by Cate Rowan
Because Naaz’s cruelties are wrapped in kindness. He shifted his gaze away from Varene, his beautiful savior and the symbol of his damnation, and shrugged. “Is there any news?”
“Not yet. No one has awakened. But I…I just wanted to see you.”
Silence tightened the air between them, and then he spoke. “Are you sure you should be here?”
She stilled like a deer deciding whether to take flight. “Why?”
Primal, searing lust for her surged through him and filled his gaze.
A ravenous spark rose in hers.
He took a step toward her. “Why have you come?”
“I had a dream last night, so I…” She closed her eyes, shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Nor do we know yet whether my people, my family, will be spared.”
Varene sensed his thoughts withdrawing as his gaze shifted to a dagger bracketed on the wall above his prayer rug. He stared at it, seemingly absorbed. Puzzled, she crossed the room to see it better, and her breath caught when she spied the sparking gems crusting the hilt. She stopped a few feet away, not daring to be nearer to him.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“And deadly.” Facing half-away, he lifted it reverently from the brackets. A shaft of morning sunlight glinted at the edge of the blade.
She recalled Prince Burhan’s words the night before, when he’d spoken the titles of his father. “Is that the dagger of Ayaaz?”
Kuramos nodded as he eyed the steel. “My grandfather’s grandfather, times four. It is five thousand years old, and has seen its share of rituals. And blood. Mine, most recently.”
She blinked. “Yours?”
His palm curled around the hilt as if it had been custom-made for him, an extension of his own hand. He turned the blade’s tip inward, toward his chest, and pricked himself just below the heart.
“Kuramos, what are you doing?” She eyed him warily.
He smiled down at the blade. “‘Kuramos’? Don’t you mean, ‘O Lord’?” A leaden undertone strained his teasing words.
The incongruity sent her pulse thudding. “What are you doing?”
A breath shuddered out of him. “It was but two days ago that I stood here with this dagger, ready to take my own life. Ready to sacrifice my blood for theirs.” He twisted the blade as if testing it. “I am still willing.”
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, gaping at his intent profile. “How could injuring yourself possibly help them?”
“Life is the easy choice. Perhaps the cowardly one.” A grimace curved his lips as he stared down at the blade and flexed his palm again.
“Why?” She strangled the word from her clenched throat.
His solemn gaze slid down the dagger to its incising point. “There is a curse on me and mine.”
She eased closer, every muscle tensed. “What are you talking about?”
“Varene,” he whispered, and his tone made her shiver. “Have you ever drawn the anger of the gods?”
She swallowed and took another cautious step toward him. “I don’t know. In Teganne, it’s not… We have different beliefs, I think, than yours.” His blood welled at the knifepoint; her own chest ached as if the dagger had cut her.
His gaze caught hers. “You’ve done nothing you’ve regretted?”
“Of course I have. Things I’ve said, or haven’t. Mistakes I’ve made. Many of them.” In an instant, the ring on her pinky felt hot and heavy. “But in Teganne, we speak of Fate, Mother Fate, as a benign force. I don’t…” She eyed his hand on the dagger. “I don’t think she works in this way.”
“Seeking vengeance?”
“Wanting death in trade for life! You honestly think your goddess seeks revenge on you, and will kill your loved ones so you’ll yield?”
The corner of his lip twitched up. “A quaint way of putting it.”
“If you believe that, then why,” she asked, pulse jumping in her throat, “did you decide, two days ago, that suicide was the wrong choice?”
“Ah.” His gaze returned to the blade. “You want me to think it’s the wrong choice now, too.” His fingers, long and wickedly masculine, drummed the handle of the knife. “But does it matter if I die, Royal Healer?”
Her eyes widened. “Under all the heavens, yes! I fight to save lives, not to see them end. I strive against death. Your life matters, Great Sultan of Kad.” She stepped toward him, her fingers raised and gently open. “But ask me that question again. And this time, Kuramos—say my name.”
She moved closer, until the blade was all that separated them. She touched the fingers of his right hand—the whitened knuckles that held his own death. Their heat warmed her own.
His breath caressed her cheeks, and his eyes, a vast and unfathomable ocean, locked with hers. “Varene na Seryn. Varene. Does it matter if I die?”
“Yes. It matters to me. You matter to me.” She pulled the dagger away from his chest, toward her, then slid her fingers around his. She tugged at them, softly prying, loosening his grip. One by one, his digits slid from the hilt until the blade lay in her own palms, and his hands cupped hers.
They stayed together like that, toe to toe, breathing each other’s scents, until at last she withdrew and replaced the dagger in its brackets, staring at it. The man beside her would sacrifice himself for those he loved, but the wounds he bore were deeper than flesh or bone. They called out to her to heal him.
His muscular, untamed proximity seared into her mind. If she turned now, she could reach up, slide her lips over his, feel the delicious weight of his hands roving her body, stroking her skin…
Married to six women.
She stepped away, toward the light streaming from a waist-high arch overlooking the garden, and sought a conversation to shield herself. “Through years of caring for patients, I have developed immunities from many illnesses—a crucial thing, because I can’t use my kyrra to heal without touching those who ail. But you—you’ve spent hours at your family’s bedsides, and even those of your most menial servants. You held their hands, breathed their air. You didn’t know the illness or how it spread, yet you risked your own life to do these things, even as others refused. Why?”
He moved beside her to the arch and his fingers gripped the ledge. “What kind of sultan would I be if I did not? Should I let my servants, my children, my wives suffer something I’m not willing to risk myself?” He shook his head. “Besides, if I am doomed by Naaz’s curse, She knows that the greatest torment She could inflict would be to kill my family while I remain hale—damned to watch Her snatch them from me, one by helpless one.”
Varene trembled, and her finger grew cold within the ring of her own folly. Even the hot morning sun of Kad could do little against the chill. “This curse… What did you do to anger your goddess so much that you deserve to die for it?”
Two slow breaths later, he left her side and began to pace. “That’s not your concern.”
She pivoted to face him. “I came to Kad to heal people you think cursed. Yesterday I was nearly murdered trying to help them. It is my concern.”
“You need only ascertain whether there is a curse on your patients. The why of such a curse is mine to know and to bear.” For an instant, his broad shoulders seemed to bow under the burden. “Telling you would do nothing, save temporarily salve my conscience—and perhaps leave you in danger.”
She squeezed her eyes shut in frustration. “But how do you even know your death would appease your goddess? You have no proof!”
“Only circumstances—but meaningful ones. A fatal sickness strikes here and nowhere else. My trusted Royal Physician dies shortly after it begins—leaving the ill in the care of a young assistant and a cluster of over-proud and under-talented physicians from the city. And, of course, there is my guilt.” He stopped, eyelids hooded, and looked at her. “Only two others knew, Varene. Now only one is left.”
She stood silent for a moment. Who else was privy to the sultan’s secret? Was it Rajvi, his Sha’L
ai? Surely it wouldn’t be Sulya…would it? But… ‘Now only one is left.’ “The second person who knew—they died of this illness?”
“Dabir. The Grand Vizir of Kad.” Kuramos resumed his pacing. “He was also my mentor, and my friend.”
She lowered her gaze. “I noticed yesterday that one of those who had passed had been very dear to you.”
“I was closer to him than to my own father. Dabir even called me his Zyru.” He shrugged, and the gesture somehow conveyed a heartfelt grief. “It means ‘beloved son’.”
“And you watched him pass away.” Which certainly fit the dictates of the supposed curse. She imagined the proud Kuramos at his mentor’s bedside, holding an anguished and helpless vigil.
“I watched him die,” he said, staring at a dark-stained section of the wall. Then he pivoted away, hands clasped behind his back. “Answer this, Varene. If the illness is not a curse, then why did it strike my household, my family? Why is it isolated here in my palace?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Doesn’t it? For an illness as deadly as this to show up without warning, untraceable? Without any known source?”
“There’s always a source, a reason. But only sometimes do we have the means to discover it.” She frowned. “Did any of the ill travel away from the palace and the city recently?”
“None of my family. Of the others in the household, it can be checked, but I very much doubt it. Besides, there has been no word of an illness like this anywhere in the realm. It struck here. In my halls, among my people.” He swerved and strode toward her, his widened gaze revealing his fears. “And even if you are able to cure them, how can I be sure this foulness will not recur? How can I keep my family safe? If I’m right about the curse, then why wouldn’t the sickness reappear, more vicious and fatal—”
She held up a hand, halting him three feet away. “Often when a person survives an illness, they’ll be less likely to contract it again—so that, at least, is good. As for the rest…I understand your worry, and I’ll try to find out the origin of the malady. I want you and your family to feel safe when I go home.”
When I go home…
Healer and sultan stared at each other for a wild, hungry moment.
Varene’s mind burst with things to say, but her lips stayed mute. Just as she was about to stammer something, anything to break the moment, Kuramos moved toward her again. He stalked her slowly, his gaze as a lion’s on its prey. “Varene, what happened at the market yesterday?”
“To start the riot? We did nothing—”
“Afterward. When I pulled you from the fire. When we stood together, you and I.”
He would make her give voice to her shameful wanting? She spun and stared out the window. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t you?” He moved beside her, so close that his body warmed hers and every nerve hummed with his nearness.
His breath feathered over her ear, and he reached up and stroked a finger along her jawline. Her breath hitched.
Leave me alone, she wanted to moan. She knew she should step away, flee the room…but her traitorous legs wouldn’t shift. They melted to jelly at the touch of his fingertips on her nape, stroking soft circles on the skin exposed by her ponytail. As his large hands skimmed slowly down her back and along the sidelaces of her gown, her back arched in pleasure. His hot breath grazed her neck, and she closed her eyes and tilted her head, baring her skin to his lips, his lion’s bite…
But long ago, she’d chosen to wear her ring—Tharkin’s ring—to remind herself of her mistakes; of what would happen if she let a married man’s whispered words and caressing hands overcome her good sense. They will always choose their own over you, Varene.
No matter the differences between Kuramos and the despicable Tharkin. No matter that Kuramos was a deeply honorable man, a protector to his core, someone who would never allow others to be slaughtered just to ransom his own hide. No matter.
Like Tharkin, he would always choose them over her. His wives, his children…and himself. If there were a choice to be made, he would leave her and hers to rot.
It was the nature of married men. Perhaps of men in general.
She spun around and braced her hands on his chest. “We mustn’t. I won’t.”
His hands stilled in confusion and his brow furrowed, but before he could answer, she strode away.
Kuramos stared after her vanishing form and groaned. His passion, and hers in response, had led him to forget himself!
Naaz, is this part of your curse too?
It was one thing to rely on Varene’s skills, to hope that she could help his children, wives, and servants to recover and live—and another to want her so deeply that his loins stirred when he gazed into her eyes. Another thing entirely to want her in his bed, over him and under him, fast and often, as Rajvi had so delightfully put it.
He should be ashamed to lust for a heathen, a woman who shared neither his realm nor his religion nor noble blood, but lust for her, he did.
In the wake of her departure his quarters felt empty, an important presence missing. Varene’s fragrance of jasmine and herbs faded by the moment. The herbs, the blessed herbs that might cure his loved ones, the cursed herbs Varene had risked her life to find for them. And now he was staring out the half-open doorway after her like a rutting stag.
Had Dabir truly known this would happen? He seemed to have foretold it. “She will come…It won’t be easy…Will you bend, or will she?” Even the wise Rajvi had guessed Kuramos’s mind before he’d known it himself. More of Naaz’s curse, it must be—more torture for him, an exquisite torture indeed.
And yet he could not feel ashamed.
Varene was a lovely woman in the heart as well as the body, and her repressive Tegannese clothing hid a passionate and sensual nature; bonded with them were a strong mind and a sizable share of stubborn will.
But there was something even more about her. He sensed a sorrow in her; a sadness he wanted to quench, to vanquish, to scatter and defeat, so the smile that enchanted him would linger on her lips.
Once all this was over…if, in fact, the illness would ever be over…would it be so terrible to bed her?
She lusted for him, too. She’d proven it in her movements in the market, and this morning in her bared neck and ardent responses that had matched and challenged his own. And sultans had long held the right to spread their favors where they would.
But as for Dabir’s question, the sultan of Kad would never bend.
Kuramos stared around the vast, empty room. Varene was still an infidel, one who would soon go home to Teganne, to her life there as the Royal Healer…and life would continue as usual here. If Naaz the Vengeful, the Merciful, allowed such grace to him.
He turned and leaned on the window ledge. The parting would be inevitable, and the world would move on as it had for decades upon lonely decades here in the palace of the Great Sultan of Kad.
Two halls away from the sultan’s door, Varene finally slowed down. She sagged against a cool white wall and tucked the stray locks of her ponytail behind her ears, remembering as she did the sensual stroke of Kuramos’s fingers on her nape. She swallowed hard and set herself to counting the number of tiles in the mosaic cityscape on the opposite wall. When her breathing slowed, she proceeded toward the Infirmary at a dignified pace.
When she reached the statue of Naaz above the door, Sohad burst from the exit and nearly smacked into her. “Healer! Priya and I have been looking for you.”
Guiltily, she realized the sultan’s quarters didn’t seem a likely place for her to be. “I was just—”
Before she could finish, he grabbed her sleeve and tugged her toward the other end of the hall. “Come. Priya says Prince Tahir is awake!”
“Tahir? How is he?” She clamped his hand.
“I haven’t seen him, I tried to find you first—”
“Get the sultan. He’s in his quarters!” And don’t ask me why I
know.
“I will. We’ll meet you in the prince’s rooms.”
She sped through the halls and the harem courtyard to Tahir’s chambers.
To her surprise, Kuramos and Sohad pounded into the courtyard from the opposite direction, Kuramos in the lead, swift as a falcon. As the three of them raced down Tahir’s hall together, Varene and Kuramos exchanged a wide-eyed look fusing hope and dread. Please, Varene prayed to whatever entity might be listening. Please let Tahir survive.
Kuramos entered the room first, just in time for Varene to view the joyful smile Tahir bestowed on his father. Sulya sat at Tahir’s side, tears streaking her beaming face.
“Zyru!” Kuramos infused the word with more love than Varene had thought possible. He knelt at the bedside and reached for his son’s hands. “Are you well, my little lion?”
“Yes, Abha!” Tahir, sitting up, nodded several times in his enthusiasm.
The knot in Varene’s chest dissolved in a flood of relief.
Kuramos leaned down and touched his forehead to his son’s with a whisper: “Tahir, my heart is too small for this much joy.”
Varene’s eyes welled at his words. Tears also rolled from Sulya’s jade eyes and down her porcelain cheeks. She slid her manicured hands over her husband’s and squeezed.
Still by the door, Varene curled her fingers into her palms. Watching the beautiful Sulya touch her husband so freely made Varene blush.
A hangnail snagged Varene’s palm. Her skin had grown dry from all her hand-washing, and certainly proved she was no pampered lady. Which is fine, she thought. My life’s work is to mend bodies and heal. Even as she rubbed the hangnail, she gazed at Sulya’s flawless fingers and felt herself substandard. Then she blushed deeper at her searing jealousy of Kuramos’s wife.
The Healer knew she should examine Tahir before everyone’s hopes soared, but was reluctant to disturb the family’s bonding, especially after her realization. Not knowing what else to do, she fidgeted by the doorway and finally coughed. “May I, O Lord?” she murmured, deliberately using the formal salutation.
