34 | Yaron
The not-so-red Moon Festival
Three days later, we are able to celebrate our union out beneath the light of a moon that shines silver, not red. I refuse to wait the twelve weeks it will take for the red moon to shine again.
I shake off the adrenaline in my blood and the energy in my bones. The fights for Kiandah’s hand were swift and all for show. I’m left to approach my female now, standing at the end of the arena. She drips, not in jewels, but in robes that are parted, revealing stretches of the perfect skin that awaits me.
I lift the small golden jar in my shaking hand that I purchased at the Night Market on our first date. The air is warm tonight, even though the cold winds of winter are soon to creep up from Hjiel. It is either because her ancestors favor us, or because of the fires that decorate the wide field before the castle, still stained and blackened from her flames, but prepared to grow again with the right nourishment.
I wear trousers and no shirt and dip my pointer finger into the small golden jar. I part Kiandah’s robes with the back of my hand and paint her precious skin in even strokes, designs varying but coming to me organically. I paint her until she is a vision. I paint her while the town cheers on, drunk on the good food she and her family prepared — and of course, copious amounts of wine.
I do not think in this moment of the coming war, of the Fates, of the rescue mission we have begun to prepare to free Freya. We have called on the Berserker of Hjiel to join us in convening with the Berserker of Gold City to mount a coordinated attack on Mirage City from the South Island, but he has thus far remained resistant, preferring instead to keep to his brutish ways in the cold, apart from the rest of Gatamora.
I do not think of Dragnovic and the sorrow he expressed in his last letter after I told him what befell his sister. I let those thoughts lie and linger in another part of my mind that belongs to the Shadow Lord, but not to Yaron.
Yaron is here now with his Kiandah, his fingers moving with surety over every inch of her flesh, which pebbles and shivers under my touch. She stands so strong. So beautiful. Shining like a flame. And finally, when all of the paint glitters gold on her skin, the small tin in my hand now empty, I step back and toss the tin aside.
The crowds roar out their drunken cries and Kiandah smiles at me like she does not even see the drunken fools her people are making of themselves in her honor as they laugh and dance and sing up into the surprisingly clear night sky. She looks at me like I am the only other person in the world and it makes me feel like something greater than a Lord for the very first time. A king? No. Not that. A man. Her man. A husband with a wife who loves him and is content with him, because she chose him and is content with everything she has.
“What now, my Lord?”
“Whatever you like, my wife, but I may be partial to returning to the keep.”
“Your wife,” she repeats dreamily. “My husband, you’re ready to go home so soon?” she teases.
I smirk. “I did not buy edible paint for nothing, Kiandah.”
She steps towards me and I sway when she places her palms flat on my chest, marked with scars for her that I know will not be the last. “Are you going to be a good boy, Yaron?”
“I’m going to be whatever you need me to be.”
She laughs and I drown in it. “Then take me away, my husband.”
“I will bond you and then rut you savagely, wife.” I lift her up and let her smooth, bare legs wrap around me as I tease, “Under the light of this moon, as I will under the light of every moon henceforth.”