Chapter 19
Nkiru took one look at Azul's face and fled to prepare some restorative broth.
Ragnar carried Azul inside, laid her on her bed and knelt beside her. His eyes glanced at the new vase of blue flowers on her windowsill, focusing on his betrothed.
"Khatun. What happened?"
Azul stared at the ceiling, her heart still hammering, her body still trembling. "I was talking to the scholar, and then I had a memory. A bad one. When I came back, I couldn't stand. And he was there."
"What did you think about?"
"I—" She choked, her eyes stinging with sudden, humiliating heat. "I want to see my sister."
Ragnar's brow furrowed slightly. "Chidinma?"
Azul shook her head. The movement sent a fresh wave of dizziness through her, but she pushed through it. "No." She took a deep breath, forcing the words out past the tightness in her chest. "I want to see Kamsi."
His body stilled. “Khatun, who is Kamsi?”
Azul closed her eyes. She didn’t know how much was too much or how far was too far. But if she did not speak, she feared her soul would crumble under her mind.
But Ragnar was kneeling beside her bed, watching her with patient eyes, and something in his silence made her want to speak.
"Kamsi is my sister," she said. "The last daughter.
We grew up together in my father's compound.
" Once started, her words could not be stopped.
"She’s younger than me. Four years, maybe five.
" There was no way to know her true age since she was brought in as a toddler.
"Thin as a reed, with hair that curled so tight you could spend hours combing it and never reach the ends.
" A ghost of a smile touched her lips. "She’s a Djinn. "
Something flickered in Ragnar's eyes, but he didn't interrupt.
"You know my father’s ambitions. A Djinn daughter is valuable, so he made sure she learnt Shamanism."
She paused, swallowing against the ache in her throat.
The child haunted her dreams and memories incessantly. Azul did not know why; but she needed to see her, at least to clear her mind and allow her body to rest.
"I think Father's plans for her—" Azul's voice cracked.
She couldn't finish. The words wouldn't come. She suspected her father planned to make her crown Somadina King. Obiageli had already picked her Divine King; whether it was the current Igwe or another person entirely, she didn’t know.
They sat for a moment in silence, and she found herself losing the will to speak. Slowly, her eyes dimmed.
Ragnar seemed to notice her body curled as she looked anywhere but at him. "I should go," he said quietly. He began to rise.
A hand shot out and grabbed his robes.
Ragnar stopped and looked at her.
She didn't say anything. So he knelt again.
The space between them shrank. His knee pressed against the edge of her bed. His shadow fell across her.
"I don’t mind," she whispered.
"I know."
"I don't want you to think I have any interest in him,” she said. “I don't. I would rather die than let him touch me again."
Ragnar's jaw tightened. Something dangerous moved behind his eyes.
The air between them thickened. Azul became acutely aware of where her hand still gripped his robes, of the heat of his body so close to hers, and of the way his gaze had dropped to her lips for the barest fraction of a second before returning to her eyes.
Ragnar inhaled. "Khatun," he said slowly, "is this your attempt to act on my heart?"
She didn't reply, and he didn’t pull away.
So he asked instead. "Is this for yourself or for your father?"
She hesitated but eventually answered in a small voice. "For myself."
He settled more comfortably beside her bed, making no move to leave.
"Then I allow it."
Azul blinked. "You…allow it?"
"I allow you to act on my heart." His tone was mildly teasing. "I allow you to seduce me, if that's what you're doing.”
A snicker escaped her, startling his heart out of his chest. "Who said I want to seduce you? Your ego is large."
"Then I should ask you to seduce me anyway, even if you weren't considering it."
Her laughter broke the stifling atmosphere, letting the light in the room finally do its job and brighten his world.
“You idiot, if I seduce you, won’t you be in trouble if I’m asked to kill you?"
He sighed. “With how many times you threaten to kill me, I have long since prepared a will."
When Nkiru returned some time later, a steaming bowl of broth in her hands, Ragnar rose silently and met her at the door.
"She's sleeping," he instructed. "Leave her."
Nkiru peered past him at Azul's still form, her face pinched with worry. "But the broth—"
"Later."
Nkiru hesitated, then nodded, retreating with her bowl.
Ragnar glanced at the sleeping figure, a picture of innocence. Anyone who failed to see death in her eyes was bound to lose.
Truly, hearing that Somadina had taken her, his heart squeezed tightly as though he were on the verge of losing something important. She knew he would come straight for her. And he knew she saw it as mere usage of the privilege he had given to her.
She hadn’t made him do anything he hadn't chosen, but his choice was a problem.
A deeper problem—the one he was less willing to look at directly—was that he didn't want her to stop.
He wanted her to use his name again.
He wished for her to be a tyrant and throw his power around; it brought him such a strange sense of accomplishment, one he couldn’t quite understand.
A man who couldn't see the trap might stumble out of it by accident.
But Ragnar could see this one from every angle and kept walking towards it anyway because some part of him had decided that being used by her specifically was preferable to being left alone.
He wanted her to bring him her problems. To look at something that needed destroying and turn those gold eyes on him and say my Lord in that register and let him be the thing she reached for.
He wanted to be her instrument, which was either the most honest thing he had allowed himself to admit in years or the most catastrophic.
He took one more look at her, and his heart stopped.
She was awake.
He didn't hear her wake. No shift of the mattress, no change in breathing, no sound at all. He simply looked down from the ceiling and found her eyes open, watching him, and had no way of knowing how long they had been.
Cold.
That was the first thing he thought.
He didn't move.
She didn't speak.
She had read him, he realised. In the time between opening her eyes and now—seconds, no more—she had read the room, read his position, and read the hardness pushing against his pants; all of it. He could see the moment she finished, the slight settling of her expression as the calculation resolved.
The room was quiet, and she seemed to be waiting for something, for an offering.
He was willing.
Slowly, he sank to one knee, eyes never leaving hers.
A soft rustling of clothes and his breathing, which had been controlled in her presence through sheer discipline, found itself erratic.
The warmth under his mask had spread considerably.
Every prayer he had ever offered Ukhel had been for clarity, for stillness, for the silence of want, and every single one had been declined, and this one was going to be declined too, and he knew it, and he prayed anyway because he had nothing else to do with himself.
A sound escaped him as he stroked.
She watched him; he wished she would never look away.
Low, involuntary. Discipline had located its absolute limit and found it closer than expected.
He pressed his fist hard against the floor.
Her lips parted and stretched, eyes squinting as if she were laughing at him.
His breath came laboured, the mask misting. He wasn’t sure why her smile scared him so, sending a thrill through his entire body, pushing him over the edge.
His body tensed as his seed darkened the cloth.
She didn’t bother with him after that; as if he had served his purpose, she turned, facing the snake, and dismissed him.
The Ugoeze's receiving chamber was warm with the press of bodies, the morning light filtering through carved screens to adorn the assembled women in gold. They knelt in their ranked rows—first wives nearest the dais, then the lesser wives, then the concubines and favourites.
The Ugoeze herself sat elevated above them all, her expression serene, her lips curved in her perpetual smile. She accepted their obeisances one by one, dispensing blessings to each woman who greeted her.
"The Akwaugo is absent," she observed during a lull, merely curious. "Is she unwell?"
The women exchanged glances. No one spoke.
Ugoeze's gaze drifted to the second rank, where Chidinma knelt with the other Borjigin wives. The girl was pale and listless, her original bravado worn down swiftly. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, and her hands were still as stone in her lap.
"Chidinma." The Ugoeze's voice sharpened slightly. "You share blood with the girl. Do you know why she fails to attend?"
Chidinma blinked, seeming to surface from somewhere far away. "Ugoeze," her voice was soft, barely carrying. "My sister is sick. She sent word through her maid this morning."
A ripple of surprise passed through the room. Chidinma rarely spoke of the Akwaugo, much less acknowledged their connection.
The Iyom's laugh bounced off the walls. "Sick?
How convenient. The girl is always sick when duty calls.
How can she be indisposed when she should be paying respects to the mother of the tribe!
?" She shook her head, her ornaments chiming.
"Ugoeze, this is a pattern. The girl has no respect for tradition nor hierarchy.
Illness is not an excuse for dereliction. "
Several wives nodded agreement. Others kept to themselves, unwilling to show outward hostility to the Akwaugo.
The Ugoeze's smile didn't waver, but something flickered in her eyes.
"You raise a valid point, Iyom. We may have been too lenient. Perhaps the Akwaugo needs to understand that her position in this household comes with obligations, regardless of circumstance."
The Iyom's lips stretched.