Chapter 16
Alliances
Since her argument with Aleksi in the cedar
tree, Sahar was acting more like a chicken than a tigress hiding in
her chambers for the past three days. In that time, three things of
importance had happened. The first of the messengers her father had
sent out had returned, bringing with them oaths of alliance should
the Ox start a war. Brawn had come back with the news that the Wolf
had made it to the Crow’s city alive, barely, and that riders had
been sent to the Ox to inform him of his son’s condition,
purportedly caused by Sahar’s and Aleksi’s treachery. Sahar’s moon
flow had arrived with a vengeance that left her curled around a hot
brick on her bed with a cool, wet cloth over her forehead.
The first two happenings she knew because her
mother and Halah—the only two people she admitted into her chambers
other than her maid servant, Safa—had told her.
The third she’d told her mother with the
promise that Sahar would be the one to tell Aleksi.
Aleksi.
She’d heard every word he said to her through
the bolted door to the treehouse, and the myriad of emotions she’d
felt, that she still felt, overwhelmed her. Shame, regret, pity,
anger, frustration, and guilt, especially guilt, because he was
right. She should’ve had enough faith in him to know he would take
care of her and any babe they made. He was a good, strong,
honorable man, who would have given his life for her, and who had
proved it many times over. He’d never gone back on his word, and
never would. He’d told her from almost the moment they met that he
wanted a good, strong-bodied woman with an easy temper to marry and
raise his sons.
She’d never been, and would never be that
easy-tempered woman whose only dream in life was to marry and have
babies, a fact she had made clear from the start. She’d never
pledged her love, or made any commitments during their few nights
of physical passion. He was a strutting stallion looking for a
docile broodmare, and she, by his own words, was a fierce tigress
wary of traps. Ah, but while she may not have set her trap, she had
fallen for the handsome bait and walked straight into it. Straight
into the arms of a man whose cocky grin and hearty laughter made
her smile despite herself. Whose easy company and teasing banter
soothed and inflamed her. Whose touch turned her bones to liquid
fire, and whose strong, steady presence grounded her.
Who had told her she meant nothing to him in
anger once, though his body, his eyes, his whispered endearments
had told her otherwise since.
He’d never told her he loved her. They had
never promised that to each other.
She didn’t know if she wanted him to love her
with more than his body. The idea of loving him, all of him, body
and soul, as her mother and father loved each other seemed
impossible. Yes, they shared desire and passion that burned hot and
fast, but they’d never had the easy, effortless relationship that
her Uncle Nasim and Auntie Lyrra had, or even the sweet adoration
that made her brother and Rima glow when gazing at each other and
their newborn son.
Sahar rolled her aching head from side to
side and laid a hand over her empty womb before pushing herself up
and off the bed. None of it mattered now. She was not with child.
She and Aleksi wouldn’t marry, and he’d be leaving for his home
soon with his string of broodmares and one hundred and thirty-two
gold pieces in his purse. Enough to start his new life without
her.
“Enough,” she said as she stood on shaking
legs. She drew a deep breath in and blew it out. “Enough.” She
opened her bedroom door to her outer chambers. “Safa,” she called.
“I’d like to bathe.” As a woman in flux, she wouldn’t bathe in the
woman’s pool, but there was a wooden tub kept for such times.
“Please tell my mother I’ll be supping with the family this
evening.”
“It is a formal supper this evening,
mistress, held in honor of the emissaries who have come bearing
oaths of alliance from their kings.”
“Thank you. I’ll wear my red worm weave.”
Aleksi looked up from the table where he sat
with Serge and Pyotr watching Sahar’s entrance. This was the first
time she’d entered the hall since the feast celebrating upon their
return, and the first time he had seen her since their argument in
the treehouse that same night. The red, one-shouldered gown she
wore with a red shawl draped over her shoulders skimmed curves he
knew intimately. Her black mass of curls, set high atop her head
with ruby-encrusted combs, showed off the proud, elegant line of
her neck. Aleksi’s wasn’t the only male, or female’s, head to turn
and watch the regal tigress take her seat, but he’d wager the
hundred gold pieces her father had given him that he was the only
one to notice the hollows beneath her eyes, or that her tawny skin
was a shade paler than usual. Well, he amended as her mother cast a
lingering eye over her daughter, perhaps not the only one.
“Your princess is looking rather well for
having been ill these past three days,” Pyotr said.
“Hmmph.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Serge
asked.
“It means that she’s not my princess.”
“No?” Serge quirked a brow. He glanced from
Aleksi to Sahar and back again. “Then why does she watch you as
intently as you watch her?”
Because she and I shared a passion that
seared us both to the bone. Because she may be carrying my babe in
her belly even now. Because she may soon be my wife and does not
wish to be.
“Because we have become used to watching out
for each other,” Aleksi said. “Our lives depended on each other for
a time and it’s a hard habit to break.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What,” he turned on his friends with a
snarl, “is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Serge said, sitting back with both
hands up.
“It means,” Pyotr puffed his thick chest out
and sat forward, “that you have been a morose bastard for the past
three days, the same three days the princess took to her chambers.
It means neither of us is stupid. We can add one,” he eyed Aleksi
as he held up an index finger, “and one,” he glanced at Sahar and
held up his other index finger, “and come up with,” he pressed his
fingers together to form a single column, “two.”
Half expecting Pyotr to say three, Aleksi let
out the breath he’d been holding with a snort. “Do you truly think
a princess would consort with a bastard?”
Before they could answer, Munir walked over
and sat down across from Aleksi. “Serge, Pyotr,” he greeted them
each with a nod. “Aleksi.”
“Munir,” they all said at once and laughed.
“I have a favor to ask of you,” Munir said to Aleksi. “You saved my
life. If it were not for you, I would not be getting married, so, I
would like for you to stand by my side along with Asim at my
wedding a fortnight from tomorrow.”
Aleksi liked Munir, and he respected him. He
wasn’t insensitive to Munir’s request. A fortnight was not too long
a time away, and if Sahar was pregnant, he would still be here
planning his own wedding. Besides, he had already decided he would
stay to stand and fight by King Asad’s side if the Ox was
successful in starting his war. A war Aleksi had had a hand in
provoking and intended to have a hand in preventing. If that wasn’t
possible, then he’d help them win. King Asad had welcomed Aleksi’s
decision yesterday.
“I’d be honored,” Aleksi told Munir.
They stood and shook on it.
“You two are invited as well,” Munir told
Serge and Pyotr. “I hear Anya is planning a feast to surpass all
feasts.”
“Then we’ll be there,” Pyotr said, slapping
his barrel of a belly, which had grown a stone or more since Anya’s
sacks of food had been delivered daily. “Especially since King Asad
has generously offered to keep stabling us and our horses until
Aleksi finishes his business here, whatever that may entail.”
Munir glanced at Aleksi and then quickly
looked away. He knew. He knew exactly what it was that Aleksi was
still doing here, what he was waiting for. Aleksi glanced over at
Halah, as close to Sahar as a sister, and then back at Munir, who
gave a quick, unapologetic shrug.
“Tell me what I need to do and where I need
to be when,” Aleksi told Munir.
“I will,” Munir said. He glanced at Halah,
who was watching them. “I should go take my seat beside my
betrothed. She’ll be pleased you accepted.”
Pyotr and Serge were eyeing Aleksi
expectantly, waiting, he guessed, for more of an explanation what
his business here entailed, but Aleksi ignored them. They may have
been his best and oldest of friends, but he wasn’t going to tell
them about what happened between him and his tigress. Too many
people knew already. Not that he was embarrassed or ashamed, but
she would be.
The first course of greens and fish soup was
being served when Anastasia made her appearance on the arm of the
corpulent prince into which she had sunk her royal teeth. Why they
were still here Aleksi didn’t know. The prince was the second son
of a kingdom three days west of this city who should’ve returned
weeks ago, with or without Anastasia, who slid a sideways glance at
Aleksi as she flounced by. Aleksi shook his head. He had more
important things to worry about than his husband-hunting bitch of a
half-sister.
One of those things was the way Sahar was
looking at Aleksi with none of her usual humor or fire, but with a
solemn expression he had never seen before. It hit him like a punch
to the gut. Gods, she wasn’t pregnant. Her moon flow had come, that
was why she had taken to her chambers the past three days.
He should’ve felt relief. His life would be
his own again. Once Munir’s wedding was over, and the Ox and the
Wolf dealt with, Aleksi would be free to return to his home and
build his stables. Find a strong, easy-tempered wife to work and
toil by his side and raise his sons and daughters. He should be
elated, ready to celebrate his close escape, but all he wanted to
do was rage and howl as he sat there staring at Sahar’s beautiful,
somber face. In that moment, it came to him. He didn’t want a wife
and a child by anyone else but her. He wanted their child.
And he’d lost both.
Sahar couldn’t sleep, which had nothing to do