“I’ve already got my people assembling a force to ride out with you,” Cyrus said. “About thirty or so, all veterans.”
“Good enough,” Unger said, nodding. “And your King won’t be providing a problem?”
“He’s not my King,” Cyrus said. “I came to render aid because his son is my friend and an officer of my guild.”
“Heh,” Unger said with something that didn’t sound anything like a laugh. “Honor bound, is that it? To a fellow warrior?”
“Something like that,” Cyrus said. “Honor is pretty important in my guild.”
“Feh!” Unger waved him off. “Honor. I don’t begrudge anyone their honor, but I hear it come from the mouths of the dishonorable more often than those who truly show it. Victory is what’s important now, and I’d trade all my honor if it kept my Kingdom from falling to these beasts. Show me a man who’s obsessed with only his honor and I’ll show you a man who’ll be defeated time after time. Honor! Tell me about honor on the day you see your enemies marching into your towns, slaughtering your people.”
“Defending your people is a kind of honor,” Cyrus said. “These things are beasts, so the only honor here is protecting those who can’t protect themselves from these things.”
“Fair enough,” Unger said. “I suppose I was still thinking of it the way Aron Longwell cries about it. Wraps himself up in the word as though it could shield you from a thousand swords. But it doesn’t shield you from the reality of war, we’re seeing that now.” He nodded at Cyrus. “I’m going to go get myself an hour or so of sleep before I start having to make preparations again. Come to the north gate with your people at sunrise, and we’ll be off.”
“Count on it,” Cyrus said.
“Oh, I will,” Briyce Unger said with a toothy grin as he began to ascend the amphitheater stairs behind him. “I’m already planning my strategy around having some of your mystics to help save us from our troubles.”
Cyrus gave the man a nod as he left with the rest of his delegation, and watched him disappear from sight into the tunnel. When he turned, he saw that the amphitheater was empty, and the garden around him was quiet, save for the buzz of crickets in the night air. There was a very slight movement across from him and he realized that the last person in the amphitheater besides him was Cattrine. She sat on the bench in the same place she had been throughout the ceremony, watching him, as gravely as if someone had died.
Her skin held a certain flush in the torchlight, a warm, browned hue from all the travel of the last months. Her auburn hair was perfectly matched to the lighting, and he saw the slightest flicker of her eyes as he crossed the center of the amphitheater, heading toward the tunnel through which he had entered. “Going to stay here all night?” he asked her, pausing at the end of her row.
“Perhaps,” she said, quiet, calm. “I … can’t believe he’s still alive.”
Cyrus felt a sharp pain within. “I’m sorry.” She looked up at him in surprise. “Whatever else has happened between us, I’m sorry I didn’t free you from him. I may not care for the fact that you lied to me,” he felt his body tense as the anger came back to him, “about your brother and who you were, but I wouldn’t wish being married to him upon you, no matter what.”
“I don’t wish to go with him,” she said, and lowered her head. “I don’t wish to ever be subject to … to that man, ever again.”
“You won’t have to,” Cyrus said. “I won’t let him take you.”
“You would fight your way through the whole Kingdom of Actaluere to spare me?” she asked with a subtle smile. “You would go into the heart of the sea country, into the city of Caenalys and fight your way through the streets and over the bridges, and do so on my behalf?”
Cyrus felt the clench of his jaw and hated it. “If I have to, I will.”
She stood, then, and turned to him, watching him, her green eyes hard like emeralds and unrelenting in their pursuit of him. “Even though I didn’t tell you who I was?” She took a step closer to him. “Even though I lied by omission, as you say? Even still?” She stepped closer yet, and was now only a few feet away from him.
“I would.” He nodded. “All the way to their capital if necessary, all the way to their throne room, I would fight my way to your brother himself, crush all his guards and pry a promise from his lips to never pursue you or attempt to make war to honor his own name, under penalty of my return.”
She stared at him, still as a statue. “What a man are you, Cyrus Davidon. How deep must your conviction run, that you would do that for a near-stranger?”
He flushed, and swallowed hard. “You’re not a stranger, we’ve been-”
“I know,” she said, and took another step toward him, reaching out and running a palm down his cheek. “I almost thought you had forgotten, in your anger, as though you wanted to disavow ever knowing me, ever holding me …”
“What happened, happened,” Cyrus said, feeling the touch of her hand on his face. He could feel the roughness, where once it had been soft and smooth, now calloused from the ride and practice with her blade. “But it’s done now.” He felt a great pressure in his chest, a warmth within him at her touch, at the remembrance of nights and days in Vernadam. “You saw to that when you didn’t tell me the honest truth.”
“I didn’t lie,” she said, coming closer, her forehead nearly on his. “I wouldn’t have lied to you. But I feared that you would not fight that hard for me, for a near-stranger, or even for a lover, had you known who my brother was and what complications it would bring. How was I to know?”
“Because you know me now. Because you got to know me, the real me.” He couldn’t look at her. “You could have told me at Vernadam. Any time in the days we spent together, the infinity of blissful days that we held together.”
“I was afraid,” she said, holding her hand awkwardly, still touching his face. He leaned into her as she stroked his cheek. His breathing became suddenly slightly heavier, his heart thumped in his ears. “Afraid you’d be … upset. A fear that turned out to be accurate, I would point out.”
“But it wouldn’t have been,” he said, his voice low, his eyes now on hers, gazing into them. “Not if you’d told the truth before all the hell broke loose. Before there was threat of war. I wouldn’t have been angry if you’d told me then. If you’d been honest and not tried to hide forever-and we could have …” He took a breath, felt a pulse within him, the deep thrum of his desire. How can it have been less than a month? I wasn’t so on fire with need after years, but now …
“We still could,” she said, slipping closer, drawing her forehead to his with her hands then slipping her arms around him. “I still want you. I’ve missed you … the touch of you, the feel of you against me in the cold night air …” Her hands ran down his robes, clung tight to him, pulled him against her. “I want you,” she whispered in his ear, and her mouth found his earlobe and sucked on it gently, her soft breath against the side of his neck causing Cyrus’s entire mind to blot out any thought but her …
He was both acutely aware of every moment and yet it blurred around him as though he were in a stupor of tiredness. She pulled him down, onto the nearest bench, and he felt her hands lifting the hem of his robe, felt the rustle of cloth as she tugged her breeches down and he heard the sound of her leather boots echo on the floor of the amphitheater. Her kisses were tender yet forceful, and every one of them seemed to awaken some beast within him that had been locked away for the last month, clamoring quietly to get out, chambered in a room of bleakness and despair but now afforded a view of the sky and charging toward it with all its strength.
He kissed her back, roughly, and it was just as it had been at Vernadam. He craved her, kissed her on the side of her neck, sucked on the sweet skin there and heard her moan as he unlaced her cloth shirt’s collar and slid it up. She kicked off her breeches underneath him and it turned loose his animal excitement. Something froze him, for just a beat. “Won’t somebody see us?”
“They’
re all gone,” she said. “Off to bed, and won’t be back to the garden until tomorrow afternoon.”
“But …” He sat there, feeling foolish but still wanting her, held back by an invisible tether. “You’re still a married woman.”
Her eyes were on his, and he could see that she wanted it too, wanted him. “That never stopped you before.”
“I thought you were a widow before.”
“So did I,” she said, pulling him closer, “but so little is my regard for the man that this almost seems more delicious than before.” She pulled him close and kissed him, and they melted together into action and activity, the cold night air made warmer by Cyrus’s skin pressed against hers, held by her embrace until they had finished.
“You’re a man of commendable vigor,” she said, her voice muffled from her face being pressed against his chest. She reached a hand up and brushed her hair back so he could see her face, glowing, almost resplendent. Her shirt had been lost in the moments between her initiation of their second lovemaking and his arrival on the floor. He felt the stone chill against his back and bottom, but it seemed to soothe his hot flesh. “The Baron could never manage to satiate me in such a way as you have.”
“Don’t talk about him when you’re with me,” Cyrus said, but it came off snappish, and he saw her flinch from his words. “It’s been a month; of course I’d have some pent-up desire.”
“You have years of desire, my love,” she said with a sigh. “And your vigor is hardly something new; how many times did we engage in such things at Vernadam? I’m only pleased that you haven’t grown tired of me quite yet.” One of her hands slipped down as she smiled.
“Stop,” he whispered, imploring her. “Not here. Not again.”
“Why not?” she asked. “I used to come here as a child, you know. With Milos and my father, whenever a convocation was held. We had three of them, two within a year of each other. This is a sacred place to us, here in Luukessia, because of the connection Enrant Monge has to our ancestors.” She lifted herself off him, exposing her upper body, and causing him to bristle as she got to her knees, causing him to tremble at the sight of her nakedness, the scars that crisscrossed her body still visible to him now, obvious, inescapable signs of her torment, almost as though they were marks of her guilt. “I used to wonder if the man I would marry was in the crowd of nobles who would come with us to the moots.” She became ashen as she tucked her hair behind her shoulders. “As it turned out, he was-though not the man I would have picked for myself.”
“You’re talking about him again,” Cyrus said, sitting upright. Now the stone underneath his buttocks simply felt cold, uncomfortable to his touch. Cattrine remained on her knees, leaning back to rest her haunches on his thighs.
“I’m sorry,” she said gently. “I meant to say that I hoped back then that I would meet a man like you-strong, brave, noble and true, one that would treat me decently, more decently than many of the ladies I knew in court were treated by their husbands.”
“So were you looking for a man to take care of you?” He eyed her warily.
“I was taught to take care of a man and he’ll take care of you-something of a lie, I realize now, but at the time it seemed reasonable enough.”
He felt bile rise in his throat, heat on his face, and he recoiled from her, pulling himself free of her grasp. The sweat and the smell made him feel only dirty now, as though any clothing he touched would be soiled, ruined, unusable at any time in the future. The stickiness of his skin as it pulled away from the stones that he had sat upon felt as though his flesh had to be peeled from it the way the skin of an apple is removed, and the grittiness remained as he rose to his knees and clutched at the robes that lay only a few feet away.
“Did I not please you, m’lord?” Cattrine’s eyes were upon him, but the slight mocking undertone in her voice made him ill, made him feel dirtier still. “Is your tireless drive such that I need convince you of my affections once more?” She pressed close to him again, laying her head upon his shoulder from behind as he leaned over.
She still felt good against his skin as she pressed herself to his back, and he felt a momentary urge to turn, to hold her, but he pulled away instead, the fight won at last by that nagging sense of disgust that had welled up within him. It overcame the last of his desire, spent finally from all her efforts, and he felt the monster within’s clutches let loose of him, and a fearful anger took hold. “Get off me,” he said, and let his robe cover him and his shame.
Her face was a mask. There was no kindness upon it as there had been in the past, but some fear or anger crept out in slow measure, revealing itself subtly through the tilt of her eyes, the thinness of her lips as she regarded him. “Did I do something to make you angry?” she asked with the subtlest hint of insincerity. “Do you wish to hurt me now? Because if so, I do request you keep it below the collar and above the sleeves.” Her fingers traced lines over the flawless skin just above her neckline down to the jagged scars that ran across her breasts and along her arms, and down to her left thigh where a particularly heinous wound had left a half-inch indentation in her inner thigh where the skin was simply missing, as though someone had gouged a small cube of it out.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, almost spitting the words at her. “You’re still the same woman who came before the man who she thought killed her husband and immediately offered herself to him.” The deep disgust welled within him. “Have you been manipulating me all along? Taking advantage of my … desperation, my heartbreak, my naivete?”
He saw the flicker of hurt in her eyes at his words, and her skin reddened around her neck, turning the same fiery red as it always had post-coitus, little blotches, like fall leaves on the palest parts of her flesh. “I wouldn’t call you naive. You’re a man grown, and you’ve known the touch and seduction of a woman before. I came to you in your hour of need in Vernadam, willingly, as you aided me in mine by taking me away from Green Hill. I see nothing to be ashamed of in that. You offered your help to my escape, but gave me no guarantee that such aid would continue forever. I took what you gave, and drew closer to you-but do not ascribe my motives to selfishness, Cyrus. That would be unkind. I did nothing with you that I did not want to, that I did not wish to do wholeheartedly.”
“Funny,” Cyrus said, slipping his feet back into his footcovers. “You just used my body-my appetites-to try and sway me back to you,” he said, the rage filling him. “Is this nothing but a game to you? Like your brother plays with Luukessia? Am I just a piece to move around the board to your best advantage?”
He saw her face tighten, harden, as though the mask had solidified in stone and there was nothing left but it. “My best advantage would be to rule Actaluere, but alas, even as the eldest child, I am a daughter, and thus ineligible to be in the line of succession. The best I can do is to get out of this forsaken land, where being born a girl gives you less chance than a mutt of finding a man who won’t beat you or lord his power over you. You offered that. Don’t fault me for accepting it.”
“And everything else?” Cyrus asked, staring at her pinched expression. “That was all … what? Sugar on top? A gift to me for making good my promise and freeing you?”
“It was …” her voice cut out, but the coolness of her gaze remained, “… whatever you wish to think it was.”
“I think it was manipulation,” Cyrus said. “I think behind your eyes is a fearsome calculator, someone as subtle and wicked as Milos Tiernan ever has been. I think you saw a chance to solidify your power, and you saw me as a chance to do it, so you took it. I think you saw a man at the head of an army who had the ability to give you what you wanted and you went for it, clumsily at first, then recovered and came about it a different way, and in my moment of weakness you found your opportunity.”
“See it however you like,” she said. “But remember, it was you who invited me into your bed, not vice versa.”
“Oh, I see it now,” Cyrus said, quelling the anger within. “I se
e it all, now, all you’ve hidden.” He reached down and took hold of her riding breeches from the ground and the shirt next to them and tossed them to her. She caught them, flinching as her hands curled around the cloth and pulled the shirt over her head. He watched the scars disappear beneath it, along with all else. “I think your scars are your excuse; that there are other things that mar you far worse than anything so surface-level as those. I think you are cunning, far more cunning than I would have given you credit for.”
“My goodness,” she said, “all this thinking will come to a bitter end for you.” She remained fixed, unexpressive, save for the coldness that radiated off her in waves, reminding Cyrus of the Northlands of Arkaria, the frozen tundra that even in summer remained frosted. “You’ll spin about for quite a bit longer I suspect, weaving more and more suspicions.” She tugged on her pants, sliding into them and lacing them tight. He watched as the drawstring dug against her flesh, biting into her skin, leaving a red line where it hugged her waist before disappearing under her shirt. “Draw whatever conclusion you’d like, Lord Davidon,” she said coldly. “But tell me this-what do you mean to do with me now? Would you still defend me to the death? Would you march your armies into the land of Actaluere to save me from having to go back to my husband? Or do you hold me in such low regard that you would throw me back to him, as a plains cat would toss aside the remains of a meal it is finished with?”
“As tempting as that would be, discarding you back to the tender hands of the Grand Duke Hoygraf,” he said spitefully, watching her stiffen as he said it, “I am not so cruel as you and would not use that bastard merely to hurt you as you have hurt me.” He shook his head. “Even after all else, I’ll honor my pledge.” He looked away from her. “I suppose it’s the least I can do, as payment for what you’ve done to-and for-me.”
Her eyes flared. “You think me a doxy, now?” He watched, waiting to see if she would strike at him. “You consider me a whore because I gave myself to you? More the fool you are, Cyrus Davidon.” She tied the neck of her shirt together, but he could still see the redness at her collarbones. “Have it your own way, then. I’ll take your safe passage from this land as payment. And I’ll thank you, once it’s all over, for teaching me once again a lesson I should have learned before.”
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