by Cate Rowan
She moved to rise, but the prisoner raised his head and looked at her. Wrinkles formed across his forehead, and a bead of sweat rolled between his brows and down the bridge of his crooked nose. “Thank you.”
She held still for a moment and their gazes locked. “You are welcome,” she said at last. Sohad helped her to her feet and she stepped away, toward Kuramos, sitting tall upon his throne.
“Royal Healer Varene,” the sultan rumbled, “have you done as you wished?”
“I have.”
But instead of moving to the sidelines, she stayed in place.
“Is there something else?” The sultan steepled his fingers.
“I have another request to ask of you.”
A pause filled the space between them. “You may ask,” he said.
She gave a minute dip of her head to acknowledge his warning, but she couldn’t stop here. Not now.
“Great Sultan…You have ordered these men found on my behalf. For my sake, for your loyal servants, Sohad and Priya, who sought to protect me and nearly died for it, and for those in your palace whom we saved. Your captain,” and she nodded slowly at Buld, “did as you wished, well and swiftly. I thank you both for the justice you’ve given us.” She turned to the prisoners. Filthy, bruised, with days-old stubble shading their skin, and with their lives in ruin. Maybe they repented what they’d done, and maybe they didn’t. “They’re here now, and subject to your will, and your mercy. Is it possible, O Lord, that death is not the only suitable punishment for their crime?”
“The punishment for attempted murder is death. They would have slain the three of you. A gruesome, slow, and very painful demise, as I recall.”
She recalled it too, and never would she forget the desperate intensity of his eyes as he cut her bonds.
“Yes, O Lord. I do not, I cannot overlook what might have happened. Even so…I was asked to come here to Kad to heal, not kill.”
Kuramos didn’t answer, just watched her with inscrutable eyes. He reminded her of the effigy of Naaz above the infirmary door—mercy and vengeance, the left and right hands of the goddess who sat in judgment of Her people, just as Kuramos did for his.
She glanced at Sohad and Priya, tried to read the resolution they wanted from their faces. All she saw there was tension, nothing she could decipher. Did their thoughts differ from hers?
If so, they’d have to speak for themselves.
“O Lord, several of these men were drunk. It does not excuse what they did, but drink can cause sense to flee. What concerns me more is their belief that the realm from which I come is one of thieves and evil. This attitude seems not uncommon in Kad. And it pains me. Greatly. Your family and servants have benefited from my skills, while others fear and hate them. So as I reflect on these men and their crime, I’d like to suggest an alternative sentence.”
He raised one cool brow. A low murmur of indrawn breaths and whispers reminded her of the noble audience gathered around. Bracelets clinked and fabrics rustled on pillows as she gathered her next words. She felt herself pulling on a fraying rope against the combined might of Kuramos and his court. If she pulled too hard, would it snap?
She hazarded a glance at Bafar, then across at the others, absorbing gazes that were bleak with fear and despair, and simmering hatred. Ask it.
“I wish that before these men go to their final end, they realize their beliefs about my realm are wrong and have a chance to make amends for the damage they’ve done.”
The sultan’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “By…?”
“O Lord, you could send them to Teganne.” She took a step forward, palm up in plea. “With their families, if they wish—for what they have said and believed has no doubt been instilled in those who are close to them, as well. In Teganne, they would be under the watchful eye of my sovereigns, and receive a chance to learn the error of their assumptions.”
One of the prisoners growled. She ignored him and went on. “They would live in Teganne, surrounded by my people, dependent upon them for their living, for their very survival. They’d realize we are neither thieves nor necromancers. And if they did not change their actions and their words after learning this lesson, then they would suffer the consequences meted out by my sovereigns. If this pleases you, Great Sultan of Kad.”
Behind her, the prisoners’ chains scraped the tiles nervously.
“How can you be certain your prince and princess would accept these eight mounds of offal, and would oversee their punishment?”
Her firm gaze caught the sultan’s. “My sovereigns would wish to avenge themselves upon anyone who sought my death, O Lord. Their vigilance and justice will be appropriate to these men’s offense.” In the ensuing silence, she heard the captives’ panicked breath, their fear rising up like the sour stink of their bodies.
Kuramos stared down at the prisoners, and as his gaze landed on each of them in turn, that man flinched. Then his fierce eyes met Varene’s, seeming to weigh her judgment, and her will. “You have a merciful streak, Healer. But also a devious one.” He gave her a long, slow nod. “The Royal Healer’s request is granted.”
The prisoners shuddered, and one man moaned his dismay.
“And now,” continued the sultan, still staring at her, “their healing treatment is over. You have given them mercy. Let them now feel a portion of the suffering you felt on the stake.”
Kuramos’s gaze swept over the kneeling men and his tone conveyed his disgust. “Your chains shall remain on you throughout your long journey to Teganne by foot, and until your new sovereigns deem fit to remove them. Your actions have shamed Kad, and you will remember the weight of my anger, now and for the rest of your days. You’ve been granted your lives by a Tegannese citizen, one who had every right to demand your deaths in the most painful way. Learn from your mistakes, learn from her justice. Do not waste this chance. And perhaps then, the balance will one day be swept clean. May Naaz have mercy on your souls, for all that you do not deserve it.”
“Bow to your sultan!” the captain barked at the rioters. They pressed their foreheads to the floor, sweat and tears in their eyes, before they got unsteadily to their feet and shuffled out the doors.
At a glance from Kuramos, the scribe stood and addressed the court. “The Great Sultan of Kad gives you leave to depart.”
Varene held her breath, wondering if Kuramos would want to speak to her. She knew she’d told him to stay away, but tendrils of hope clutched her.
Kuramos stepped from the dais and stalked out through the side entrance without a backward glance.
Alone in his quarters, the Great Sultan of Kad slammed his fist on the stone windowsill and damned the woman who was plundering his thoughts and desires. And she’d had the gall to say the Tegannese weren’t thieves!
How dare she turn him away? He was the sultan. Kaddite maidens craved his notice. They prayed to Naaz each night for it, dreamed of him coming to their beds. Yet Varene spurned him. Stoked him to an inferno of need, intoxicated him with her ardent response—she’d climaxed in his very arms, fully clothed!—then turned him away, with that needful, despairing look in her eyes. The look that made him want to kill whoever had put it there.
She was a sorceress after all, for she’d certainly enchanted him. Damn her.
“You seem…provoked, O Lord.”
His gaze snapped to the harem entrance, where Sulya parted the curtain of pearl strands and strolled into his chamber. In her arms lay a leather-bound book. His brows drew down at the odd sight. His Sixth Wife was not particularly fond of scholarship.
“I do not want visitors,” he said flatly.
She ignored his declaration and closed in, a smile on her lips. “I may change your mind.”
His teeth ground together. “Sulya, it’s time for you to depart.”
Unhurriedly, she opened the book, laid it on the table and skimmed her sharp nails down the page to a marked passage. “There.”
He eyed her for a moment more, not liking her poise or the determined
flicker in her gaze. Then he looked down at the passage, and fury flamed through his bones.
“Where did you get this?” His fingers clamped the book’s edge, whitening his knuckles.
“Dabir’s quarters.” Her mouth made a smug twist. “An ancient law—forgotten, perhaps. Or overlooked. No matter. I claim it now.”
He dropped his gaze back to the book, read the title on the cover. A muscle spasmed in his clenched jaw. “Besides the obvious, what, exactly, do you hope to gain by this?”
“It is my due as your wife.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“No?” She drew closer to him. “This law clearly states my right to demand lovemaking from my husband; that Naaz and Idu bless that right, for the benefit of Their children, of Their realm.” She drew herself up, thrusting out her breasts. “I stand before you now, demanding your good faith. Your obedience to the High Ones.” Her eyes glittered. “Your body.”
Rage blazed through him. She, a woman who cared nothing for reading or study, would blackmail him using Dabir’s collection of books? She was using him for her own ends, and always would.
“I have honored you as the mother of my son.” He stepped close to her, his voice a guttural snarl. “Perhaps I am bound to make my body honor you.” He waited a moment, watching her nostrils flare at the scent of her win. “But Sulya, you will never again know my love.”
The truth of that crossed her perfect features, and for a second he saw the snap of pain before her lashes scrolled down over her darkened eyes. Soon she had control of herself. “If that is the case, O Lord,” she said, “then I will have to content myself with taking what is mine.” She reached up, wrapped her hand in a sensual wave around the back of his neck, and pulled his mouth to hers.
Her lips slid against his, and her tongue nipped and stroked. Her fingers, ever skilled, found their way into his kaftan. They enfolded him in ways that urged, cajoled…aroused. His body, wound tight for days, displayed a mind of its own.
A wordless sigh escaped Sulya as she felt Kuramos respond to her touch. This was the only way she had ever mastered him. The power of it coiled in her belly, and lower, in the place that ached for him and for his seed.
Perhaps tonight, she would once again be fertile. Conceive another son of the sultan, another chance at the greatness meant for her own bloodline. With two sons, she could almost assure her family that their hopes and plans would come to pass after generations. The thought thrilled her, spurred her to twine a leg around Kuramos, urging him closer, tighter, deeper.
He groaned and shoved her against the wall, trapping her between his arms. She rubbed her breasts over his chest, her body against the hard length of him, felt him grow and pulse for her the way he always had. He sought her mouth, captured it. Surely he could taste the triumph on her tongue.
His warm hands slid around her waist and down, underneath the fabric of her skirt, and cupped her buttocks. Her husband. Hers. And now he was doing her bidding. She would get what she wanted, in the end. She always did.
He lifted her up and settled her against his arousal. She writhed, rubbing his length, and reached for the drawstring at the waist of his churidar. As she tugged, he closed his eyes and pressed her back to the wall.
Kuramos felt Sulya release the drawstring…but in his mind, it was Varene who was cupped in his hands, Varene who was undressing him, Varene who would ride him through the night. The Tegannese enchantress held his thoughts and his heart even as a different woman clamped her legs around him, panting.
“Varene…” he sighed.
Sulya’s eyes flew open and her talons splayed across his back. She looked at him for long seconds as he stared down at her, concealing his surprise, calming his impassioned breath. He had never before called a woman by another’s name, much less showed that disrespect to one of his wives.
Tonight, he could not regret it.
Sulya inhaled a deep, shocked breath, then huffed it back out. Her palm slammed his cheek.
Their gazes locked, and he slowly set her down. Despite himself, his lips curled into a barbed smile.
A tic marred one of her exquisite eyes. She whirled out of the room, smashing through the curtain of pearls. One strand broke and cascaded its beads across the floor.
Kuramos watched the pearls roll to a halt as he smoothed a hand over Dabir’s book. It was almost as if his mentor had helped him, after all.
Feeling strangely liberated, he walked into his hammam, stripped off his churidar and plunged into his bath.
He scrubbed himself down, then floated in the lapping water to gaze at the mosaic on the ceiling. In it, Naaz’s golden sun warmed Idu’s blue sky and their Kaddite lands below.
The sun could burn a man. And Naaz knew everything.
Had Naaz placed Varene in his path on purpose to torture him? Varene, whose life and beliefs were so different from his own and had branded his heart… He should have been eager to take Sulya, his wife, up against a wall, begging for him, squeezing his length with all her supple skills. Instead, the whole encounter seemed a sordid betrayal of what he felt for Varene.
Never before had he been ashamed of being with one of his wives. He was the sultan, he had six of them, and it was his right to be with each—and more—if he so desired.
But Sulya’s twist of the knife had forced him to be with her when he’d already told her they were done. Not only had her manipulation infuriated him, it had made him feel dirty. Unclean. Which was crazy. He’d been married for nearly two hundred years, and not once had he been tempted to confuse sex and desire with love.
He cared for his wives, respected them, honored them, but had never wanted to be with only one; never wanted to wrap himself around that one, hear her crystal laugh, plunge into her, seeking a forever promise from her eyes. Never before had he yearned to gift a woman with his whole heart and his very soul.
Tonight, he’d closed his eyes and seen all that and more. Instead of Sulya, the woman who’d always used him—just as he’d used her—he had felt Varene with him. Loving him, just as he loved her.
Love. That was inescapable now.
Stay away, she’d said. I can’t be one of your many women.
He turned over in the water and stroked from one end of the pool to the other, wanting the water to sluice over him and cleanse his life as it cleansed his body. He wanted it to change things back to the way they’d been. How could he love a woman who was a heathen, an infidel, a Tegannese Healer with magic in her soul—and who disdained Kaddite marriage?
But he did. He loved her honorable nature. Her boldness. Her generosity and devotion to those who depended on her. He loved the woman who looked upon him as a man, not as a sultan with wealth and power. Not as a means to her family’s glory, as Sulya did, or as a ruler and tactician, as did Rajvi, a source of fun for Zahlia, a political alliance for Nireh, a protector for Maitri or a victor for Taleen.
Varene saw him as a lover, a father, a man with dreams for his realm and hopes for himself. Hopes he thought he had entombed long ago, but she’d discerned them anyway.
He loved the vulnerability she concealed deep inside her challenging, insubordinate shell. She was a stunning flower that hadn’t yet fully bloomed, hiding the most beautiful and tender part of herself. Her fiery sensuality, the spark that lit his own, engulfed him with desire for her. He wanted to protect her and stroke her and set her free to blaze her own trail, all at once. He wanted to make her happy in every way, in his bed and out of it, every day and every night, for as long as the stars shone upon his land.
He reached the end of his pool and halted, bobbing in the water.
Stay away…
He knew she wanted him to love her body. That he’d already proven, and the memory of her moaning climax again hardened him to sword-strength. But what if that was all it was for her? What if she didn’t love him?
She had a comfortable life in Teganne—a high place in the court and in the hearts of its rulers. Would she give that
up to be with him? Would she want to? Kad was foreign to her, a culture that didn’t understand her and even at times offended, insulted and threatened her. His contributions to that shamed him.
He pulled himself up to sit on the turquoise ledge. Water slid down his naked body and pooled on the tiles like his cascading thoughts.
Whether Naaz had intended these developments or not, her son Kismet had Kuramos’s life in his grip. Unrest snapped at the edges of his sultanate. Varene’s land and his were nearly enemies, and his realm distrusted and reviled hers.
This should have been simple, but nothing had been simple since he’d first gazed upon her face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Varene spent a lonely night angry with herself, Kuramos, and Fate. Between fitful periods of sleep, she stared at the pale glow of moonlight on her patio.
She should have been departing for home. She wanted to resume her interrupted life more than ever—to spend time laughing with Jilian and Alvarr, to stroll though the quiet forests, even to sort her herbs in the solitude of her rooms. But now she couldn’t leave until Sohad and Priya wed.
Wed. She’d encouraged their romance and was glad to see them together, even if she’d never dreamed they would say their vows so quickly…
She flipped onto her stomach and pulled her pillow over her ears, hating the jealousy that swarmed her.
Another day’s delay. Another day of loving Kuramos and being unable to escape his presence. She was in orbit around him, in an unrequited and unfulfilled love that would only bring her pain.
Almost as soon as sleep had come again, Priya entered her door, panic on her lips. “My lady, there are fifty patients waiting at the doors of the palace!”
“Fifty!” Varene sat straight up in her shift, blinking, then swung her legs to the side of the bed, peering about in the dawn light for her sandals. “Was there an accident?”
“No. They’ve been lining up for hours to see you—so many that the guards will only allow in a few at a time. Word has been spreading about your skills.”
