Beyond The Shadows (16 page)

Kylar stood in a hazy corridor decorated with brightly colored animals, facing a door. There were no sharp edges to anything.
It was as if he were looking at the world through sleep-blurry eyes. The door opened without his touch, and as soon as he
saw her, his heart lurched. Vi was lying on a narrow bed, weeping. She was the only thing in the world utterly clear, sharp,
and present.

She raised a hand in supplication, and he went to her. She seemed as unsurprised by his presence as he was. For a moment,
he wondered at that. Where was he? How had he come?

The thoughts disappeared the moment he touched her hand. This was real. Her hand was small in his, delicate and finely shaped,
the skin as callused as his own. Unlike Elene’s, Vi’s third finger was slightly longer than her forefinger. He’d never noticed
that before.

It was the most natural thing to sit on the bed and pull her into his arms. She lay across his lap and clung to him, suddenly
weeping harder and grasping him convulsively. He held her tight, willing his strength into her. He could feel her need for
it. She was confused, lost, scared of this new life, scared of being known, scared of never being known. He didn’t have to
read her face, he felt it within himself.

She turned tear-swollen eyes to his face and he looked into her deep, green eyes. He was a mirror to her and he reflected
back truth against every fear.

The tears slowed and her grip relaxed. She closed her eyes as if the intimacy was too much. She put her head in his lap, sighing,
her body finally relaxing. Her long, fiery red hair was unbound. Though it was messy and tangled and crimped from where she
had worn it in a ponytail all day, he was amazed. It was glossy, silky, mesmerizing, a color that only one in a thousand women
had. His eyes followed a strand of her hair past tear-wet eyelashes to a nose with faint freckles he’d never noticed before
to her slender neck.

Vi wore an ill-fitting plain nightdress. It was too short for her and the knot had come loose, leaving it gaping open. Her
nipple was dark pink, small on her full breast, lightly puckered in the room’s coolness. The first time Kylar had seen Vi’s
breasts, she’d exposed herself to shock him. This time, he could feel that she was unaware of it.

The unexpected innocence of Vi’s exposure roused something protective in him. He swallowed and moved the cloth to cover her.
Despite that Vi could feel him as clearly as he could feel her, she didn’t notice. Was she merely that exhausted, or was she
so divorced from her body that she didn’t attach any significance to her breast being covered? Kylar didn’t know, but either
way, the wave of compassion he felt overpowered his desire. He barely glanced at her shapely legs, naked to mid-thigh, as
he covered them with a blanket.

She burrowed into him, so vulnerable and so damn gorgeous he couldn’t think straight.

He ran his fingers through her hair to call back the more protective feelings. Instead, Vi melted instantly, yielded completely,
a wave of tingles coursing from head to loins. His heart lurched. The only thing he’d ever felt close to this was when he’d
kissed Elene for half an hour and then spooned behind her, tracing kisses across her ears and neck and skimming his fingertips
across her breasts—and it was always then that she stopped him, afraid of losing control completely. Vi sailed right over
that brink. She was his, utterly, completely.

He was drunk on her ecstasy. The bond between them burned like fire. He couldn’t stop himself. He slowly combed his fingers
through her hair, rubbed her scalp, combed his fingers through her hair again. She shifted her hips, making tiny sounds. She
rolled over in his lap so he could reach the other side of her head. It put her facing his stomach, inches from the undeniable
evidence of his own arousal.

He froze. She felt it and her eyes flew open. Her pupils were pools of desire. “Please, don’t stop,” she said. “I’ll take
care of you. Promise.” She gave the bulge of his trousers a peck.

Her casualness threw Kylar. There was a disconnect here, in what was supposed to be a connection. It wasn’t let’s share this, it was let’s trade. It wasn’t love—it was commerce.

“I’m sorry,” she said, picking up on his confusion. “I was being selfish.” She threw back the blanket and in the illogic of
a dream, her ugly nightdress was simply gone. In its place, a fitted red nightgown clung to her curves. She stretched like
a cat, displaying herself to marvelous advantage. “You first. It’s all yours.”

“It’s all yours,” not “I’m all yours.” She was offering herself like a sweetmeat. It was nothing to her.

The door opened abruptly and Elene stood there. Her eyes took in Vi, half-naked, draped over Kylar, her hand on his crotch
and Kylar stupidly enjoying it.

Kylar scrambled out of bed. “No!” he cried.

“What?” Vi asked. “What are you seeing?”

“Elene! Wait!”

Kylar woke and found himself alone in the safe house.

Dorian was in his chambers with Jenine, poring over maps of the Freeze and the Vürdmeisters’ estimations of the clans’ strength,
when the Keeper of the Dead entered. Dorian and Jenine followed the man into one of the cheerier rooms where a body lay wrapped
in sheets. Two huge highlanders in nondescript southron clothes but with the bearing of soldiers stood after making their
obeisance.

Ashaiah Vul opened the cloth around the corpse’s head. The stench was magnified tenfold. The bald head had been split in half,
but not cracked. Nothing had been broken or torn. There was simply a slice missing from his crown to his neck.

In that instant, Dorian knew not only the victim, but also the killer. Only the black ka’kari could make such a cut. Kylar
had done this. The rotting sack of meat was Dorian’s father Garoth. His knees felt suddenly weak. Jenine came to stand close
beside him, but she didn’t touch him, didn’t take his hand. Any show of comforting him would make him look weak to his men.

“How did you do this?” Dorian asked.

“Your Holiness,” the highlander who had a birthmark over the left half of his face said, “we thought you’d want His Holiness’s
body for the pyre. There was a demon in the castle. It did this. The lieutenant went with our ten best men to kill it. He
ordered us to take the body, sire. They were supposed to meet us, but they never came.”

“How was your journey? Really.”

The man stared at the floor. “It was real hard, Holiness. We got jumped three times. Sa’kagé twice and once some damn traitors
in Quorig’s Pass who went bandit after we lost at Pavvil’s Grove. They thought we were carrying treasure. Red’s not breathing
right since I pulled the arrows out.” He nodded at the other highlander, who didn’t have red hair. “We hoped the Vürdmeisters
might take a look once you’re finished with us, sire.”

“They weren’t bandits. They were rebels.” Dorian stepped forward and put his hand on the highlander’s head. Red tensed, uncertain.
He had blood clots and infections all through his lungs. It was amazing he’d lived as long as he had. “This is beyond the
Vürdmeisters,” Dorian said. “What about you?”

“I’m fine, Your Holiness.”

“What happened to your knee?”

The man blanched. “My horse got killed. Fell on it.”

“Come here. Kneel.” The men knelt and Dorian was infuriated at the waste of their bravery. If Dorian weren’t such a skilled
Healer, one would die and the other live a cripple, and for what? To deliver bones. These heroes had made great sacrifices
for nothing. “You have served with great honor and courage,” Dorian told them. “In the coming days I will reward you appropriately.”
He Healed them both, though it was oddly difficult to use his Talent.

There was a low spate of awed cursing from the men as the magic swept them clean. Red coughed once and then inhaled deeply.
They looked at Dorian with awe and fear and confusion, as if they couldn’t believe that saving their lives was worth the Godking’s
own effort.

Dorian dismissed them and turned back to his father. “You sick bastard, you don’t deserve a pyre. I should—” Dorian broke
off, frowning. “Keeper, the Godkings always leave orders that their bodies be burned so that they may not be used for krul,
yes?”

“Yes, Your Holiness,” Ashaiah said, but he looked gray.

“How many times have those orders been obeyed?”

“Twice,” Ashaiah whispered.

“You have the bones of every Godking for the last seven centuries except two?” Dorian was incredulous.

“Sixteen of your blood were used to raise arcanghuls and subsequently destroyed. We have the rest. Do you wish me to prepare
a substitute corpse for Garoth’s pyre, Your Holiness?”

Garoth Ursuul deserved no less for all the evil he’d done, but refusing his father a decent burial would say more about Dorian
than it would about the dead man. “My father was monster enough in life,” Dorian said. “I’ll not make him one in death.”

Only after the little man left did Jenine come hold his hand.

We’re not going back, are we?” Jenine asked, coming before the Godking’s throne. Dorian waved the guards away. He stood and
walked to her, taking her hands in his.

“The passes are snowed in,” he said gently.

“I mean we’re not ever going back, are we?”

She said we. It made him tingle, that unconscious admission of unity. Dorian waved a hand at the gold chains of office he wore. “They
would kill me for my father’s crimes.”

“Will you let me go?”

“Let you?” That hurt. “You’re not my prisoner, Jenine. You can go whenever you wish.” Jenine. Not Jeni. That formality had stuck. Maybe she feared she had merely traded gaolers. “But I have to tell you, I’ve just received
news that Cenaria is under siege. The last warriors to make it through Screaming Winds saw an army surrounding the city.”

“Who?”

“Some Ceuran general named Garuwashi and thousands of sa’ceurai. It may be that come spring—”

“We’ve got to go help them!” Jenine said.

He paused, letting her think. Sometimes she did act sixteen. “I could order my army to attempt the pass,” Dorian said. “If
they were lucky and the weather cooperated and the rebel highland tribes didn’t attack while my army was spread out, we might
only lose a few thousand. By the time we got there, the siege would probably be finished. And if we arrived in time and seized
the city ourselves, do you think Cenaria would welcome us? The Khalidoran saviors? They will not have forgotten what my men did a few months ago. And my soldiers who lose brothers and fathers and sons in
the passage, or who lost friends in the Nocta Hemata, will want the spoils of war.

“If I forbade rapine and murder, they might obey me, but it would plant doubts about me. Two hundred of my Vürdmeisters—that’s
more than half—have disappeared. I don’t yet control the Godking’s Hands, who are the only people who will tell me where those
Vürdmeisters have gone, or who is leading them. Garoth Ursuul had other aethelings I haven’t accounted for. I may be facing
civil war in the spring. So if it came to it, who do you think the Vürdmeisters will follow, Khali, who gives them their power,
or the once-treasonous aetheling?” The line between her eyebrows was deep with anguish now, helplessness, but Dorian wasn’t
finished. “And if they do follow me, and we are successful, what will your people say? They’ve installed a new queen, Terah
Graesin.”

“Terah?” Jenine was incredulous.

“Will the people welcome back young Jenine with a Khalidoran army? Or will they say you’re a puppet, so young that I’m manipulating
you, perhaps without your knowing it? Will Queen Graesin surrender her power?”

Jenine looked ill. “I thought . . .  I thought it was going to be easy after we won. I mean, we won, right?”

It was a good question. Perhaps it was the only question that mattered.

“We won,” Dorian said after a long moment. “But the victory cost us. I can never go south again. All of my friends besides
you are in the south. They’ll see my reign as a betrayal.” That made him think of Solon. Had Solon even made it out of Screaming
Winds alive? The thought made him ache. “If you want to assert your right to Cenaria’s throne, I can deliver it, but that
would cost you too.

“The price will be that everyone sees that a Godking has given you the throne. Do you think you’re ready to rule? Without
help? At sixteen, do you know how to pick advisers, how to tell when the chancellor of your exchequer is embezzling, how to
deal with generals who see you as a child? Do you have a plan to deal with the Sa’kagé? Do you know why the last two Ceuran
wars ended and what obligations you have to your neighbors? A plan to deal with the Lae’knaught who occupy your eastern lands?
If you don’t have all those covered, you’ll need help. If you accept help, you’ll be seen to be accepting help. If you don’t
accept help, you’ll make mistakes. If you trust the wrong people, you’ll be betrayed. If you don’t trust the right people,
you’ll have no one to protect you from your enemies. Assassination has as long of a history in your kingdom as slaughter does
in mine. Do you have an idea of whom you will marry and when? Do you plan to concede rule to your new husband, share it, or
keep it?”

“I have answers to some of those questions, and I know some people I can trust—”

“—I don’t doubt it—”

“—but I hadn’t considered all of those.” She got very quiet. “I’m not ready.”

“I do have . . .  an alternative,” Dorian said. His heart pounded. He wanted to use the vir. In his old life, before the One
God found him, he’d learned a glamour to seduce women. Now he could use it, just a little, just to help Jenine get over her
fear and disappointment and to see Dorian as a man. He wouldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do.

He quashed the impulse. Not that way. If Jenine didn’t choose him freely, it was all for nothing.

“Stay,” Dorian said. “Be my queen. I love you, Jenine. You are the reason I came to Khalidor. This throne means nothing to
me without you. I do and will always love you. A queen is what you are, what you are meant to be, and there is work for you
here. My fathers haven’t had queens; they had chattels, harems, playthings. Khalidor’s people are no worse than any other,
but this culture is sick. I thought once that I could run away. I see now that that’s not enough. I’ve found my life’s work:
changing reverence for power to reverence for life. You have no idea what your mere presence will do. Our marriage will redefine
marriage for this entire country. That’s no small feat, and it will bring no small amount of happiness to the women and the men here.”

“You want me to marry you because I’ll help you in your work?”

“Jenine,” he said quietly. “Lovers always want to make a private world. Just you and me and nothing else matters. The truth
is, everything else does matter. Your family, my family, the different ways we were raised, the obligations we have, the work
we do—it all matters. A marriage can be a refuge, but I’d be a fool to ignore what and who I am now, and what and who you
are. But the answer is no, I don’t want to marry you because I want you to help me. I want you. You’re worth more than all the rest of it combined. I’d rather serve in a hut with you than rule all the world without you.”

She averted her eyes. “You honor me, my lord.”

“I love you.”

She met his eyes now, but uncertainty still painted her features. “You are a good man, Dorian Ursuul, and a great man. May
I think about it for a few days?”

“Of course,” he said. His heart died a little. “Let me think about it” isn’t the answer a man wants to his proposal. Of course,
most men managed a little romance before asking.

In one way, he was horribly disappointed in himself. In another, he was content. He wanted Jenine’s mind to consent to this
match, not just her heart. Romantic feelings would come and go. He didn’t want her to choose in haste and regret at leisure.

She excused herself and the guards let in Dorian’s next appointment. It was Hopper. The man limped in quickly and prostrated
himself. Jenine hesitated halfway out the door. She had told Dorian that there was something about Hopper that she wanted
to share with him, but they hadn’t gotten around to it.

“Your Holiness,” Hopper said, “the women have been in an uproar. They begged me to ask if you’ll be accepting any of them
into your harem.”

Jenine turned away, as if embarrassed to be eavesdropping, but she didn’t hasten to leave, either.

“Of course not,” Dorian said. “Not one of them.”