Chapter Five #2
“I’m not even sure why this discussion is needed,” Shionne said from where she leaned against a windowsill along the north-facing wall.
She had her hands shoved in pockets sewn into her black tunic.
Behind her was a large oval window made of purple glass.
It wasn’t a security risk; one of the main exports of the Aether Kingdom was purple glass that was charmed to allow a clear view from one side and impede viewing via the other.
The raven-haired fae woman with honey-colored eyes turned to peer out the window that allowed a sweeping view of Cinta, the Aether Dominion’s central city and seat of power.
“I want every last monarch and noble of all the Six Kingdoms dead.” She pressed a finger to the glass, pointing to the glittering palace with conical turrets topped with spires in the distance.
“My only contribution to this useless chat is to express that I despise the custom among the Six Kingdoms where only the bride’s and groom’s bloodlines and courtiers attend weddings.
If they truly played nicer together and the Six Kingdoms came together as one to attend their liege lord’s wedding, we could just be done with this now.
” The temperature inside the room had dropped to the bitter, unsurvivable temps found among the peaks of the Yunnas.
“Damn it, woman!” Jakobi shrieked. “Reel it in. I’m freezing my balls off.”
“Get over it,” Shionne told Jakobi without turning away from the palace she had in her crosshairs.
Jakobi growled something under his breath that he was wise enough not to state louder with Shionne descending into such a mood.
“The princess dies.”
Malachi finally forced it out. It was part of their plan, part of their collective vengeance, and they’d stick with it.
KADEESHA HAD INTENDED to sneak back into the palace well before the sun rose.
However, it had been an arduous battle to pry herself away from Malachi’s side—or, rather, off his cock.
When she approached the palace gates, the sky was a dusky rose gold from the sun peeking over the horizon.
With Leisha and Samira in tow, Kadeesha beamed charmingly at the pair of guards on duty.
Leisha swaggered up to one of them and passed him a pouch that had a sum of runi coins inside that doubled his wages for the year. Leisha gifted the same to his partner.
“You never saw us this morning,” Kadeesha ordered the guards.
She held each of their stares in turn, letting them know the penalty for deciding anything otherwise.
Her father might not place much stock in Kadeesha and her Nkita, but they had proven themselves a superior unit of well-trained, vicious warriors, and other folks in the dominion were smart enough to recognize it.
Case in point, the guards visibly blanched.
The light-haired, beefy guard to Kadeesha’s right bowed. “Saw who?” he asked when he straightened. His shorter, slimmer counterpart expressed an identical sentiment.
Once that hurdle was cleared, Kadeesha and her sisters slunk to their wing of the palace without further incidents.
It was early enough that the courtiers of the palace hadn’t yet stirred, and any servants moving about already would be doing so via the network of back entrances and sequestered corridors that her father dictated they use.
When Kadeesha had first formed the Nkita, she’d wanted them all to live together to help forge bonds and camaraderie.
Sylas wouldn’t hear of her spending a single night in the soldiers’ barracks where the rest of the palace guards and flyer squadrons slept, so she’d exercised the bit of sway she held over her father and persuaded him to allow her to move to a wing that was separate from his royal apartments—and house her Nkita in it too.
When they arrived in the wing they called home, they silently dispersed to freshen up before the day’s flurry of activity.
Their trio didn’t need to exchange words because everyone knew there was nothing to say.
Both her sisters passed her pitying looks all the same before leaving her side.
Kadeesha gnashed her teeth, watching as her sisters made their way to their own rooms. She tried to accept the new existence she would step into today.
She’d attempted to circumvent it but failed, and she needed to make peace with her marriage.
What she didn’t need to do was be standing in the middle of the hall suddenly recalling how much she enjoyed giving herself over to a complete lack of inhibition at Oleander House.
How much she yearned to have that level of freedom and absolute control over what she chose to do and not do, always.
She also didn’t need to be recalling just how good it felt to be with a man so ferociously committed to wringing every last drop of pleasure from her.
She knew it wouldn’t be that way with Rishaud.
Bedding her new husband would be a joyless, aloof act at best and a repulsive duty to endure at worst. She clenched her hands into fists, bile rising in the back of her throat.
It wasn’t fair. If she’d been born a male, she would’ve had different and better choices.
She would’ve faced a vastly different future.
Nothing could’ve dislodged her from being Sylas’s heir and remaining in her home among her friends and people and everything she’d worked so hard to attain.
She would’ve had some say in whom she married as well.
She drew in a breath. As she exhaled, she let all of the whatifs and self-misery go.
She couldn’t alter her course, so all that was left to do was figure out how to live with the life that lay ahead and not let it—or Rishaud—break her.
She vowed to herself she’d at least be victorious in that and turned for her quarters to get ready for her wedding.
When she pushed open the door to her rooms, she startled.
A woman sat on one of the chaises in her boudoir, sipping from a gold teacup.
Kadeesha fortified herself to interact with her visitor and walked over to sit next to the woman who had her same deep bronze coloring, her same jet-black hair, her same high cheekbones.
“Hello, Mother,” she said, reaching for the gold teapot resting on the foot table in front of the chaise.
She poured steaming tea into one of the matching dainty cups, added two spoonfuls of honey, two sugar cubes, and a sprinkle of the ground lavender that were all in round dishes upon a silver serving tray.
Her mother, Yashira, scowled. “Must you drink your tea so sweet on this day? You’ll have a stomachache and be sick during your wedding.”
Kadeesha grunted and pointedly added another dollop of honey. Before bringing the cup to her lips, she said, “Perhaps the Celestials will smile upon me—I’ll be so sick that I become incapacitated, and then this day never has to occur.”
Yashira scowled harder. Her eyes, which were lined generously with kohl paint, narrowed on her daughter.
Dressed in a vibrant orange gown, Yashira was a famed beauty among the Aetherfolk, and she carried herself as regally as any Aether queen might have done if Kadeesha’s father had had a wife.
“You should be elated on this day,” the Aether king’s concubine started in.
“Not woeful about it. You will become something I can never be. You will become more than any woman among the whole Six Kingdoms can ever dream to be—our high queen.”
Kadeesha only barely held back a snort. But that veered into disrespectful territory, and while Kadeesha had a complex relationship with Yashira, she loved her mother too much to go there.
She did, however, state, “You are right, Mother. Let me correct my distasteful behavior. I am beside myself with delight to marry a man rumored to murder his wives when he grows tired of them. And I am absolutely ecstatic that my father is selling me off to my eventual death so he can gain greater political favor.” All right, maybe she failed at not wading into disrespectful waters.
But on this morning, could Yashira really blame her?
Yashira sucked her teeth. “Are you done being dramatic, daughter? You and I both know that you will be well. Rishaud needs you alive to stir up fervor for a conquest campaign against the Apollyon Court.”
“And what about afterward?” Kadeesha snapped. “Will you still be so confident that my safety is assured then?”
Her mother passed her the look she often did when Kadeesha was a child and Yashira found some behavior of hers exasperating.
“Be serious. You are the general of the fearsome Nkita. I daresay there is no man alive who could come for your life and live to tell about it. You can handle yourself fine against Rishaud.”
Kadeesha huffed because that wasn’t the point, and her mother knew it. She also ignored the pride that oozed from Yashira’s tone when she spoke of the Nkita and Kadeesha’s reputation. She would not let her mother find the soft bits of her today and wield them to make her more agreeable.
“When the sun sets,” Yashira forged on, “you will be so much more than Rishaud’s bride.
You will have cemented yourself as a high queen anointed by the Celestials themselves.
And then nothing can threaten to strip you of your station among the Six Kingdoms—not even any legitimate male heir your father may produce in the future.
For you will be one of the most important individuals in all of the southern kingdoms.”
Ah. There it was. Kadeesha knew they’d arrive here soon enough.
Sylas wasn’t without a queen or legitimate male heir for lack of desire or trying.
He and Yashira had played a game for centuries that had resulted in any woman of suitable birth to whom Sylas proposed marriage being poisoned on their wedding night.
Sylas was well aware of the culprit, as was his larger court.
Both Yashira and the court also knew Sylas had a soft spot for Kadeesha’s mother and he wouldn’t lift a finger against her.
Sylas would level some punishment, usually a few decades in irons because he must to save face, but Yashira’s life always remained intact.
Then, Kadeesha was born and Yashira had the key to escaping any future sentencing.
Sylas couldn’t deprive his daughter of a mother’s nurturing and the court would excuse him taking a lighter hand with Yashira for the same reason.
The irony wasn’t lost on Kadeesha that she’d be thrust into the same danger once she was Rishaud’s wife that Yashira had visited upon Sylas’s brides.
It was one sordid, twisted affair indeed.
“You meant to say I will be one of the most important individuals beneath the Hyperion king, each vassal king of the dominions, and every other high-ranking male of nobility and importance,” Kadeesha said to her mother, her voice dripping with acid.
Yashira had an infamous temper and Kadeesha could practically see the steam rising from her ears.
A petty, childish part of Kadeesha felt joy in managing to aggravate Yashira so on this day.
Kadeesha didn’t dare display such a sentiment; that’d push her mother too far.
Kadeesha only gleefully watched as Yashira visibly summoned calm, drawing in a long breath through her nose and pushing it out.
“I’ve enjoyed taking tea with you. As always, your visits are a pleasure, Mother,” Kadeesha said before Yashira could speak something to aggravate her further.
Yashira blinked. “Are you dismissing your own mother?”
“I am about to be high queen, am I not?” Kadeesha retorted. “I guess it’s time to start acting like it, throwing around that power you say I’ll command for something useful.” Kadeesha got up, went to the door, and opened it, sending her mother a plain message.
“I … I’d hoped to help you dress for your wedding, since I, a lowly concubine of common birth, won’t be permitted to attend a royal ceremony.”
While nothing Yashira said was untrue, it was another manipulation attempt.
The latter issue was the one that pissed Kadeesha off, stung her badly, and she wasn’t about to bend to Yashira for those reasons.
She stiffened her spine, locked her complicated feelings for Yashira down tight.
“I’ve got dress-maids for that. I’ll come see you after the ceremony and before I depart for the High Court to let you know how everything turned out. ”
Yashira looked furious enough to spit venom, but excessive pride was another trait Kadeesha had inherited from her mother. So, Yashira stood and marched to the door. Kadeesha shut the door in her mother’s face, only wishing she could do the same to her fast-approaching future.