Epilogue
Osric
My locker in the guard hall still has my name written on it from before.
I hang my harness on its hook, fold my uniform onto the shelf, and pull on my pants and boots while the shift bell rings out in the yard.
Two guards from the night rotation nod at me on their way in.
One of them asks if I’ll trade patrols with him, and I tell him to ask the captain, which is the same answer I gave him last time.
Zen undresses at the bench beside mine. His shell is green, darker across the shoulders, and his light brown hair curls around his pointed ears no matter how short he cuts it. He’s younger than me and carries most things lightly, but he folds his uniform slowly and keeps his eyes on his hands.
“My father wrote again,” he says. “He wants to know if I’ve been to a shaman. My mother wants to know why every male in our line found his mate early and I can’t manage it.”
“You can’t rush it,” I say. “It happens when it happens.”
“Easy words from a mated male.” He pulls a shirt over his head. “I’m not clicking at empty air yet, but people look at me differently. They know how old I am, and they know I’m alone. Lately, they stop talking when I pass.”
“They’ll find something else to whisper about.”
“Will they?” He shrugs and reaches for his boots. “My parents were mated young. Their parents as well. Everyone at home talks about it as if I’m failing on purpose. I don’t even mind the whispering. I mind the waiting. I want what you have. Is that a foolish thing to say out loud?”
“It’s not foolish.” I close my locker. “Now hurry up. My wife doesn’t like it when I’m late, and she likes it even less when I’m late for dinner.”
That gets a laugh out of him, and the laugh does him good.
“Thank you for the invitation. I’ve been low lately, and I didn’t want to admit it until you asked me over. I want to see this new place of yours, and I want to meet this lovely wife the whole city keeps talking about.”
“She’s excited to meet you too,” I say.
I don’t mention Darina. Esme built this dinner the way she builds all her plans, with total confidence and no subtlety, and my only job is to deliver Zen to the table and stay out of the way.
If he suspects nothing by the time we reach the house, the plan has already worked better than I expected it to.
We drive out of the lower city and along the desert road while Zen talks about his patrol, and I answer in the right places until the house comes into view against the cliff. I park by the terrace, and I let him walk in ahead of me.
Esme waits in the entry with Nim tucked against her chest. The sight of my wife holding the half-wild animal is one of my favorite things. Darina comes through from the dining room with a folded cloth in her hands, saying something about the table settings.
Darina stops mid-sentence, and Zen stops too, two steps inside the door.
Nobody speaks, and the entry hall goes so silent that I can hear Nim purring in Esme’s arms. Darina looks at Zen with the cloth hanging from her hands.
Zen looks at Darina and doesn’t finish his greeting.
I stand there with no idea what a host is supposed to do in this situation, which is fine, because this part was never my job.
Darina recovers first. Her eyes move from Zen to Esme and narrow. She drives her elbow into Esme’s side. Esme chuckles and steps forward to welcome our guest as if nothing were planned at all.
Zen turns his head and gives me the look he uses in the guard yard when someone’s story doesn’t hold together. I give him nothing back.
“You must be Zen,” Esme says. “Welcome. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“It’s an honor.” He bows his head to her, but he hasn’t fully turned away from Darina. “Thank you for having me.”
Nim twists out of Esme’s arms, drops to the floor, and is gone through the terrace door before anyone can say a word about it. She doesn’t like new people in the house. She never has.
“And this is Darina,” Esme says. “My best friend. She came with me from Concord.”
“Darina,” Zen repeats. “It’s a pleasure.”
“Welcome,” Darina says. Her face has gone pink. “Dinner’s ready.”
We sit, and the two Scorpii females I hired bring out the dishes and withdraw to the kitchen. Zen looks over the table without picking up his fork.
“This is human food.”
“It is.” Darina passes him the bread. “I taught the cook every dish myself. There was a fight about the spices. I won.”
Zen takes a bite, and his eyes close briefly.
“Then I take back everything I’ve ever said about human food.”
“What have you said about human food?”
“Nothing I’ll repeat at this table.”
“Now I have to know.”
“Then you’ll have to earn it.”
Darina laughs, and after that, the two of them stop being careful with each other by slow degrees. They start polite, then curious, and Esme catches my gaze across the table and holds it while Zen refills Darina’s glass without being asked.
“How do you find Otheera?” he asks her. “Most humans I’ve escorted through the gate can’t wait to leave it.”
“Most humans never see more than the gate.” Darina sets down her fork.
“In Concord, I wasn’t allowed past the gardens.
Here, I walk to the market on my own. I cross the bridges, stand on the terraces, and look out over the whole valley, and nobody tells me to get back inside. I love it here. I love all of it.”
“You may be the first human I’ve heard say that.”
“Then the others weren’t paying attention.”
“And nothing about it frightens you?”
“The prices at the spice stall frighten me.”
Zen laughs, and Darina looks pleased with herself.
“Esme tells me you work in the city,” she says.
“I’m a city guard, like Osric. We’ve been friends for years.”
“Then you can tell me stories about him that he won’t.”
Zen glances at me across the table.
“How many do you want?”
“All of them.”
“As you wish,” he says.
“Careful,” I say, and the two of them ignore me completely.
The females come back to clear the plates and bring out the next course. The house is louder than it has ever been, and I find that I like it.
They keep talking, but I stop following their conversation.
Esme’s hand finds mine under the table, so I watch her instead: the way she pretends to eat while she tracks every glance that crosses between our guests, the way she keeps her face calm while missing nothing.
She’s wearing the expression she wore when she welcomed Zen at the door, the innocent one, and it fools no one in this room except, possibly, Zen.
She looks at me, I look at her, and we’re so happy we could burst.
Across from us, Darina asks Zen another question before he’s finished answering the last one.
Esme squeezes my hand. I squeeze back.
***
Esme
Later in the evening, Zen and Darina go for a walk in the garden, and I pull my husband up the stairs by the hand. Neither of them notices us leave, which tells me everything I need to know about how the garden walk is going.
I’m kissing him before our door is fully closed.
He laughs against my mouth and pushes it shut behind us, and we fall onto the bed together, tangled and ridiculous.
I start pulling at his clothes. We’ve done this almost every day since the mating ritual, and I still can’t get enough of him. I don’t expect that to change.
“Sting me,” I whisper against his jaw.
He pulls back far enough to look at me.
“No.”
“Osric.”
“We have a guest downstairs. And you, wife, need to learn patience.”
I prop myself up on my elbows.
“Do you truly think I need to learn patience?”
“Yes.” He’s laughing. “Though I know it’s impossible. My wife is never patient. I knew it when I married her, and I’ve made my peace with it.”
“You’ve made your peace with nothing,” I say, and I pull him back down.
He rolls me over, and I roll him right back.
The bed creaks under us while we laugh far too loudly for two people who are supposed to be discreet hosts.
His hands are in my hair and mine are under his shirt, and I’ve almost won the argument about patience without saying another word when Darina’s laugh comes up from the garden, high and easy.
We both go still and listen.
Zen’s laugh follows hers, low and unguarded, nothing like the polite one he used at dinner.
I turn my head toward the window. Osric turns his. Down in the garden, one of them says something too low to hear, and Darina laughs again.
“Do you think there’s something there?” I whisper.
“Definitely,” Osric says.
“You could sound more impressed. I arranged this entire evening.”
“You arranged a dinner. They’re doing the rest themselves.”
I settle against his chest and let myself grin at the ceiling.
“Maybe we should plan a trip to Maara. You and I. Give those two a few days here without us watching them. And when we come back, maybe they’ll be mated.”
He considers it the way he considers all my ideas. Seriously and knowing he will agree with me.
“That’s a very good idea.”
Predictable.
“I’m full of very good ideas.”
“You’re full of schemes.”
“And you married me anyway.”
“I did,” he says, and then he kisses me again, slow this time.
Just to prove him wrong, I don’t rush it.
THE END