, girl? A personality? Go on…tell me what you think of me and my son.”

  “I-I don’t think anything about you. I’ve only just met you!”

  “Ah, but you have many thoughts about my son. And not all of them good, I’m thinking.”

  “He’s brought me here against my will! Please, if you have any influence over him…tell him to bring me back home. Make him see that I am not what he wants!”

  “I cannot make him see lies. You are what he wants, and he has gone through a great deal of trouble to get you. Do you understand what it means, this thing he has done by taking you like he has?”

  “It means something to him…to Kiltians…but it means nothing to me!”

  “Are you so certain?” the older woman asked. “Come. Sit.”

  Fatima took her by her elbow and led her to a grouping of chairs by one of the sunny windows.

  “Isn’t it lovely? To have so much room?” she asked, taking a seat across from her. “Before the treaty and the land we were all cramped together in a couple of rooms. My son, his brother, his brother’s wives and concubines, their children and me. Generations together, all in one place. Now there is all of this room and I don’t know what to do with it. It feels lonely sometimes. But now you are here and I might share the space with you.”

  “Thank you,” Ariana said quietly. She was trying to imagine what it must have been like…all of those people in such a small, confined area. She didn’t think she could have borne not being able to have some privacy. And yet Fatima spoke as though she missed that closeness. “You have grandchildren?”

  “Four and one on the way. My other son has two wives and three concubines. It is Harea, his youngest concubine, who is ready to produce my fifth grandchild. There is much in the way of bloodlines for this family. We shall rule the Kiltian people for many generations to come. Although, Raj Vich and his line of kin will only inherit if my son does not produce issue. He needs an heir.”

  “Then he should spend his time looking for a woman who would welcome his advances!” Ariana said bitterly.

  “Are they?” Fatima asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Unwelcome. Are his advances to you entirely unwelcome? And do not lie to me for I will know. Do not lie to yourself either, for that will only blind you to your own needs.”

  Ariana flushed and looked away from the other woman.

  “Your son is a very…compelling man. More so than I ever gave him credit for in the past. But that does not change the fact that I am here against my will!”

  “Hm. So you do admit to some feelings for him. Some…passion.”

  Ariana wanted to deny it, but she found she couldn’t lie to either of them.

  “Passion and feelings are two separate things,” Ariana said in defiance.

  “Not at all,” Fatima contradicted. “Passion is as much a feeling as it is a physical state of being or acting. My son craves you with great passion…but if you think it is just the physical then you are very mistaken. That is proved by your very presence here in this room.”

  “I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you mean,” Ariana said with frustration.

  “My son is afraid of his passion for you. He fears what it will drive him to do…what it has already driven him to do. In all his autumns as raja, I have never known my son to ask for anything for himself. I have never seen him act selfishly. He has sacrificed everything for his people. But you…he has risked everything for you. He has acted on his own desires. Not without much thought…I am sure he weighed all his options and the ramifications of his actions most thoroughly—it is in his nature to do so—but after weighing everything in his mind he still decided you were worth the risk. Has anyone ever valued you so highly before? To the point where they would risk everything to have you?”

  “That isn’t the point,” Ariana said quietly.

  “Isn’t it though?” Fatima regarded her with a measured glance. “What is life to us if we are not greatly valued by another? I know men and women alike who would sell their souls to both hells for a chance at being on the receiving end of the devotion my son is showing you.”

  “He does not feel devotion. It is obsession. An unhealthy obsession.”

  “It is true. He is obsessed with you. But where is the line between devotion and obsession? Do you know where it is? For I do not. Is my son obsessed with the well-being of his people, or is he merely devoted to them? Or is it both? Can you consider the possibility that he is both where you are concerned?”

  “Whatever he feels for me is unhealthy,” Ariana said. “If he would just accept the fact that I am out of his reach then perhaps he can—“

  “But you are not out of his reach. You are most decidedly within his reach.”

  Frustrated she exploded with, “But I shouldn’t be! I shouldn’t be here!”

  “And yet you are. Perhaps you should accept that and move on from there.”

  “I don’t want to accept it! I have a life with all of its responsibilities awaiting me back home. I will not forget them simply because I have crossed a border!”

  “No one is suggesting that you do. I am merely suggesting that you should accept where you are now. Calm yourself. Live in the moment. Let the future work itself out as it is meant to develop. In the meantime, explore what is around you. What is available to you. Learn about the world you are living in and the people in it.”

  “I…I am learning about this world.” More than she had ever expected she would. She was also coming to understand it more than she had ever expected she would.

  “I can see that you have,” Fatima said knowingly. Too knowingly. There was something of wisdom and insight in the woman that only came with age, experience and ability.

  “Are you Jadoc?” Ariana asked sharply.

  Fatima smiled. “Would that make you feel better? To know my insights into you are easily explained by my power and not from a keenness that comes with instinct?”

  “It just makes sense. You seem to see so much and with such confidence.”

  “Would it surprise you to know I am what your people call a non? A being without majic?”

  Ariana’s jaw dropped open. She blinked widened eyes at the woman.

  “That is not possible. Your son is—“

  “A very powerful man. Yes. Both of my sons inherit their ability from their father’s side.”

  “Then how is it you know so much about what I am thinking and feeling?” Ariana asked, distrusting.

  “Perhaps it is because once, long ago, my sons’ father felt the same passion for me that Sin feels for you, and I for his father. We were an unwelcomed match, Jirar and I.” Fatima’s eyes, a dark duplicate of her son’s, grew distant. “It was frowned on for a rajan heir to take a non, even as a concubine. A lover, perhaps, but not as an exalted concubine and certainly never as a wife. But I had just been sold by my father into a pleasure house to pay for his debts and as a virgin my maidenhead was a valuable thing for the man willing to pay the right price. Sin’s father was raj then—heir—and his father was still alive. He was his father’s only son despite his father’s many wives and concubines. The fate of the entire crown rested on his head alone. Jirar had com
e into the pleasure house with three of his friends and when he saw me…saw how crudely his friends were treating me…saw how wholly terrified I was…he purchased me outright for an extraordinary amount of money. It is a price still talked about in the pleasure houses…when pleasure girls are dreaming that a prince might come and sweep them away one day.

  “He did not take me to his bed that night, nor did he let me go out into the world unprotected. He put me into a room with his father’s concubines and had me share space with them. Oh how mean and spiteful those women were! They could not wait to report my presence to the raja. As expected, he was furious with his son. ‘Fuck her if you must,’ his father said, ‘but she is no fit concubine for you.’”

  “So Jirar called me to his bed that night—and every night after—so I might have a safe place to sleep and so he could keep me close. But we did not make love those first nights. In fact, I think Jirar thought he felt very little about me those first weeks. But slowly, as he got to know me, he realized he was beginning to burn for me. He became obsessed with my comfort and care. The littlest things about me began to plague his mind incessantly…or so he told me. The smell of my hair. The darkness of my eyes. The shyness of my smile. Then, one night when he could take the temptation no longer, he devoured me with his passion for me. I had never known such pleasure could exist.

  “Unfortunately, in a home so small, so crowded and with so little privacy, our passion was not private. His father learned of the coupling and then demanded that, now that he had his fill of me, Jirar was to put me out of the house. Jirar told his father that he would not…that he intended to make me his first wife…his only wife. His father threatened to disown him, to take the right of succession out of his hands. They both knew this was an empty threat. Still, this created a rift between father and son that was never repaired, not even on his father’s deathbed. Jirar was willing to risk everything for me…the little non woman who would one day bear him three children and his only line of succession.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” Ariana said with feeling.

  “For what?” Fatima asked.

  “The child that did not live. Or…am I wrong? I have only heard you mention two sons and no daughters…perhaps you have just—“

  “No. You are correct. There was a child that did not live. A daughter. She would have been younger than Vich. Her name was Fatim. She would have been as beautiful as my sons are handsome. It was a great loss for Jirar and I. And then, shortly after, I lost Jirar and became raji-mother. I ruled until Sin was old enough to take the reins of the government. I am afraid I was not half the leader Sin is. He was born to lead. Luckily, it was only five autumns before Sin reached the age of maturity. And really he was ruling by my side even then. He is his father’s son. Born and bred to be a ruler of men.”

  “That must have been so daunting…to be a non with two young boys to raise and a country to run.” Ariana could not help but be impressed.

  “I had the power of my brothers to help…and Sin was already quite powerful for all he was a young man. No one dared to try and oust us. Besides, our people have a great respect for the bloodlines of our royals. They would do anything Sin asked of them…including go to war. It may not have always been the most popular decision, but the end justified the means. Sin has opened up a whole new world for us. The gift of the land you have given us has meant everything to a dying race.”

  “A dying race?” she echoed.

  “There was no more room. Disease was running rampant in close quarters. Yes. We were dying. But now we’ve space aplenty. Thanks to you and your people.”

  “To us? But we didn’t do anything. We fought you tooth and nail before giving up that land! And we didn’t give it to you, we sold it to you.” A fact she was feeling with shame now every time she said it.

  “You could just as easily have continued to war and you could have bargained for less at a price we couldn’t afford. This was exactly what we needed under terms we could survive. It meant a lot.”

  “Your people fought valiantly for what they needed. And it was a need, not just a selfish want as so many of my people viewed it…view it still. If I could go back, I would work to change that.”

  “It is more important that you are here and make my son happy.”

  “I cannot make your son happy. No one can be responsible for another’s happiness. That is entirely up to them.”

  “We are going to have to disagree on that. Like I did with Jirar, you have lit a fire in my son. He grew up with his father and I for an example as to how it should be between a man and a woman. You will not convince him that he cannot win you without time and patience. That is why he has brought you to me you know.”

  “So you can talk me into caring about his needs and disregarding my own?”

  Fatima chuckled, a soft, rich sound that Ariana couldn’t help but smile with.

  “No, darling. Because you try his patience. Because he feels he cannot control his baser urges around you and he wishes to respect you better. I am to play chaperone.”

  Ariana blushed wildly, hardly knowing the reason why. She should be grateful this woman would now act as a buffer between her and Sin. But for some reason she felt loss…as though she were being deprived of something she wanted very much.

  No! She didn’t want him, she told herself stubbornly.

  Even though that quiet part of her knew it to be a lie.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ariana spent the day with Fatima and didn’t catch a single glance of Sin the entire time. She liked the older woman’s dry wit and wise ways. Getting to know her helped her to better understand a man she was already learning far too well. Sometimes it made her uncomfortable to think on it, other times it did not.

  The two women took midday meal together in the pretty salon. The servants served them at a small table that was off to one side of the room. It was a simple, light fare, already portioned onto their plates.

  Then Fatima sat at her loom and deftly worked the shuttle back and forth as the two women chatted about many different things.

  When Sin finally came into the room, it was to announce that supper was ready. Ariana looked up at him, butterflies fluttering about in her belly. He was such a beautiful man, she realized. She had not appreciated it before because she had been so determined to despise him, but there was a dark intense beauty to his features. Oh, he was all male and in no way pretty, but he was richly handsome in a rough sort of way. It was a type of beauty she did not see often in the perfect dandies that were the male Sarens.

  Sin came up to her and, with perfect courtly manners, he held out his hand to her. It was such a simple gesture, and yet it was not. For in his eyes was the deeply intense knowledge that he now knew what she looked like without her clothes on…that he had almost become completely intimate with her on that level. If she had been hoping his use of his mother as chaperone would mean that he would forget those facts and pretend they had never happened, she was sorely disillusion in that instant. As he waited for her hand, his eyes raked down over her and she could see his breath come a little quicker.

  She flushed hotly all up and down her body, from deep inside places she hadn’t been in touch with in a long time…if ever. But she wasn’t about to let him know that, so she placed her hand in his and lifted her chin in defiance of how she was feeling.

  Sin tucked her hand into his elbow, his fingertips lingering to stroke the back of her hand. It felt almost suggestive, that stroke. She squelched a shudder. He held out his opposite elbow to his mother and she took it. Three abreast they walked out of the salon and into the large dining room some distance down the hall.

  Where the salon had been sunny and peaceful, the dining hall was darker and noisy. There were children running about, chasing each other up and down the length of the floor around the table. As Sin entered the room the adults took hold of the children and tucked them into their seats. There were five women and one man sitting at the head of the table, and many men and wom
en seated at the foot. One of the women at the head of the table was heavily pregnant. This must be Harea, she thought. The other women must be Sin’s brother’s wives and the man must be his brother.

  As Sin seated her and his mother, she took the opportunity to consider his brother. He was about half a foot shorter than Sin, but had the same pitch colored hair. He had brown eyes as well, but his were fair and nothing like the nearly black color shared between Sin and his mother. He was a barrel-chested man and seemed solid enough, but there was a sense of him being less fit than his brother was. Then again, who wasn’t? For a man who spent so much time pouring over books and ledgers, Sin was extraordinarily well developed in musculature. She wondered what he did, outside of riding, to keep himself so fit.

  “Ariana, this is my brother, Raj Vich,” Sin introduced her. Vich frowned at the introduction but inclined his head politely. Barely politely. “These are his wives Caran, who is firstwife, and Kindah who is secondwife. They are mothers to his sons Joren, eldest and heir, and Freash, respectively. These are his concubines and daughters. Arud, mother to Darinda and Hela, mother of Dasa. This is soon to be mother Harea.” He indicated each woman and child as they were mentioned. He took his seat at the head of the table. Ariana had been seated at his left. She felt as though she was on display. As if this seat were of some significant importance by the looks she was receiving.

  “At the end of the table you will find ambassadors and diplomats from many other lands.”

  That surprised her. She had always envisioned the Kiltians as an insular race. But then she recalled that they were heavily dependent on outside resources for everything. Even the food they ate. He began to introduce them and each got up and bowed in their turn. He simply introduced her to them as Ariana. Not Ariana, triumvir of Saren.

  She realized then that one of these people might be the best way she had of getting news of her location back to the Sarens. Of course, Sin had to realize this too. It was no doubt why he had kept her locked secretly away. The more people who knew of her the higher the risk that the Sarens would come for her in one way or another. So why had he let her out? Why was he letting her be seen all of a sudden?