How was it possible for a woman’s smile to be so appealing? To make him forget all thoughts and all words? To forget everything and everyone that had come before her?
He tightened his fingers around hers and drew her close, lost in her sapphire eyes and easy smile.
“Oh, beg your pardon.”
Muir didn’t know whether to feel relief at the interruption or anger. He cut his gaze to Milo and bit back the sharp retort resting at the tip of his tongue.
“May we help you, Captain?” Rapunzel asked.
“I know it may seem like poor timing, but the town council has expressed their desire to celebrate. I know the men could use the morale boost, but I didn’t want to agree without speaking to you first.”
Rapunzel pulled away, and she turned to the captain, smiles and blushes gone, every inch the princess again. Muir steeled his resolve and withheld his disappointed sigh.
“Of course, Captain. Open the estate larders and use them to provide for the feast. A celebration is exactly what this town needs, though we should keep a watch.”
“I’ll seek out volunteers and make sure they get a day of rest to make up for missing out.”
“I’ll assist you,” Muir offered. If nothing else, he needed a distraction from a wife who was entirely too enticing.
Chapter
Tiny fingers shook Joaidane out of a dead sleep. He’d been late to bed, crawling beneath the sheets just moments before dawn broke on the horizon.
Three nights ago, one of the spotters in the lighthouse had called in a longship sighting just after midnight, and Joaidane had been awake ever since waiting for the inevitable—an attack from Ridaeron.
The bastards liked to sack villages in the early hours of the morning, and would float their ships a few miles from shore in darkness until sunrise. He’d wanted to be prepared for them to touch the beach, or better yet, locate them on the sea and incinerate their ships. Another sighting never came, however, and he’d begun to wonder if Mustafah had imagined it. Or even fallen asleep at his post for a few minutes and had one vivid dream.
His daughter pulled the blankets off him. “Papa.”
Joaidane sighed. “Not now, Scherezade. Just another hour, please.”
“I brought you breakfast.”
Another hour would have been divine, but when he opened his eyes, her little face wasn’t far from him. She held a tray with a plate of poached eggs beside fresh bread, berry jam, and vegetables she’d clearly cut with one of the blunt knives used to spread butter. They hadn’t been sliced so much as crushed and torn.
Joaidane rubbed his face and sat up. “Well, how can I refuse such a kindness? Let’s have it.” He heard a chuckle from the door and glanced that way to see his wife leaning against the frame.
“I told her you had only been asleep a few hours, but she didn’t understand how you could sleep on an empty stomach and insisted,” Zarina said.
Despite the exhaustion urging him to collapse against the pillow again, he smiled at his family. “It’s fine. I’ll sneak away for a few hours this afternoon.”
After eating the breakfast prepared by his two favorite women, Joaidane chose not to return to bed. He crawled into the bath, where Zarina had already set his clothes for the day, anticipating he’d decide to operate on a mere three hours of sleep.
With breakfast behind him, he visited the lighthouse, confirmed there had been no more sightings, and decided Mustafah had likely dreamed up the entire thing while drowsing in the middle of his watch.
When he returned home, Scherezade was playing in the lower tower entrance hall with her kitten, a handsome ivory and caramel creature with a sleek, short coat and enormous orange eyes. The kitten had been a present from his mother and father who made frequent unannounced appearances to bring the family gifts. Despite the loss of his ifrit powers, Joaidane’s father was happier than he’d ever been.
Good. After so much pain, they both deserved happiness.
“Papa,” the child announced the moment she saw him. “Bast brought me a flower today.”
“Oh, she did?”
“Yes, look!” She ran over to him and thrust the blossom up, revealing an amber desert rose—a wild one, the sort only found in the heart of the desert where the sun bleached the sand ivory and only the hardiest cacti survived the brutal heat.
Bast couldn’t have brought such a flower to her. It must have been yet another gift from his mother, or perhaps even his father. He smiled.
“It’s a lovely rose, though it doesn’t compare to you, my love.” He tucked it in her dark hair behind her left ear then pet the kitten in her arms. “Where is your mother?”
“Sewing clothes. She’s making me a new dress for my birthday.”
As Scherezade approached her fourth birthday, he wondered more and more what he had ever done to deserve her. Or her mother for that matter. Were a few acts of kindness in Naruk enough to banish a lifetime of living as an incorrigible, selfish ass during his youth?
Joaidane sighed and ascended the stairs to find Zarina. He found his wife at her sewing table with yards of ribbons and rolls of fabric surrounding her while she focused on the machine. It was a strange, unusual magical contraption made in Ridaeron by their brilliant gnomes, a gift James had given her from one of his final voyages under the black flag.
For a while, he watched her work in silence, mesmerized by the methodic noises the needle made as it poked through fabric and stabbed ribbon. Zarina stopped when she reached the end of the row and removed her foot from the pedal. The machine silenced.
“All right, you’ve been surprisingly patient,” she said, rising from her chair. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong. Can’t a man enjoy his wife’s beauty without needing something?”
She gazed at him. A fine brow arched above her storm gray eyes. “I didn’t say you needed anything, but now I wonder… was that a hint?”
Joaidane chuckled. “No.”
Her smile didn’t fade. “It’s been some days since you’ve shared our bed with me, and last night you were far too exhausted,” she murmured, moving closer. She raised one hand to the back of his neck and kissed him, but his heart wasn’t in it and exhaustion crashed over his stirring arousal.
Zarina leaned back and studied him, brows knit. “That sighting truly worried you, didn’t it?”
“I want to believe Mustafah dreamed it up, or that it was even a trick of the light on the black waves, but the possibility troubles me just the same.”
Zarina cupped his cheek. “You said it yourself, Joaidane. Ridaeron hasn’t attacked Ankirith in years. They missed their chance in the short window of time between your mother leaving the tower and your arrival. They would be foolish to do it now.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“And even if they were to launch some foolish attack, you would crush them. This city is prepared for the worst.”
He didn’t answer for a while, a few moments passing before his shoulders sagged. “Ah, you’re right. You’re always right.”
“And you hate it, I know.”
“On the contrary, I love it when you’re right. You see the sense in all things, my desert rose.”
Zarina tilted her face for a kiss he gladly accepted, treating him to the sweetness of her mouth and stroking tongue in a sensuous glide past his lips. Her palm smoothed down the front of his open robes and over the buttoned shirt beneath, pausing below his belt and lingering where he swelled with arousal. “Already?” she teased.
“What can I say? I need little encouragement when you are near.”
“Mm, I suppose. While Scherezade is quite occupied with her kitten, should we not live up to our promise to give her a little sibling?”
“It would be quite irresponsible of us to disappoint her,” Joaidane agreed.
He kissed his wife again and guided her toward an unoccupied table in the workroom. He raised her skirts around her waist before setting her on the edge, thrilled to discover how littl
e she wore beneath the layers of floral-printed red silk.
Zarina tore at his trousers to open them, fumbling the sash.
“Papa!” Scherezade’s shout echoed up the spiral staircase. “Your friend wants you!”
Joaidane swore under his breath and moaned against Zarina’s dark hair. “And yet this very evening she will ask us again why she has no brother. How I wish I could tell her that she must leave Mama and Papa alone to themselves if she wants one.”
Zarina laughed and pushed his chest until he backed off. “Go see to your acquaintances. We’ll finish this later.”
Once he’d straightened his clothes and willed down the pounding erection Zarina had inspired in only a few stolen moments, he made his way down the stairs. Scherezade met him halfway, bouncing on her feet.
“Papa, Papa, it’s Queen Stasia.”
“Ah, that friend. Thank you for delivering her message, my love.”
Anastasia’s image was no longer in the crystal ball in the center of the room, but he waved a hand above the cloudy sphere and called her name. She returned seconds later. There were dark circles beneath her eyes.
“Anastasia,” he said in a quiet voice, deciding against teasing her for interrupting time with his wife. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“I apologize for interrupting your morning, Joaidane, but I need your assistance. Urgently.”
“Of course. However may I help?”
“The disagreements with Eisland have taken a turn for the worse. The king is dead, his queen appears to be the villain responsible for the slave trade, and she’s done something—a curse of some kind, something I can’t hope to possibly understand.”
“Describe it to me, and perhaps together we can solve this puzzle.”
Anastasia told him everything about the current situation. By the end of it, Joaidane was scratching his bearded chin and staring at the distant wall of spell books.
“Give me a day to search my mother’s notes. In the worst-case scenario, I can attempt to contact her for information.”
“Thank you, Joaidane.”
“Thank me when I’ve actually done something to improve your situation.”
* * *
Despite the pot of coffee he’d put into his belly, Joaidane awakened at his desk sometime after dark. He glanced at the hanging clock on the wall, squinted, and frowned at the time. He’d lost three hours.
At some point during the afternoon, his wife had draped a wool blanket over his back and shoulders, but he still ached from slumping over the desk for so long. Groaning, he pushed up from the chair, thoroughly reminded that he was over three centuries old, even if his body didn’t appear to be a year over thirty-five.
Zarina poked her head inside the room. The doors were open, rarely locked unless he was in the midst of practicing a dangerous spell or curse. Experience had taught them that their daughter’s mind was a sponge when it came to magic. Once she saw Joaidane cast a spell, she hid somewhere in the tower to practice it, much to their disapproval.
“Joaidane? Are you still studying?”
“No. I believe I did more sleeping than studying, but thank you for the blanket.”
“What blanket?”
“The one you placed over me.”
“Joaidane, I wasn’t home until moments ago. Scherezade and I were visiting Kazim. I just put her to bed and thought I’d come to see if you wanted to share a bath.”
“If it wasn’t you, then who…?” He glanced at the fallen blanket on the floor then swept it up. There were motifs of suns and moons on it, his magic often produced roses, and Zarina’s art was an eclectic choice of patterns. The blanket wasn’t of their household. “Mother and Father were here.”
Zarina’s brows knit. “I wish they had taken a moment to shoo you to bed.”
Joaidane chuckled. “You’re speaking to the wrong djinn, my rose. I cannot grant wishes,” he teased.
“That’s where you’re wrong, husband. You’ve granted plenty of mine.” She stepped over and gathered the books on the table into a pile. “Should I return these to the shelves while you start the bath?”
“Yes, please, I—” His gaze swept over the short stack and fixed on the spine of an unfamiliar blue and silver tome. It wasn’t part of his collection. “This also is not one of ours.”
Zarina removed it from the pile and glanced inside. “I don’t understand this language.”
He looked inside. It was Eislandic, a difficult but beautiful tongue he’d learned as a child. Three centuries ago, when his mother had been the grand enchantress of the tower, she’d personally educated him in over a dozen of the world’s languages.
“I believe Mother lent a little helping hand.”
Zarina frowned. “Does this mean you won’t be sleeping?”
“Run the bath. I’ll read while there.”
Her disapproving expression remained a moment longer until Joaidane kissed her lips and urged her away with a gentle pat to her bottom.
When he met her in the bath, she’d already filled the immense marble basin and added her favorite fragrances, the feminine scents of honey and vanilla kissed by a hint of myrrh and golden amber. The tub was a luxury Joaidane had missed over the centuries when he’d wandered as a cursed man from one desert village to the next.
It had given him a new appreciation for life’s comforts.
And a new appreciation of a woman’s love, because meeting Zarina was the best thing to happen to his life. She sat on the rim of the basin, wearing only a silk robe and trailing her fingers through the foamy bubbles.
“What’s happened in Cairn Ocland now?” she asked.
“What makes you think something happened?”
“Queen Anastasia called you on the crystal ball, and then you disappeared for the day.”
Joaidane grunted. “Apologies. I meant to join you both for dinner and then—”
She waved a hand. “You’ve done nothing wrong but miss a supper. You’ll make it up to us tomorrow as you always do.”
“Still, I wonder at times if my responsibilities take too much from both of you. If I’ve neglected—”
Her palm cupped his cheek. “Far from it. You are a wonderful father to her, Joaidane, and don’t you dare doubt yourself for a moment. If it troubles you so much, take Scherezade into the markets for a new book tomorrow. Or even a doll from her favorite shop.”
While Zarina washed his back, Joaidane skimmed through the book and searched for the hidden clue his elusive jinni mother wouldn’t—or couldn’t—outright tell him. Creatures such as her and the greater djinn were bound by rules of neutrality and unable to interfere with the affairs of other kingdoms or even their own unless strict conditions were met. Nothing in it appeared relevant to their mirror, as the book was related to astrology and the stars.
Once they were in the bedroom, he slipped into loose linen pajamas and crawled beneath the sheets. His attention alternated between watching Zarina brush out her hair for bed and reading the book.
“Will you tell me anything about what Queen Anastasia wants, or will you keep me in suspense?”
Joaidane chuckled. “These things bore you.”
Zarina playfully tossed her brush at him before rising from the vanity. “They do not. Now tell me.”
“A strange thing occurred in Eisland, and they have requested my help to unravel the mystery. It appears to be a curse of some kind.” He described the rest of the situation regarding Rapunzel’s imprisonment, the war, and the mirror Muir had seen in the throne room. By the end, Zarina appeared stunned.
“A curse that drives many people to irrational hatred and cruelty,” Zarina murmured, slipping into bed. “I cannot imagine how the princess must suffer to see her kingdom dragged to such ruin.”
“Nor can I,” Joaidane replied.
“What will you do to help?”
“They hope I can determine the manner of curse. Since it originated from a mirror, they believe it is an enchantment of some sort.”
He smiled. “Yes.”
“I am reminded of a story from my childhood. The Snow Queen.”
“Yes?”
“It was an old, old tale my mother once told me, but I remember it well enough. The story began with an envious goddess of deceit deciding to play a trick on the other gods. But no one would join her game.”
“As these tales often go,” Joaidane said.
“Of course. Laverne can be blamed for many disasters in Eisland mythology, but she is not the only villain in this story. To punish the other gods, she turned her attention to the mortal realm and picked the most beloved kingdom of all, a land of snow cherished and blessed by the other divines. And in that kingdom, there was a radiant queen known for her kindness and love. But no ruler is ever perfect, and this queen had one tremendous flaw—her vanity.”
Joaidane raised a brow. “I gather this is where the mirror comes into the story.”
“Yes. Laverne bestowed a mirror to the mortal queen, telling her this gift would always show her the truth, but in its glass the goddess had put all things awful, filling it with hatred, avarice, and deception, until the mirror became dark as sin.
“As time passed, the mirror showed the queen only the ugliest things in her kingdom until she lost the desire to govern and decided her people were no longer worth her compassion. At last, the king grew weary of his wife’s inattention. He took the mirror and shattered it into a million pieces, some no larger than grains of sand.”
Joaidane tightened his grip on the blue book, staring at her.
“In doing so, he released a surge of cold power no human could withstand. The king, queen, and those of her council perished. The shards blew to every corner of the kingdom and into the eyes of their faithful subjects, corrupting all they saw.”
“And what happened to this goddess of mischief?” Joaidane asked.
Zarina pursed her lips. “I cannot recall for certain, but I believe she was punished by the other gods. She lost her powers and was sentenced to a life among the mortals.”
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