Serovek barely registered the shocked gasped intermingled with cheers and catcalls from the crowd in the stands. If she wasn't painted in places with scarpatine blood and he with scarpatine venom, he'd gather her in his arms and hold her tight enough that her ribs creaked. They stepped back, he wearing a full grin, she a close-lipped smile. Nearby, the dead scarpatine baked in the sun as black blood oozed into the sand, creating small pockets of foul-smelling ruin.
“Come,” he said, speaking close to her ear so she might hear him above the crowd. “You must present yourself to the king. No doubt he'll be disappointed that you killed this new toy of his.”
Her silvery eyebrows crashed together in a ferocious scowl. “Fuck him. I won. You're innocent.”
“And I doubt there's a soul in the forum who'd argue that fact,” he said, tipping his chin toward the crowd, who cheered even louder. “But considering your temper at the moment, let me do the talking,”
As he predicted, King Rodan was indeed disappointed at the loss of the abomination his sorcerers had made for him. No doubt he'd hoped for a vicious spectacle of his new pet's prowess. Something to display to all as a new weapon or simply to cow his own people in case any were planning insurrections. Serovek prayed the disappointment came mostly from the fact that Anhuset had killed the only one made and that more weren't forthcoming.
And while Serovek couldn't be sure, he'd confidently wager the king's discontent also sprang from the fact it was Anhuset, not Serovek who killed the scarpatine. He wasn't versed in the laws the way Rodan's administrators were, but he knew the importance of their interpretation. It was a fight to the death. The champion won by killing their opponent. If Serovek had killed the scarpatine, then Rodan would have had grounds to forfeit the match. The king had willingly sent him in there, betting Serovek wouldn't just help Anhuset, he'd interfere.
He might well have been right. Serovek would have killed the scarpatine himself defending Anhuset if she could no longer defend herself. The match would be called forfeit and he'd cheerfully stand trial before a tribunal whose purpose wasn't the pursuit of justice but to please the king. He'd said nothing to Anhuset, afraid if she knew the ramifications of anyone but her killing the scarpatine, she would have taken unnecessary risks to win, even it meant dying to do so.
We live for those we love. We die for those we love. Her statement rang in his mind, a peek into what it was like to be cherished by this fierce, steadfast woman.
She stood beside him now below the king's box and squinted up at the Beladine monarch, her face as sour as his as they stared at each other. Rodan finally stood and approached the balcony's edge once more. His gaze settled on Serovek, grim and resolute. Serovek wondered what excuse or twisted interpretation of the law he might use to revive the charges against Serovek and keep him prisoner until Rodan chose to kill him.
One of the royal sorcerers stepped forward and handed him the same piece of stone, infused with the magic of sound. It amplified Rodan's voice again so all in the forum could hear him. “I've always known you to be an exceptional fighter, Lord Pangion, and your champion certainly equals you in skills. You've both provided us with worthy entertainment.” He paused as the audience's cheers overwhelmed the magic. Once the noise died down, he continued, his features tight with dislike. “And your champion is victorious. The charges against you no longer stand. You are acquitted.” He gestured to someone behind him. “See to it he's unshackled.”
The crowd again erupted into cheers and clapping, many calling out Serovek's name. He winced, wishing they wouldn't. He was in this spot because Rodan already thought he was too popular. The king held up a hand for quiet. “There is, however, the matter of High Salure. How you answer my question will determine whether or not it's returned to you.”
Serovek braced himself for another trap.
“Will you bind yourself to Anhuset of the Kai as her husband?” Rodan said.
The question silenced the crowd more effectively than any spell. The weight of thousands of stares settled on Serovek's shoulders and back, and beside him Anhuset stood rigid, staring straight ahead at the arena's high wall.
This was what she referred to when she told him to say yes to the king's question of marriage. At the time he thought it odd, spoken as it was out of context and as a quick warning before the prison guards interrupted them. He'd probably disappointed her when he refused to stand quietly aside while she faced certain death to prove his innocence. He couldn't find it within himself to regret that, though he planned to apologize later. A marriage proposal though, even one spurred on by a ploy or strategy, was altogether a different matter. A personal one. One that shortened his breath, made his heart beat fast and his soul light with joy.
“Yes,” he said. “A thousand times over. Yes.”
Anhuset's stance didn't change, but Serovek still felt her wilt with relief. Rodan's smile was a thin slash and his brief nod to her a mysterious one. “The margrave has said yes,” he repeated for the crowd's benefit. A few cheers and applause met the announcement. Even more curious speculation arose among the stands. “Is this still your desire as well, Anhuset?”
She nodded emphatically so all could see her answer even if they couldn't hear it. “Yes.”
“So be it.” Rodan spread his arms to encompass all in the forum, raising his voice even though the stone with the spell to amplify it did its work without his help. “By the laws of this land and the approval of this monarchy, the kingdom of Belawat recognizes the marriage of Serovek, Lord Pangion, margrave of High Salure and Anhuset of Bast-Haradis. So may it be. So may it remain.”
The crowd answered back with one thundering voice. “So may it be. So may it remain.”
It was the shortest, strangest wedding ceremony Serovek had ever attended and by far his favorite, highlighted by the irony of exchanging one kind of binding for another when one of the king's servants removed the shackles from his wrists. Were he alone with Anhuset, he'd pull her into his unchained arms and spin her about in celebration, even if it did earn him a hard punch to the shoulder for his antics. He merely bowed to the king instead, and she followed suit.
Rodan tossed the enchanted stone back to the sorcerer so only those closes to him could hear. “Gather your things,” he ordered the newly married couple. “And attend me in my antechamber.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” they replied in unison.
The king turned his back, dismissing them without another word. Serovek grabbed Anhuset's hand and the two hurried through the gate from which they both first entered the forum, the audience cheering their exit.
This part of the corridor was quiet for a moment, that brief hush before the first crush of people filled it as they too left the arena. With Serovek declared innocent, he was no longer a prisoner of the crown and no guards followed him and Anhuset into the corridor's gloom.
Fueled by the euphoria of still being alive and now being wedded to the woman he desired most in the world, he was desperate to hold her. She didn't resist or protest when he nudged her toward a corner and wrapped her in a hard embrace. Anhuset returned it with a bone-cracking one of her own, claw tips pressing into his back, almost breaking the skin as Serovek captured her mouth in a consuming kiss.
A kiss of gladness tinged by the terror of a shared fight for survival. Their first kiss as husband and wife. Serovek breathed her in as he savored her taste and the feel of her in his arms. She was hard muscle and power, made of unbreakable courage and unshakable devotion. Armored inside and out except in those rare, magical instances when she'd offered him a glimpse of vulnerability.
They paused to catch their breath, and he leaned his forehead against hers. “I'd swive you against this wall if you weren't armored to your back teeth and there wasn't a mob of thousands about to descend on us.”
She smiled, her eyes bright with a firefly's glow in the dim hall. The smile faded a little. “It doesn't have to be real. This hasty marriage. It was Brishen's idea to lower your standing among the Beladi
ne people. A formality only. We can figure out the rest when we leave...”
She paused when he placed a finger across her lips. “I want it to be real in every way. Do you?”
Even the fear of having a scarpatine barb impale him didn't compare to the terror of waiting for her answer. The smile returned. “Yes. Very much.”
They kissed again, lost in each other until the thunder of numerous footfalls reached their ears. “The crowd,” Serovek said.
“And the king awaiting us,” she replied.
They fled the forum ahead of the surge of humanity filing out of their and hurried to the palace. A few hailed them as they passed, offering shouted congratulations, but no one stopped them. An entourage of guards led them to the antechamber where they waited for Rodan.
He didn't make them wait long. He wore the same sour look he'd given Anhuset at the forum, and he didn't waste time on good wishes or congratulations. “Whether or not this marriage is a sham is of no concern to me, but here's how it will work from now through the end of my reign and those of my heirs, margrave.” His eyes narrowed, their murky irises glittering with threat. “If you put aside your Kai wife to marry a human one, you forfeit High Salure. If your Kai wife dies, and you take another human wife, you forfeit High Salure. If you die before your Kai wife does, she inherits nothing and will return to her people. If some strange sorcery makes it possible for you to sire children off your Kai wife, you forfeit High Salure.” He paused and his brow lowered even more in a scowl. “And if you ever ally yourself with Bast-Haradis against Belawat for any reason, you forfeit High Salure, because I will have you put to death without trial. Are we understood?”
Serovek didn't hesitate. “Perfectly, Your Majesty.”
The king stared at him and then Anhuset in grim silence as if he weighed the sincerity of Serovek's answer. Seemingly assured, he spoke again. “I've already sent a message to my regiment at High Salure. By the time you arrive, they'll be gone and on their way back to Timsiora. You may even pass them on the road.”
A small voice urged Serovek to accept the king's terms, bid him farewell and leave the capital with all speed, Anhuset by his side. A greater voice pushed him to request a favor. “Your Majesty, I would claim redress of the false charges made against me by my steward Bryzant.” His fury over Bryzant's treachery hadn't gone away; it merely settled in his gut like a stone, pushed down while he tended to more urgent matters.
One of Rodan's eyebrows arched, and the same gloating half smile from earlier played across his mouth. “Were they false? Truly? Maybe in practice but possibly not in spirit.” He shrugged, obviously savoring what he was about to say. “You'll have to get your revenge on Bryzant another day. I've sent him home to his father's estate. I suggest you put aside your desire for vengeance for now and return to yours.”
Were he not the king or if Serovek didn't value his own skin, he would have flattened Rodan in that moment with a punch to the face. He reached out to hold Anhuset's arm, feeling the quiver of muscle there, half fearful that even if he restrained himself, she might not do the same. “Of course, Your Majesty,” he said, his voice calm. “Then if you require nothing else...”
Rodan dismissed them with a short “Go,” and turned his back on them.
Anhuset waited until they were halfway to the stables where she'd left her horse before speaking, and her tone would have curdled milk. “Spiteful old bollocks bag,” she spat. “He did that on purpose. He knew you'd want Bryzant's head on a pike. I want Bryzant's head on a pike.”
Her outrage for him made Serovek smile inside though he didn't dare display it. “He'll not get away with his treachery. There's always consequences. It's just a matter of when, not if.”
At the stables, Anhuset traded her mail hauberk to the stablemaster for a second horse. Serovek groused over the trade all the way to the gate. “He'll resell it in the market and get fourtime what this nag is worth.”
“Think of it as one less thing you'll have to strip off me for a good swiving,” she said. And with that, he no longer complained about the trade.
They put Timsiora behind them without looking back and Serovek followed Anhuset to a place deeper in the conifer wood, on a rise that gave a view of the road below but was hidden by the trees. A tent stood within the shadows, its gray canvas blending in with the patches of snow and the understory of winter-dead brush. The remains of a fire lay in front of the tent.
“Home for now,” Anhuset said. “Unless you'd rather return to Timsiora for a day of rest.”
If he never saw the Beladine capital again in his lifetime, it would be too soon. He was exhausted, in pain, lusting for his wife, and desperate for true sleep. The tent seemed the most inviting place in the world to him, even it did look rather narrow. “Are we both going to fit in there?”
Her eyes shone golden in the shadows. “One of us will probably have to sleep atop the other.”
“As I'm still recovering from having the breath knocked out of me when you fell on me, I call top.” She laughed at his wink before urging him to dismount so she could see to his blistered skin.
He sat patiently while she physicked the blistered patches of flesh where the scarpatine venom had burned him. Bare to the waist, he shivered in the cold, skin pebbled with gooseflesh under her touch as she made a quick salve from supplies she kept in a satchel. “It's just a comfrey ointment,” she said. “I'm sure there's an apothecary in Timsiora who can sell a better concoction, but this will do for now unless you want me to ride back.” She spread the ointment with careful fingers, pausing at intervals to brush her lips across the uninjured places on his body.
“This will do fine,” he said, shivering, unsure if it was from the cold or the sensual pleasure of her affection. That, more than the ointment, made him forget his discomfort.
He soon forgot everything except the weight of her limbs on his, the smoothness of her skin, her scent in his nostrils, and her heat as she sheathed his cock deep in her body and rode him into oblivion, reaching her climax before he reached his. Her moans and the grip of her thighs coaxed him to join her, and he uttered her name in prayer as his eyes rolled back and he came hard inside her.
The tent was indeed narrow and half collapsed on one side thanks to their exertions, but neither cared. While Serovek had claimed his place atop Anhuset, they ended up on their sides facing each other, legs and arms entwined, skin to skin, breasts to chest. He kept an arm around her hips, holding her close to stay inside her. Her lamplight eyes burned softly, and Serovek wiped away a streak of sand granules from her cheek with his thumb.
“How are you, wife?” he said, savoring the term.
Her features gentled even more, and the corners of her mouth curved upward. “Slippery.”
He chuckled, then stopped when he felt himself sliding out of her. He gripped her hips even tighter, not ready to leave that sweet place just yet.
Anhuset encircled his wrist in her hand and raised his arm. Her claw traced the dirty ribbon still wrapped there. “I thought this went into a monastery midden. Why did you keep it?”
Serovek could list a hundred reasons for why he kept it, but he gave her only the most important one. “Because it was proof your feelings for me had changed. There is no finer gift in all the world than the love of sha-Anhuset.”
She gave a tiny, inadvertent flinch. “I'm no longer a sha.”
He'd wondered what she sacrificed in order to offer her marriage proposal. She'd give up much to remain his wife. Regret filled him at the thought of her losing her position as Brishen's second. She was born to it, and he'd seen firsthand how she defined herself by it. As much as he wanted her, it wasn't under circumstances like these.
“You risked your life for me,” he said. “I'm losing count of the number of times now. I don't want you for my wife just to keep High Salure. It's just stones and mortar. Forfeiting it wouldn't be the end of the world. I want this marriage because I've loved you since I first set eyes on you in Saggara, so grim and beautiful
.” He stroked a lock of her hair where it draped on her bare shoulder. “But I won't rob you of those things that mean most to you. We can live separately if you wish. The king's restrictions don't demand we occupy the same household together.”
His mind raced. They could visit each other every week or even twice a month. Brishen still wouldn't allow her to remain a sha for reasons that were strictly political and diplomatic. Serovek understood that, as did Anhuset he was sure. But she didn't have to leave behind her people and her home just to remain his wife. They could make it work; it would just take some planning.
Anhuset sighed, and the small smile she'd worn before their conversation turned more serious returned. She stroked his back, tickling the dip of his spine with a fingertip. “Oh, I don't know. Margravina has a more stately ring to it than sha, don't you think?” She continued mapping a path down his back to his buttock before giving it an appreciative squeeze. “And High Salure has comfortable beds with soft blankets and warm hearth fires. Your furnishings are quite princely too.”
The clamp around his heart eased a little, one he'd refused to recognize as he made the offer to send her home to Saggara while he returned to High Salure, married but still without a wife. “You didn't mention the food,” he teased.
She gave a disdainful sniff. “We can debate that unpleasantness later.”
He kissed her and she him, their mutual caresses becoming more urgent, more passionate. Serovek pulled back to stare into her eyes with their swirling citrine shades. “None of that matters. There is no bed I want to be in more than the one I'm in now with you, and we're far away from High Salure.”
Anhuset swatted him on the buttock she'd cupped a moment before. “You have to be the chattiest individual I know,” she said. “Do you want me as your wife in every way?”
An easy question to answer. “Yes.”
“Do you want me to live with you at High Salure?”
“Yes.”
Her voice became a loving touch that stroked his soul. “Do you love me even half as much as I love you?”
The Ippos King: Wraith Kings Book Three Page 38
