Chapter 59 Quil #2
She wore travel leathers trimmed in fur, with her knees dangling over one armrest and her neck resting against the other. Her black hair was piled high on her head; her feet were crossed jauntily and clad in oxblood boots.
“Hello, Quil,” she said with a smile that made his stomach swoop. “Did you miss me?”
He didn’t dare move for fear that she would vanish. “S’rsha—” he said. “How—your inn—why—?”
“By ship and river barge,” she answered the first. “As for the inn, I got an offer I couldn’t refuse.
But I can’t say more.” She held up a silver oath coin.
“I promised.” She looked at him finally, full in the eyes, as she hadn’t in so long.
Her gaze was tentative. Hopeful. “And why? Because I’m ready. If you are.”
He reached her in seconds, and she was standing, throwing her arms around him as he cast his scim to the floor with a clatter.
She held him so tight, whispering that she loved him, she loved him, she loved him, and now she was here and she wasn’t ever leaving again.
He tried to get a word in edgewise, desperate for her to know that Adah oath or not, she was the only one for him.
In the end, he didn’t have to say it. She kissed him and nothing mattered but her lips on his, her palms against his hips, his hands down her back, hers pulling off his shirt. He breathed her in, knowing he would never be able to get enough of her skin, her scent.
“Ah—” he said, catching his breath. “The door—”
The throne room had a lock. A rather large one, actually. But S’rsha shook her head and kept one hand on Quil’s chest, slowly pushing him backward.
“If you believe I’m going to let go of you long enough to lock the door after thinking about this the entire way from the Southern Isles”—she nudged him onto the throne and straddled him—“then you don’t know me at all.”
They fell into each other then. He kissed his way across her collarbone and up her neck, his blood pounding at her tiny gasps of pleasure. As she raked her fingernails through his hair, he closed his eyes, savoring the way their bodies fit together, the way their wanting seemed to have no end.
He pulled her hairpins free, smiling as her locks fell loose around him like a great, soft cloud.
“Mine.” He pocketed the pins. She took his face in her hands, and he could see shimmers of gold and black in her irises, the tiniest freckles across her nose. Her brown skin glowed in the lamplight and he caught his breath at the depth of feeling in her face.
Seconds later, one of the pins was in her hand—she’d stolen it back—and she poked the tip of her finger with it. A small drop of blood beaded there.
“I, S’rsha Inashi-fa,” she whispered, “name you, Zacharias Marcus Livius Aquillus Farrar, as my Adah, half my soul. I give my heart unto your keeping, a gift with no compare.”
For the second time that day, Quil’s eyes filled. He took the pin and pricked his own finger, pressing it to hers.
“I, Zacharias Marcus Livius Aquillus Farrar, name you, S’rsha Inashi-fa, as my Adah, half my soul. I give my heart unto your keeping, a gift with no compare.”
He knew the Adah coin would not come back.
There were no Raanis to witness this. And once an Adah coin was broken, it was gone forever.
But as she kissed him again, as she pulled him to her, impatient now, he thought this could be their bond: bliss as they moved in an age-old song, as she clenched around him and whispered his name again and again.
It turned out Quil was not so tired after all, and a long while later, they made it to his room.
“Nice bed, Your Majesty,” S’rsha crooned appreciatively of the four-post monstrosity he slept in.
She giggled when he tossed her into it, but her laughter turned to sighs when he pinned her wrists at her sides and laid her bare to the lamplight and his lips, taking his time making up for the past year they’d been apart.
Hours later, she fell into slumber, making a small sound of protest when he got up but falling quickly asleep again, beautifully bare, her hair a dark spill across their bed.
Quil was restless now, his exhaustion fled, though it was nearly dawn and he hadn’t slept a wink. He pulled on his fatigues and waved off his guards, both of whom were trying desperately not to smirk at their emperor’s late-night activities.
When he walked out of the palace and into the streets, his scims at his back, he remembered that Aunt Hel used to do this.
Long ago when she was warring with Keris Veturia, she walked the streets of Antium to think, to find comfort in the sounds of the city and her people, to remind herself of why she was fighting.
Quil made his way to an expansive park in the center of the capital, the trees and shrubs and flowers brought back to life after the depredations of the Kegari.
Someone—a gardener, a groundskeeper, a face that might never be known—had saved the statues of his aunt Hannah, his mother, and his grandparents, down in Navium. Quil had them placed in this public park where anyone could visit them, along with a new sculpture.
It was different than the others, hewn of gray marble instead of black. The figure cast in stone knelt, head bowed, a war hammer in her hands.
Quil stood before her as the sun rose and the night fled.
A pale light gleamed down on her stone crown braid, painting it the same silvery color it had been in life.
Quil had chosen the message of the plinth himself.
He’d begun to trace the first letter with a finger when he saw movement in the gardens ahead of him. At this hour?
He’d half drawn his blade when he heard the creak of a cart, the low croon of a mourning dove, the quiet call of greeting between a man and a woman. He relaxed when he saw figures in green smocks. It was just the city gardeners beginning their day.
He turned back to the statue, his gaze going to the engraving.
Empress Helene Aquilla I
Daughter. Sister. Aunt. Friend.
Mater of Gens Aquilla. Savior of the Empire.
Loyal to the end.
Quil reached out and touched her face. Loyalty or freedom? I hope you’re free now, Aunt Hel.
He sighed, for in this moment, with his head bowed and his hand against the stone of her face, he could almost smell her, a scent he’d known since he was a child, clean and light, like an unexpected snowfall at the start of spring, just when the grass was beginning to shoot up.
Quil’s head jerked up. He did smell her. Someone was behind him. He held completely still, his mouth open to form her name. Then he turned, certain she would be there, a hint of a smile on her serious face, a mischievous sparkle in her pale eyes.
There was no one before him. He was alone but for a tall gardener with her hood up, disappearing into the park so quickly he wasn’t sure he’d seen her at all. He spun; the park was empty.
But his hand was not.
He stared incredulously at the rolled parchment that had appeared there, as if slipped between his fingers by a ghost. Or, perhaps, not a ghost.
As he read the familiar handwriting, he smiled.
I choose freedom.