The Seer

by MacArran, Ariel

  “I’m well aware of that,” he bit out, his eyes narrowing. “I know who I am. I know what’s expected of me.”

  She gave a nod. “As do I.” Then she softened a bit and touched his arm again. “I am glad to see you looking so well, darling.”

  “I never bore you any ill will, Jasa,” he said heavily. “I wouldn’t have wanted this for you either.”

  She was quiet for a time. “Well, I should go. I suppose it wouldn’t do to have anyone see us talking if you’re supposed to be this Legan person. You can be assured of my discretion. I wouldn’t want to ruin anything for you.” She tilted her head. “Will you kiss me goodbye?”

  He regarded her silently.

  He’d tried, years ago, to create something between them, make some peace with what was to come. Although the sex was more than satisfactory it had never evolved into anything else.

  Despite her beauty, the similarities in their background and the heat of her bed, her single-minded focus, her absolute confidence in her—in their—inherent superiority chilled him. Jasa possessed charm but no joy, had wit yet lacked humor, she was gracious but not kind.

  He couldn’t honestly say he even liked her.

  She knew that, of course. And made no difference to her. When he understood it did not, any hope of happiness in his coming marriage collapsed.

  But now, with Arissa . . .

  Suddenly his betrothal seemed so much more like a trap than it ever had.

  She narrowed her blue eyes up at him then gave a half-smile. “I look forward to seeing you at our wedding on Zartan.”

  “I will be there.” His eyes closed briefly. “As promised.”

  Twenty

  Jolar’s heart was hammering when he finally found her, sitting alone outside on the low wall in the courtyard of Bruscan’s house. She was still in the evening gown she’d worn to the reception, her shoulders hunched against the chill night air. Sertar’s moons had risen and by their light he could see she had been crying. Perhaps had been since Bruscan had whisked her out of his sight an hour ago.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  Arissa didn’t even look at him. “Who are you?”

  The illumination from Sertar’s moons made her face paler, tinted the dark ringlets of her hair with their cool, blue light. Like the goddess Seleni, she seemed a being fashioned entirely of moonlight—a beautiful specter, delicate, unreachable . . .

  Jolar came closer, drawn like Seleni’s many ill-fated suitors toward a resplendence that threatened to remain forever just beyond his grasp. “You know who I am.”

  She shook her head, wiping at her face with the back of her hand. “You told me your name, but I didn’t even think about it then. Tell me who you are.”

  “Jolar d’Tural.”

  “You’re a Zartani aristocrat, aren’t you?”

  He passed his hand over his eyes. “Yes.”

  “You’re Lord d’Tural then.”

  “Yes.”

  She put her hand over her mouth. “How could you do that to me?” she whispered and the pain of it slashed his heart. “How could you not tell me?”

  “I never expected this to happen, none of this,” he said hoarsely. “What’s between us, how I feel about you—Gods, I’ve never felt this way about anyone. I didn’t even think I could. I love you, Arissa.”

  “You’re betrothed.” Her voice rose, her eyes flashed with Seleni’s light. A goddess wronged, a power not to be affronted. “You should have told me. You should have told me everything.”

  “I don’t love her. I never did.”

  Arissa turned her face away.

  “It’s the truth,” he insisted.

  Her eyes squeezed shut as if she were in pain. “I know,” she murmured.

  His shoulders slumped in relief. Of course she would. Perhaps he could make her understand, somehow still make this right . . .

  “When I realized I loved you I knew I had to tell you but I thought—I thought once we were finished here, once you had the ID, then together we could decide what to do.”

  She regarded him with wide, shocked eyes. “You’re really going to marry her, aren’t you?”

  A lump formed in his throat. “I have to.”

  She shook her head. “Have to? You have to? You’re wealthy. You’re a Zartani lord. You can do anything you want!”

  He gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “That’s what you think? That my life is my own? It’s not. It never has been. I have to live out my heritage, there’s no other honorable way. I’m bound by family name, Arissa, by a thousand years of Zartani tradition. That I ever even joined the military despite that heritage was only the result of years of battle between my father and I. Gods, it’s the only thing in my whole fracking life that’s my own, that I earned for myself. I was contracted to marry Jasa years ago. Once I made that vow, signed that contract, there was no going back.”

  “People break betrothal contracts all the time,” she retorted and he realized she thought it only an excuse.

  “Arissa, I can’t break the contract. If Jasa wanted . . . but that’s not going to happen. I gave my word as a Zartani nobleman to marry her. I have to do what’s right.”

  Her shoulders fell. “And marrying Jasa is what’s right.”

  “After my mother died, Father insisted that I make a ‘suitable’ match. He chose Jasa just as his parents chose my mother for him. He said she’d settle me, help me focus myself—whatever the hell that means. I didn’t want to be promised to her. I didn’t love her. I knew I never would. My father and I fought about it bitterly.” His throat tightened. “Then my father became ill, weaker with every passing day and finally, five years ago, when the healers said there wasn’t much time left . . . He said it would make it easier for him to go if he knew that I was promised. So, Jasa came to the house and we stood beside my father’s bedside . . . He pressed my mother’s betrothal bracelet into my hand and—” He swallowed. “And he died the next morning.”

  “I know you loved him, that you still grieve for him.” Arissa said, her voice soft.

  Hesitantly, Jolar sat beside her on the low wall.

  “I meant what I said.” He touched the betrothal bracelet she wore; his finger traced the curves of metal warmed by her skin. “I want to marry you.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “But you can’t ever do that, can you?”

  “It shouldn’t be like this.” His hand wrapped around hers, her fingers were cold. “I can’t marry you, as much as I want to, but that doesn’t mean we can’t spend our lives together.”

  Her face twitched with hurt. “Be your shadow consort, you mean?”

  “It wouldn’t be like that,” he promised. “You are my heart, Arissa. You’ll be my life.”

  “While you’re married to Jasa.”

  “I love you.”

  She didn’t say it back this time. She knew every feeling he had, every heartache and joy and at that moment he wished so much that he too were a Seer—that he could know if she still loved him, if there were any hope at all—that he felt sick with it.

  She turned away. “How would you feel if I were going to marry someone else?”

  “How can you even ask that? You know how I’d feel. Arissa, there’s nothing I can do. I’m promised to her. I didn’t want to be. Not ever. My father wanted this, not me.”

  “Did you ever join with her?”

  His rush of shame must have given her the answer.

  “Looks like you wanted it at least a little,” she said, her voice choked.

  “I haven’t been intimate with Jasa for a long time and what we did was never more than—” He closed his eyes briefly. “It was never like it is between us. I can’t undo what happened before we met but I can give you everything from now on. I promised to take those vows but I won’t have a life with her. I won’t live with her.”

  She stared at him. “So you’ll marry her and then what? You’ll kneel in Arrena’s temple, take vows you don’t mean at the Goddess of Love’s al
tar and just never consummate the marriage? You’ll put Jasa in a big house and me in a smaller one, stand beside her at official functions and spend your nights with me?”

  “I gave my vow to my father. I made my promise to Jasa as a Zartani nobleman,” he said roughly. “Tell me how to make this right and I’ll do it!”

  “There’s only one way to make this right, Jolar,” Arissa said, tears shimmering in her eyes. “I let you go.”

  “No.” A jolt of sickened horror ran through his belly and his fingers clenched reflexively around hers. “No, there has to be a way. We’ll find a way.”

  “I can’t live that like that. Being hidden away again. Not anymore.”

  “You won’t be. You’ll have your ID. Everyone who matters to me will know who my true wife is. People have done it for centuries.”

  “Your people—Zartani aristocrats—you mean.”

  His voice rose. “People who had duty and wanted happiness too!”

  “What about Jasa?”

  “I won’t make any secret of what she can expect from this. She’ll know about you—about us—before I marry her. Honestly, I can’t believe she’ll care.”

  “Could you really do that?” she asked, shaking her head. “Make vows you don’t mean? Live a lie like that?”

  “Yes,” he said sharply. “If it means I can be with you.”

  “What about children?”

  He wet his lips. “We could have—”

  She shook her head. “I can’t risk having a child like me. That leaves Jasa.”

  “Then I won’t have children,” he said flatly.

  “But you want them, don’t you?”

  “I’m not going to have everything I want. If I did, you and I would be at Arrena’s temple right now getting married.”

  “So, you’ll marry Jasa but not share her bed, not give her a child and she’ll live out her life alone while you spend yours with me?” She searched his face. “You can’t do that, Jolar.”

  “If Jasa agrees, then what difference does it make?”

  “Would you have kept your marriage vows if you hadn’t met me?”

  Jolar stomach twisted. He remembered going to the door of that tidy house in Kev-Zartan a month before he joined the Fleet. The puzzled, polite look on the attractive woman—about his mother’s age—who answered his knock, how his father had blanched upon seeing him there. How right then, swaying with the soft, spring rain dampening his face, he’d sworn never to betray his own wife the way his father had . . .

  Jolar closed his eyes briefly. “Things are different now.”

  Arissa shook her head. “I can’t let you do this.”

  “I don’t love her. She knows that. Neither one of us has been faithful.”

  “But you were going to be after you took your marriage vows, weren’t you?”

  “Why are you doing this?” he demanded. “We can have a lifetime—a whole lifetime—together Arissa!”

  “Jolar, you wouldn’t—you couldn’t—respect yourself if you did this.”

  “Because I’m a good man,” he said and the words tasted like ash. “An honorable one.”

  “It will eat at you,” she said softly. “It’s eating at you now and I can feel it. I can’t live with that, feeling this, feeling what this will do to you.”

  “Of course you can feel it,” he said, his voice bitter. “Anyone else I could hide it from. Anyone else I could have.”

  Arissa shakily unfastened the cuff from her wrist. She held it out to him, the Zartani firestar of the betrothal bracelet blanched of its color by the moonlight. “Here.”

  Tears burned his eyes. “Keep it.”

  “No.” She extended it a little further. “That’s not right. And I just—I can’t wear again.”

  “Please,” he begged hoarsely. “Even if it’s all you’ll ever have of me, gods, at least it’s something.”

  Twenty-one

  “Loosen your grip,” Jolar advised, resetting the target. He had reserved the entire Tano-Sertar indoor shooting range to teach her in privacy. “It’s important not to hold the blaster too tightly.”

  “Okay,” Arissa said, trying to relax—no easy task with Jolar right next to her. A thousand times a day her heart whispered to her reach for him, to slide her hand into his, to reach for him across the wide expanse of their bed.

  It wasn’t the immorality of it, though she imagined if she were of better character that would bother her. Even her resolve not to be hidden had quickly worn threadbare over the past three days. She’d be no more hidden than Kemma was and Kemma wasn’t miserable or ashamed. Certainly Arissa didn’t condemn Kemma and Lian for what they had together.

  But she knew Jolar’s mind. How important loyalty and fidelity were to him. She knew once he took those final vows to another, he would forever be torn by keeping her as a shadow consort, no matter how above-board the arrangement was. She knew he would do his best to honor her, and his wife. But he would hate himself for the double life.

  And every moment they had after, no matter how joyful, would know that taint.

  She couldn’t live with herself if she let him do it.

  But her selfish heart didn’t seem to care about noble intentions or sacrifice in the name of what was right. All it knew was that Jolar was beside her, the warmth of him tempting her to turn and bury her face against his chest.

  “Try it now,” Jolar said.

  Arissa focused on the target, the outline of a person, and squeezed the trigger.

  “That’s good,” Jolar said, with a nod toward the target. “You got him right through the center of the throat.”

  Arissa lowered the weapon Jolar had purchased for her that morning; it was the smallest blaster available that he deemed powerful enough to provide for her defense. Each cartridge held a charge for weeks and at full charge guaranteed no less than fifty shots before she would have to switch it out.

  Initially it hadn’t felt heavy but her arm was starting to ache from holding the diminutive weapon in the firing position for so long. “I was aiming for the shoulder.”

  Jolar frowned. “Why?”

  “I was trying to wound him.”

  “Don’t,” he said flatly. “Once you’re at the point you have a blaster aimed at someone you need to try to kill them.”

  “Can’t I just leave it on the stun setting?”

  “Stun isn’t foolproof. Sometimes it takes an instant longer than you have to take effect. And you need to hit them square to be sure you are going to knock them out rather than daze them. That’s why when I shot that Utavian, I shot to kill.”

  “Because he wasn’t facing you?”

  “No, because he was facing you,” Jolar said sharply. “And me taking that extra instant for stun would have given him time to burn a blaster bolt through your head.”

  Arissa rubbed her eyes. She wasn’t—they weren’t—getting much sleep. It might be obvious to Nela and all of Bruscan’s other household that something had changed between them but they still shared a room—and a bed.

  That first night Arissa had returned to their room and found that Nela had laid out the pretty new shimmersilk nightgown set she’d bought. She’d sat on the bed, holding it’s soft, slippery fabric against her face and cried.

  The bed was used for sleeping only now, what little they got of it. They lay far apart and Arissa could feel every time that Jolar kept himself from reaching for her. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if he didn’t hold himself back; one touch of his skin against hers and her resolve would crumble.

  They went about to parties and luncheons as Bruscan’s slicers gathered what information they could, continuing the pretense of being a married couple. Their investigation was proving painfully slow.

  Danlen Mirat was disinterested in all of their overtures, Broc Attar pursued them like a love starved sluoof cub, and Larner Tovic showed only slight puzzlement each time they sought him out.

  But not even Broc Attar was more focused on them than Carlea.

&n
bsp; Focused on Jolar, that is.

  “Ready to try again?”

  “My arm’s tired,” she said.

  “Try a few on stun and then we’ll quit.”

  “Why practice the stun setting if I’m never going to use it?”

  He sighed. “I didn’t say it was never useful. Tactically there are a number of situations where it’s a better choice. If you need to question someone, drilling a blaster hole through his chest isn’t the smartest move. When you’re more experienced you can make a better judgment about when to stun, but for now just practice it.”

  Arissa reset the blaster to the stun setting the way he’d shown her. She raised the weapon and fired four shots.

  “Much better,” Jolar said approvingly. “You hit him dead on. What did you do differently?”

  “I knew it was set for stun.”

  Jolar’s mouth thinned. “Things may get to the point where it’s kill or be killed—in which case, Arissa, you need to make it kill. Understand?”

  She rubbed her forehead. His exhaustion and tension was only adding to her own. “How long do we have?”

  “Do you want me to pay for another half hour?”

  “I meant before you’re supposed to meet Carlea,” she said, more sharply than she intended.

  Jolar looked down the range. “An hour and a half.”

  “Then we should get back so you can change.” Arissa set the safety on the blaster and placed it back in its carrying case along with the extra power cartridges. “She hates it when you’re late.”

  “I don’t have any interest in Carlea.” Jolar sent out little spikes of annoyance. “I’m not going the frack her.”

  “She’ll tell you whatever you want to know if you do,” Arissa said bitterly, slinging the case over her shoulder. “Maybe that would be best.”

  Jolar pulsed with anger and hurt. “So it’s all the same now to you if I do?”

  Arissa turned away. She had to stop this. What he did and with whom he did it were Jasa’s concerns now, not hers.

  “We have dinner plans,” Arissa reminded. “Bruscan said Broc was very insistent he see us tonight.”