by Cate Rowan
It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate his physical protection. Or the way his muscular body felt, mere inches behind her, swaying in easy rhythm with the fydd’s walk. Or the way his bulging arms encircled her, keeping a polite distance from her skin as he held the reins and guided their mount back toward the palace gates.
What she resented was the hum in her body at his nearness. He was arrogant. Overbearing. Dictatorial. The sovereign of a realm that despised her own. And he was married to six women.
Varene was barely past the burial of a man she’d loved. Like Kuramos, Findar would have protected her with every fiber of his being, she had no doubt—but he would never have put her life at risk in the first place. Findar had not been the kind to encourage hatred of others. He’d been serene. Gentle.
The wreckage they passed on the way out of the market—overturned carts, produce scattered in the dirt, the shocked hush—all that had happened stemmed from Kuramos’s long-standing consent, his sanction of contempt for outsiders.
Yet despite it…despite everything…she felt the hum of awareness. She tingled with it, just under the surface, a tuneless purr threatening to ascend into an aria. And all she wanted was to quash it, choke it off, hammer it into blessed silence.
Somewhere behind them, Priya had been given a ride back, too. Sohad had refused the same offer, choosing instead to walk beside Priya’s fydd. Varene imagined what looks might be passing between the handmaiden and the physician’s assistant in the smoky ashes of the day.
As riders dismounted in the forecourt, Kuramos said nothing, just gestured to the three of them to follow him into the palace. The winding corridors that had once been alien now enveloped Varene with thick walls, with safety from those who would harm her.
They passed the infirmary and continued on to a grand office overlooking the main courtyard. A short stack of ledgers lay on the mahogany desk.
The sultan stepped to the windows, hands clasped behind his back. Dusk had settled over the roofs and the courtyard, but when he pivoted toward the three who waited, the fire of the room’s torches flickered in his eyes. “I promise each of you that those who started the riot will be found and punished. My Captain of the Guard is a superb hunter.”
Then he stared at Varene with an intensity that made her shiver. Kuramos is a hunter, too.
He turned to Sohad and Priya. “Go now, both of you. I will speak with the Royal Healer.”
Varene shared a quick look with her two assistants and set the sugarwort carefully on the floor beside her. “Thank you,” she told her companions. “I…” The upturned hand she lifted toward them fell away again. There was too much to say, and this was not the time. “Please put a large kettle of water on the fire and locate three mortars and pestles. I’ll join you in a moment.”
Sohad and Priya both bowed low to her, and then to their sultan. They walked out together, and as they passed into the hall, Varene saw them glance at each other shyly.
She kept her gaze on the door, knowing she was now alone with him. A man who, with an embrace she’d never expected, had set her nerves dancing beneath her skin. She quavered under her calm facade, all too aware of his presence behind her.
She turned to face him, but as she did, her robe, now much the worse for wear, swayed against her legs. She glanced down at the wide slit cut from the garment by Kuramos’s scimitar, then tugged at the toggles of the robe, to remove it and its memories. Flustered, she said the first thing that came to her mind. “I owe Rajvi now.”
“Rajvi?” His brow furrowed. Clearly the Sha’Lai was not the topic he’d expected to discuss.
Varene stopped, the garment hanging open over her own Tegannese dress, and looked at him. “This is her robe. Or was. I don’t suppose she’ll want it back like this.”
He gestured dismissively. “I’ll have a new one made for her. A thousand new ones. The robe is not what matters.”
“What does?” she asked, before she could think the question through.
Their eyes locked.
She twisted away from his gaze and crossed from the center of the room toward the safer haven of the walls. The étagère she neared teemed with lions—statues, sculptures and effigies, striding and pouncing, fearless and valiant.
The lion, the predator.
The likenesses mocked her; even if she left the room, she could not escape the one who hunted. But she feared something far worse: that she had become the hunter.
Married, Varene. He’s already married. Numerously.
As she stared at the lions in all their glory, Kuramos stalked toward her. With her senses awakened, she heard his steps, felt the vibrations on the floor. She scented a shift in the winds of Kad.
The lion stopped, held still. Watched her.
The winds swirled, jumbled, fell to earth.
His voice growled out from five feet behind her. “What possessed you to go to the market alone, without guards?”
She reached forward, touched one of the lions. It was a golden one with diamond, snarling teeth. “I wasn’t alone. Sohad and Priya were with me.”
Kuramos snorted. “Much good they did you.”
She turned and stared at him. “They kept their heads in the midst of a mêlée, which is more than should be asked of anyone.”
“Exactly my point. They shouldn’t have been there, you shouldn’t have been there, without sufficient protection.”
She raised her chin to him. “I just needed the sugarwort. It should have been a simple trip.”
“But it wasn’t.” His scowl deepened.
“No one told me we’d need guards—not Priya, Gunjan, Sohad, Hamar who gave Sohad the money—”
“Well, they should have! I should have, by the Goddess’s mercy! But you simply raced off, heedless of propriety or discretion—”
She stepped toward him, indignant. “I wore a veil, I covered my gown—”
“Then how did they know, Varene? How did they know who you were?”
She swallowed. Because of the rumors I started in your throne room… “Your people fear mine so much that they’d murder me to remove the taint of magic from their midst—and you have the gall to blame me for that?” Her voice ascended with resentment. “For being attacked by a horde in the market in front of your own palace? When it was you who begged me to come here and use that very healing?” She jabbed her finger toward him. “You fostered their mood of hatred, you encouraged it, quelching magic, repressing their hope—”
“I’ve never repressed my people!” Fury reddened his face. “I’ve protected them, shielded them, brought them prosperity and pride and honor!”
“Honor? Is it honorable to attack a woman and her companions because she is a foreigner? Because she is here to help, to heal—”
His fists clenched. “Of course not! But anyone with half the mind needed to reach your position, even in Teganne, should understand caution—”
Fury blasted through her like lava. “You dare insult my realm and my intelligence, you arrogant despot?”
His face turned to rigid steel, nostrils flaring and brows furrowed. “What did you just call me?”
She shoved forward until she was mere inches from his looming form, and howled, “You! Arrogant! Despot!”
Silence cloaked the room.
A few brief seconds later, when a semblance of sense reached her overloaded brainstem, Varene realized she’d hurled mortal insults at the Great Sultan of Kad. His furious gaze grappled with hers; his ferocious scowl was just a breath away. Air surged in and out of her lungs with her ire. She noticed the rapid rise and fall of her breasts, tightly molded under the Tegannese gown and thrust forward by her belligerent stance, and the instant that he, too, noticed them. His gaze shot back to her own, then lingered on her lips.
Rather than the rage she’d expected, the royal bellow that might have blown her back against the wall, a mind-numbingly sexy smile curled the corners of his sensual mouth.
Her heart paused in her chest, then bounced twice and
restarted.
To shatter his smile’s mesmerizing hold, she yanked her gaze away, up—where it landed instead on his sea-green eyes.
Oh, Mother Fate. Varene wanted to drown in that gaze, a willing martyr to passion. It was a sensation she hadn’t felt in years, in decades. Long before Findar. Before Teganne. Not since…
She jerked herself backward, away from his lips, that stare. She wheeled around and started for the door.
He advanced. Every fiber of her body heard the rustle of his kaftan, his footfalls on the rug. Felt him move up behind her, his breath wafting over her veilless neck… “Varene—”
“I must go,” she breathed, stumbling forward. “I—I have patients to see.” She refused to look back at him. “Excuse me. O Lord.” The honorific didn’t stick in her throat this time. She meant it to distance them. To protect herself.
She swept the bag of precious herbs into her arms and fled the room.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Varene threw herself into the process and the final herbal preparations went quickly. She and her two assistants broke the sugarwort twigs into pieces and crushed them with pestles, then added them to hot water. While the pot hung on the hearth to simmer, Varene crossed her arms and stared at it moodily while Priya and Sohad cleaned up the table and made small talk about the palace gardens. No one seemed to want to discuss the riot, least of all Varene.
She didn’t even want to think about it, or the mess she was making of her time in Kad. She focused as best she could on the sugarwort, on her hopes for her patients, but her mind ricocheted from one painful thought to another.
Death had bested Varene too often. Today’s mob had nearly gotten the three of them killed, and she knew others’ lives were likely to end once Buld found them. Findar’s soul had fled his body before Varene could even reach him, the blood from his knife wound trickling between the cobbles of a dusty side street. And here in Kad, six of the palace’s ill had succumbed to their malady before Varene had come and had a chance to help. She recalled the image of Naaz above the Infirmary door and curled her lip in distaste. The Kaddite goddess of death was all too active.
Narrowing her eyes, the Healer glared at the steaming pot. This time, Varene would win. Ten people’s lives spun beneath death’s fingers. She would not surrender them.
Others were counting on her, too—Sulya, for her son; the frightened Mishka, daughter of the ailing sultana Maitri; the families and friends of every dying patient. And Kuramos—ruler, husband, and father, connected to each and every one of the sick, even the swinekeeps. Sohad had told Varene of the sultan’s visits to them, and that even as ill as they were, their lips held amazed smiles for hours after.
At the memory of the sultan, she got up and paced the room, wishing she could leave the thought of him behind.
When the pot had lost a third of its water, they strained the rest through cheesecloth, removing the woody chunks. Varene added two jars of honey to make the fragrant but bitter broth more palatable. As she stirred them in, she noted Sohad and Priya’s seemingly casual touches—the brush of a finger across an arm, a mutual gaze held just a little too long, how they stood close to each other even when their eyes looked away. Varene gritted her teeth and tried not to notice. It only reminded her of the man she couldn’t have and shouldn’t want.
She wasn’t sure why she led her assistants to Prince Tahir’s room first. Perhaps it was because he’d been the first patient she’d seen in Kad. Or because he was the youngest, with so much of his life still to come, or that his solemn, self-possessed demeanor had touched her.
Or maybe, she admitted as they crossed through the courtyard garden, it was because his father loved him so.
At the prince’s bedside, his mother stood a possessive watch. When they knocked and entered, Sulya splayed her hand over her son. “What is that!” She pointed in revulsion at the maroon broth in the pot Sohad carried.
Varene sighed, almost regretting her decision to begin here. “A remedy that I hope will aid your son.”
“You hope? You still don’t know?”
“I hope,” Varene answered simply. She spooned a portion of the decoction into a silver bowl. Sulya’s nostrils flared as she stared at the broth. Before she realized it, Varene had tightened her hold on the bowl. The bowl and pot held all of the hard-won decoction. By Fate, would Sulya try something stupid? Was Kuramos nearby to calm his wife?
Sulya swallowed hard, then backed away from the boy. “Do your best, Healer. Please.”
Astonished, Varene held the mother’s gaze and nodded with as much certainty as she could. “Always. You have my word.”
Sulya retreated against the wall to watch.
The boy was barely awake, his face pale as moonlight, the purple stains under his eyes grown deeper. Varene handed the bowl to Priya and settled beside him at the edge of the bed. “Prince Tahir, I’ve made something for you. A broth filled with things to help heal you, to make you well again. Sohad and Priya and I made it with our own hands. Will you drink it?”
Tahir’s fern-green eyes blinked once, slowly, and he nodded his assent.
Varene lifted his torso from the pillows, swiftly propping more cushions behind his back to help him sit. His head lolled on his neck, but she caught it in the crook of her arm and gestured to Priya. The handmaiden brought the bowl near Tahir’s lips and slipped the spoon into Varene’s hand.
The prince opened his mouth and let Varene tip the spoon into it. The honey could only do so much to mask the bark’s bitter strength, and he grimaced through the swallow, then leaned back to stare up at her in protest.
Varene smiled. “Finish this bowl and you’ll be done. Then I’ll let you sleep, I promise. Would you like that? A long sleep, one that will let your throat cool and give you sweet dreams?”
“Must the dreams be sweet?” He opened his mouth and took another spoonful.
“I suppose not,” Varene said with mock seriousness. “You can have any kind you like.” She smiled at Sulya, but the sultana’s pinched gaze clung to her son.
Varene looked down at him. “What kind of dreams would you prefer?”
Tahir’s eyes rolled skyward in thought. “Fighting dreams.”
She pursed her lips and nodded. “With armies, and such.”
“Yes. I’ll ride a stallion across the plains, leading the warriors of Kad into battle…” He looked up at her as if seeking approval.
Battle. Someday, this son of Kuramos might even lead his warriors against her own Teganne.
But that was for the future and for Mother Fate to decide. “Then fighting dreams are what you shall have. If this would please your mother, as well.”
Sulya’s gaze flicked to meet hers, almost devoid of expression. Beneath it, Varene read layers of agonized control. “Yes,” Sulya said. “That would please me. Fight well, my leopard.”
Tahir grasped the bowl in two weak, small hands and drained the rest. Then he lay back against his pillows as if resolute to stride into combat.
Varene eased the extra pillows out from under him so that he lay flat once more. “What color will your fydd be?”
“Golden, like the sun. Like Naaz.”
A noise at the doorway made Varene swivel.
Tahir’s father stood at the threshold. He gazed down upon his youngest with his noble heart and all his love in his eyes. “I will buy that stallion for you, little lion. I will find the fastest stallion in all the lands for you, and you will ride him under Naaz’s glory.”
A smile grew on the boy’s tiny mouth. “Then I’m ready, Father.” He closed his eyes.
When Varene saw the look of hope and fear Kuramos shared with his wife, she felt like an intruder in their intimacy. A stab of astonishing jealousy shook her.
As the sultan strode to the foot of the bed, Varene bit her lip and forced herself to focus. This would be no ordinary sleep she’d create for Tahir, but a trance infused with the power of her calling and the strength of her kyrra. His life depended on it—and cl
early, so did the lives of his parents.
She touched the boy’s temples. “Think about that stallion of yours, Prince Tahir. What he feels like as you ride him across Kad, thundering faster and faster…”
She called to the power within her and encircled Tahir’s consciousness, walling it off from the outside world, cushioning it with clouds of sleep and rest. Into that cushion she sent her healing, all her wishes for the boy’s recovery, all the dreams of a long, full life ahead of him, one of discoveries, and joys, and sweet, true love. Part of her mind remained present to the rhythm of his lungs and his heart, and another soared around him, wrapping him close with her kyrra.
When his breath finally slowed into slumber, Varene released the sigh coiled deep in her gut. She opened her eyes and they lit upon Kuramos, who was looking back at her.
“Thank you.” His pensive gaze renewed the hum deep in her soul.
Behind her, Sulya pushed herself off the wall. The bells at her ankles jangled a warning.
Varene turned away and picked up the empty bowl from the nightstand. “You’re welcome. He should sleep through the night, perhaps until midday or so tomorrow. I must go to the other patients now.” She motioned for Sohad and Priya to follow her out the open door.
Behind her, Sulya’s cacophony of bells sped toward Varene. The Healer spun around, preparing for fight or flight—but when she raised her wrist in uncertain defense, Sulya only slid a hand around it and gave it a gentle squeeze. No words left the mother’s mouth, but gratitude—and worry—suffused her exquisite face.
Soon Varene had spooned the decoction into each waiting mouth. In total, sixteen Kaddites had contracted the illness; ten remained, all of them depending on her skills.
Varene would be sorely pressed if many more fell ill, since there wasn’t much of the herbal treatment left. She and Sohad chilled the rest for storage, but the power of the simmered sugarwort would fade. Even so, she doubted others would sicken. No one else had fallen ill since she’d arrived, and she felt more certain that the illness, though perilous, did not spread from person to person. She still needed to discover how it did spread, but her patients would be the best resource for those answers, and they were all now deep in their healing trances.
