The Empire (The Lover's Opalus) (6 page)

Chapter 9

The Emperor’s chamber was separated from hers by mere curtains. They might have been a wall formed from the thickest rock. As long as they had been married, the curtains had never been parted. The rare times he came to see her he left his room by his door then knocked at hers. She did the same. Lately, Raeche had become deeply dissatisfied with the cleanliness of the curtains. She had them cleaned but no matter how many times the men and women came in with ladders, buckets, sprays, and some Spirit-driven contraption that dried the fabric as it went, Raeche was not satisfied. She had ordered them taken down and sent to the Clear Pool, but the Emperor heard and refused to have it done, insisting they wait until the temperature rose so that Raeche did not take a chill from the huge room that was naturally difficult to heat evenly. When she asked that the chamber be modernized, the Emperor appeared horrified. This chamber had not been changed in centuries and would not be for centuries to come. It was in that room that a king became an emperor, a kingdom became an empire. Raeche knew the story but she did not care and silently considered setting fire to the curtain.

Then she stared at the curtain until it did catch fire. Glee tickled her as she watched flames lick quickly higher. Glee was replaced by despair as the blaze died abruptly and even appeared as if it had never been. Instead of smoke, she inhaled Lanus’s Spirit.

Something coursing through her like the dancing light in the bottle caused her to take another drink and imagine the Emperor’s possible expressions when he had noticed the burning fabric. She saw terror, which didn’t ring true, humor, which was more plausible, and an overabundance of patience. Never once as a child had she disobeyed or purposely rebelled, but now defying her husband intoxicated her. She could not stop doing it.

Raeche took a final sip then did something she had never done before. She went to the edge of the curtain against one wall and pulled layer after layer of heavy fabric back until she could skirt around it, let it drop, and look directly at her husband.

Lying on his side, one elbow propping him up, he read by the light of five fresh avla eggshells. His daystar-streaked hair was pushed over his shoulder, hanging down to the white covers, strands catching dark fire from the flickering glow. His chest was bare. Flat planes contrasted with the rounded muscles of his arms. The build of a warrior yet his hands turned the pages with the lightest of touches. He tensed and looked up, right at her.

“Raeche.” Her name flowed over perfect lips. “I am surprised to see you come around the curtain.”

“I tried to burn it down.”

“The Spirit of Luck is with you,” he congratulated her.

The barb stung, for all knew there was no such Spirit.

Raeche swayed with the longing to lay her hands on his chest. She wanted her fingertips and palms to warm against his flesh. The urge to touch him caused her to say, “You did not enjoy it.”

“Yes, I did, Raeche, but you did not.”

That he knew her thoughts should have amazed her but Raeche understood what no one else did–the Emperor could hear the thoughts of most in his presence when he chose. He had picked directly from her mind the vision of their first night wed. Of her being carried to his bed by his father and brother. Of him being ushered in by her mother, his aunts and cousins, with a ceremonial sword pressed into his hand and petals sprinkled over his head.

Born for him, given to him, given to his pleasure, Raeche felt shame as she reflected on that night. She had not pleased him, had failed in the only task she had ever been given. He had done his duty, done it quickly and found release, then left her immediately. After one more such encounter, he had never returned to her bed.

In an act of pure impulse, Raeche reached for the haphazard bows tied at her shoulders to keep her soft white nightgown up.

“Please, do not.” Calm, voice modulated, not a trace of change on his face, and yet the tiniest spark leapt in the air. It arced and shot through her like an arrow. Sizzling power singed her senses. Her body hummed.

“You are angry with me.” Raeche did not like to pout yet she had done much of this in recent times.

“How would you know that, little dark one?”

Such reverence and sweetness marked the endearment. She had always liked him most at times when he used those words. At least twice he had called her “my sweetest little dark one” and she had felt warmth in her belly.

“I find I am able to read your mood, Emperor. When you are angry, I feel sparks. When you are happy, as you are with Rucha, I feel as if clouds lift my feet and warm syrup courses through my veins, though I still feel sparks.”

“And when I am aroused?”

Raeche blushed, looked at the floor.

His quiet, seemingly involuntary groan transformed the blush to a burn.

“Go back to bed, Raeche.”

Instinct, combined with breeding, demanded she do as he commanded. Yet her feet stayed rooted to the ground as she searched his face, then the tendons of his throat and the curves of his muscles even down to his belly. A thin sheet hid the rest of him but she knew that beneath were strong legs, thighs corded with muscle and a light dusting of sleek hair. Above those thighs? Something she had not felt in a long time, something that had brought her pain once, something that had inspired fear.

Yet now, she felt no fear.

It had been a long time. A very long time. She now knew well that the Emperor had not hurt her on purpose. If he were to enter her again, to stroke a little, make her ready for him, maybe the low hunger that had eaten at her for cycles and cycles, since she had borne Rucha, could finally be satisfied. Once maybe. Just once this desire to lie with a man, this man, could be slaked and maybe–

“Stop it.”

She winced. Whether emperors were mind readers or not, his eyes and the dry rustle of his Spirit told her he was exasperated, that he knew the direction of her thoughts.

“You have not been pleased with me,” Raeche declared. “I have been wed to the Empire for five rings yet I have not once pleased it.”

“You are the Empire. You have been wed to
me
and you have given me a daughter. A daughter who will, as my oldest, rule this land after me, who will be greater than I have been or will be. There is nothing more I have the right to demand.”

“Those are not the words of a conqueror.”

“I have no interest in conquering you.”

He lowered his eyes and went back to reading his book. Raeche furtively searched the area near her.

Casually, he said, “There will be no violence between us. I will not tolerate it from myself, though I have in the past ring had a growing desire to wring your neck every time the nightstar goes full round, and I will not tolerate it from you.”

“How will you prevent it?” Raeche asked, horrifying herself. She clamped her hands over her mouth.

“You confuse me.”

She confused herself. “Emperor?”

“In here it is Lanus.”

Raeche tried to say it but could not force the name through her lips. Frustration pounded at her like waves against rocks. Her body hot, her skin sensitive, standing still grew difficult. More of those angry flashes of power sparked off the Emperor and onto her, sending her up in frustrated flames.

“Say it,” he told her in what sounded like a purr.

“Say?”

“Lanus. Say Lanus.”

Something poked like a stick in her chest. More awful, unwarranted and undesirable words tumbled forth. “Rucha is your daughter.”

The muscles in his arms and shoulders tensed but when he spoke his tone lacked all expression and his words were mundane. “Yes, she is,” he responded. “There was never any doubt of that.” Theoretically, Raeche posed to herself during a brief storm of reason, she should let this rest. But she could not, not any longer, not if she were to allow herself to enjoy his kiss.

“She is your daughter true.”

“Indeed.” He put the book away then pushed back to sit against the centuries old headboard of a giant bed that was the twin of her own. “Raeche, let us accept that your teachers, your aunts, and your mother all failed at their task. They did not train you to please me. They trained you to fear me.”

“No.” Raeche’s response was pure reflex. Hiding that she despised her mother, her aunts, and her teachers had not been necessary but the right thing to do. Despite all their demands, their instruction, their push and their pull. “They did not fail. I am sure they would all dive to their deaths from the Standing Rocks if they should hear these words or have any inkling of your perception.”

“They shall have no inkling. They have had none this whole time you and I have existed apart.”

“You cannot blame them for my fear of you. It has consumed me my whole life. I feel it when you are near. I feel it even when I think of you.”

Lanus nodded and unfolded his hands. The Emperor frequently talked in gestures. “I know. When you came to me you were merely a frightened girl.”

Her chin came up a notch. “Only one ring separates us.”

“Yes, but my father had already begun to waste. My mother refused to leave his side. I had been ruling in truth for two rings by then. Surely, our experiences were different.” He continued earnestly, “Though I did not want to, for your eyes were yet wide as a child’s and I believed you would lie still, cold as ice beneath me, I had to take you. Until then our marriage was not true. Though you would not, you had the right to leave me. I was weak. You were beautiful. So unlike any other woman. I could not allow the chance that you would escape me. Because, though I felt shame, I knew I wanted you, and you have always been mine. The thought that you could spring like a tsillis from a trap coursed like poison through my veins.”

“You had an Empire.”

“You are the Empire.”

A ball of fire dropped from her throat down to her belly and lower. The words were formal. They had been said many times in other, official settings, but this time. This… She licked her lips and took a breath despite the tingling of her nerves. “You could have declined me as your bride.”

“It is traitorous to deny the Empire anything.” Lanus’s hands fisted. “You were and are mine, Raeche.”

“Am I an object, then? Am I a curious formation living from the bark of your tree, no more than my birth? Do you seek sway or power over the fools who write songs to my beauty and hurl themselves at my feet for a favorable glance? Or the stupid girls who stoop in their gowns to appear short and stain their faces beneath their eye to mimic my mark?”

“You insist on believing the opposite of my words and my Spirit. What I seek, Raeche, is forgiveness. I hurt you. Because I lost myself in pleasure I hurt you, making this fear you have of me a permanent thing.”

Raeche felt embarrassment on behalf of her husband. “I knew it would hurt the first time.”

“And so, when you willingly came to me the second time, I shamed myself and hurt you again.”

Raeche offered, “I have learned that is not unusual with one who is small like me, especially when coupled with one who is large like you.”

“Nevertheless, I vowed to stay away from you until you were ready. I needed to wait until I no longer felt I was bedding a child.”

“I was no child.”

“You were. You nursed childish dreams and rebellion. You still do.”

Raeche’s lips were dry. She wanted water. She wanted Lanus to stop speaking.

He did not. “Because you feared me, resented the loss of your childhood, you sought what was not me. You risked death to chase a man that held dominion over nothing more than his timra. A man who chose you and who you chose in return rather than someone arranged for you by your parents. You chose a man who was calmer, smaller, whose body held no fear. You chose someone who was not me, not at all like me.”

He knew of Galan. He knew. He knew. He knew.
 

As he sat there calmly, Raeche thought to deny it, but what use was that? “I do not know what you mean.” She acted an imbecile anyway.

Lanus sighed. “Go back to your chamber. Do not use the curtain again.”

Her brows drew tight and her body felt as if it were aflame. “You have no right to bar me from this room.”

“You misunderstand. I have asked that you come to the door and knock, that you never come around the curtain that separates this space.”

“And your bed?”

“You may not come to my bed.”

“It is traitorous to deny the Empire anything,” she challenged.

“Then I make it a request, Empress. It would please me greatly were you to stay on the other side of the curtain.”

“If I do not come to your bed, no woman comes to your bed.” It was bold, angry, and something that, should he will it, Raeche could not enforce. It was law. Should one partner deny their spouse their bed, the other would be well within their rights to seek the bed of another. Unfortunately for Lanus, his denial had come three rings too late. She had betrayed him with Galan a long time ago.

“Raeche.”

“No woman comes to your bed,” she growled, her fists tight at her sides.