Chapter 17
When I open the door to Memnon’s—I mean our—house, the first thing I hear is supernatural pop music blaring from hidden speakers. The tune is familiar; the singer’s a siren—or rather, was. I think she died decades ago, but her songs have been immortalized.
My eyebrows hike way up as I listen to the upbeat melody, the magic in the music pricking at my skin.
I glance down at Nero, whose tail is twitching curiously. I open my mouth to make a comment, then close it.
Memnon steps out then from the kitchen, the sleeves of his crisp button-up rolled to his elbows.
A huge grin spreads across his face when he sees me.
“Wife,” he says, clearly relishing the term.
My pulse was already beginning to gallop at the sight of him, and now it races at the title I’ve long bucked against.
I try to grimace, but it comes out as a smile. My traitorous heart.
He sees it and presses his advantage. “You came back here of your own accord.”
I bite my lower lip, trying to suppress my growing grin as I drop most of my things. “You gave me a massive library. I had to come back.”
“Of course.” He nods, false understanding painted on his face. “That’s the only reason.”
“Well, not the only reason.” I desperately want to be near you at all hours of the day, and it’s hard to think about anything that isn’t you, which is infuriating because I have a whole life outside you, and you’re also a menace, and—
“I have something I’d like you to do for me,” I say, cutting off my own fevered thoughts.
Reaching into my bag, I fish out the items I’ve gathered from Henbane, then approach my annoyingly good-looking husband.
I press the items against his chest. The charcoal, the bone needle, the blunts.
Memnon raises his eyebrows as he glances down. “What is this?”
“I want you to tattoo me.”
I hear his breath catch and sense his body go still. There’s not much that can truly throw this man off, but I think I just did.
His magic lashes out of him, and a moment later, the music clicks off.
“What?” His eyes have a gleam to them—one I can’t quite read.
I swallow and drop my gaze, my hand going to my chest. “I keep looking at the blank sections of my skin, and they’re starting to look wrong. Too bare. Now that I have my memories back, I want the panther and the slain deer on my upper arm. I want the dragon clan mark over my heart.”
He takes the bone needle, the charcoal, and the cannabis and sets all of it on a nearby side table.
“You cannot know what it means to me, that you want to wear our sigil again,” he says. Maybe I’m hearing his thoughts or reading into his expression, but I sense he’s…torn.
“I can find a man’s heart with my blade.” He grabs one of the bone needles. “I cannot do this.”
“You must’ve seen dozens of tattoo sessions.” It can’t be too difficult—a bit of fire, a bit of charcoal, and some pain.
He frowns. “Watching and doing are two very different things. I am no artist.” Even as he says this, however, I can feel his resolve wavering and his curiosity rising.
I have been drawing these images in the margins of my notebooks for years. I could easily draw the image onto my skin. It’s tattooing myself that I can’t do.
“I know you have read the mind of at least one tattooist at some point in time,” I say. “The knowledge is there, even if you’re being reluctant about it.”
He doesn’t say anything to that.
I reach out to Memnon’s neck, tracing the lines of the panther he has inked there. Beneath my touch, the sorcerer stills, and his eyes grow heated.
“Please.” I glance up at him. “I want my old ink back.” I don’t know why I’m so adamant about this, but the idea will not leave me.
Maybe because the past lies trapped in my memories and there is a part of me that wants to scream that it happened—that I existed when the world looked different and it still means something to me.
Memnon carries the loving marks of his people—our people. I want them returned to my skin, and I want Memnon, who has both memory of these tattoos and an understanding of the significance of them, to be the one to give them to me.
“I swear to the gods, you will get your tattoos, est amage,” Memnon says fervently. “We will find the most skilled artist and commission it.”
I drop my hand from his neck, and the look in his eye is telling me that he does not like that he lost my touch.
“You’re going to do it,” I insist, backing away from him.
“Oh, I am?” he says, prowling forward a step, sounding both amused and skeptical.
“And I trust that it won’t look like a five-year-old’s drawing of a dragon because you are Memnon the Indomitable, Sorcerer King of Sarmatians, Unifier of the Steppe Nations.”
“Again,” he says, slipping into Sarmatian, “as you have so eloquently stated, I’m a conqueror, not an artist.”
Already I’m taking off my shirt. Memnon’s eyes heat as my skin is revealed to him, his gaze darkening when his attention drops to the flesh just above my heart.
“I trust you.”
He gives me a look, like he knows I’ve weaponized those words.
“And, if you do this for me, I will do something for you.”
Memnon pauses, and oh, I think I’ve caught him. “What is that?” he says.
“Whatever you please.”
I don’t think Memnon breathes. Then, like a spell being broken, he shakes his head, his eyes never leaving mine. “Don’t hand me an offer like that. You have no idea what my demands will be—and you will get a shitty tattoo out of it.”
An apprehensive thrill rushes through me. I think I have him. “Name your price.”
Memnon steps in close and hooks a finger around the amulet hanging from my necklace. “Anything?” he says again, sliding the crude ceramic moon face back and forth along its ribbon. He fists the amulet then, as though he might rip the thing off.
Ah.
Memnon wants my fertility back.
I swallow.
He laughs, his eyes devilish. “That’s what I thought.” Memnon drops the necklace, and I relax, even as a part of me deflates. “Don’t offer deals you cannot stomach.”
“What makes you think I cannot stomach it?”
Again, I seem to catch my husband by surprise.
“You want my mark that badly?”
His mark.
“My tattoo,” I correct.
“Our tattoo,” he amends.
I breathe deeply in and out of my nose, debating, debating. If I agree to this, I could get pregnant.
My core clenches at the thought of it, and my throat tightens. There’s old loss there—old loss and longing—that I’ve shoved away. It’s loud in my ears now though.
I sense him listening to my thoughts greedily.
My heart is in my throat. I guess now is the time to start getting better at BJs. And anal. And buying condoms.
One of Memnon’s brows rise, and an amused smile is curling his lips as he listens in on my own internal struggle.
Why am I not outright rejecting this joke of a deal?
I open my mouth to tell him no.
Instead, what comes out is “Don’t you want to get to know your new wife better before we discuss kids?”
But Memnon is marveling at me. “You’re seriously considering this.” His gaze drops to my chest, to that pale expanse of skin over my heart, and now I can see how seriously he is contemplating the proposition.
I hadn’t considered the possibility that Memnon might truly want kids this badly. But he looks…newly determined.
“If I get pregnant, you’re the one staying home with the baby.”
He laughs. “Est amage, I will give up my whole damn empire if you ask for it. And if you give us a child, our child”—his voice goes hoarse—“I will give them the world too.”
My heart still pounds recklessly fast. “What exactly would be the terms of the deal?” I ask.
“No more birth control.”
That would take condoms off the table, leaving me only oral, anal, hand jobs, and pulling out early. It takes an infinitesimal leap of logic to grasp that Memnon would absolutely be willing to edge me until I let him come inside me.
The thought has my nipples tightening.
Obviously, I should not agree to this.
But the way Memnon is looking at me, with those jeweled eyes and that cruel, curved scar, and the memories of how intensely he loved his family and how viciously he protected them…it’s all affecting me. I feel the echoes of my own buried longing.
“Would you want to make an unbreakable vow?” I ask, watching him carefully.
He gives a hollow laugh. “Because the last unbreakable vow worked out so well for us.” Memnon’s eyes flit over me.
“No, I trust you,” he says, weaponizing those words the same way I did.
“Besides,” he adds, “I rather enjoy the thought of you sneaking contraceptives. But I retain the right to throw them away if I find them.”
It’s an out, one my strategic husband is all but handing over to me. I can make another amulet, but he might lift the magic from it.
This is a reckless trade, I know, but I’m not terribly worried about getting pregnant either.
Last month we had lots of sex and essentially no birth control, and we were fine.
And I know from the deep past, infertility was our struggle.
So I’m not that worried—especially not when I’m already making plans to have my wedding ring spelled with another contraceptive charm back at Henbane’s apothecary.
It’ll be fine.
I draw in a deep breath. “It’s a deal.”
Memnon’s eyes gleam as he takes me in. I can sense his churning emotions, but mostly, I sense exultation from him. He thinks he got the better end of the deal.
He probably has. I’m just annoyingly determined to get my tattoo.
“Alright, est amage. It’s a deal.”
Stepping deeper into my space, he reaches out once more and loops a hand around my necklace, the moon-faced amulet dangling from the end of it. Giving it a swift tug, the ribbon snaps.
He tosses the necklace aside, his expression pleased and a smidge victorious.
“When do you want me to begin the tattoo?” Memnon asks.
“Right now.”
A little bit of that self-satisfied pleasure falls from his face.
Memnon sighs. “I’m going to need that blunt.”