Chapter VII #4
With a growl and a shove, the stranger cast Afon aside.
Drops of the Caervallin king’s blood spattered the ground, mingling with fallen meadowstar seeds.
Warily, the man with the knife watched Afon gesture furiously to his convalescent troops.
He reached for Ariana with his free hand, helping her to her feet, but his focus never left Afon.
When the stranger pushed Ariana behind him, gently, not at all the way he had handled their mutual enemy, she felt something sudden and sharp and new.
She’d known peace before. Serenity. Holy exhilaration.
But the stinging joy that rushed through her as she stood behind the man with the knife was different.
It was triumph of a sort, and self-satisfaction, and security.
As long as he stood so, between Ariana and the world, no harm could befall her.
Afon stormed away with his men following closely.
Only once the sound of their booted feet had retreated did the man with the knife turn to Ariana.
He was taller than Afon had been, and younger.
The stranger cast the Caervallin blade he held aside, his gray eyes flashing.
When he reached for Ariana and took her chin in one hand to look her over with a searching glance, she nearly swooned.
It was the fever. The pain in her throat. The panic still singing in her veins.
She was overwrought.
“I’m sorry, little star,” the stranger said courteously. He wore cloth of gold rather than warrior’s garb, and his sleeve was stained with Afon’s blood. “He should not have treated you so. Are you well?”
No, Ariana thought. I am not well. I will never be well again.
“Thanks to your protection, yes,” she murmured instead, and could not help that a little of the heady triumph she’d felt when standing behind him shone out.
The man’s gaze kindled into flame, not of anger or violence as she’d seen in Afon, or the relentless determination she’d found at her own core.
It was something else entirely. Some potent yearning that seemed to focus on Ariana.
It compelled her, and she heard the man catch his breath as, once again, Ariana sank to her knees.
“I owe you my life, Lord Inver,” Ariana said softly, for while he was as unfamiliar to her as Afon had been, she could not fail to recognize Honoria’s king. “What service do you claim from me and my goddess in exchange?”
“Is this how you kneel before Lyria?” Orden Inver blurted out, as if he could not help the question. “Is this what your goddess sees?”
A blush burned across Ariana’s face. She felt suddenly self-conscious and awkward, as she never had before. But sorias were trained in reserve and restraint, and she only nodded.
“Yes, my lord. I honor you now as I honor her.”
A pause. “You honor me as you honor Lyria? An Inver?”
“You chose peace a moment ago.” She was not precisely afraid in his presence, yet there were nervous wings in the pit of her stomach. “In that moment, you were Lyria’s vessel, and so to honor you is to honor her.”
He scowled, briefly and stormily. “So you do not honor me, then. I’ve no part of it.”
“I—no. That is, I meant—I didn’t mean—” Ariana couldn’t help stammering. She wasn’t sure how to express that in Corrin, Lyria was everywhere, in every right action, and that it was a great compliment to see the goddess reflected in another’s choice.
But the king’s frown had already become a smile, changing like quicksilver.
“Don’t be anxious. I don’t need to understand your ways to know that someone like you could never slight another person.
Not truly. Not even if you tried. You are too innocent.
Too unlike the rest of us, with your goddess and your perfect peace. ”
“Oh no.” Ariana shook her head in dismay. “That is not so. I am deeply flawed, my lord.”
“Impossible,” Orden scoffed. “If you’re able to see Lyria in one of my actions, then you, little star, are the goddess walking among us, and I will tell you this—I never understood how one could be devoted to her until this moment. But you, I believe, could teach me in full.”
Ariana could not look at him. His words were sacrilege, but there was a forbidden sweetness to them all the same.
Orden Inver was silent for a time, seemingly waiting for Ariana to speak. At last, she summoned the courage to glance up at him and found a war of emotions playing out across his handsome face. Meeting her gaze, he mastered himself. Honoria’s king shook his head.
“You ask me what I would claim from you in payment for my service. I want nothing,” he lied, and they both knew the words to be false. “Only to take my men and go home.”
At his command, the remaining soldiers stood.
Ariana stayed as she was, on her knees, watching while Orden ushered his convalescent men out of the tent.
He turned back, as she’d known he would, and fixed her with a lingering look.
She felt flushed and aching with fever once more, as if the Inver king’s shadow had briefly warded illness off and now it had returned.
It was only his power that made her lightheaded in his presence, she had told herself then and every day after.
It was only his protection that left her empty and anxious when they were apart.
Nothing more and nothing less, for what greater feeling could exist between a warlord and a daughter of the stars?
“I remember you,” Afon said to Ariana in his rough, dry voice.
The last time they’d met, she’d thought it must be the aftermath of exposure to witchsmoke that made him sound so.
But it was, as far as she could tell, only his natural tone.
“I knew we’d meet again someday the moment I heard Orden had chosen a star bitch for himself.
You refused to beg for your own life seven years ago, but you were happy enough to beg for another.
So I’ve brought a sacrifice for your gods, to gut on one of your altars unless you intervene.
I came here for one purpose only, Ariana Inver, and that is to see you plead.
I’ve a powerful hunger to know why Orden likes it so much when you cower. ”
“Enough!” Gileta snapped, and Orden strode forward hotly. Ariana was closer, though, and reached Afon with floating steps before Orden was halfway across the room.
“I did not cower this morning,” she said. “Nor for several days past. I was fighting for something every king desires, and as you can see, I won my war.”
She shifted the baby in her arms so that Afon would see him better.
All of the Hand knew that Afon had bedded and butchered a dozen women in the vain hope that one of them would get his successor.
Two mistresses without an heir might be a coincidence.
Three, and people began talking. But Afon’s dozen had left no doubt in anyone’s mind—potent though he might be on the battlefield, Afon was not so in the bedchamber.
Ariana knew it as well as anyone else, and in this moment, the knowledge was a weapon in her hand.
Forgive me, she pleaded silently to Lyria. Forgive my poison tongue.
Afon stepped closer, and Ariana found herself beyond fear.
Having quailed before him once and discovered the burning star at her heart, she would never falter again.
He still smelled of woodsmoke and steel and horse, and his nearness as he surveyed the little prince was a strange and fascinating thing.
She wanted to examine him, as she had looked over the body of the mountain cat Silith’s servant had once dispatched.
To memorize his form, his strengths, his weaknesses.
To decide for herself how he could best be vanquished.
Afon seemed to sense her interest and lifted his pitch-dark gaze to hers.
All she saw there was the yawning hunger he had spoken of, to dominate, to possess, to break.
With a lift of her chin, Ariana turned aside as if the foreign king was nothing.
She found Orden immediately behind her, a looming and threatening presence at her back.
As was her practice, she sank sweetly to her knees before him.
For the briefest moment, she found displeasure in his gaze.
But she shifted the bundle in her arms, and the small prince woke.
“My lord,” Ariana said, her eyes steadfast on Orden’s face. “I bring you your son and heir. Does he please you?”
Immense satisfaction replaced all else in Orden, and he reached out a hand, settling it on the crown of Ariana’s head.
“I see the hearth goddess has kept you safe through your childbearing,” the king said, his voice warm and pitched to carry.
“Our son is a blessing, and it gladdens me to find you well. I’ve ordered torches to be lit for you in the sanctuary, and before council ends, we’ll dedicate the prince to Honoria and name him before our gods. ”
Ariana let out the slightest sigh of relief as he took the prince from her, cradling the baby in his arms. With great care, she stood.
Dull pain still twisted within her, and her linens were sodden now.
As she got to her feet, she felt another rush of blood, and the slick slip of it as it began to trickle down the insides of her legs.
Schooling her face into a mask of serenity, she moved to the open center of the audience hall and held her hands out, one to the retinue from Song Royale and one to the ambassador from Caervallion.
“I’m afraid you’ll both have to meet me here,” Ariana said. “An Inver trial by fire is a wearying undertaking, and I’ve little strength left in me at present, having come directly from mine.”
No one moved. The hush in the audience hall grew absolute as Ariana waited, hands outstretched, nothing about her revealing the sudden fear lodged in the pit of her stomach. Afon had not made her afraid, but this moment, this choice—oh, she feared it greatly.