The Pages of the Mind

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “Nakoa, please,” I begged him, not at all sure what I asked him for, and he raised his head to look at me.

  “All, mlai,” he said, and pressed the heel of his hand down as he curled the finger inside.

  I screamed, a long, wild sound that I only vaguely recognized as my own, my vision going black, spiked with torch flares of fire. In the distance, thunder rolled through the storm. Or a dragon roared. Or the volcano rumbled.

  None of it mattered. Only the soul-shattering release that dragged me under.

  Regaining my senses felt like swimming up through the depths of the Onyx Ocean, only to look into the intricately patterned ceiling and torchlight instead of the blue skies of Annfwn, disorienting me momentarily, as if years had passed instead of only minutes. Nakoa still knelt between my open thighs, a look of utter self-satisfaction on his face, transforming it from brooding to something nearly beatific.

  “Beautiful, yes?” He tilted his head, a teasing glint in his eye. “An excellent game.”

  I laughed without sound, still breathless. “I suppose you think you won that part also.” Which, in truth, he had. I realized I’d spoken to him in the wrong language, but he didn’t seem to mind, giving me a smug smile.

  He helped me to my feet, the dress catching on my knife belt. With his eye on my reaction, Nakoa unbuckled it, which set the gown slithering off. I moved to grab at it, but he stopped me so I stood there naked in the pool of fabric, wearing only my stockings. Still kneeling there, he caressed my ankles and calves, tracing up over the ribbons to the bare skin above. Maybe he’d shattered the last of my modesty along with all my reserve, because for once I didn’t mind him looking at me.

  It felt good to be seen, in truth.

  And the way he’d pleasured me left me languid, full of liquid fire, a bit savage myself, naked in the torchlight with my dragon king. He cupped my bottom and pressed a chaste kiss to my belly just over my pubis, lingering there and murmuring a prayer. I stilled, stricken by the possibility that he hoped to get a child on me. An emotional avalanche, triggered by the thought, crushed my thoughts, making it difficult to breathe.

  Like in that dark hole, licking at the water, a flicker of hope keeping the despair at bay.

  I’d had that dream once upon a time. A lovely—and ridiculous, it had turned out—fantasy that I would have babies and rebuild the family I’d lost. But I’d given it up after the failed arranged marriages and as the lonely years passed, one after another. So thoroughly had I abandoned the idea that it seemed startlingly new—which made the pain fresh, as I gave it up again. Just as with that lapse where I’d suddenly recalled the siblings who had died more than three decades before, whose lives I’d blocked out, along with so much of that blood-drenched nightmare. I’d planned to name my babies after them.

  And then I’d given up thinking about any of it.

  Grief won out, swamping me with things I hadn’t thought of in ages. As if a door opened in my taxed brain, memories of my older sister letting me try on her gowns and putting up my hair, our little brothers doing everything to taunt us and get in the way. Playing games of chase through the meadow under the summer sun, while our mother and father looked on, judging the winners of various races.

  All in the days before Uorsin arrived and destroyed our simple pastoral existence in the back of beyond, grinding joy to shreds of flesh scattered across a trampled meadow.

  And like that, the grief became rage. All of it gone, never to return. The same as my aging womb, the time long since passed for it to bear a child.

  Too damn late.

  In a burst of fury, I pushed Nakoa away, punching my fists against his shoulder. Like hitting a wall, but that got his attention. He held on to me, which pushed me over some edge of panic and rage.

  I slapped him. Hard.

  18

  We stared at each other, frozen in equal bemusement. My hand tingled with shock, wrist already aching, echoed by the quiet throb of my overused feet. How out of character for me. How utterly girly—and how ill-advised. Nakoa looked as if no one had ever struck him so in his life, which was likely true.

  Good Goddesses—I knew better than this. What was wrong with me?

  I braced myself for the thunderous anger, the retaliating blow. I’d seen Ursula on the receiving end of Uorsin’s fist, a scene that had filled me with cold terror. Being who she is, she’d handled it with astonishing resilience. My own fortitude came from a different place, and I would never hope to do as well. Perhaps he’d kill me after all.

  Nakoa moved and I flinched, bringing up my hands in a weak defense, my heart thundering. No, the volcano. Nakoa flicked a glance in the direction of the volcano, then back to me, considering. Moving more slowly, he picked up the discarded knife belt and drew my dagger. I swayed, my thighs going weak and feet ready to give out, a sob of terror leaking out of my stricken lungs. With an impatient shake of his head, Nakoa pressed the hilt into my hand and put the point at his throat.

  Then he grasped my hips, holding me upright. He asked me a soft question. I stared dumbly at him, unable to grasp the words, though the meaning hovered somewhere at the edge of my memory.

  He pressed his lips together in a frustrated line, growling under his breath, brow furrowed. “Sorry. Why is Dafne sorry?”

  That was it. The shading for a storm, an abrupt event like the volcano erupting. He was asking me what was wrong.

  It broke me. Sympathy from an unexpected quarter can do that, as if someone else’s caring undermined the carefully constructed walls meant to keep out assault, but vulnerable to concern. I clutched the dagger between my breasts, fisted over my heart, aghast at the second sob that ripped out of me.

  “I don’t know,” I managed, unable to draw breath, my heart pounding furiously at the lack of air, my throat closing over any possibly of getting some. That is, I knew the why of it, but not the reason that the enormity of panicked emotion pressed on me. Or how I’d ever explain it to another soul, even if we shared enough of the same words. “I don’t—” I ran out of breath entirely. I struggled to make my lungs move.

  Failed.

  That decided him. Without further questions, Nakoa swept me up in his arms, knocking the game board and pieces aside so they clattered to the wooden floor, chiming brightly. Instead of laying me on the bed, he sat, then stretched out, turning me so my back was to him and his long body curved all around mine. He put one hand on my belly, pressing me back against him, and the other under my head to wrap around my forehead.

  I should have felt trapped, but I didn’t. Instead the firm grip calmed the wild panic inside. I felt protected, safe, and secure.

  Maybe for the first time since Uorsin destroyed my world.

  Gradually, my throat opened and my starving lungs dragged in a fistful of air. Then another. Nakoa murmured something to me. Had been all along, speaking softly in a soothing tone, shading it with pitches of comfort, happiness, and pleasant days. He used different words, some I knew, some I didn’t, as if seeking ones that held meaning for me.

  I seized on ones I’d heard in reference to my injured feet.

  “I will not hurt you,” he said.

  And I believed him.

  We lay like that for a long time, the torches burning low. How late was it? The rain had dropped back to a soft patter and the palace had gone silent of human activity, the only sounds those of the high-pitched tweeting of birds. Only they didn’t sound exactly like birds. More reverberation and more chirping than a song. Some other creature? I would have to find out.

  The return of my natural curiosity loosened the last of my paralysis. Unwrapping my death grip from the dagger’s hilt, I flexed my fingers and took a long breath, letting it out slowly. It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield. I would not be a coward.

  I turned in Nakoa’s arms to face him.

  He watched me, the black of his pupils deep pools ringed with the glassier shine of the ir
is.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “For hitting you. For my . . . storm.”

  He lifted a finger to trace my cheek. “No sorry, Dafne mlai,” he said, using my word. And returned my wobbly smile at the reminder. In some ways we did better with these small phrases we’d established between us, each understanding the emotion behind it, if not the more complex thoughts we still struggled to convey to each other.

  The immensity of it all staggered me. We were like two people lost in that storm, unable to see or hear, drenched and in danger of being washed away by something much larger than ourselves. Finding and losing each other again after a brief point of contact.

  And with me at least having no idea where we journeyed.

  I wondered if even Nakoa knew. Were these uncharted waters for him, too, or did he follow some hidden map? He studied my face, deep in thought. If nothing else, I presented him with an enigma. Probably I seemed like a crazy woman, as mercurial as I’d been behaving.

  He tapped the dagger I still held. “You always have this.”

  “I know.” The ruby gleamed a deep red, a beacon of another life that seemed impossibly far away. Nakoa sought to reassure me still, not understanding the root of my fears, what I truly sought to protect myself from. How could he when I didn’t understand myself? I couldn’t have explained even if we spoke the same language. I felt I owed him something, though. “My queen gave me this. A . . . special gift.”

  Tracing a finger over the ruby, much as he had my cheek, he gave me a solemn smile. “You are precious to your queen. For such a happy gift.”

  “Yes.” I blinked back the emotion. Still not steady.

  “Precious also to your king, Nakoa mlai.”

  Oh. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “I don’t understand.”

  He made that rumble of frustration. “No. I know you do not.”

  He seemed to be torn, waiting for some answer from me, some kind of promise, perhaps. Only I didn’t know how to convey that I’d try to be patient. Or that Ursula should be sending people to rescue me, whatever form that might take. Guilt pricked me that I hadn’t warned Nakoa of this. Though I didn’t owe my captor an explanation that I’d sent for help. How thoroughly he’d seduced me that I even worried about the lapse.

  I am wise in this.

  And yet, he’d comforted me in my panic. Taught me a strategy game I enjoyed, given me everything I’d asked for—with the salient exception of my freedom. Even now he laid with me quietly, skin to skin, me naked but for the stockings, not pressing his advantage. Waiting for my answer.

  “I will . . . see to understand over . . . pleasant days,” I tried, using Harlan’s trick of cobbling together approximate words and phrases.

  Nakoa smiled, though it had a tinge of regret in it. “Sleep, mlai. I will go.” He moved to lever himself up. Where had he been sleeping? Following the impulse—maybe a bad one, but instinct seemed to be all I had left—I stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “Stay?” I gestured to the bed, the room. “Nakoa’s place, yes?”

  “Yes.” He regarded me gravely, but with a flicker of mischief in his face that also banished the sadness. He patted my hip. “Also Nakoa’s.”

  I made a face at him even as I, ridiculously at this point, blushed. “Stay. It is a . . . large place.”

  “No sorry?” He searched my face, unconvinced, and it occurred to me that my outburst had wounded him in some way. He wasn’t at all sure what had gone wrong. That made two of us.

  “No sorry.” I said it firmly, for him and for me. A little hesitant, I unwrapped my fingers from the dagger—they would surely carry the imprint of the carving for some hours—touched his cheek and leaned in, giving him a soft kiss. He held still for it, not pressing me, but mirroring the pressure, returning in kind. “Thank you.”

  “All, mlai.”

  I opened my eyes to a silent room, filtered sunshine, and an emotional hangover. The gauze curtains remained drawn around the bed, but Nakoa was gone. We’d gone to sleep, curled together, my back to his chest, after he’d found me a sleeping gown and helped me out of my stockings. I suspected he normally wore nothing, because he stripped off his armbands, but retained his kylte for my benefit. He didn’t exactly understand my nervous modesty, but he made allowances for it. Another of his courtesies.

  I’d touched him from time to time during the night, or the few hours that had remained until morning, unused to having a furnace of a man in my bed. He’d responded to my confused disorientation with murmurs of reassurance, gathering me against him in that way that oddly made me feel safe.

  He must have risen to see to his duties, leaving me to sleep. Ever the dedicated ruler.

  Not sure why Inoa and her ladies had not yet invaded, but grateful for it, I parted the curtains and set my feet on the cool floor. Stiff, a little swollen, but tremendously better. I made it over to the chamber pot behind a screen, delighted to have the privacy for such a thing. Not having to rely on others for assistance for the most basic of body functions was something I would never again take for granted.

  The same with dressing myself. I gave thanks for the simple autonomy of choosing my own gown—albeit not actually my own, as mine were all far too heavy for the muggy heat, but I wouldn’t tarnish the moment with details—and brushing my own hair. And finding places to secret my little daggers. I held one up to the midday light streaming in the windows, turning it so the script glittered. This is why it’s perilous to ignore a librarian.

  I could hide only a few in the filmy garment and my stockings, but I felt more secure for doing it. Interesting that Nakoa seemed to understand that, reminding me of my weapons even as he attempted to disarm me in every other way.

  The flower garland lay in a wilted heap on the bedside table, where Nakoa had tossed it after handing me the sleeping gown. I hadn’t given it much thought then, beyond exhausted and frankly grateful to sleep without it. The crushed and bruised petals seemed somehow accusing in the morning light, as if I’d broken them in carelessness.

  And Nakoa had not given me a fresh one.

  Because he’d let me sleep. It had no more import than that. But, feeling a little superstitious about it and maybe a bit of nostalgic affection for how patiently he’d held me the night before, I put it on anyway. I would find the library—I was pretty sure I knew the way—and Akamai. Nakoa would look for me there. Taking the latch on the door, I found it bolted still, refusing to budge under my hand. Panic-filled anger rushed into my head, swift to flash to that emotion.

  Then, chagrined, I recalled how Nakoa had manipulated the bolt and I found the catch to undo it. Panicking over nothing at all. He’d simply given me peace and privacy. I’d slept into the afternoon, the palace quiet and almost no one about. The few I saw were in intense conversations in the open shaded courtyards, some casting me strange looks. Mostly the place seemed unusually silent, almost empty.

  I took a couple of wrong turns—the palace wound from room to room with few central hallways—but I finally found the distinctive double doors of the library.

  As with the rest of the palace, nobody seemed to be inside, though the extensive space, shelves, and cabinets could hide any number of people, not to mention the rooms beyond I hadn’t explored yet. Which I longed to do, but my thrice-cursed feet ached from the walk, so I hobbled to my table, no doubt looking like a person mincing as quickly as possible over hot sand, and gratefully plopped myself in the chair. All of the notes, books, and maps remained exactly as I’d left them—a rare luxury for me, who’d always been a person of questionable status, forever acceding to the priorities of others.

  Apparently it was good to be queen.

  To test my memory—and to immerse myself in trying to think in Nahanaun—I reread the scroll in that language, seeing if I could get through it without cross-checking to Dasnarian. It would be a tremendous relief to get past childlike pidgin talk with Nakoa, even if we’d still have a gulf of understanding to bridge from there. One step at a time.


  It posed a challenge, but I made myself wade through it, sounding the tones and pitches in my head, going straight through without obsessing over the words I couldn’t parse. Next I’d try writing it out in Common Tongue, which would really pin down the holes in my understanding.

  “My queen!”

  I jumped like a cat coming across a snake, squeaking out a cry that had Akamai’s eyes going wide with alarm, sending him into a deep bow and a torrent of apologetic Nahanaun that coursed far too fast for me to follow.

  “Akamai—speak more slowly or in Dasnarian, please.”

  He fluttered his hands in dismay. Then, with a deep breath and obvious effort, he folded his hands. “Queen Dafne Nakoa KauPo—are you hurt? I am so sorry!”

  No sorry, Dafne. Why that silly, stilted phrase made me want to smile, I wasn’t sure. “It’s happy good,” I replied in Nahanaun. The more practice, the better, even if Dasnarian would be easier. “You, ah, were sudden.”

  “I surprised you,” he offered, seeming relieved, and I mentally noted that very useful word. “I did not expect you here on this unhappy day.”

  A curl of dread wormed in my stomach. “Why unhappy?”

  His face crumpled in dismay, his interwoven fingers wringing each other. “You don’t know?”

  “I only awoke this now.”

  “Oh.” His eyes slid to the side. “Perhaps it is not correct that I—”

  “Akamai . . .” Giving up on practice, as the subject was too important, I switched to Dasnarian. “Please tell me what is going on. I need to know and you are probably my only friend here. If you won’t tell me, who will?”

  He paled and took a step back. “I am not your friend!”

  The rejection stung a surprising amount. I’d just assumed, since Akamai seemed so familiar to me, with our shared perspective and love of books and caring for them. “I apologize,” I said, somewhat stiffly, not in small part due to the Dasnarian form of apology being a particularly unyielding, unapologetic thing to speak.