Chapter Six #2
“The appointments were only once a month or so,” I told him.
“And at my next appointment after you left, the doctors said there were ‘anomalies’ in my bloodwork, and they sent me home. Then they called to tell me I was already pregnant. The so-called anomalies had been the baby.” I gave a bitter little laugh.
“Check with those doctors if you don’t believe me. This is your baby I’m carrying, Davos.”
He shook his head, his face registering confusion. “No. No, you’re lying. Werros said the baby was his.”
I felt exhausted suddenly and let my head fall back against the pillow.
“He was the liar, not me, and yet you believed him. I’m not going to argue with you, though.
Ask the doctors if you don’t believe me.
They’ll tell you. They’re the ones who gave me the injections.
They should know. They’re the ones who first told me.
But do a paternity test if you doubt me. I have nothing to hide.
I’m telling you the truth.”
He turned on his heel and walked out without another word.
I had to admit I was relieved when he’d gone, but it was pretty damned abrupt.
Maybe he was going to talk to the doctors.
When he did, they would confirm it and when he checked the dates, he’d know for sure.
If he even bothered, that is. That would make my baby safer once he believed me, and that was all that mattered.
He could have a paternity test when the baby was born. Or not—I hardly cared anymore.
I was glad the memory had returned, but why had it left me in the first place?
I was still having headaches, and I’d never had those before all this started.
It was almost as if something had been screwing around inside my head—was still screwing around.
But was that possible? All those times Evoq had been giving me “lessons” and “counseling,” as he taught me about his religion and then when he began the “relaxation techniques,” as he’d called them…
Had he been doing something to my brain?
Had he been making me forget things? Changing my thoughts?
And had it been with Werros’s full and enthusiastic consent and cooperation?
An hour or so passed before Davos suddenly reappeared again. He came in the room, and stood just inside the door, leaning against the frame. He looked down at me with an odd expression.
“I’ve spoken to the doctors who did your injections. They said you aren’t lying about this. This is my child you’re carrying.”
I shrugged. “Like I said.”
I was looking up at him with a cocky little tilt to my chin, watching as some kind of emotions passed over his face. I have to admit I was feeling a little smug. He wiped all that away with his next words.
“I’ve arranged for our wedding to take place tomorrow.”
“Wait—what?”
“You heard me. My child must be born after marriage. He’ll be king one day so he has to be legitimate. It would be inappropriate to do anything elaborate, though, so the ceremony will take place in my office. I’ll send someone in to bathe you and get you ready.”
“No. I don’t need anybody to bathe me, damn you.”
“You’ll wear the sapphire robes. Lose the uniform. And the marriage will be consummated again afterward. Do you know what that word means?”
“Yes, of course I know,” I said, gritting out the words.
“Any objections?”
“If it keeps my child safe, then no. Do whatever you want. You will anyway.”
He gave me one last grim look, and then he swept from the room.
I felt a little pang somewhere inside me.
How had it really come to this between us?
I heard the echo of another memory in my head—I loved you from the first moment I saw you.
If that was real, then he’d said that to me once.
But I guess he’d changed his mind. How had his love for me evaporated so completely?
It made me feel sad, even as I reminded myself that I didn’t care what he thought about me.
He was my enemy, after all. Funny how that didn’t seem to give me the comfort I thought it would.
Later that evening, some of his servants descended on me and hauled me into the bathing room to strip me down and wash me to within an inch of my life, pull up my hair and twist it into tortured curls after brushing it until my scalp was possibly bleeding.
Afterward, I was taken, freshly bathed, dressed in the sapphire robes with new boots, down the corridor to the king’s office.
I felt like a little doll they’d dressed up for him.
He was standing in front of his desk, and I got a little shiver as I looked at him.
He wore the same robes as Werros had, but on him they looked entirely different, like something out of one of the novels I read, about ancient warrior-gods.
He had a sword strapped around his waist and gold chains with medallions draped around his throat.
He wore a high, golden crown, studded with precious jewels, and his red-gold hair streamed down over his shoulders.
He was stunningly handsome to me, but I pretended not to notice.
Except for those looks I kept stealing at him. People may have noticed those.
He held out a hand to me and I took it, feeling wary of him. He glanced at me because my fingers were so cold. He hesitated and then leaned over to whisper to me.
“Are you all right?”
“Perfectly,” I said, raising my chin.
He came closer and spoke softly in my ear. “Then give me a kiss for luck.”
A memory came flooding back to me of the last months of the war before he’d disappeared.
Every time he came home, we spent the hours until he had to return frantically making love to each other, afraid it would be our last time together.
And when he left, just before he walked out the door, I’d ask him for a kiss “for luck.” He had always obliged.
I turned my head sharply to gaze up at him, touched by his words, and his eyes looked sad. It broke my heart. I held still, keeping my chin high, so he could brush his lips gently over mine, once and then again. It shouldn’t have meant so much, but it did. God help me, it meant everything.
He nodded to some priest I didn’t know and had never seen before standing nearby, and the man came over to perform the ceremony as Davos held tightly to my hand.
I didn’t think the priest was from the Veranon, because he wore an orange-colored robe.
He began to read a long passage from a book he held in his hands, and naturally, I didn’t understand a word of it, but I knew it wasn’t the Veranon bible.
He droned on for about ten minutes and then stopped to look at me expectantly, as an acolyte I hadn’t noticed before rang a loud bell from behind me.
I jumped and whirled around and a few of the guards hid their mouths with their hands.
Davos sighed and poked me with his elbow.
“Answer him.”
“What do I say?”
He rolled his eyes at me. “Say yes. Then say, I will. But say it in Tygerian.”
“How do I do that?”
Another sigh and then, “Say, ‘Hai, Illios meh. Halag al moro.’”
I turned back to the priest and said, in a strong, clear voice, “Hai, Illios meh. Halag al moro.” Davos nodded and said the words back to me.
Then we waited as the priest read more from his book and turned to pick up the crown I’d seen behind him on Davos’s desk.
It was far more valuable than Davos’s because it was made entirely of diamonds.
Big ones—somehow held together by a thin, golden frame.
I’d have been thrilled by it if I hadn’t known that the Tygerians considered diamonds to be next to worthless.
They were so plentiful on the planet that you could pick them up off the ground.
They even paved their roads with them. But these were so pretty.
He saw me looking at it and leaned closer. “Do you like it? I chose diamonds because I know humans usually like them very much.”
I looked up at him, and those damn tears flooded my eyes again. “I love it.”
His eyes smoldered down at me, and he nodded.
The crown weighed a ton, though. The priest took it reverently in his hands and handed it to the king, who let go of my hand and turned to face me. “Kneel in front of me, nobyo.”
I dropped to one knee, or at least I tried to.
Davos saw me struggling and sighed long-sufferingly—he was beginning to sound like a leaky tire—before he finally held my hand and helped me down.
He was able, without expressing a word, to convey to me how utterly troubling and annoying I was to him.
He could have saved himself the bother. I was pretty sure that despite the fact he was being nice to me now, I knew exactly what he thought of me.
He put the crown on my head, pressing it down and saying, “Arise, King’s Consort.” I held out my hand for him to help me back to my feet, because I couldn’t get up on my own, and once again he had to touch me. It looked as if it were painful for him.
And that, apparently, was that. I was now a married man and the Royal Consort of Tygeria. The baby gave me a hard, high kick in celebration.
Et tu, baby?
Two of the guards came to “escort” me from the room, though not before Davos took the crown off my head. “I’ll get you a smaller one,” he said. “That one looks ridiculous.”
It was, in fact, slipping down over my forehead and sitting just above my eyebrows.
“Thanks a lot,” I muttered, and he glanced back down at me.
“I’ll be in later to check on you.”
I started to walk away, but he stopped me dead in my tracks with two words. “Get naked.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. Wait for me in my bed. Naked.”
If looks could kill, he’d have been dead, because he’d said that shit in front of everyone. I gave him the look it deserved and would have stormed out, but his red-robed thugs took my arms and held onto me as they marched me back down the hallway.
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I glanced over at Rakkur and cleared my throat.