twenty-six
It didn’t take long for Sulim to fall into a new groove at Gardiah Estate.
She had one month of the in-laws being away, and she was determined to make the most of it—starting with not having anyone ragging at her about chores.
She would assert them however she liked, and since she was the stand-in Lady?
She could keep the dinner table stacked with julah to amuse her husband with, such as when she insisted that Mira bring her “uncle” Ramaron over for dinner for the sole purpose of peppering him with pointed questions about the finer aspects of sorcery.
Sonall wanted to know how energy wells worked?
Well, who better to ask than one of the premier scholars in that kind of research?
Of course, that wasn’t what Ramaron Marlow was in Harksplit to research.
Sulim still wasn’t sure what he and Lady Joiya were up to beyond “the thinness of the veil” and apparently having their own romantic affair, but what was it to her?
She should mind her own affairs. Like the one she eagerly continued with her newfound soulmate.
They were bolder in the absence of the in-laws.
No longer were their liaisons confined to the loft and afternoon delights in town.
Graella’s old room was due to be remodeled, and Sulim took it upon herself to get it started as a project while her mother-in-law was gone.
It gave her the perfect cover for dragging Mira into bed whenever she wanted, since nobody would bother going in there after Sulim changed the locks and kept the only key.
Meanwhile, she did her due diligence to pack up the rest of Graella’s things to either be shipped to Qahrain, dispersed among the house, or sold.
“Look at you, going through another woman’s things.” Mira lay across the large bed in nothing but her tunic, her long, slender legs dangling off the edge. “After I’ve had my way with you, no less.”
Sulim tossed a wooden doll at her. “It’s my cover for being in here.”
“Still sexy. Remind me to bring you into my childhood bedroom for some fun.”
Sulim didn’t dwell on what that meant, let alone what their future looked like together.
Every time she thought about it, the more flushed she became.
I could be the wife of Young Lady Dunsman.
While same-sex marriage was not legal between two julah, Federation laws were observed in the case of julah and humans on Yahzen.
Sulim would never be fully accepted as a member of House Dunsman, let alone seriously looked at as the daughter-in-law of the High Priest, but who cared?
They could own property in the city. Sulim could acquire a residency visa.
There was a possible future there, now that she knew they were soulmates.
As for her husband…
Sonall was busier than ever, and it gave him an air of serious propriety before he retired to their room late in the evening every night.
Early in his father’s absence, he revealed that Vern had given him the keys to the office and some of the drawers in Lord Gardiah’s desk.
Sonall sometimes shut himself up in his father’s office as often as Sulim was in his sister’s old room.
Neither really talked about what they were doing while in there.
About a week into the quiet peace of Gardiah Estate, Sulim needed to find him for something, and realized he had probably gone into his father’s office again. On her way there, she bumped into Kema, who was walking in the same direction.
“Oh…” She brushed her hair out of her face. “Pardon me. I was just…”
Indeed, Sulim was curious, since the only doors in this direction were related to the main office of the family business, a large storage closet, and a bathroom for guests.
There was no reason for someone, let alone Kema, to be wandering around unless she was on a set route for an indoor walk.
Which Sulim somehow doubted. This was a woman who could teleport wherever she wanted, including town.
This area had some of the loveliest hikes around…
“Never mind.” She quickly went back down the hallway. Sulim forgot why she was even looking for Sonall, but indeed found him in his father’s office, going through some old files.
When he wasn’t doing that, Sonall was chained to the fields with the ranch hands and Marco, both of whom knew how to work around him and looked to him for some direction.
Sonall confessed that Marco did most of the final decision-making about what to do about this and that while out in the fields, but in private, he encouraged Sonall to think things through, be it relying on what his father would do or implementing his own ideas.
“I don’t know what I’d do without him right now,” Sonall said while they watched a broadcast one night before bed.
“I’m still the youngest guy out there by like ten years. Even the newer hires have a decade’s worth of experience over me and just know what to do when shit is happening. Like the other day, when we realized there was a hole in one of the fences,
and it was big enough to let some of the foals through. That could have been an utter disaster, and while I sat there trying to think up what to do, Garrick just hopped off his horse and chased down a colt like it was something he did every day.”
“And you fixed the hole, right?”
“Of course.”
She assured him that he would fall into a groove as she had, but she also knew that he didn’t think their jobs around the estate were at all the same.
Something they kept to themselves, since neither did Sonall want to insult, nor did she want to be insulted.
The man had been trying to get laid for the past week, and he knew that it wouldn’t happen if his wife was even slightly put off by his behavior.
That had been established the moment they got engaged.
“To be honest,” Mira said the next day, as they had tea in the salon, “I assumed you were still performing your wifely duties this whole time.”
Sulim snorted, finally allowing herself to be comfortable enough to lean into her soulmate’s embrace. The two of them took up a couch, their tea untouched. “Wouldn’t you hate that, though?”
“You’d hate it more, I thought.” She then said, “It really wouldn’t bother me. I’d be more bereft if you told me you actually loved him more than me and you wanted me to get out and never be seen again.”
“Come on…”
“Besides, be grateful I said that in Basic. In Julah, the sentiment literally translates to, Minding the Midnight Malady. Except there isn’t the same amount of lovely alliteration.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Really puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? I remember being a little girl and hearing about it for the first time. My parents were always open about the existence of sex and romance,
so I have this core memory of staring at my mother from across the breakfast table and asking her if my father made her do things when she didn’t want to. She was so horrified!”
“I think I would die.”
“You have to remember, I never got along much with my father, so it was quite the realization. I was still adjusting to the idea that anyone loved him. Let alone like that.”
Sulim lifted her head, grateful to be off the subject of her sharing a bed with her husband. “I’ve never really asked you what he’s like. Your father, I mean.”
“You mean the High Priest of the whole damn universe.”
“Sure.”
Mira pressed her chin against Sulim’s scalp, an arm wrapped protectively around her. “I get to see the side of him nobody else does. Except his companions, I guess.”
“Which side is that?”
She sighed. “The fatherly side. I’ve heard so much about him as a student, a priest, and a husband, and I can understand now why so many love him. But as his daughter, I know he resents how independent and willful I am. Despite me being my parents’ little-me.
My mother is the first to point out that my more destructive sorcery and hotheaded arguments come straight from him. Basically, my father doesn’t like it when I throw it back in his face. Especially as a High Priest.
I’m one of the only people in the mortal world who can see beneath the golden diadem. And since I’m his daughter, he can’t seduce me with his usual romantic tricks.”
Sulim thought back to all of the times she watched High Priest Nerilis Dunsman on broadcasts, be he giving the rare interview or—more likely—giving a sermon in the High Temple.
In her youth, she recognized the otherworldly beauty that represented a different kind of treasured masculinity from the human world and found him an all right orator who focused more on Temple doctrine and theory than instilling emotion into his followers—that was more his wife’s thing as
priestess.
But as an adult, Sulim often assumed that it was a front.
The “man beneath the diadem” was more likely a being of multitudes.
“The man’s a hypocrite,” Mira continued.
“He fought our family’s system to marry my mother and do things his way. But when it comes to his own child, a cling to tradition transpires. He would have had me betrothed to a man of his choosing from the moment I was old enough to establish legitimacy as his heir.”
“That’s not very fair.”
“As the people he’s closest to have told him over and over. He’s finally dropped it since I graduated from the Academy, but I know he hates that he can’t control me. Even when I did so much that was expected of me, like excelling in the Academy and becoming a priestess.
The fact that I wasn’t a more demure version of my mother rankles him.”
“Some people aren’t good at being parents.”
“Yeah, well, on Yahzen, quality of parenthood isn’t really considered when you become one. There’s always someone else who will raise your child for you while you treat them more like an employee or a baby doll than an actual person.”
“That sounds rough. I’m sorry.”
“Part of it is because I’m a native member of House Dunsman, infamous for its tough love and smug attitude toward the rest of our own kind. My mother knew what she was marrying into, but what does that mean for any kids she had?”
“I suppose love can really be that powerful.”
Mira squeezed Sulim closer. “Guess we’ll find out, huh?”
Sulim chose not to dwell on that.