Chapter 6
“What do you mean?” he demanded, face only inches above hers.
“I told you,” Aster grit through her teeth as she struggled and failed heave him off her.
Pinned under his dense weight, hips cradled by sand, she sighed.
“I told you. The wedding. It isn’t just me and Herold.
Everyone’s afraid the Nightborn king will choose their daughter as his bride, so it’s been a frenzy for husbands since Manna-moon.
I’d already be married off if it weren’t for my shortcomings. ”
“And those are?” The moons-light glinted in his dark eyes.
“Many,” she bit out, as if they weren’t on full display.
Her lack of delicacy, her stubbornness, her unwilling nature.
She steered the topic away from herself before she was forced to confess them all.
“The competition for matches drove the dowries so high that the council gave an order to keep the peace. All colony women of age must be matched by the Revel. They paid an outsider to offer herself as the only choice, so your king will have to accept her. But how can a human queen keep the peace between us if the council doesn’t care about her welfare? ”
He stilled, and something passed over his face. He understood then, how terrible it was. The poor woman the council had recruited, likely with lies and bribes, was not insurance against a future war. She was a sacrifice. He understood.
“So you see,” she continued. “It is not I who risk the Revel, it is their selfish schemes. If I’m caught, they might blame me, but I would not have left if it weren’t for their order.”
“You would have stayed and married Herold if they hadn’t forced you?” He delivered the question with a bit of a growl at the end.
“Of course not. But neither would my father have promised me to Herold without my consent,” she explained. “He’s cold, but he’s not a monster. Not usually.”
Damir released her instantly and stood back as though she were still drenched in saltwater. “Is that what you think of me, even still? A monster?”
“No, quite the opposite.” Despite his habit of restraining her against her will, he was the most civilized male she could recall meeting. He spoke with conviction and kept his word, at least. Aster sat up, gathering her skirts to rise.
“Yet I am the one forcing you to marry Herold by returning you to the colony, so I must be,” he said sadly.
He reached a hand to help her to her feet and then set about brushing damp particles of sand from her skirts, taking extra care around her hips to avoid any impropriety, even after he’d seen her behaving so wantonly.
His thoughtful aid put a lump in her throat.
“You’re still going to do it, even after what I’ve told you? Knowing full well the council will not meet the terms of the treaty in good faith? That they will force the king’s choice?”
“Will you let me fly you home now without killing us both?” he asked, ignoring her question.
“No.”
“We will walk, then.” His handsome mouth flattened and, with a flare of his nostrils, he hauled her over his broad shoulder and set off down the beach.
She howled and kicked and tried to smother him with her skirts, but none of it worked.
He wrestled her into submission without even slowing his steps.
“You are beastly. Monstrous!” She punctuated each word with slap to his folded wings and then kneed him in the sternum.
“Yes. Yet who is trying to injure whom?” he asked, panting slightly. At least he had the decency to be out of breath. “I will truss you with your ribbons again if you can’t control yourself.”
Rather than terrifying her, the thought sent a bolt of lust shivering to her core. The after-effects of his venom? Surely it must have faded by now. Perhaps untying her ribbons had wakened something sleeping in her, some winter animal that now refused to hibernate. If this was not ruin, what was?
“Aster,” he said hollowly. A reprimand.
“Take me with you,” she begged suddenly, softening her blows on his back until they were pleading caresses. “Take me beyond the forest. I’ll write assurances that I went willingly. My parents will recognize my hand if the Nightborn delegates carry my letter.”
“Take you to my bloodthirsty brothers?” he asked. “You don’t know what you ask for.”
“You’ve taught me not to fear. Your kind doesn’t kill their prey. If I must pay for protection in blood, I can—”
“You are not prey to them,” he said flatly, loosening his grip on her thigh now that she was not struggling to escape it. “You are an enemy, and they will treat you as such.”
Her heart stilled, choked by dark imaginings of what his teeth and claws could do to an enemy.
If this past night and day had taught her anything, it was that her imagination was sorely limited.
Still, when she weighed the possibilities against a lifetime in the nunnery or as Herold’s wife?
There was no choice. “I will endure it. We are enemies only for a few more days.”
“It will take much longer than that to heal our wounds.”
“Your wounds?” she blurted in disbelief.
“The war was two-hundred years ago. Surely any wounds are long scarred over.” Even as she said the words, she doubted them.
If the wounds had fully healed, the council would not be grasping to defy the peace treaty’s final provision to provide a choice of bride to the Nightborn king.
Surely, he would be furious when he learned of their deception. He might even declare war.
Damir stopped short and let her slide down until her bare feet hit the sand. With one claw, he tipped her chin up to look at him. His gaze raked over her face, drawing blood to her cheeks.
“Do you have a nightmaid, Aster?” he asked.
“Of course.” The question unsettled her. All girls were paired with a nightmaid at birth. “Mithri.”
“Mother of Zoran.”
How did he know that? After the last Revel, Mithri had sent the tiny, blue infant away with the rest of the male children, and Aster still missed his sweet coos and chubby fists.
“He cried for three nights,” Damir bit out. “He still cries for her, as his brothers cry for their mothers. Tell me, did Mithri weep for her saltborn son?”
Why was he asking such things? Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth as she answered with the truth. “No. Nightmaids only cry for the birth of daughters, as all women do.”
“Then you must understand, being one yourself.” He gripped her shoulders, his face very close to hers. “Nightmaids do not cry because they prefer sons. They cry for what their daughters must endure.”
Dread squeezed her ribs like a fist, rattling her. She knew—knew—he spoke the truth.
“That’s why the colony protects them behind our walls,” she whispered almost by rote, desperately pushing down the dawning realization that most of what she knew was wrong, and that this was likely wrong, too. “They don’t have defenses against your—your—appetites.”
He released her shoulders to let his thumb sweep over the arch of her eyebrow, down the bridge of her nose.
Across the curve of her mouth, pausing at its corner.
“Our daughters are born whole and perfect, like our sons. Their defenses are stolen from them. Their wings amputated. Their fangs filed. Their claws pulled. That is why the nightmaids cry for daughters.”
“They do that to babies?” How had she not known?
When Mithri had returned from her month-long confinement with a healthy baby boy, she had not spoken of what she’d witnessed while she was away.
It must have been these…atrocities. Aster’s eyes swam with so many tears that Manna and Corek melded into one wavering blur.
“You do that to babies. Then you ask why our wounds are still fresh. You wonder why my brothers might take their revenge for longer than three nights.” He released her, heedless of her growing distress that made her lungs strain against the cage of her bodice.
“The answer is no, Aster. I will not take an unmated human female beyond the forest, nor will I allow her to go there on her own. It would invite the destruction of much more than her body and spirit. It would condemn all the Nightborn daughters as well, and our sons who are deprived of their mothers. The treaty must be honored to the end, until the nightmaids are released from bondage. You and I both must sacrifice to make it so. You must return to the pinches of your cruel cousin, and I must marry a human. These things pale in comparison to what just one nightmaid has endured, don’t you agree? ”
She reeled back. “M-marry a human?”
He only blinked at her and crossed her arms over his broad, velveted chest, like he was waiting for her to piece it together.
“You’re the king!” she gasped, her thoughts racing over their every interaction.
How she’d called him a monster. How she had begged him, groveled for his touch.
How he’d withheld it, she’d thought to protect her honor.
But it hadn’t been out of concern for hers at all, but for his own.
He was betrothed. Treaty-bound to take a human wife.
One he didn’t want but would take anyway for the benefit of his people.
He’d told her again and again that she had confused their interests. She just hadn’t realized the depths of her ignorance. Mortification filled any gaps that remained in her knowledge. “I understand. Forgive me. I did not mean to…debase you.”
“You have not wronged me,” he said gently, and she saw him for the king he was. How had she missed it? She could only blame the dark, because had she seen his noble face, the way his eyes burned with truth and lips parted with compassion, she would have known from the beginning.
She lifted her chin. “I have. In the same way I have wronged Mithri. If I had simply asked her—” she broke off when her voice cracked.
Why had she never thought to ask? Why had she never conceived that her nightmaid might be suffering in her company?
Why had she been so callous as to leave her behind, abandoning Mithri to some punishment once her own escape was realized?
“We should hurry if I am to cross in the next ebb,” she said. He moved to lift her, but she shook her head, hitching her skirts and making her own way.