Chapter Twenty-Nine
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Julia woke with a pounding head and a dry, dead-carcass taste in her mouth.
The bed was still warm from Alaric’s body. What had she said last night? She remembered Alaric saying the word husband . Not betrothed , husband . That had to be some fever dream. She remembered demanding concessions. He’d laughed, and then drowned her in fire.
Her hand was bandaged. She remembered the brotherhood oath, Riga carving belonging into her palm. She had earned her place. They couldn’t change their minds now. You couldn’t take back a scar.
Julia rose and pulled Alaric’s cloak over her shoulders, enveloping herself in the smell of him as she stumbled down the stairs.
The men were already awake, tending horses and sharpening weapons. Riga’s tent was gone; she caught a glimpse of bright felt tucked away on the back of his saddle, resting across a fence. Last night, it had been a palace of myth; now it was only a scrap of cloth tied to a saddle. The sight of it made her feel oddly bereft.
The cut on her palm gave a tingling throb.
Julia leaned against the doorframe and watched Alaric walk out of the trees. He didn’t look like he’d had a hard night. In fact, with his bronze hair tied off his shoulders and his skin glowing golden in the sun, it seemed he’d just come striding off Mount Olympus.
She’d declared herself his, hadn’t she? And then demanded a dowry. How embarrassing.
Alaric stopped before her, his blue gaze more amused than concerned. “Are you ill?”
“No.” Automatically she raised a hand to her hair, and winced. Small animals must have made a nest in it last night. “It’s just that no one should be awake at such a cursed hour as this.”
“It’s two finger lengths past dawn, Julia.” He held out a half-full waterskin. “You look like you need this.”
Thank the gods. Julia took the waterskin gratefully, sucking down water so cold and sweet it could have been chilled wine. “Is there anything to eat?”
“As a matter of fact, there is.”
Alaric spread out a feast before her on the grass. Brown bread, cheese from Brisca’s village. Strips of smoked deer meat. Julia fell upon the food, forgoing manners entirely. It took her a moment to realize Alaric was sitting back, relaxed as a sunning cat. Watching her.
“Do you remember the way you acted on the first night, when I tried to give you food?”
Julia laughed. “In my defense, I thought you were trying to trick me into eating shoe leather. Why didn’t you tell me it was delicious?”
“You wouldn’t have listened to me if I told you the sun was hot.”
Julia smiled ruefully. “I was an utter horror then, wasn’t I?”
“So was I.”
It held the weight of an apology. He put his arm around her, pulling the cloak up around them both; and it felt so good to be with him like this, warm and sated and safe. There had been many kinds of silences between them. Angry, vicious silences. Dangerous silences. But this one felt full of sunlight.
She took a deep breath and found her courage.
“Do you know,” she said lightly, “for a few hours after we lay with each other the first time, I really believed we were pledged to be married? Isn’t that ridiculous?”
Alaric said nothing, but she felt his muscles tense. Suddenly Julia wished she was anywhere else. In one of those trees, perhaps. Or under the ground.
“We are not pledged, Julia.”
Shame. Horror. “Silly of me, isn’t it? I blame the lack of sleep.”
“We are married.”
Now it was her turn to fall silent.
“No, we’re not,” Julia said in rising panic. “Marriage involves—it involves trappings , Alaric. An exchange of rings. Witnesses. Marriage is a matter of state for me—for both of us!”
He was looking down at her with his own kind of horror. “I swore to be your shield and fight your battles. What did you think that meant?”
“Just—just love words.” Her heart would not stop racing. “Pretty promises such as men make in the throes of lust.”
“I do not make promises I don’t intend to keep, Julia.”
Julia drew a breath. That was perhaps the truest thing about him.
Even so. “You don’t actually intend to hold me to this travesty of a promise, do you?”
His blue eyes held hers. “Is it not what you want?”
She lowered her eyes. Her heart was hurling itself against her ribs now. “I don’t know.”
Alaric took her hand. His lips brushed her knuckles; his eyelids lowered, hiding his blue eyes behind a screen of blond lashes. “Among my people, all it takes to bind us together is for a man to pledge himself to a woman, and her to him in kind,” he said. “We don’t need ceremony. Our gods are everywhere. A dowry seals it, if the man’s family has one to give.” He looked at her solemnly. “I cannot make you empress of Rome, Julia. We would never win such a war, not on the Empire’s own soil. Let me make you Queen of the Goths instead.”
Julia could only stare. Was she dreaming? Was this some fever-born hallucination?
“There are strategic reasons for this marriage,” he went on, the soul of rationality. “You are still hunted. No one else can assure your safety as I can.” He paused; the silence multiplied. “ Fuck , woman, say something.”
Was that— fear behind his eyes? Julia stared up at him in bemused wonder. “Why would you want to marry me?”
Alaric threw back his head and laughed, and the next instant, she was in his arms, being kissed very thoroughly. “Is that answer enough?”
Her face went hot. “Nobody marries for that .”
“Are you certain?” His thumb dragged across her cheekbone, achingly gentle. “My whole life I have been at war. Peace is not my strength. Perhaps you could help me with that.”
He wanted her to be his Cleopatra. Her stupid heart nearly died in her stupid chest.
“You’ll need a currency, of course. And a trade strategy,” Julia said. Suddenly her mind was full of all the things that must be done. “A back channel for diplomacy to Rome. I can help with that. And then there’s infrastructure. Roads, bridges, aqueducts—”
“Is that a yes?” he asked her quietly. “Considering I am not currently distracting you.”
Julia’s heart soared wildly. High above, an eagle had found an updraft and was spiraling up and up, dizzy and alive with the sheer joy of the open sky.
“I am not some peasant who will marry you in a field, Alaric,” she said archly. It would not do to be too easy. “I require a dowry. A palace, and a minimum of one very expensive party. I want my enemies in Ravenna to hear the rumors and weep.”
“What an opportunistic little minx you are.” And she was gathered back into his arms again, his lips on her temple, his laughter thrumming through her. “I should have given this to you on that day. I suppose I was also distracted.”
He slid something on her finger. Her mother’s opal ring.
Julia stared up at him, astounded. “It takes a special sort of spine to marry a girl with her own ring.”
He laughed. “Never fear. There is no end to the riches I’ll shower on you once we reach Noricum.”
Her face was sore from smiling. He was hers too. And if he said nothing about love—which he hadn’t—Julia decided she would take as much of him as she could have. She didn’t expect a declaration of love—although, with every fiber of her being, she’d hoped for one. But it was foolish to fall in love with your spouse. Everyone knew that. Alaric was not foolish.
“You know,” she whispered into his chest, “as a wife I have needs . You have been curiously remiss in fulfilling them.”
“So I have.” He rose to his feet, lifting her in his arms as if she weighed nothing. “Come, wife. I have a mind to make it up to you.” And he carried her, despite the youth of the day, back to bed.