CHAPTER 26 #2
My fist connects with a thin plate of steel hidden beneath her leathers. My hand crumbles, pain igniting every nerve and scrap of flesh like an arching bolt of lightning.
“Foc!” The scream slips past my lips unsummoned when Riah clasps my broken hand in hers.
The pain of every fracture is dimmed by the scorching agony of her healing gift as it knits me back together.
I glare at the female warily when she slips a sheet of metal out of her leathers and throws it out of the ring.
It isn’t large, little more than the size of my fist. She knew where I would strike her.
“Your teacher was Drakai, wasn’t he?” she asks, brows high on her forehead.
We both know it isn’t really a question. The female baited me into revealing myself in a manner worthy of applause.
“You should have told me when we were training yesterday,” she says.
“It didn’t seem relevant,” I say, my eyes on the floor of the ring.
“Krakenhisht,” she says. “You are more skilled than you led me to believe. Why?”
“It felt like a safe choice. Ever since the warship landed, all I am to every soldier I pass by is La’tarian. The enemy.” A small amount of truth to better hide the lies.
“But you aren’t just La’tarian. You belong to the general,” she says quizzically.
“I do not belong to the general,” I say through clenched teeth, bristling at her assumption that because she’d seen me in his bed, I am the male’s property.
Her eyebrows hit her hairline, but she seems to accept my position and every explanation I’ve given her when the tension leaks out of her shoulders.
She swipes her hand along the side of her head, running her fingers through her hair, and looses a breath.
Looking down at my hand, I flex it, then ball it into a fist to test its function.
“Why did the general call for Caden yesterday if you are a healer?” I ask.
“My gift only works on bone,” she explains, her eyes lingering on the fist at my side.
I catch sight of Awri running toward us, dressed in a full set of leathers, some of the melancholy already gone from her face.
I step aside when she enters and takes determined strides toward Riah.
The lieutenant doesn’t attempt to correct her form.
She just stands in the center of the ring stoically, blocking every blow Awri throws as she releases whatever she has bottled up inside.
Once Awri is spent and her brow no longer pinched down in a forlorn frown, I take her place.
It doesn’t take Riah long to get a truer estimation of my skill.
She flows through a series of strikes and kicks I learned as a child.
Each one I deflect is followed by another, slightly more difficult to evade, until I feel as if I am home, repeating my drills with Bront.
It’s a relief when Sera arrives with a basket of fresh fruits and a stack of thick sandwiches for lunch.
Though it’s a feat to convince Riah to sit on the floor of the ring and join us for the meal.
My tongue works around a mouthful of berries when an attractive male with long brown curls and blue eyes passes nearby.
Awri and I share a smile when his lips curve up on one side and he winks at Riah.
“Your mate?” Awri inquires boldly.
Riah shakes her head, smiling at him as he disappears around the side of the stables. “Just a male I exchange pleasure with.”
“In what way?” I ask, blood pooling in my cheeks when they both look at me curiously.
“The usual way I suppose,” she laughs, before taking a bite of her sandwich.
She doesn’t seem the least bit deterred by my question, so I risk another.
“You said you exchange pleasure. What is it you do for him?” It isn’t until the words fully exit my mouth, that I feel how entirely awkward they are.
“Does that mean you’ve changed your mind about Xeyvian?” Awri asks, clearly surprised.
I’m not sure I want to go into detail explaining just how stupendously I’d fallen for Siserie’s deception or how she was the sole reason I denied him.
So, all I say is, “I’m not sure.”
“About which part?” Awri asks.
“All of it,” I say.
I mean every word when it passes my lips and in the same moment realize they aren’t true.
I have reconsidered him and even though I tell myself it is all for duty, for my purpose, there is no denying my desire.
Desire for myself and fulfillment of his own.
And why shouldn’t there be? It changes nothing.
“That’s a lie,” I admit, and Awri side-eyes me as she pulls a slice of cheese from her sandwich and pops it in her mouth. “I have reconsidered him.”
The words are a torrent, released from the dam of my mind as I explain everything. The moment I’d gone to accept him, finding Siserie, when he’d taken me to his chambers in the middle of the night, and when he’d learned of my run-in with the female the next morning.
“He told her he would bind her and ship her to La’tari?” Awri asks, gaping at me.
“I hope you won’t be offended when I say that I sincerely hope she crosses you again so that I have the pleasure of seeing her shipped south,” Riah says with a snort, and I decide that I really do like the female.
“I’m inclined to agree,” Awri chimes in, “after watching her chase after Xey for centuries. As if he would ever consider her.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” I ask. “She is exceptionally beautiful.”
“No lovelier than you,” Awri says, and I gloss over the lie.
As much as I’m sure she’s just trying to reassure me, I’ve never been vain enough to require flattery.
“And the female is an absolute snake, just like her sister,” she continues, “She’s the last feyn on the continent I’d trust with the king. I’m sure Xey feels the same.”
If he does feel that way, then they are both wrong on that account. If they really knew me, Siserie would be second on that list.
I bite into a juicy apple when Awri asks around a mouthful of food, “Do you remember Ishara?”
I nod, but unlike the memory I’m sure my friend summoned, the day I met the female in the dressmaker’s shop is not what comes to mind. It is her voice, calling after me when I jumped from her balcony.
“Siserie and Ishara are sisters,” she explains.
I’ve heard of sibling rivalry, and though I wasn’t raised with siblings, it’s still hard to imagine why sisters would pursue the same male.
I’m trying to recall all that Awri said about their family when Kishek appears at the edge of the hedged road and she perks up with a smile. Discarding her lunch, she darts off to greet him and they disappear behind the dense bush.
Riah grins at me as she says, “The question you asked before, about pleasuring the male,”—I nearly choke on a fat thimbleberry—“I can tell you how, if you like?”
Before I know I’ve agreed, the female is weaving tales of long passionate nights that she’s spent diligently engaged in just such a task.
Exhaustive accounts of what she, in her long life, learned will bring a male to his knees.
She is quite descriptive and while the lady I portray should shy away from such things, the inquisitive student I truly am hangs on every detail, supplying questions that will draw out the finer aspects of the acts she describes.
Her deep throaty laugh calls Awri back to the ring as I try to compose myself.
I hack out the small sip of water I inhaled when she began to describe a long night she’d spent with not one, but two males.
I’m still not sure how I would manage the general’s thick length in any of the ways she described, let alone have another to contend with.
Kishek follows Awri back to where we sit with our mostly consumed meal. She is beaming, all the morning gloom shed in the ring, and perhaps behind the tall hedge where she’d lingered out of sight with the male by her side.
“What are you two talking about?” she asks with a suspicious smile.
I sputter the last of the water from my lungs, eyes watering, when Riah answers, “The art of war.”
Kishek’s mouth twists. “I’m not sure that is what the general had in mind for your lessons.”
“Trust me,” the lieutenant retorts with a wink, “The general will thank me later.”
I slap her arm with the back of my hand and laugh.
Not a small or forced laugh, but a laugh that makes your eyes glisten and your belly ache.
A laugh that sears a happy memory into your mind.
I laugh like I have rarely laughed before, my sides splitting at the look of pure confusion contorting the male’s face.
The lieutenant jogs off with a wave when Kishek gathers up our picnic supplies and leads us to the palace. Awri apparently arranged for Adora to come for a final fitting before the masque, and I find that we have time to do little more than wash and dress in fresh clothes before she arrives.
Kishek waits in the main room of the general’s chambers while I wash, and I smile when after a quick bath I find that the general had the rest of my clothing brought over and hung in his closet. I pluck a colorful gown from the racks and a pair of matching pants sewn in a sheer beaded lace.
Adora sees to Awri’s fitting in the privacy of her own chambers before coming to see to my own.
She must be sure of her work when she binds my eyes with a thick black cloth, shielding the costume from my sight.
I was wrong when I thought she would seek my approval of the gown.
Instead, the female claims that while half the fun of the masquerade is revealing yourself to those in attendance, the other half lays in the anticipation of the event.
She assures me that none of the ladies view their gowns until the evening of the party, and I suppose I can always discard it in lieu of a simple everyday gown if I feel it’s necessary.