Chapter 14
ANOTHER WEDDING NIGHT
Iwas going to ruin everything.
My hands were hot against my thighs, and only whatever magic previously kept me and my clothes from incineration kept me from conflagrating. I whipped towards Khal, but he was still rigid, ashen-faced, staring towards the stones.
The petite older woman spoke, her voice rising over the crowd.
“Sephar speaks right, that the stolen daughter is not required to mate the one who stole her. The rituals of man are tainted by their wickedness, but the circle must be pure. However,” she shouted, above the rising hubbub.
“Though the girl must marry in, by our laws, a woman has a right to choose a husband.” She looked at me, her wrinkled face heavy with concern, offered, in broken Common, “Marry, is you want? This one?”
“No!” I’d shouted it. I’d shouted. They were all being polite, and I was yelling, I was coming apart.
Again I was the child from the street, screaming at everything.
Again, I was the girl that could only be looked at with disgust. “No, I will not marry him! I am not…chattel to be traded around! Oh, one kidnapping didn’t work, so you’ll push me at his cousin?
I will die first—" the crowd pulled back.
"—because I will burn him. If you do this, I will burn everything, and you will have to kill me.”
Fire, yellow, reflected in her eyes. I looked down, and my hands were lit, two globes of flame. The murmurs of the crowd were shouts now, words that again I couldn’t understand, my threads cut by fire, only fire, and Sephar…Sephar, by the circle…he was smiling.
“Rowena.” Khal’s voice cut through the noise, through the roar.
He stepped in front of me, his face haggard and pained, but not afraid.
“Rowena, it’s alright. No one is going to make you do anything, alright?
Please.” He gripped my hands. His palms were calloused, familiar.
Flame was dancing up his wrists. He didn’t burn.
My magic refused to burn him. “Rowena,” he repeated.
His eyes were lit with my flame. “You’re safe. ”
I stared into his eyes, and I stopped burning.
There was still a wide, empty circle around us, so many angry and accusing eyes, so much fear.
“I’m sorry,” I said. My throat was like sand. I threaded the magic back through, into my voice, tried again. “I’m sorry,” I said, and shock rippled over them as they understood me, as my tongue formed slithering, foreign sounds and I addressed the old woman. “I must marry. Is that what you said?”
She nodded. “The law has been invoked. The vital ways must be kept.”
“Then I choose the orc who took me. Surely I have that right? Surely I can choose to keep him?” I tasted tears, but I wouldn’t cry. I wasn’t going to be weak here, wasn’t going to let anyone hate him by proxy of my weakness.
The old woman leaned on her staff. “Khal Drazha's-son. You stole this young woman under a falsehood. Will you wed her in truth? If another needs to be found,” she looked at my hands, “it should be far away, where the risk to the community is diminished.”
Khal looked at me, his face so ashen. “Is this what you want, Rowena?”
Yes. I was selfish, and horrible, and I didn’t want a stranger. I didn’t want other orcs far away. I wanted one solitary thing to be my choice. “It is.”
He bowed his head. “Yes,” he said. “I will wed Rowena, Baron’s daughter.”
And maybe I was more wicked than he ever was, because he had thought I was willing, when he took me, but here I knew his mind and body rebelled at the thought of me, and I was taking him anyway.
The ceremony was a blur. He held my hand, and words were spoken. He made promises, before the people, and I repeated them back. Khal kissed his fingertips and touched the outer stone before he led me through.
I was holding him to a promise he made when he was lied to. When I had lied to him.
The air hummed with magic, every blade of grass and leaf of moss, flowing over my skin, washing over us in waves.
My eyes lit again, that power bringing everything into iridescence, the cold of my hands, the heat of him walking next to me.
I pushed the power away on instinct, and it rolled up again, lighting the world, showing the light of him, the tiny hairs on his neck, the cloud of his breath on the warm air.
Maybe it was natural for my magic to wrap around this tragic warrior, this prisoner with me of fate.
Wasn’t he always the man I didn’t burn? Maybe all of me wrapped around him without trying.
I felt the threads of power tying me to him, catching at his arms, at the heat of his heart, desperation and fear dragging more and more of me to him while we walked, two feet apart, toward the central, massive stone, a stone that, with my eyes fueled by this power, was lit with symbols I couldn’t read, glowing with strands of power I might never understand.
He touched some of those symbols, and a door slid open, light flickering within. A torch?
“Watch your step,” he murmured, and turned to take my hands.
His eyes were dark with grief, and I was going to break, right there on the threshold.
I shouldn’t cry with his people watching from outside the ring.
I shouldn’t embarrass him more than I already was.
I stared into his eyes, searching for some shred of peace to hold onto, to hold myself together, a little sound like a cat escaping my mouth.
And the magic surged again, buzzing in my skin, lighting up those threads I’d wrapped to him, and I heard his voice in my head, and it was like with the peasants on the road again, and I saw through his eyes, my face stared up at him, eyes big, cheeks pink with crying.
And it was Khal’s voice, reverberating in my mind: This is the worst thing I’ve ever done.
The peasant’s dress fit loose over my shoulders. There was a leaf in my hair. My eyes were wide with fear.
The sin of perjury has to be less than the sin of this.
How much did he think about sins?
Are we no better than the Gol Droth? If breaking this oath separates me from the people, it would still be less evil.
Anger and loathing rolled over him, through the bond to me, so strong I thought I might vomit, and it was so strange to see my own face shaken up, trying to process, through his eyes. But his thoughts were discordant.
She’s trembling. Is she cold? She’s terrified. I hurt her and now I’ve pledged to hurt her again. Damn this-
He stepped back through the doorway, into the flickering torchlight.
The torch didn’t smoke, didn’t seem like a regular flame. That white power flowed along it. More magic, more that was alien and yet me. This place, like the safe harbor from before, had orc furnishings, a drying rack, a hanging water horn, a basin.
A wide bed.
The stone slid closed behind us.
He let go of my hands, stepped away, pulling the harness with his swords off his body, like he'd put the weapons far away from us. The score along his pec was still purple and crimson, the bandages at his thigh fresh. “We’ll be sealed here till morning,” he said. A muscle in his jaw twitched.
“Alright,” I whispered. He was speaking at normal volume. The rock walls shut out all sound from outside. I was still overwhelmed by the surging of this power, the closeness of his thoughts.
“They won’t…no one will check, for blood. It’s not like a human wedding. They know we’ve already…” he grimaced. I am already a monster. Why not an oath-breaker? His voice ran, sliding between the Orcish and the Common in my mind.
I blinked, trying to block it out, trying to put myself in the present, into what came next.
I had to be the one initiating what was needed for his oath, because Khal was clearly not in a place to lead.
I should be taking things off. I’d been so bold before.
Our first night, I got out of my clothes so quickly.
But now it felt like so much. Was it because I knew him? Or because I knew he didn’t want me?
“We don’t have to do this,” he said aloud. “I pledged to you I’d keep you safe.” I can confess to the council when she’s gone, when she’s safe. What’s the penalty for perjury, a brand? My soul is branded. “My oath to you comes first. I can break this. It won't matter.”
“Please don’t.” My voice was so small.
“I won’t,” he said instantly, so quick. God, she looks so afraid- “You’re safe, I’ll never—"
“No, please don’t…think about breaking oaths for me.”
He faltered.
“These are your people. You love them. You disagree with them, but you love them.” I wanted to be brave enough to take his hand, but I wasn’t.
And now she’s being manipulated. “You don’t have to worry about me. I'm going to keep you safe, we’ll find a way—"
“You said something about a brand.” I swallowed. An image from his mind flashed across my vision, charred flesh, and screaming. I gasped.
“Whoa,” he caught my shoulders, and I looked at him. He dropped his arms. Damnit, Tyralk… “Whoever has been scaring you, they were wrong to. You don’t have to think about that.”
“I don’t want you branded, or beaten, or chased away—"
Some poker-face you have, you shit-bag, moping about like a mewling pup and making this, again, her problem-
“I can't endure you…flogging yourself, in your mind, over and over, like you’re something that you’re not.” I wrapped my arms around myself.
“You don’t have to worry about that.” He forced a smile, and that was worse. This was worse. “I am not…flogging. I'm just focused on doing what's right.” I will be focused on it. Focus, Khal, you pile of shit-