Chapter 12 #2
I let my fingers trace further down, feeling the tension in his jaw where he clenched it shut.
“We know at least the first message came from the Shadow King. It was a dwarf who delivered it, and he showed no signs of Maki’s influence. There were no wires coming out of him, no strangeness in his speech.”
“Other than that he tried to kill me?” Tallu asked mildly.
“Who hasn’t tried to kill you at this point?” I tapped Tallu’s chin as I thought. “Your own husband, four of your generals, several of your servants, your own heir, and nearly every one of the free nations remaining.”
“You forgot any citizens of the conquered lands,” Tallu said.
“Can’t forget them,” I said. “At this point, it’s strange if someone hasn’t tried to kill you.”
“Empress Koque did not,” Tallu said.
His words stuttered something in my heart, and the question I wanted to ask was just at the tip of my tongue. But I didn’t want any other ears to hear it. I didn’t want Tallu’s Dogs to know what he would say in response to my unvoiced question.
I could feel the desire burning up inside of me, feel it with such painful clarity that it exploded out like a star bursting in the sky.
Time froze. Or, the world froze, leaving only Tallu and me in a pocket of it.
Tallu blinked, sitting up and opening the curtains, his mouth parting when he saw the Dogs frozen, the fluttering curtains caught in midair. When he turned to me, the expression on his face was wondrous.
“Airón…” He shook his head, and I grinned back at him.
“Tell me about Empress Koque,” I said. “Who was she to you?”
“You performed impossible magic to ask me about Empress Koque?” Tallu asked.
“Well, we could use our time to get the intimacy you so wanted to keep private.” I grinned, reaching out to cup his chin, tracing my thumb up the rough shadow of a beard on his face. “Only, I fear that when I reached… climax, I might lose my concentration, and the Dogs would get an earful.”
My heart rate began to rise, and not just from the sharp prickle of scruff against my fingertip. I had never used ice magic like this, although I had seen Na? do it often. I felt it like a physical force, physical exertion. As though I were beginning to run across the tundra. My chest constricted.
I forced myself to breathe normally. I had done worse. Once, when I was training, Yor?mu demanded I run the length of the palace roof over and over until morning dawn turned into sunset and the moon crested the horizon.
Tallu turned his head, pressing sweet kisses against my fingertips.
With his eyes closed, he began to speak.
“I have very few memories of my mother. She died when I was very young, no more than four or five. I remember feelings more than anything. The way it felt to be cradled in her arms, how soothing it was when she combed my hair with her fingers, the song she would sing to me before I went to sleep. I remember the soup she made for me when I was very ill and a cake she once made for a celebration. The cooks were frantic—the empress in the kitchen—but she ignored them all because she wanted to make it for me as her nursemaid had made it for her.”
My heart pounded in my chest, and the drumbeat of my own racing pulse sounded in my ears. How long could I maintain this? Na? was able to do it for hours, and surely I had more strength than her. She was a child.
“Then she was dead.” Tallu paused, blinking slowly and looking away.
He shook his head. “After that, when my father returned from the north, I was taken on campaign with him. He said that it was the only way to undo my weakness. He claimed I had been allowed to hide for too long behind her skirts—that was why I mourned her so greatly. I was sixteen when my father took Koque as his empress.”
The throb of my own heart in my ears made it almost impossible to hear his next whispered words.
“But I had met her long before. She had been my father’s lover for some time.
His marriage to her was simply a formality.
I remember her in the palace, in the empress’s rooms nearly every time we returned from battle.
Perhaps she was his lover when my mother was alive.
I never asked. She would have been very young then, but that would have fit perfectly with my father’s predilections. ”
“What would have happened to Empress Koque when my sister arrived?” I asked.
“I have no idea what my father intended. We did not speak of it; no one did. Then again, it would be more than ten years before your sister came of age. Perhaps my father assumed Koque would die in childbirth before then or be assassinated.” Tallu stopped again.
“Was she kind to you?” The question ached inside me. I tried to imagine Tallu’s childhood: told that mourning his own mother made him weak, told that in order to be a man, he needed to crush his enemies under his heel.
Then to be faced every day with the woman who had usurped his mother in the rooms his mother used to occupy.
“She was very kind,” Tallu said finally.
“Koque treated me as her son, although I imagine she was no more than a decade or so older than me. When you are young, ten years’ difference turns one from a child to an adult.
She treated me as her son, and I thought she loved me.
I am not sure what I will do if I see her alive again. ”
He stopped there, closing his eyes, his dark lashes just touching his cheekbones. My heartbeat was so fast I was sure it would break my rib cage, and my muscles twitched as if I had run for too long or lifted something too heavy.
“Tallu—” I released the ice magic, gasping harshly, my whole body reacting. I felt bile rise in my throat and tried swallowing it down, only to choke on the taste of it.
Tallu’s eyes flew open, and he sat up again, dragging me into his lap, his strong arms lifting me so that I was upright and wouldn’t drown in my own vomit.
The bed curtains flew open, both Dogs alert, their blades drawn. “Your Imperial Majesty?”
Tallu’s title alone was enough of a question. He didn’t look away from me. “Get Prince Airón some broth and water. Something he ate disagrees with him.”
The Dogs hesitated, and Tallu ordered, “Now!”
One of the Dogs stayed, and the other left for the door, returning a moment later with the news that the servants would bring it. After the Dogs forced them to taste it, they presented it to Tallu. He raised the spoon to my lips, my own hands too shaky to drink it myself.
His russet eyes were fixed on my face, and I looked away, feeling hot with embarrassment.
“You must be careful, husband,” Tallu said. “You must be very careful. I have no desire to lose you. Not when it is entirely unnecessary.”
His words were pointed, and the set of his jaw showed that he truly meant them. They were not just for show.
So doing ice magic came with a physical toll. It made sense. That was why Na? had told me I needed to practice, to strengthen the skill.
A child who was just learning to balance was not asked to run the length of the Silver City. A wolf pup who just learned to take the harness was not asked to pull the entire sled on a hunt.
I put my hand on his knee, continuing to sip the broth he fed me. It was salty, tasting of bone and meat. And I could feel my muscles relaxing one by one, no longer quite as jittery.
When I had finished the bowl and another, the liquid sloshed uncomfortably in my stomach, but I felt mostly recovered. I looked up, finally ready to meet Tallu’s eyes.
“You will not lose me,” I said. I wasn’t sure why the words felt true, even though they were an impossible promise. “And I will not be so foolish to do that again.”
Tallu nodded tightly, raising his hand to cup my cheek. “Let us sleep.”
We both lay down, and the bed shifted as something climbed up. Na? curled herself at our feet, a sliver of her eyes and her scales glimmering in the artificial dark of the bed curtains.
“Fool,” she said directly into my head. “Now you know better. Sleep.”
Her magic shivered over me like snow trailing down a mountain peak, and then sleep pulled me under.
I woke to movement and noise. The curtains were still drawn closed, and when I reached over, my hand encountered only rumpled sheets where Tallu had been sleeping.
I had been around Tallu long enough to recognize the pattern of servants speaking, their quiet subservience, the tone they used in front of His Imperial Majesty, Dragon Chosen Emperor Tallu.
As they spoke, I could hear the rumble of Tallu’s voice, my body still waking up, not quite making sense of the words.
“There. Now you are awake. Do not speak.” Na? lifted her head, glaring at me. “You know what you did was foolish?”
I nodded, my head still throbbing slightly. I had been so desperate to have a moment alone with Tallu that I had continued on when my body had literally been screaming at me to stop.
“This is no game,” Na? said. “This will kill you if you are not careful. Pride alone is not the only reason that dragons kept this magic from humans. It is dangerous. Far more dangerous than speaking with animals.”
I nodded again. I understood, knowing that it had only been good sense that had kept me alive. If I had let it go on much longer, then I would have been beyond saving.
Seemingly satisfied, Na? stood, padding up over my legs and putting her two front paws on my shoulders. She blew a cold breath of frost over my face, the chill of it soothing my headache.
When my vision cleared and the ice had dripped away, I no longer had a headache. Na? pushed away, going back to the foot of the bed and curling around her own tail.
“Will His Highness be joining you?” one of the servants asked, his tone nervous.
Well, might as well make my presence known. I pushed open the curtain, sliding my legs over the edge of the bed. A servant appeared immediately with a pair of slippers.
“Yes, His Highness will be joining Emperor Tallu to visit the King of Krustau,” I said. I looked around the room, my eyes catching on Asahi. “I don’t suppose Nohe had enough foresight to pack more than one spare outfit?”
Asahi nodded his head. “I can take you to your rooms.”
It would be easier, but I hated putting any more distance between me and Tallu. Last night had been so intimate, the quiet for just the two of us. The cost of using the magic had been one thing, but seeing how Tallu had taken care of me afterward, fed me broth, watched me fall asleep…
Tallu was stripped down, completely naked, seemingly unaffected by the number of people in the room. His dragon tattoo flexed and moved when he turned to frown at Asahi, as though he also preemptively felt the loss of my presence.
“Bring his clothes here,” Tallu said. He didn’t look at me, didn’t ask what I wanted.
He wiped his expression clean almost as soon as it was there.
Servants began with his undergarments, fixing the fall, straightening seams. Then they put on his pants, the long ties hanging loose until they had selected a shirt.
It was strange to see him in the color green.
Almost none of his outfits in the Mountainside Palace were that shade.
Had he set it aside because his father had favored it so?
The servants that had been assigned to me arrived with clothes as Tallu’s were fastening his pants over his shirt, the long strips of fabric narrowing his waist, giving him even more formality.
The jacket matched the pants, green stitching along the collar so delicate that it looked like a series of vines crawling up his neck.
I squinted; each of the leaves formed part of the words “House Atobe.”
It was much more decorative than his normal clothes, the style just slightly different in a way I wasn’t versed enough to name. Helping me into my own pants, one of the servants made the mistake of looking up, catching sight of Tallu.
He gasped, then looked down when I turned toward him. Biting his lip, he said quietly, “His Imperial Majesty resembles Emperor Millu a great deal.”
And there it was. Tallu was wearing his father’s clothes in the place his father had died. The tension on his face hid an unhappiness at the reality that as far as he could run, he was still in the shadow of his father.
One of the servants stepped behind Tallu, fanning out a long cloak. It had a high collar, stitched with gold, lined with delicate lacing that framed a pattern of gemstones down the front. The dark cloak he wore at the Mountainside Palace seemed austere in comparison.
In front of him, a servant held a golden crown on a black velvet pillow. Unlike the coronets and circlets that Tallu usually wore, this had high points, each topped with an oval ruby, the colors so pure that when the light caught them, it sent a sparkle of red throughout the room.
The servant gently placed it on Tallu’s head, and I had the sudden impression that he was bleeding, the red of the stones catching on his hands.
There was a mirror in the corner of the room, set up so that Tallu might observe himself being dressed, but he ignored it, staring out the window at the wide gardens beyond. A willow tree leaned over a pond, its leaves touching the still surface of the water.
“Your Highness?” one of the servants asked, his tone nervous.
I looked over. He was a young man, his hair pulled back in the imperial style, but something in the shape of his ears spoke to a heritage in the Krustavian Mountains.
He was still holding up two jackets for me to choose from.
Both would match the pants, although one explicitly matched Tallu’s clothes, while the other was a neat contrast.
I chose the one that matched Tallu, letting them settle it over my shoulders, adjust the fall of it.
While Tallu’s jacket and pants were subtle green, the gold stitching accenting the fine color, my own was a pale white stitched with the same color green as Tallu’s outfit. Tallu’s servants were still fussing over him when my own stepped back, indicating they were done.
I walked over to him, touching Tallu’s arm with my hand. He blinked, turning his head to look at me. Without speaking, I stepped toward the mirror, turning his attention so that he could see the two of us next to each other.
We looked like a matched set. His dark hair and copper skin next to my blond hair, braided back in the northern style. My blue eyes and his russet gaze. And then our outfits, nearly inversions of each other.
With my hand on his arm, our relationship to each other was clear. I stared at him in the mirror, letting him take in how well matched we were.
“There is nothing we cannot face together,” I said quietly. “And the king of Krustau has only but look at us to understand the same.”
Even if I had to kill him to make the point.