by Jaide Fox
The only conclusion anyone could draw from such an action would be that she was searching for something to steal, or more interested in Talin than she had any desire for anyone to think.
Moving to the door that led into the corridor, she put her ear against it, listening. In the distance, she could hear the murmur of voices, but she couldn’t hear well enough to tell what was being said.
Tiring of that fairly rapidly, she left the door and paced the room a while and finally returned to the chair.
She wasn’t just scared anymore, she realized. In fact, at the moment, she wasn’t fearful at all.
She was bored.
Sighing, she glanced around the room dully.
She missed her ladies. They had been chosen to serve her and she was not supposed to encourage them to treat her as an equal rather than their superior, but she had come to think of Lady Leesa and Lady Beatrice as friends and companions. They had filled the dark well of loneliness that had seemed an almost constant companion throughout her childhood and banished the sense of isolation she’d felt from the rest of the world with their talk of their own lives. Even the other maids, although she had not felt the same sense of closeness, had livened her days with their idle chatter.
The quiet that surrounded her now was suffocating.
She missed her apartment--all the things she’d taken for granted, even the tasks she’d once dreaded and found boring.
She missed her garden even more.
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t her garden. Her father had had it designed and built for her mother, who had been from a land warmer than their own and had missed the garden of her childhood home. When she’d come of marriageable age, she had inherited her mother’s apartments, and her mother’s garden--which had been off limits to her as a child and which had gone to seed after her mother’s death.
She had filled much of her days tending the plants and coaxing them to flourish once more, and a good part of her leisure there as well, working upon some needlework project or another and listening to her ladies talk about their homes, and their beaux.
She was never going to see her home again, or her garden, she realized with a shock of dismay.
She would’ve had to leave it anyway, when she was wed, but she would have been able to visit at least occasionally.
She would not be welcome there now. Her father would disown her. She’d sunk so low, her own people would probably spit on her.
Unwilling to go there, Aliya returned her thoughts to her garden, thinking back to what it had looked like when she’d first taken it as her own.
It occurred to her after a moment that, at first, she’d been unsettled by the fact that the garden was on a rooftop. It had seemed so very high that she couldn’t bring herself to go near the low wall that surrounded it without feeling as if she was going to plunge to her death.
She’d forgotten that.
Over time, she’d grown so accustomed to the height. She’d ceased to find it unnerving at all!
It was a small step from that thought to wondering if she could grow accustomed to the terrifying height of Talin’s castle.
Chapter Seven
Aliya turned to stare at the thin beams of light pouring through the shutters for several moments. Girding herself, she stood after a moment and moved to window. Her belly tightened before she’d even reached it and for several moments she paused, wondering if it was even a worthwhile idea.
She should try, she finally decided. Perhaps, even if she did grow more accustomed, it would mean nothing more than that she wasn’t so on edge about the distance to the ground, but in the back of her mind she knew that as long as she was terrified of the height, she couldn’t even search to see if there was a way to escape.
It seemed doubtful there would be. But wasn’t some chance better than none?
Wasn’t hope better than hopelessness?
Inching a little closer, she finally leaned toward the crack where the two planks of the shutter didn’t completely meet and peered through it. Instantly, as her vision focused, her belly did a free fall and it felt as if her heart wasn’t far behind it. Her chest felt as if it was wedged in a vise that was slowly tightening and squeezing the air from her lungs.
“They’re bolted.”
Aliya jerked all over at the abrupt intrusion having been so focused on her fear of the view beyond the window she hadn’t even heard the door open. Sucking in a sharp inhalation of air, she whirled toward the sound, one hand lifting instinctively to the wooden panel to balance her.
A wave of dizziness went through her at the sudden movement.
Talin frowned, studying her with a mixture of anger and confusion. He could see she wasn’t merely startled, however. She was shivering as if she was freezing.
There was something about her expression and the way she glanced back at the window and then moved away from it that gave him pause. After a moment, he crossed the room and stood where she had moments before, staring through the small crevice.
He could see nothing. He knew his own sight was far better than hers, so it could not be anything beyond his view that had disturbed her. Pulling away from the window, he turned to study her for several moments and finally glanced at the view again. Enlightenment dawned and yet he could hardly credit it.
“You are afraid of the height?”
Aliya stared at him mutely for several moments, but she could think of no reason to deny it. “I can not fly,” she said stiffly. “I have never been so high above the world.”
Some of the tension eased from Talin at that comment, and the roiling, sick anger that had been eating at him eased slightly.
He was almost tempted to smile. One look at her face was enough to assure him that would be poorly received, but he was relieved beyond measure that she had not, apparently, reserved that look of sheer horror for him. Frowning, he thought back over it and realized that she had hardly even glanced at him before when she was so terrified, and she had certainly shown no compunction about fighting him when he’d brought her to the tower again.
That had been because of her fear of the view, he decided.
Perhaps not all of it, he thought wryly, remembering what she’d said to him when she had discovered the door and windows were covered. She had seemed relieved about the shutters, but no more receptive to him.
He supposed it was something, at least, that she was more afraid of the height than she was of him.
Inwardly, he sighed. He was not generally such a numbskull, or so impulsive. If he had been a man child, she would have every reason to fear and loathe him for stealing her away. The fact that he was not only made it worse, not better, for he knew the man children despised and feared those they called the unnaturals. He felt a sense of hopelessness for the situation. No matter what he did now, he could not take back the way they had begun. The best he could hope for was that she would grow accustomed and come to accept and even that was bound to be an uphill battle.
She was attracted to him, even though it was obvious she loathed herself for it. He hadn’t imagined that. As innocent as she was, she had responded to his touch readily.
Dismissing that thought abruptly when he felt the blood begin to surge through his veins, he focused on what he’d come for--a change of clothing.
At least he hadn’t been so hardheaded, and stupid, as to press her right away, though the look of her naked form had sapped much of his sense straight down to his cock. Even thinking of it now made his blood surge and his cods tighten painfully. He glanced at her full lips with an insatiable hunger, then looked away and gathered his thoughts, steeling himself against the desire to take her.
It had taken distance from her to gain that much brain function, but he had realized that it would probably make things easier between them if he gave her time--at least a few days--to get over the worst of her fear and distrust.
He wasn’t certain his patience would outlast more than a few days of being around her. She was his, regardless of how she might
feel about that now, and his knowledge of that made it very difficult for him to control the beast inside of him that was clamoring to claim her in every way.
He’d stripped before it occurred to him that, as an innocent, his nakedness might discomfit her. When he glanced at her, he saw it had.
Her eyes were wide as saucers and she’d backed away until she’d come up against the wall. Frowning, he glanced down at himself, wondering if that look denoted interest or revulsion. He could see nothing about his man body--save the paleness of it perhaps-that she might find unappealing. His body was lean and not excessively hairy. He was not scarred. His muscles were well developed, perhaps a little too much, for they bulged, forming hard knots in some places and long ropes in others, but it was a warrior’s body and she had wanted a warrior.
His man tool was flaccid. She could not be intimidated by that, although he was pleased himself to see that, even sleeping, it was a powerful looking beast and well proportioned to his body--maybe a little over large, but not freakishly so and he rather thought he preferred to err on size in that direction than the other.
After some consideration, he finally decided that she appeared more shocked than anything else--which meant that she had either never seen a naked man, or she was stunned to see he looked much like any man.
The last wasn’t a particularly pleasing thought. It was disappointing only to see that glazed look in her eyes when he would’ve preferred to see admiration and lust, but he supposed the blank look was better than horror.
Sighing, he squatted in front of the chest at the foot of the bed, found the clothes he wanted and closed the chest again. She hadn’t moved, he saw. Dropping the clothing on the bed, he headed toward the table that held the washbasin. To his surprise, Aliya slipped along the wall until she met up with the table and then turned and moved along the table, effectively blocking his access to it.
He paused in front of her, looking down at her upturned face with a mixture of desire, irritation, and amusement. The urge to tease her came out of no where. Dipping his head until his lips were no more than a hair’s breadth from hers, he murmured, “Do you mind?”
She blinked. Her lips parted ever so slightly in surprise.
His mouth went dry. He swallowed with an effort, trying to decide if she was actually offering her lips to him. Deciding finally that she wasn’t, that it was only wishful thinking on his part, he grasped her shoulders in his hands and set her to one side.
When he’d washed his face and teeth and dried himself, he glanced at her again and discovered she’d sidled down the wall in the other direction. She didn’t look frozen, however. She looked embarrassed.
Resisting the temptation to tease her any more, he returned for his clothing and dressed. He was about to leave when she stopped him.
“My ladies? You did not harm them?”
He turned to study her, frowning slightly. “You saw that I did not.”
Aliya’s brow creased. “I thought--but I was not certain. I am … very fond of them. Even if I was not, I would not want them to be hurt,” she added hastily.
His lips flattened. “I do not harm those who can not defend themselves. And, in any case, I would not have harmed them for trying to defend you.” He seemed to think it over for a moment. “I was pleased that they did. It told me much about you that I had heard was true.”
Aliya looked at him questioningly, but he didn’t elaborate. When she saw that he would go, she stopped him again.
“That … uh … the guard, Reyhan?”
“What about Reyhan?”
“Is he … is he … did he survive the whipping?”
His brows rose in surprise. “Of course. He is back at duty, but he will not soon forget the lesson.”
Aliya frowned in confusion “He was whipped?”
“Yes. I ordered it.”
“I don’t understand. You said … uh … I would not have thought he would be well enough to return to duty so soon.”
He studied her curiously. “Shall I have him come and show you the marks? It was done. No one ignores my orders with impunity.”
Aliya shifted uncomfortably. “I was angry, but I didn’t want him to die.”
“There was never any possibility of it. If you knew anything about my people, you know that. The lesson was a painful one, not a death sentence. We feel pain, just as you do, but we heal quickly--most of the time.”
Aliya nodded jerkily, finding that she was relieved. She’d meant it. As furious as she was to be treated in such a way, she would not have liked to think the man lost his life only because he had, apparently, misunderstood what he’d been told to do. She wasn’t completely certain she believed he’d even been whipped. She had heard that the unnaturals were demons, and that was why it was nigh impossible to kill one, but that seemed less likely to be the truth to her now that she had met Talin. For how could they be so very like them and not be the same?
She hesitated when he turned to go once more, but she realized she would rather know than merely wait to learn her fate and worry over it. “What will happen to me?”
He had already opened the door, but at that he closed it once more and turned to face her again. “I will take you as my concubine.”
Aliya felt a mixture of anger and fear. “Why? Why would you dishonor me?”
“I have not. I have not threatened to. You will be my concubine. That is a position of honor, second only to the queen.”
Aliya swallowed against the knot of emotion in her throat. “I am a princess. Taking me without benefit of marriage would be to dishonor me.”
“You will be my wife--my mate. It is all that I can offer to make things right. I could not make you my queen if I wanted to. My heir must be pure of blood. The council would never accept the offspring of a man child.”
“Then take me back! Take me to my father, to live among my own kind--where I can wed one of my own kind and my children will be accepted.”
“No.”
She stamped her foot angrily. “Why? Why would you do this to me? I have done nothing to you! Is it to assuage your anger over the insult you think my father gave you?”
His brows dropped ominously over his eyes and his lips tightened. “Because I want you.”
Chapter Eight
Aliya gaped at him in stunned dismay. Finally, her anger asserted itself once more. “This face? This body? What will become of me when I am no longer young and desirable to you? Will I be cast aside? Shamed? At least if I was allowed to marry among my own people I would always have the respect of my position!”
“You will have the respect of my people! It could not be otherwise, for I would not have it otherwise!”
Aliya stared at him dully, fighting the urge to shame herself by yielding to tears. He either didn’t understand, or he was willfully ignoring the truth. She would not be looked upon by his people as his ‘second’ wife, but a glorified whore, and her own people wouldn’t even consider her a king’s whore--which at least had some status, for they loathed and feared the unnaturals and would only think of her as tainted beyond redemption, the cast off unworthy of even the creatures of the underworld.
When she said nothing else, he left her to her solitude, but there was little comfort in it. The barely acknowledged hope that she’d nurtured that he had not come to her the night before because he had reconsidered was quashed. She didn’t know why he just didn’t go ahead and take his pleasure and be done with it.
Was it some sort of diabolical torture? To allow her hour upon hour, perhaps days, to dread and wait for the inevitable?
She did dread it, but she discovered that boredom was a very effective remedy for fear. Cooped up in Talin’s suite all day, she had nothing at all to keep her company beyond her own thoughts and nothing to look forward to except the maids who brought her food.
They didn’t bring her gown. Each time she asked, they gave her an excuse instead of producing it. When it grew dark, one came and lit the candles, replacing those that had b
urned completely. After the evening meal, the maids trooped in again as they had the night before and prepared a bath, readied her for bed and departed again.
By the time she’d spent the following day in much the same way, she decided that she was going to go stark raving mad if she could do nothing but await her fate. She had never given much thought to what it must be like for the condemned, but she began to think she had a fair notion.
On the third morning when she woke, she discovered that when the maids had delivered her breakfast tray, they had also brought pen and ink and parchment. She ignored it for a while, testing herself against the view beyond the window and discovering she felt just as frightened and ill each time she looked. If she stood for a very long time without moving, focusing on one spot, some of the fear seemed to lessen, but she knew she was still a very long way from growing accustomed even to looking. The thought of trying to scale the distance to the earth below boggled the mind.
When she felt that she had endured as much ‘growing accustomed’ as she could bear, she moved away from that window. After a little thought, she moved on to another, and then another, wondering if there was anything she might see in any direction that would give her some hope.
She found that two of the windows looked down upon a flattened area in the center of the castle walls. Men, or what looked like men but what she knew must be unnaturals, were gathered there. Most were lined along the edges of the clearing, watching, but perhaps a dozen had been paired off and were exercising their skills with swords.
Was it merely practice, she wondered? Or were they drilling for war?
She was inclined to dismiss the last. Talin had said her father was making preparations for war, and she knew that he must be determined to rescue her. But she also knew, even if her father didn’t, that he could not even reach the kingdom of the golden falcons, let alone wage war against them.
