“It will give everyone something to truly celebrate after Spring returns. The first grand fling, to welcome their king’s new bride and I will invite my other wives.”
Vad’Alvarn felt his lips curl as he spoke, though he was already considering in the back of his head exactly how much work bringing his other eight wives would be for himself and his staff. None of them had seen him in over a year and though it was forbidden to even ask for his companionship on the night of the wedding, there would undoubtedly be demands for his attention on the nights before and after. It was after all one of the few ways to gain stature among the women, becoming pregnant by the king. The one chance any of them had of making their names even known to him. Granted, after seeing Jalcina, and knowing she was the one, none of the others compared. It was as if they stood in darkness and she had the only light. So different was his view of them all. “Certainly that will be enough to meet with my darling’s expectations.”
“Your darling.” The words squeaked out of her throat as if forced. “King Vad’Alvarn, you offer me too much.” The formula phrase gave her something to say even if they were not the words she wished. “Please, I only ask your leave to be gone from your presence.”
“And I have not granted it.” His eyes hardened toward her again. “Come to me, Princess.” He held out his hand to her as if daring her to climb the fence in her skirt.
“You cannot expect me to?” Jalcina glanced at the obstacle between them and then at his hand before letting her eyes come back to his.
“Why can I not?” His tone was teasing, but it was obvious he expected to be obeyed. There was no telling what he would do if his directive was not followed. “Come to me,” he repeated, this time beckoning her with his outstretched hand, a possibly inviting smile on his lips if it had not been for the fear Jalcina felt in her own heart. He was asking her to come into an arena where men fought, what could he possibly want from such a move? Taking his hand, she found her foot a space on the lower rung and slide her body over the top, blushing as his other hand came to the small of her back to keep her steady as she slipped to the ground.
“Well, I’ve come.” Her eyes were demurely lowered before him.
“Yes, I see.” His hands rested around her waist. “Now…” He lowered his head until he was speaking her ear. “Princess, I enjoy your company very much, but you are trying my patience.” She outright shivered when the sound of his sword removing from the scabbard filled the air. “Hold out your hand.” The voice of command seemed to gain control of her senses because she put out her hand without thinking. It was not until an object was pressed into her palm she checked to see what it was. He had given her his sword. Reflexively, she curled her fingers around the hilt as he let it go, shifting until she could hold it aloft without his help. It took both of her hands. “Good. Now, go do battle, my love.” The hand resting at her hip pushed her forward.
“Are you sure of this?” Navar had watched the entire exchange quietly. Seeing his brother’s bold move, he knew what was going to be expected of him. “I might hurt her.”
“My beloved will show no signs of battle. But you may, when she’s done with you.”
Back straight with fear, Jalcina tried not to shake as she started forward. Did he truly expect her to fight a trained warrior with his sword? She slid her eyes back toward him, wanting to see if he was indeed still watching her slow progress. He waved her forward, his posture relaxed against the fence, arms obscuring the crest on his tunic. Each step was taken with great care. This was ground where blood had been spilled. Where her own blood was going to be spilled in a moment. The thought of running away without having said anything appeared quite good. Her opponent had yet to draw his own blade, but only watched her, eyes sympathetic. He would not harm her, would he, not for the amusement of his king?
Jalcina was so close now she could count the rents in Navar’s armor; she brought the sword up as she had seen her Father do many times before, a defense stance.
“Maybe she does know something,” Navar joked, finally drawing his own blade and lightly tapping at the point of hers with it. “Will you prove him right, Princess? Will I show signs of this battle while you do not when he calls us to a finish?”
“I think I have the unfortunate fate of being married to a mad man.” The thought was out of her mouth before she could think to catch it. Gladly it was not a thought in need of catching. Let the king find out what his bride thought of him. She thought him insane. Completely and utterly insane and incapable of something as simple as human decency placing a woman out in front of armed soldier while he watched on for his own amusement.
“I thought you said to him you and he were not wed?” Navar goaded her. It hung in the air between them. Jalcina stated she was not wed and thus she had no reason to listen to the king, yet there she was standing in the middle of the practice field with his sword growing heavier by the moment in her grip for his pleasure. Perhaps it was not the king who was mad? The tapping of the two swords rang out bell clear when Navar did so again, as if trying to get her to strike. The third time, she did, the point of her blade snaking forward to catch him in the shoulder. The movement was quick enough to catch Navar, the point glancing off his armor. Not enough force to spin him, but enough to make him take a step or two back and his gaze skipped from the woman before him to his brother who was still watching with a smug smirk on his face. Just watching as if nothing had happened.
The light around Jalcina solidified. She had entered the ring without armor, unprepared, but the light of day came to her aid, drawing beautiful rings onto her dress and holding itself there to protect her. Shock was written over her features as she watched it happen, felt it settle into place around her lightly. What was going on? Her movement mirrored Navar’s glancing toward their amused spectator. He seemed to know what was happening. Ever the opportunist, the man moved to attack her while her attention was diverted, but she felt him move. The awareness of his movement made her twirl, skirts whipping out around her legs, to bring her blade across the front of his armor, head below the level of his striking blade. Sparks appeared and once again, Navar was made to back away from her.
“What deviltry?” he snapped out, nearly losing his balance in the soft grass. His sword came up in defense just in time to keep her from landing a much stronger blow. The words were forgotten in the awareness she was actually moving not in practice, but with a lethal efficiency of someone who had killed before. Yet the girl he had met the night before did not seem the kind who had ever had any contact with a sword. Yet she moved so beautifully, the wisps of hair dancing around her face as she came at him again, blade glancing off his armor. Navar stepped back, kept stepping away, his sword managing only to keep her from truly damaging him. How was it possible?
“Leviana,” Vad’Alvarn called a name not Jalcina’s name, but it swept off his lips like leaves before wind. “My beloved.” His eyes were full of unshed tears, heavy with the thoughts of what could be if only he could make this one believe, make her remember what it had meant to be with him, to ride by his side, and bring the world to their heel as it was meant to.
She swept her hair from her face as she moved, his sword seemingly no heavier than a fan a woman would use to hide her face.
“Vadian.” No one had called him that, not in this life, she had been the last one to speak that name. The warm brown eyes in her face had gone a steely, elegant blue, rather like the blue of her dress, with just edges of silver in them, flickers of moonlight calling his name. Then the sword was slipping from her grip and she collapsed. First the sword with its heavy thud, to lie still in the grass. Navar managed to slip his arm around her waist, curling her body against his.
“Vadian?” He asked the question, looking at his brother. This name was not one he had ever heard, not even from Vad’Alvarn’s mother who called him many things other than his name.
“She called me that,” he said, his words far too quiet seeming, as though he feared to wake the woman
held against his blood brother’s chest. “Up until the moment she died.” He moved closer and carefully cupped her face before accepting her body from his brother’s grip, pressing her against his armor. Her head at the level of his shoulder, he half carried her as they started back toward the castle. “Navar, you see what I see now?”
Whatever doubts the blond had before meeting this dark vixen on the battlefield were long since gone, lost in the ring of his brother’s sword against his armor. No coddled woman could have done what she had done. None of them could hope to have done as much damage in so little a time. No wonder his brother had kept such a bride at his side. Who could have hoped to fight against him with such a Valkyrie covering his flank? Absently, he picked up Vad’Alvarn’s sword, knowing his hands were otherwise occupied. “I see what you say,” there were no other words he could have used. Now he knew, it made him wonder if perhaps there was not something to this entire business Vad’Alvarn told him about, how this life was not his first and he was born to conquer the world. Could it truly be possible? Did the divar exist as more than just some great story for mothers to use to delight their children before they must blow out the night’s candle? “But you still have not answered what you are going to do?”
“I’m going to send for my wives,” Vad’Alvarn said definitively. “And have a wedding. Leviana,” he kissed her forehead lightly. “Deserves all that and more from me.”
Romkita hid her face when Vad’Alvarn and Navar entered, using her hands and her sleeves to cover her face from her eyebrows to her chin.
“Master, forgive me,” she sputtered out through her cloth shield. “I did not mean to cause you any strife. Nor to make you murder your bride.”
The two men shared an amused look before Vad’Alvarn shook his head.
“Kita,” he called her by the familiar name he used for her when he wished to be gentle. “She’s not dead, I have done her no harm and you have caused me no strife.” The woman had been with him for a long time, she was a good woman and he trusted her. If he did not, he would not have given her the care of something so precious to him as this woman he carried in his arms. “Will you go get a warm cloth for her head? She will wake with a headache and it is best to sooth it quickly.” That sent her bustling off to find what was asked as Vad’Alvarn carried her back to the pallet where the two of them had spent the night. It was a surprise how gentle he could be when he wished. The bits of hair framing her face were smoothed away with delicate fingertips. “Navar, I’ve waited for so long it seems a lifetime is in every breath she takes.”
“Tell me what really happened.” In all the years he had listened to Vad’Alvarn speak of a former life, Navar had never asked, uncaring for the reason why behind his brother’s need to reach for the heavens and carve his name out with stars for even the Gods to take notice of him. What difference did the plans of the general make to a soldier? Tell them where to fight and all was right with the world, but now the ease was disrupted. This woman had brought a disruption into his world and taken the path seemingly from beneath his blood’s very feet. “How did she die?”
“I do not remember.” Vad’Alvarn was not watching him. “I only remember one thing about it.” His eyes concentrated on the sleeping face below him. “Her eyes were open, one hand had me by the back of my neck and blood was at the edge of her lips. She spoke to me, only a few words as her true life began to pour out. My name was the last thing I heard from her, and I thought perhaps even the Gods were stopped a moment by the feeling of her heart stopping under my hand. I swore I would see her again and I would not rest until I had completed my promise to her.”
“What did you promise her?”
“I told Leviana I would conquer the world.” Something so simply said. No more than a child’s dream, a fantasy grown into his obsession. The same obsession had drawn her with him, had taken her life, and now had brought her back to him, it seemed. He could not remember all the years he had lived, though there were many. How many times had she also been returned only to walk the hall of the dead in waiting for the next time a body was prepared for the influx of her soul? Would this be the time when he kept his promise and released them both? Was it even possible for them to be released from his promise to the heavens?
“She swore she would see it through with me.”
Once again, he kissed her skin, just enjoying the fact she was warm, not slowly losing her warmth through his fingers along with her life’s blood running out over his hands from the tears in the armor he had given her.
“You swore to take over the world and she swore to see it through,” it was so simple. Terrifyingly simple. A promise made was a promise to be kept. So they were both trapped by their own words, trapped and forced to continue until their words became truth. “That was all?”
“I do not remember there being anything more to it.” He continued to softly stroke her skin with his fingers and the back of his hand. “I promised; she promised; we fought; and she died.”
“What happened to you then?” surely Vad’Alvarn had to have died as well or he could not have come back.
“I,” he turned to look at him finally, eyes a strange blend of frightened and calm. Almost glassy on the surface like something had been placed over them. “I lived on.” The sentence seemed to complete itself. And Vad’Alvarn left it just as it was, complete in itself. Navar let his feelings of confusion cross his face but only for a few moments before shaking his head and moving out of the room. He brushed past Romkita as she re-entered, a small basin her hands full of warmed water and a soft cloth to wipe the Princess’s brow with. The two barely saw one another, each caught in their own worlds, yet for just a moment, their eyes met and it seemed as if the strange feeling in Navar crossed the air to Rom. The woman knelt beside her lord, the basin in hand.
“Master,” she called attention to herself quietly. “As you requested.”
“Thank you, Kita.” His interest was elsewhere as was obvious by the fact he had not even bothered to doff his armor though he was in his private rooms. “I want a scribe to take a note for me, one to be sent to Arthum. For my wives.” Of course he would continue to call them his wives regardless of the fact only one woman he truly wished to be with now was the one laid upon the pillows before him, tired from the exertion of having her mind invaded by her own former spirit.
“Your wives, Master?” It was no secret Vad’Alvarn had little or nothing to do with the women he wedded. Truthfully, the fact he still continued to have anything to do with this one only seemed to bear more truth in the fact she was special to him. None of them so far had commanded so much loyalty as to make him forget his armor and his blade to bathe their face with warm water against a possible headache. “What could you possibly have to say to them?” She asked the question before thinking and quickly added. “If I may be so bold as to speak such a question.”
“You may.” He was full of indulgences for the moment it seemed. “The Princess has demanded a real wedding, one that will be true in the eyes of Ancel. I would honor her wish, but I cannot do so without my other wives being in attendance. She will be chief among them, the Queen instead of a mere Princess.” There had never been any question of him needing to eventually marry and produce an heir, but those words said he had finally chosen to do such a thing. He chose what he was to do and who he would do so with. “Will you seek my scribe for me?”
“Yes, Master.” Rising she did a small dip in deference to his position and then disappeared from the room again searching for the man who wrote all the royal correspondence and held the seal in trust to be able to sign such documents as the law required.
Left alone with Jalcina, Vad’Alvarn simply watched her breathe as he laid the cloth against her head. He did need to get out of his armor, but he was reluctant to leave her. Still, he did finally draw away, moving cautiously to the other side of the room and carefully unstrapping the breastplate, mind full of the motion of her as she attacked. How long ago had it been since he had fought
with her or against her? Though he had set her against Navar it had been hard to deny the need to draw his own blade and do battle against the woman who had stolen his heart. The strength of her arm had been one of the many reasons she had taken him so easily. The moment they had met, with her settling down on the ground before their teacher together, her long shirt slit around her pants trimmed in deep blue the color of her eyes, he had known there was something about her was so far beyond him he would never understand. At first, she was placed against him and he rebelled against their teacher’s choice, a proud boy standing against a woman. Her motions had been slow and calm, it would not be for years he found out how angry she had been when first faced with him. How her blood had boiled at being called a mere girl by a boy who had not even earned the right to draw blood. Sitting with her years later, she would tell him of that day from her eyes and how she had relished the sound of every hit knowing if she was a mere girl than he could certainly be beaten by a mere girl and such a defeat meant he was no warrior.
How he had laughed when she told him, her face framed by the moonlight seeming to make her more real than the world around her. The arrogance of a child was the only defense he had. He had been little more than a boy then and though she by the same token was no more than a slip of a girl, barely filling out her shirt and certainly too straight in the hips for a woman’s skirt, he should have trusted in the understanding of their teacher; he would not mismatch them. Still, it had taken years and many battles before they came to an understanding.
He turned to the sound of her shifting, his breath catching in his throat as a low sound came from hers. Then she settled again and he took a sighing breath. Was he finally seeing the possible end to his years, in the body of a woman he had seen across the floor of a ballroom a single time and seemed to know beyond any ability to know such a thing? He had forgotten how beautiful it felt to stroke her hair and hear the sound of her breathing in his ear. The night before he had been agony when she finally slept beside him, the soft sound of her breathing seeming to dominate the night’s darkness. First she had seduced him with the promise of light, then with sound, and now with taste. He could still taste her sweat against his lips as he settled his armor carefully on the floor, knowing it might well wake her if allowed to clatter to the stone as he would have previously. Were he alone in the room, it would have been unceremoniously dropped and then gathered up to be polished, he always polished his own armor, trusting none to care for his needs as well as himself.
Chains of Fate (The Fate Circle Saga Book 1) Page 14
