twenty-five #2
“Knows I’m madly in love with you?” Mira attempted to hide her smirk behind her teacup, but couldn’t. “Afraid that she does. Don’t worry. She’ll keep our secret.”
“But I’m…!” Sulim leaned forward, lowering her voice. “I’m married. And a human.”
“Trust me. She doesn’t care about either. There’s a reason my mother has spent half her nights in the Harksplit Temple ever since Ramaron showed up. She’s sick of sleeping next to her daughter every night and needs someone fresher.”
Sulim’s mouth dropped.
“I’d say I get being kind of a slut from my mother, but honestly, it’s both of my parents.”
That was the exact moment Lady Joiya knocked on the door and helped herself in, nothing but feminine airs, manners, and smiles as she kissed Sulim on the cheek and thanked her for whatever tea was in the pot. When she sat next to her daughter, they exchanged a knowing look that Mira couldn’t escape.
And Kema sat next to Sulim, something weighing heavily on her shoulders.
I’ve never really noticed her before. Kema was sometimes around, sometimes not.
She looked like her blood kin, in that she had black hair and brown skin, but she had neither Joiya’s extroverted energy nor Mira’s seductive charms.
From what Sulim understood, Kema Lerenan was a hybrid cousin with a julah father, meaning she could perform perfunctory sorcery but not much beyond teleporting and some telekinesis.
She was one of the more exhausted after her one trip to Qahrain and back, in which she took many of Graella’s most treasured possessions, but had managed to stay awake during dinner.
Now, she seemed more rested, but troubled.
Kema was pretty. She was courteous. And despite having grown up among the julah, she had a human humility to her, especially as the only female member of the julah entourage not to have a tattoo.
I think she’s their lady-in-waiting, or something.
At the very least, she was not on penance like Mira and Hannu, but she was expected to do whatever Joiya told her.
“So, Sulim,” the woman said after the tea was served. “How does it feel? Being the lady in charge now?”
Mira clicked her tongue before Sulim could decide how to respond. “Don’t give her a hard time, Ma.”
“I certainly don’t intend to. By the way, don’t get your head full of…” She rattled something in Julah that made Kema cover her mouth and Mira gasp.
“Ma! Not in front of…!”
“She already knows.” Joiya looked to Kema, who was redder than the blood powering her adrenaline. “Don’t you, Kema?”
“Know about what?” Sulim asked.
“About your affair with my daughter, Sulim.”
Mira gave her lover a pleading look that insisted she didn’t know this topic was coming. But Sulim could only stare at the woman next to her, who slowly nodded in apology. “It’s quite obvious,” she told Sulim. “Just like it was obvious to me that you do not desire your husband.”
“What is this?” Sulim blurted. “Some kind of intervention?”
“Not at all,” Joiya assured her. “But I want us all to be on the same page. I’ve got plans in this house that will be much easier to fulfill now that Jacelah is absent, and while I do not wish to impose upon your hospitality, Sulim,
I’m aware that having some leverage over you is only pertinent to reveal.”
“I…”
“Oh, please. I think you and my daughter are lovely! A shame for your husband, of course, but we’ll sort that out later. You wouldn’t be the first human to have to end one marriage to enter either House Lerenan or Dunsman.”
“Ma!” Mira’s shriek of admonishment was accompanied by a slap to her knees. “Don’t presume to know what she wants to do!”
“I’m not. But why wouldn’t she want to be with you, my heart? She’s your soulmate.”
The blood may have been flowing through Kema, but it stopped in Sulim, whose face must have paled white enough to cause concern.
“Ma…” Mira covered her own face with her hands. “I haven’t told her.”
Joiya was so taken by surprise that she began apologizing profusely to everyone in the salon, but Sulim was still too gobsmacked to understand. We’re… soulmates? She gazed at Mira long enough to realize that someone else was staring at her the whole time.
Kema perched her chin in her hands as she finally looked away. Whatever she thought, she kept it to herself. All the more room in the salon for Sulim to nearly pass out.
“Can you imagine being able to do that?”
Sonall asked later, as he and his wife settled into bed.
The television was on, but neither of them paid attention as the news broadcaster spoke of civil unrest on Sarrah, a planet known for its anger toward the Federation.
“Just teleporting wherever you want to go in the universe? You can see people whenever you want.”
Although Sulim heard the words he said, she was so distracted by her own thoughts that she barely parsed them. “Yeah. But I guess it’s considered a big talent if you can teleport anywhere. Like, somewhere you’ve never been.”
“I suppose great intergalactic distances might be taxing for most, too.”
“And how many people or things you’re carrying.”
“Interesting. I wonder where their energy pool comes from.”
For the first time all night, he said something that piqued her curiosity. “You’ve never shown much interest in this sort of thing before.”
“To be frank, I don’t have much time to wonder.”
“Well… you’ll never have a chance like this again, so maybe you should ask the source.”
He chuckled. “I’m not like you. I’m a lot more shy around Lady Joiya and Mira.”
“Why? They’re not that intimidating once you get to know them.”
“I mean, Lady Joiya is… even after these few months, she’s one of the most famous women in the universe. And Mira is…”
“Hm?”
“Mira.”
Sulim didn’t know what to make of that. “You’re intimidated by them?”
“Every damn day.”
“You’re kidding.”
He sank deeper beneath the covers, hand on his forehead as he shielded his eyes from the light beside him. “Mira is the kind of woman who seems like she’d cut my balls off just for looking at her wrong. Which makes sense that you two get along so well. You don’t have any.”
My, my. What did one do with a statement like that? “Lady Joiya is too famous for you, and Mira is too womanly for you, is that it?”
“Womanly! Suppose that’s one way to put it.” Before she could retort, he grinned at her and said, “You’re more my kind of womanly. She must carry a knife in her waistband.”
“Well, so do I.”
“Yeah, but you carry a pocketknife for practical purposes. I’m talking more like a shiv.”
Fancy that. He’s almost caught on that she’s been in prison. That would only make her more intense in Sonall’s fragile eyes. His sowing wild oats on Qahrain when visiting his sister was the craziest his life ever got—with his consent, anyway.
“You always did have a thing for Qahrainian girls,” Sulim teased.
“If you mean women who are more down to earth and know their way around a farm, then yes. Which is why I fell in love with one.”
Sulim glanced down at him before turning off her light. She also picked up the remote and turned off the TV, plunging them into quiet. “Aren’t you a flirt?”
“Flirting with you is one of the highlights of my day.”
She really wished he would lay off a bit, if only because the guilt became too much when she thought back to what she got up to with Mira while her husband was off working in the fields and taking care of a multimillion-dollar business that was the cornerstone of its community.
While the Gardiahs didn’t employ as many locals as they imported qualified ranchers and servants, even Sulim knew how much money they stimulated in the local economy.
Without the Gardiah Estate, Harksplit would go into ruin.
No wonder they showered Sulim with attention in every shop she had a chance to visit.
And no wonder so many women look at me with jealousy.
“But you don’t like being flirted with.” He poked her thigh beneath the bedcovers. “That’s always been true for as long as I’ve known you.”
That’s not true at all. Sulim loved being flirted with… by other women. With men, she preferred the arrangement she had now. He directly told me how he felt, I thought about it, and I said okay. Nothing romantic about it, but…
“Anyway,” he continued, “I’m glad you’ve got a friend around here at least. Especially with my sister gone to start her new life.” He shook his head on his pillow. “Pregnant already…”
“The look on your mother’s face, right?”
“It was gorgeous. Angry as all hell that her baby daughter wasn’t a virgin when she got married, but also… she was married. What the hell was there to do?”
“Meanwhile, your mother will not rest until I’ve had five children.”
“Mostly me. It’s me who she wants to have the five children.”
“I’m the one married to you, though.”
“Not this again. My parents aren’t even here, Sulim. Can we have a few weeks of not having to think about this?” This time, his poke lingered a little longer. “Last I checked, you could have as much sex as you want without worrying about it.”
“Hm.”
“But does she want it?” he muttered. “That’s the question.”
Yes. Often. Just not with him. Someone else.
“Well, I definitely don’t now.” She turned over, covers up to her chin. “If you’re gonna say it like that.”
“Ah, fucking Void…”
He rolled over away from her and turned off his light. Sulim eventually sighed, suddenly remembering the revelation that she and Mira were… soulmates.
Of all the people in the world, it couldn’t be her husband? Of course, it couldn’t be. Sulim had always been on a crash course of fucking everything up for everyone.