Chapter 4
Oljin
S he’s mine . I found her. My heart exults even though my mind swarms with worries.
I still want to kill those frixing Mizarans, but my fury recedes as I reach the bottom of the cliff and head away from the spaceport into the grasslands. I don’t have time to be angry or seek revenge, not when my queen is in my arms.
I don’t dare take her to the priests, not like this. She’s hurt and sick, light as a baby braxa, her bones as fragile as tili stems. No one will touch her but me, not even with their eyes. Not until she’s strong enough to stand beside me. I cradle her to my chest and run in the direction of Pravil’s family home, deep in the outlands. The grass seems to part before me like Alioth herself is guiding my way.
I don’t need priests to tell me that my fated queen is in my arms. I know it in my blood. My hot, busy blood. It yearns for her, begging me to take her. To mark her with my teeth, to claim her with my cock.
I push away the thought as soon as it enters my mind. She’s so vulnerable, and I am the only protection she has, so R’Hiza take me if I damage her in any way. I stroke the soft wisps of her unruly mane and press my lips against her scalp, and a shudder ripples through her. Is she frightened of my teeth? Does she think I’m taking her somewhere to hurt her?
I slow my steps so I can focus on her face rather than the terrain. She blinks her lids open, but her wide, green-and-white eyes are unfocused, staring somewhere behind me. I’m not even sure she’s aware of me. I’m nothing to her, and she’s everything to me.
Though I’m sure she doesn’t understand me, I make her a vow. “They won’t hurt you again. No one will. I swear to you, Alara, I will protect you with my life. You have my loyalty and devotion above all others, as long as I live. I will never give you cause to fear me. I will learn your ways and treasure our differences and shape my life to yours. Our path may be difficult, but we will find the blade’s edge to balance on together.”
At my words, she melts into my chest, making my breath catch. She trusts me. She doesn’t know my name, and I don’t know hers, but our souls recognize each other.
I run through the night and into the next day. In the deepening afternoon, the sound of braxas lowing reaches my ears before the grasslands abruptly give way to a short-cropped field. The valith where Pravil grew up, a large dome built of earth and wicker, sits at the center. Next to it is a bathhouse and another outbuilding that houses a modest braxa herd. A woven fence surrounds it all to contain the animals.
When I approach the gate, an older female in a white headscarf startles in her seat by the door. She rises with a cup of nomo in her hand. “Oljin, Prince of Irra, is that really you?!”
I’ve met Pravil’s mother many times before. I often accompanied him home during our years of friendship as greenlings. Kind and hardworking, she always welcomed me as though I were one of her own children. “Greetings, Saana. Pravil sends his prayers for your good health.”
“I’m honored by your visit.” She dips into a low bow, almost spilling her nomo. “I regret I don’t have hot food to offer you. I don’t cook as often as I used to now that Garyth’s ghost is gone.”
Pravil’s father died two years ago. A severe male with many injuries from his saidal hunts, he was never very warm to his family. Still, I can see a new kind of loneliness in Saana’s eyes. She misses her mate, however cold and stoic he might have been. “May your ghosts reunite in Alioth’s light.” It’s a trite phrase that comes to my lips automatically, but she seems comforted by it.
“You must stay the night,” she insists, motioning to invite me inside. It’s only then that she seems to notice I carry someone in my arms. Her mouth falls open. “Goddess, who is that? What is that?”
“I don’t know, but I hoped you could help her,” I say, trying to keep the urgency for my voice even though every part of me is straining to fix this tiny, broken, foreign female.
Saana is known in the outlands for her healing skills. Though untrained, she has an extensive knowledge of medicinal plants developed during her years of caring for the local braxa herds. She patched me up more than once when Pravil and I were apprentices and took our sparring sessions too far.
She sucks in air through her teeth. “Bring her inside, quickly.”
I follow her into the dome house and lay my Alara on the pallet Saana quickly makes up for her. The circular room is just as I remembered it, with a central hearth for heating and cooking, the living areas around the perimeter. Small, arched windows look out into the grasslands. Bundles of dried herbs and grasses hang from the walls and ceiling, imbuing the space with their fresh, pleasing scents .
“Will she wake?” Saana asks, already moving to a set of shelves where vessels hold even more herbs and spices, along with measuring and grinding implements and bottles of oil. “See if you can rouse her, and if she will drink, give her water.”
I kneel beside my Alara and smooth a lock of her hair from her face, seeing it for the first time. Under a layer of dust, she has soft skin, the color of tili stalks after they’ve been dried and seasoned. Her cheekbones are flushed a deeper shade, and her wide mouth is a rosy plum.
If she were Irran, the color would indicate her she felt equal fear and desire. I would know to soothe her before I kissed her, to share my heart first. But she is not Irran, so I have no knowledge of her colors’ meaning, only that they fascinate me.
My touch makes her eyelashes flutter, an encouraging sign. I stroke her cheek as well. Though she’s colored like tili stalks, she feels softer than the heads of the grass, the pale, fluffy parts used to line infant cradles.
“Wake, soft one,” I say. “Open your eyes for me.”
She murmurs, turning her face into my touch, and those lips brush against my palm, sending a rush of warmth up my arm. And her lids open, revealing eyes the rich color of gratitude, like new growth. I want to sink into their beautiful green depths.
“Alara,” I say without thinking, lowering my forehead to press against hers. Behind me, I hear Saana suck her breath in.
“Your queen?” Her whispered question barely reaches my ears.
I can’t answer. I’m transfixed by the beautiful, broken female in my arms. Sliding my arm under her back, I help her sit, then hold a cup of water to her lips. She tries to take it from me, but her hand cannot grasp its contours. She mumbles something around the edge of the cup but takes a few long sips before her neck sags back, her mouth twisting into a grimace of pain.
“She’s very badly injured,” Saana says when she comes over with a bowl of herbs and oil she has pounded together. “Inside and out.”
“Some Mizarans had her. They were mistreating her, so I took her from them,” I explain awkwardly, not willing to admit out loud that I paid for her. “The healers in Gren’Irra are loyal to the temple priests, and they won’t heal anyone from Elsewhere.”
“So you thought of old Saana and her poultices.” Saana flashes the points of her teeth before the smile slips away again when my Alara groans in my arms. I gently lay her back down and take a few steps back so Saana has space to examine her. She begins a careful inventory of the tiny female’s wounds, applying her herbs where she can. Every touch makes my little queen whimper and cringe, sending a burst of fear and panic through my whole body.
I can hardly stand it. The sound rattles from my skull to the soles of my feet until I’m pacing back and forth, growing more and more agitated at every cry.
“This isn’t right! It’s not right!” I repeat again and again. Everything is wrong: the way she came to me, the way she was treated in captivity, the way she’s feeling now. “Why must the cure for her injuries hurt as much as the cause?” I finally snap.
“Healing is work, and sometimes work is hard,” Saana says calmly, attempting to feed the remains of the herb mixture between my Alara’s lips. Her eyes have fallen shut again, and she jerkily turns her head away from the pressure of the spoon, smearing the green oil across her cheek.
“You must take it. The goddess brought you here for this, for my help,” Saana says soothingly. “All will be well in her light.”
She hums a child’s lullaby until the small female’s lips part, allowing the medicine in. Even though it’s clear my Alara does not enjoy the taste, she swallows it. I swallow in unison, relief settling heavily over my shoulders. It is not the end of her healing, but at least it is the beginning.
Saana rises, giving a satisfied nod, and turns to me. “That will help her ease the pain and lighten her bruises. I can’t say whether it will help with the rest.”
“What you mean?”
“Her movements are odd, and her eyes, too. I have seen something similar in a herd of braxas once. The owner had contacted me by messenger because they were wasting away even though they were grazing on a fertile grassland, the same pasture they had lived on for years. He wondered how they could starve with so much food. When I visited his homestead, many of them had died, and the others exhibited erratic movements like this.”
“Did you find a cure?” I ask urgently, black claws slicing into my palms with the passing of every second that she does not answer.
Saana nods, although her pigment grays. She dreads telling me whatever is in her thoughts. “It’s lucky I went there in the warm season and noticed his fields contained no flowering plants. They were rich in zalu and krisk and tili, but no blossoming anitha or efala as one might expect. The owner explained they had a blight several seasons before. Thinking the braxas might be lacking some key nutrient provided by the missing plants, I went and gathered some flowers elsewhere and made a tincture of them.”
“Did it work?”
“It did. Slowly. Most of the remaining animals recovered.”
“Will you make some for her?” That is the only thing I care about now. “Tell me which types of flowers, and I will gather them for you. Anitha and efala, you said?”
“Oljin.” Saana shakes her head, her skin muddying even further. “It’s likely her diet has been missing some nutrient, perhaps for a year or more, but unless she grazes the grasslands like a braxa, it’s probably not flowers.”
I refuse to accept this as an obstacle, so I say that first stupid thought that comes into my head, wanting it to be true. “What if it is? She is beautiful enough to live on flowers.”
“You’re right, she is, poor thing. But I think she’s living on starlight right now,” Saana says, her tone meaningful.
I understand what she implies. The goddess may have brought my queen to me, but my poor Alara has paid a terrible price for her passage. And now it’s up to me to help her recover. I just wish I knew how.