Dark Lord's Wedding (13 page)

“Are you certain such a well-sculpted chin wouldn’t make me seem too conventional?”

“The amethyst eyes just might convince people otherwise.”

“No one would ever see my eyes. They’d be mesmerized by this chin’s mathematical perfection.” The corner of her lips quirked upward.

Then she had already made up her mind. She was toying with him, torturing him, submerging him ever deeper in the iciness of her disapproval for her own enjoyment. What a relief.

“The rightmost head is the only choice,” he said. “I should’ve seen it at once.”

“No, that one will never do. The prominent position of those eyes on an otherwise unassuming face would make me look like a gecko in a gown.”

The scent of triple-custard pie wafted from her. She was anxious that he would choose her own face next, but he wouldn’t so blunder. Now her scheme was clear.

He swept an arm over the busts. “You must make all the changes. The only way to balance a life is with every excess.”

Her eyes sparkled, as if they had already begun their change into gemstone. She lifted the gold chain he had given her with the red diamond. “By the time of our wedding, I will be a new woman. This engagement necklace will carry the transformational enchantment. And I have one for you.”

She dangled an amulet before him. At the center of a chain shone a little sun. It was an orange jewel, broad like a demon gate leading into inferno.

“Breath stealing.” He cupped the stone. Vital humors of mystery and uproar spread up his arms into his chest. “How will it change me?”

“It will regenerate your teeth, your ears. I only want you to be fit for our wedding.”

His wig chafed against the scars on the sides of his head. The Bright Palms had taken parts of him with their crude games. Hiresha could thwart them in this and all things. He had made the right choice by her.

“This betrothal gift would humble a king,” he said, “with what you’ve told me so far. But its enchantment is even more potent, isn’t it?”

Her surprise smelled of lemon meringue pie, flavored with vanilla so exquisite that adventurers would cross oceans to find it. “It may tighten your skin.”

He adjusted his cravat around his neck. “Pardon?”

“The enchantment will make you appear younger during the day.”

“Seem younger or become so?” Tethiel asked. “I’ve no wish to live forever. Mortality is the only thing that makes life bearable.”

The flavors of her fear deepened into a full twelve-course dinner. She doubted their marriage would succeed.

He had blundered after all. But then, if he always said the right thing, no one would tolerate him.

“The enchantment won’t make you young,” she said. “My magic does not reverse time.”

He reached behind his neck to try to latch the amulet. Could his fingers manage the clasp? Yes. They were no longer shattered but nimble thanks to escorting her over the seas. “You bring out the best in me, my heart.”

She wafted close, pressing the amulet against his heart. She pulled herself level with him. Power flowed through her kiss. It rebounded from his lips, to his throat, down his chest and back, until it faded into a resonant hum.

His black wine coiled and writhed to strike. Bite her. Make her scream.

Tethiel had to keep his magic barreled. He needed to push her away.

He must hold her closer, never free her from their kiss.

Kissing Tethiel was a joyous drowning. With her lips pressed against his, waves of shimmering tension and release crashed over her. It was only his magic, of course. Nothing so intangible as love could feel like a plunge into ecstasy. Hiresha could believe she never needed to breathe again.

Their lips parted. Kissing was a curious ritual, an acceptable diversion, and an unspoken promise.

She lifted her hand from his engagement necklace. “This sapphire contains all the hues of sunrise. You may wish to call it a dawnstone.”

He hid the jewel in his grasp. “Now I’ll always be gone with the dawn.”

“I took the gem from the divine empress.”

“You stole for me? How considerate.”

“The jewel was a trifle to her and fair payment to me for years of service to the Oasis Empire.”

“Speaking of,” he said, “where else would you care not to be married?”

Her vision divided, and she saw herself standing with bridal flowers before the barred gates of Morimound. She had designed those flood walls, and they had been shut against her. Hiresha had saved many lives. They had forced her into exile. The thud of two-and-three-quarters feet of reinforced heartwood sounded in her chest.

She refocused on the facet with Tethiel. “Not in the Empire,” she said.

“And not the Alliance of Masks.”

“Your homeland?” Hiresha asked. “I should think you’d delight in a wedding invasion.”

“I would but for one snag.” He puffed out the lace of his cuffs. “I promised I’d not return.”

“Promised whom?”

“A god.”

“Your hypocrisy is acting up. You trespassed with me down the throat of They of Jade Skin.”

Her arrangements of amethysts backlit him with purple. His Feasters had left him alone with Hiresha. “We weren’t expressly forbidden, now were we?”

He had been banished from his homeland, as had Hiresha. What an inestimably strong foundation on which to build a relationship.

“My heart, we can challenge gods as an anniversary. Let us have humbler aspirations for the wedding.”

“I also prefer our marriage not defy the gods. Neither do I wish to grovel to the priests of the Dominion of the Sun. They’d wed me to war.”

“Then the City of Endless Day is right out,” he said. “One of the Dominion’s slave states would be more welcoming.”

“Would any be a fit venue?”

“Hoathas, the City of Flowing Gold.”

“The honey capital?” It was far from her hopes, from everything. Then again, Hiresha had never factored exile into her wedding plans.

“The beekeepers have surprising style sense. They will be devoted to you at once.”

“Perhaps I should visit.” The crystal palace of her childhood dreams shattered behind her. She would have to build new hopes, greater ones.

“The city matriarchs already know me, and I just had a lovely banquet with one of their upstanding sons. A hexer.”

She rubbed the smoothness of the gems imbedded into her hands. Hiresha could not allow a hexer to touch her jewels. She might wipe them off but never rid them of the memory of foulness.

Hiresha said, “The City of Gold gave the Dominion the crux of its magical power. My studies told that all hexers train in Hoathas. And yet it is a subjugate state. Can they not be bothered to rule?”

“The matriarchs prefer to resolve conflict without violence. The Dominion of the Sun was of the opposite opinion.”

“Then the City of Gold was sacked?” What a brutish world this was, loud with ignorance, and dimly lit with the shortsighted lusts. All progress was smashed into glittering powder.

“No,” Tethiel said, “the matriarchs negotiated a peace. Their magic for the city’s safety.”

“A compromise. That is an unexpected glimmer of decency. Yes, I will visit and see if the City of Gold will suit.”

“Don’t misunderstand me. It is awful,” Tethiel said, “but uniquely so. All great cities are.”

“Unique enough to accept a wedding full of your Feasters?”

“The City of Gold stands to gain. With my favor and yours the balance of power may shift in the Dominion. The matriarchs will understand this.”

He stepped into the center of the grove. The starlight reflected from his skin in a vitreous luster. At night, no part of him looked mortal. Onyx-shard brows, skin of opal, chasm eyes, hands that cast monstrous shadows, he was a deathless king crowned with a black triangle. The tattoo on his brow had transformed from a crudely inked brand into a three-sided pupil. Its silky pool of darkness wavered to the point of revealing something hidden in its depths, then clouded again. If Hiresha stared too long into that sign she might never find her way out again.

“You may be beyond handsome,” she said, “yet what I find most appealing about you is your foresight. As long as it’s not used against me.”

“Never.”

“I’m certain you mean, ‘Never again.’” Hiresha cleaved an amethyst crystal in front of him. “Concerning the wedding, I hope the guest list won’t feel unbalanced. I have few enough friends and no close relatives, while your family is everything but reasonable.”

“My children are legion,” he said, “but the important thing is that I outlived my parents. We neither of us are bringing a mother-in-law to the marriage, so it has every chance of a success.”

“How peculiar. My mother wouldn’t have approved of you, the wedding, or my work. And yet I am still sorry that she expired before she could see me married.” Hiresha touched her chest below her red paragon. The ache there was full of piercing sharpness.

“No matter how overfond we are of our mothers, they always deserve more.”

The pain split into two distinct shards that dug lower into Hiresha’s abdomen. “We must discuss something else in that vein. If it drives us apart, better now than later when we’d look like idiots.”

Tethiel plumbed her with his midnight eyes. “You’re afraid I’ll want a son?”

“And that you’ll want me to bear him.” The admission didn’t come easily. She could rip a banyan tree out of the ground, roots and all. She had barely enough strength to say this to her betrothed. “Once I wanted children. Someday I may wish to raise one, yet likely not bear one. Not to carry, not to birth.”

“Understandable, after you saved Morimound from a womb curse.”

“In Morimound we have the tradition that a wife must bear a son. Until she does, she may be thrown out onto the street on a whim.”

Tethiel pulled on a coat cuff to straighten it. “A worthy fear, but you may bid it farewell. As we both know, I already have too many children.”

“And an heir?” Hiresha gazed toward the path out of the banyan fortress. Celaise would be outside.

“Yes. She is not of my loins, but wine is thicker than blood. We drink from the same cup.”

Wine was not as viscous as blood; his meaning was nonetheless clear. What pure crystalline relief if they could resolve this with such ease. Most any other suitor would’ve coveted a son from the Lady of Gems. That was even more true of her other self, Hiresha the Flawless. Approximately every man in the Empire wanted her to beget. Maybe Tethiel wished that too. He might only be lying to please her.

“Not so,” he answered, though she had not spoken her question.

“By tradition,” she said, “a marriage is a promise between a man and woman to make a family.”

“Are we not above tradition? Never follow a precedent when you can set one. Your children will be knowledge and wonder.”

Her jewels shone like pleasant dreams. Her gem piercings were cool points of stability in her forearms, feet, chest, and down her back. She extended a glittering hand to him.

He lifted her fingers to his lips. They were warm against her skin and thrilling against her jewels. “My heart, when you visit the city, don’t hide. Let them see your true brilliance.”

“I well may.” She ought to stay inconspicuous, yet it was a travesty to conceal her jewels.

Tethiel waved a spindle-fingered hand toward the entrance. “Someone is coming.”

“Spellsword Sagai? I should think the assassin would have the sense to avoid us at night.”

“No, a woman I invited here. A woman you’ve waited long to see.”

“Janny Barrows.” It had to be her. Understanding flashed over Hiresha. In her other facet, Janny had tried to introduce Hiresha to a man with well-proportioned musculature yesterday. Or that would happen tomorrow. Hiresha could not parse which facet came first temporally, yet it only made sense that another man introduced Janny tonight.

The woman in question bounded and bounced into the workshop. In contrast to the grey maid clothes she had worn serving in the Academy, colors battled each other across her dress. Her turban was a confusion of paisley.

“You old slab, I’ve missed you,” Janny Barrows said. She seemed ready to barrel Hiresha over with her embrace. Her body had grown more generous in this facet.