In Her Name

it. But this shall come, in time.”

He looked at Nicole, who seemed to be studiously examining the portrait Eustus treasured. “Nicole,” he said quietly, sensing the turmoil within her, “what is wrong?”

“I am afraid, Reza,” she said, still averting her eyes. “There are things I would like to say, to do, but I…” She shook her head, a bittersweet smile on her face. “I am so silly, Reza,” she told him. “I have waited all this time to have you alone to myself for a while so that we could… get to know one another again. I thought it might be good to talk of things other than the war, or what you can tell us of your time in the Empire. To get away from all the things of official interest. But now I find my courage has gone. I do not know what to do, what to say.” She looked up at him then, her brown eyes brimming with tears. “Would you hold me?” she whispered.

Reza held his arms open for her, and she knelt next to him, wrapping her arms around him in a fierce embrace, her head against his shoulder.

“What is it in the world that could frighten you so?” he asked softly.

“Oh, Reza,” she whispered. “Ever since the day that I found out Hallmark had been destroyed, I knew that you had not died. I simply could not accept it. You were… special in my heart. I had dreams that someday we might… be together. Something in me knew that you would come back, that you would be with me again. Years passed, and still I waited for you. There were times… there were times when it seemed that the thought of your return was all that sustained me.

“But I have not always been faithful to your memory. I know we were only children then, but it seemed more real than anything I have since felt, as foolish as that may sound.” He felt her quiver in his embrace, holding him tighter, drawing him closer. “I sometimes listened to the advice of others and the wants of my body; I slept with a few men, but it was never right for me. Never.” She brought her face close to his, her eyes glowing with a passion he suddenly realized no one else had ever witnessed. “May God forgive me, Reza,” she whispered, “but I love you. I have always loved you.”

He felt the sudden heat of Nicole’s lips pressing against his, parting for the velvet tongue that yearned to touch his own. He felt the strength of her emotion, was almost overcome by it as she pressed herself against him, the warmth of her breasts burning through her flimsy silk blouse, searing his own chest with the heat of her need.

“Nicole,” he managed before she pulled him to her again.

“Make love to me,” she whispered urgently between kisses as she pulled him down on top of her. Her hands began to work on the bindings of his clothes. “There is nothing in the world I have ever wanted so much as I want you now.”

Confused and alarmed, his nervous system afire with sensations he was powerless to control, Reza somehow managed to gently disengage himself from her embrace. “Nicole, please, I cannot do this,” he said softly as he rolled over, gently pushing her away.

“Reza, what is wrong?” she asked, her voice trembling. “You do not want me, do you?”

Reza sat up, an expression of pain and misery on his face. “Nicole…” He shook his head, his mind swirling with confusion as his blood began to burn with desire for the one his heart held most dear, and whom he could never again hold close to him, could never again touch. It was physical agony. “Nicole,” he rasped, fighting against the roaring pain that surged through him, “I love you as a friend and kindred soul more than any other, for who you once were in my eyes and my heart, and for who you are now. But I cannot give you the love you seek, the true love of my heart, for that forever belongs to another.”

Nicole felt like she had been stabbed through the heart, and Reza felt her pain in his own. “Who?” she asked, bitter and angry, not at Reza, but at fate. Why? she cried to herself. Why must it be like this, after waiting so very long? “Who is it? One of the trainees? Jodi?”

Reza shook his head slowly, rubbing the scar in his hand where Esah-Zhurah had shared her heritage with him, consummating their love with blood. “No,” he replied. “No, if only our lives were that simple, but it is not so.”

Nicole watched the skin of his face tighten as his jaw set. His eyes closed, and his head bowed, as if a heavy burden had just been dropped upon his shoulders. He was in pain, terrible pain. She sat up next to him, her sudden anger at his rejection overtaken by concern. She put a hand to his face simply to touch him, to reassure him. His skin was on fire, almost too hot for her to touch.

“Mon Dieu, Reza,” she gasped, “are you… are you all right? You are burning up.”

“It shall pass,” he whispered fiercely as he fought to control the trembling that swept his body. “I get this way when I think of her. It has been… the most difficult thing for me to deal with. Her face is seared into my brain, and my blood burns at the mere thought of her.”

“Who is she?” Nicole asked again softly.

Reza’s hands tightened into fists of iron. “Her name is Esah-Zhurah,” he whispered. It was the first time he had uttered her name aloud since leaving the Empire.

“A Kreelan,” Nicole whispered, incredulous.

“Yes,” he said mournfully, opening his eyes again to face her. “She has the key to my heart, but I shall never see her again. I am banished from her, as I am from the Empire.”

“Tell me about her,” Nicole asked quietly as his skin began to cool under her touch. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him close. “I want to know who this… woman… is, what she means to you. Please. I know you have sworn not to reveal the secrets of the Empire, but this is very important to me. I must know.”

How to tell her? Reza wondered dazedly, acutely aware of her body against his. How could he share with her what he had been, what he had known, what he had felt then and now? He was not concerned with staining his honor with words spoken of the Empire where Nicole was involved; he was worried more about how to convey to her all that made the love he had shared with Esah-Zhurah what it was.

Then he knew. Perhaps he was wrong to even think what now ran through his mind, but he could imagine nothing more fitting. And the more the thought took hold, the more he knew it to be the right thing, almost as if some unknowable power had suddenly dictated this course in his life. “Will you trust me, Nicole?” he asked. “Will you trust me with your spirit and your life?”

A chill ran up Nicole’s spine at the sound of Reza’s voice. It was not malevolent, not chilling, but held a note of power and understanding that seemed ages beyond his years. The intensity of his gaze proclaimed it as a challenge, daring her to follow where no others of her kind save the man kneeling beside her had gone.

“Oui, mon ami,” she said evenly, trying to keep the sudden surge of excitement out of her voice, “I trust you.”

Moving away from her, Reza turned to the precisely arranged stack of his Kreelan things and withdrew a particularly beautiful and deadly looking knife. Nicole suddenly wondered what Reza was going to do, but she had given him her trust, and was not about to take it back.

“Give me your hand,” he said, holding up his own in the space between their bodies as he had done before with Esah-Zhurah. He put the knife between their joined hands, the blade now flat and cold against their palms. “This is one of the most ancient and sacred rituals among my people,” he said, his soft voice a marked contrast to the sparkling fire that danced in his eyes. “In our blood lies our spirit, our honor, our soul. In sharing our blood,” Nicole suddenly felt the warmth of blood upon her skin as Reza drew the knife across their palms, but she felt no pain, lost now in Reza’s eyes and the lilt of his voice, “we share ourselves with one another, that we may become one. In Her name, let it be so.”

Nicole felt Reza’s hand close tightly with hers, and she silently wondered at what a silly thing this was, for what could come out of pressing two bloody wounds together? Surely blood did not really flow from one to the other? But why did she feel no pain, for surely the knife had cut her deeply?

“Reza,” she gasped as a tingling began in her hand, a warm, prickly feeling the likes of which she had never before felt. The feeling raced up her arm like an incoming tide, then spread through her body like the warmth from a glass of good brandy on a chill evening. “I feel… dizzy,” she said, watching as Reza’s face began to swim before her, and the light in the room faded toward darkness.

“Come,” she suddenly heard him say in a language she had never heard before, but somehow understood. “Come with me.”

He stood there, waiting for her, dressed in the gleaming armor that she recalled had once disturbed her, had found threatening somehow. But now it seemed normal, as if that is the way he always had been, and always