Chapter 24
If there was a silver lining to be gleaned from my captivity, it was that the bed given to me was the most comfortable upon which I have ever slept; firm enough to support my abused limbs, yet soft and as airy as a cloud.
Which was good considering how much time I spent fucking laid across it like a blood-soaked blanket.
I had no memory of leaving Queen Lab’s court and its shrieking, transformed sheep.
Whether shock or blood loss defeated my will, I cannot say, but I slept the slumber of the dead, a mercy.
There were no nightmares of murder from the sky, flashing talons and feline shrieks.
Instead, it was as though I’d fallen through a passage of time, waking God only knew how much later.
I hurt, oh, by the Most High did I hurt, the parts of my body that weren’t covered in bruises stiff as a starched collar.
But I was alive. I groaned, opening my eyes.
A very unwelcome sight greeted me.
I shut my eyes again. “Send me back to the griffins.”
“Now, what sort of welcome is that for the husband who worked so hard to clean your wounds and has been tending your bedside ever since?” Raksh chided.
“You cleaned my wounds?” I asked, drawing up in surprise.
Raksh beamed, prouder than a mother hen that’s just laid a single, dud egg. “I even stitched a few. The palace doctors showed me how. One said I had great promise.”
Ah, then perhaps I would die of infection before Lab could finish me off. “Water,” I rasped, pointing to a pitcher by the window. “If you’re going to be here, make yourself useful.”
He rolled his eyes but slid off the bed to pour a cup. “And to think I doomed an entire ship of sailors and fleeing criminals to return to your side.”
“Did you?”
Raksh paused, seeming to need a minute to decide.
“I’m honestly not sure.” He handed me the cup.
“I climbed aboard the first ship that would have me, but we ran into storms and something with the stars that made all the humans very upset. Crashed into a giant rock in the middle of the night. Ah, well, either way . . .” He grinned. “Together again.”
Trepidation churned in my chest. After Sarilaglag, I knew Raksh would come hunting after me, but I hoped to be in a better position to deal with him.
Not wounded and trapped in the palace of an enemy witch.
“You seem strangely happy to be under the thumb of a sorceress queen who knocked you out with magical powder.”
“She said it was a misunderstanding.” And granted, my husband didn’t look like a prisoner.
Freshly bathed, his long hair was loose, shining in black waves that cascaded around his bare shoulders, and he was back to his usual scarce attire, the nearly sheer white cloth wound tightly around his hips somehow more erotic than if he’d been naked.
He handed me the cup and slipped, uninvited, into my bed.
A glimmer of color at his hips caught my eye. “What is that around your waist?” I demanded.
Raksh glanced down. “This?” He pulled a narrow band of woven cloth from the folds of his wrap.
It was a belt, resembling something a dancer might wear.
And it was dyed—in bands of ebony and smoke and crimson, the colors of a campfire along with a coral that closely matched the pendant he wore around his neck.
It was the first time I had seen a foreigner wearing a hue other than ivory. “Yes,” I replied, tense. “Where did you get that belt?”
“It was among the clothes I was given. Why?” Raksh leaned forward with a wicked smile. “Would you like to take it off?”
From the common room, the heavy door that led out of our apartments slammed open.
“Amina!” Dalila called. “Amina!”
“In here,” I answered, still eyeing Raksh’s belt.
As swift as a swallow, my friend was at my doorstep. “Oh, thank God. I feared—” Then she caught sight of Raksh and cursed, her disbelieving gaze locked on the two of us in bed. “Already? What is wrong with you?”
“A great deal,” I replied, too worn out to defend myself. “Come in.”
Raksh’s expression darkened. “Oh, good, the assassin.” Hostility laced his voice. “You and I, Mistress, are due for a very long talk.”
“Go to hell, demon,” Dalila snapped, crossing the room. But that was all the attention she spared him, her face filling with concern as she got a better look at me. “What happened? The queen mentioned you’d been injured but—”
“The queen tried to feed me to Khatti Ugal’s wildlife. Did she not tell you?” I asked, surprised. “It sounded as though she had interrogated you as well. She mentioned you striking a deal.”
Dalila had already launched into an examination, but her fingers trembled on the linen dressing my leg. “No. That is . . . not what we discussed.”
The tone of her voice was troubling, and I drew back to better regard her.
Dalila might not have been battling griffins, but she didn’t look well.
Still dressed in the dusty clothes she’d been wearing yesterday, her hair was unbraided, loose and disheveled around her narrow shoulders. “Then what did you discuss?”
Dalila hesitated and Raksh pounced, malice glittering in his eyes.
“Mayhap they didn’t discuss anything at all last night.” He licked his teeth. “The queen asked about you, Mistress. She seemed quite disturbed to discover her clever little doctor might be worse than a fiction, might be a liar, a murderer, a poisoner who uses her skills only to harm.”
I gave him a sharp look. “You didn’t tell me the queen asked after us. What did you tell her?”
Raksh raised his hands in mock innocence. “Only the barest of truths: I didn’t know whether you had made allies or enemies of her yet and didn’t wish such ignorance to doom my reception.”
Dalila’s face twisted with utter contempt. “Clearly not. You’re already freed from the dungeons and worming your way into Amina’s bed. Why, I wonder?”
“Because Amina asked for me,” Raksh replied, vicious delight in his expression.
Dalila pulled just a bit too hard on my dressing, causing me to flinch. “You did what?”
“I had little choice,” I argued. “And if the two of you could stop threatening each other for a few minutes, I will explain . . .” Mercifully, they held their tongues and I continued, filling them in on my battle with the griffins and confrontation with the queen.
By the time I was done, Raksh looked pale and Dalila’s face was even more inscrutable than usual.
My loyal spouse spoke first. “I wish I had taken another ship out of Sarilaglag.”
“As do I,” I retorted. “But you’re here now and your best chance of escaping is with me.”
“Who says I want to escape?” Raksh countered, looking genuinely perplexed. “It’s nice here! The food is good, the locals seem gullible . . . That man I plucked out of the sea a few months ago said this place was a paradise.”
“Are you forgetting the part where the queen has access to magic that knocked you out?”
He shrugged. “I’ve dealt with worse.”
Dalila was still staring daggers at him.
“I will not be part of any venture that sees this devil on the Marawati again. Lest I remind you,” she said, turning her glare to me, “he is the reason you were nearly killed by a Frankish sorcerer, he is the reason I was nearly killed by the Banu Sasan, and he is going to be the death of all of us unless God releases whatever grip he has on your wits.”
“Oh, is Raksh going to be the death of me?” I challenged.
Under other circumstances, I would have found little fault with her words, but considering that Dalila had stolen our best chance at escaping Lab, I was in no mood to be charitable.
“Funny, that. Because I don’t recall Raksh robbing me yesterday. ”
Not unaware of my husband’s gleeful black gaze darting between us like a kite, I said nothing else. I might need his luck to escape Khatti Ugal, but I didn’t want Raksh discovering our true purpose in journeying here and deciding that selling us out to Lab offered a more promising future.
Dalila flinched but said nothing, and with a sigh, I turned back to Raksh.
“I would speak to Dalila alone. Go steal from the kitchens or seduce the locals or whatever it is you do. Just leave. And don’t cause me any problems, understand?”
He slipped from the bed with liquid grace. “Yes, my love.”
“And Raksh?”
He glanced back.
I gave him a long look. “Remember what you said back in Sarilaglag. You and I? We’re fated. You will never have an opportunity like me again. Think on that when you contemplate betraying us.”
I expected a sly response, something sarcastic or obscene. But instead, there was a moment of hesitation—confusion—in Raksh’s pretty face until he simply nodded. “Of course.”
Odd. I watched him go, my gaze lingering on his back. Considering how determinedly he’d been hunting me through the mangroves of Sarilaglag when last we parted, I expected to feel a surge of ambition, the magic that bound us in ways neither of us entirely understood.
And then I realized what also felt strange between us. Not Raksh’s stilted, delayed responses; he’d always been bizarre and unpredictable. But our bond, my shackle . . . I couldn’t feel it.
What did that mean? Was our bond affected by the strange magic that gripped Khatti Ugal?
Dalila’s voice was low with warning. “You cannot trust him, Amina. He holds loyalty to only himself and if he is out of the dungeons, it’s likely because he’s here as a spy.”
I don’t trust him. I’m not sure I even trust myself right now. But I set the matter of Raksh aside; Dalila and I had more pressing conflicts.
“Where is it, Dalila?” I asked, cutting straight to the heart. “Where is Khayzur’s feather?”
She pressed her mouth in a thin line, clearly readying for a fight. “Safe.”
“Safe? I do not want it safe. I want it back. You know who might have been helpful when I was about to be disemboweled by a pack of griffins? A flying bird-man capable of whipping winds into a typhoon!”