Chapter 15 #2
"Great Khan." Her voice was calm, pitched to carry. "It is an honour."
The same voice. The same cadence. The same inflection that had said those words, Great Khan while he was bleeding on her floor.
If you're the Valthorne Khan, then I am the princess you are to wed.
Ragnar found himself staring. It was no wonder the prayers to put her name to rest had fallen on deaf ears.
A bitter taste formed in his mouth as his heart beat wildly in his chest. She had known from the beginning.
From the moment he grabbed her in the dark, from the moment she pressed her fingers into his wound, from the moment she sat beside her bed in the moonlight—she had known exactly who he was.
"Great Khan?" Thane's voice snapped him out of his thoughts.
Ragnar blinked. Azul's head was still bowed. Though he couldn't see her face through the veil, he had the distinct, sourceless impression that she was smiling.
"My chambers," he finally said, reining in his turbulent emotions. "Lead the way."
The feast hall was grand, if hastily prepared. Ragnar sat on the raised platform beside the Igwe with Thane at his shoulder and made the appropriate noises about trade routes whilst attending to none of it.
Azul sat slightly behind her father, seemingly not paying him any heed.
Is she doing this deliberately?
Ragnar found himself watching the side of her head without justification.
Does she think me insignificant?
"Great Khan." Thane's voice was low at his ear. "Your cup."
Ragnar looked down. He had been gripping it hard enough to feel the clay give slightly under his fingers. He passed it to Thane and accepted a fresh one.
By the time he looked up, she was looking at him.
Her golden eyes held the exact expression he recognised from the dark of her room: calm and faintly amused, as though she were watching a man do exactly what she expected.
The cup in his hand creaked once more.
The Igwe rose, offering a toast. "To new alliances. And to the union that will strengthen both our houses."
Ragnar stood. Someone refilled the cracked cup; he drank from it quickly so as not to spill anything. The hall echoed the toast back.
From somewhere across the room, quiet enough that only someone listening for it would hear, came the sound of barely suppressed laughter.
His ears heated.
Obscene woman.
"Daughter," the Igwe said warmly. "Attend to our guest."
The alcove was to the side of the main platform, separated from the feast by heavy brocade drapes. Thane positioned himself on the step outside, back to the outer wall. The feast's noise became a muffled roar. Ragnar let his shoulders settle and waited.
He had been sitting perhaps five minutes when the curtain moved.
She slipped through it and drew it closed behind her in one motion, sealing them into a pocket of intimacy, then knelt on the cushions across from him, keeping an appropriate distance, one he felt was an exaggeration. The pearls of her veil caught the lamplight like scattered stars.
She tilted her head, and he caught her eyes, glistening with amusement.
"How are the stitches?"
Of all the things she might have opened with.
His grip tightened on the cup. "They hold."
"Good." She sounded genuinely satisfied, which was somehow worse than if she had been baiting him. "I would hate for my work to be wasted."
"You nearly killed me."
"Will you let go of that? I wasn’t actually going to kill you. The sedative kept you still, which was necessary given that you kept tearing your own sutures." A soft click of her tongue. "You're welcome."
Something that was almost delight moved through him. He suppressed it. "Are you always this difficult?"
"You were possibly the most inconvenient patient I had ever treated." She dismissed him easily. "I hope you're easier to manage as a husband."
What did she take him for? A pet?
"Do you make a habit of saving strange men?"
"Do you make a habit of sneaking into a woman's chambers in the dead of night?"
The walls of the alcove seemed to press slightly closer. He had walked directly into that and they both knew it.
"My apologies," he rasped. "I did not intend to disturb your rest."
Why am I apologising?
"Think nothing of it." She waved a hand, rings catching the light. "As long as you pay your debt, we can consider it settled."
"Pay you with my life, as you said."
She nodded. The pearls clinked. "Whatever remains of it belongs, by rights, to me."
"Oh?" A dark amusement cut through his exasperation.
It baffled him how brazen she insisted on being despite the obvious danger.
She knew his title, so she knew his reputation, did that mean nothing?
His eyes gleamed, tracking the line of her throat beneath the veil.
"A life is something to be bartered so easily? "
She nodded, so sure of herself. "Luckily I am benevolent. I will not ask anything unreasonable. I simply wish for your cooperation."
He leaned forward. "And if I told you I had no intention of cooperating?"
"Then you'd be lying," she said pleasantly, reaching for her veil to unclasp it. "You came three days early. You wanted to see the board before anyone arranged the pieces. Or, you wanted to see me." The veil was discarded. "Are you, per chance, smitten by me?"