himself up in the word as though it could shield you from a thousand swords. But it doesn’t shield you from the reality of war, we’re seeing that now.” He nodded at Cyrus. “I’m going to go get myself an hour or so of sleep before I start having to make preparations again. Come to the north gate with your people at sunrise, and we’ll be off.”
“Count on it,” Cyrus said.
“Oh, I will,” Briyce Unger said with a toothy grin as he began to ascend the amphitheater stairs behind him. “I’m already planning my strategy around having some of your mystics to help save us from our troubles.”
Cyrus gave the man a nod as he left with the rest of his delegation, and watched him disappear from sight into the tunnel. When he turned, he saw that the amphitheater was empty, and the garden around him was quiet, save for the buzz of crickets in the night air. There was a very slight movement across from him and he realized that the last person in the amphitheater besides him was Cattrine. She sat on the bench in the same place she had been throughout the ceremony, watching him, as gravely as if someone had died.
Her skin held a certain flush in the torchlight, a warm, browned hue from all the travel of the last months. Her auburn hair was perfectly matched to the lighting, and he saw the slightest flicker of her eyes as he crossed the center of the amphitheater, heading toward the tunnel through which he had entered. “Going to stay here all night?” he asked her, pausing at the end of her row.
“Perhaps,” she said, quiet, calm. “I … can’t believe he’s still alive.”
Cyrus felt a sharp pain within. “I’m sorry.” She looked up at him in surprise. “Whatever else has happened between us, I’m sorry I didn’t free you from him. I may not care for the fact that you lied to me,” he felt his body tense as the anger came back to him, “about your brother and who you were, but I wouldn’t wish being married to him upon you, no matter what.”
“I don’t wish to go with him,” she said, and lowered her head. “I don’t wish to ever be subject to … to that man, ever again.”
“You won’t have to,” Cyrus said. “I won’t let him take you.”
“You would fight your way through the whole Kingdom of Actaluere to spare me?” she asked with a subtle smile. “You would go into the heart of the sea country, into the city of Caenalys and fight your way through the streets and over the bridges, and do so on my behalf?”
Cyrus felt the clench of his jaw and hated it. “If I have to, I will.”
She stood, then, and turned to him, watching him, her green eyes hard like emeralds and unrelenting in their pursuit of him. “Even though I didn’t tell you who I was?” She took a step closer to him. “Even though I lied by omission, as you say? Even still?” She stepped closer yet, and was now only a few feet away from him.
“I would.” He nodded. “All the way to their capital if necessary, all the way to their throne room, I would fight my way to your brother himself, crush all his guards and pry a promise from his lips to never pursue you or attempt to make war to honor his own name, under penalty of my return.”
She stared at him, still as a statue. “What a man are you, Cyrus Davidon. How deep must your conviction run, that you would do that for a near-stranger?”
He flushed, and swallowed hard. “You’re not a stranger, we’ve been-”
“I know,” she said, and took another step toward him, reaching out and running a palm down his cheek. “I almost thought you had forgotten, in your anger, as though you wanted to disavow ever knowing me, ever holding me …”
“What happened, happened,” Cyrus said, feeling the touch of her hand on his face. He could feel the roughness, where once it had been soft and smooth, now calloused from the ride and practice with her blade. “But it’s done now.” He felt a great pressure in his chest, a warmth within him at her touch, at the remembrance of nights and days in Vernadam. “You saw to that when you didn’t tell me the honest truth.”
“I didn’t lie,” she said, coming closer, her forehead nearly on his. “I wouldn’t have lied to you. But I feared that you would not fight that hard for me, for a near-stranger, or even for a lover, had you known who my brother was and what complications it would bring. How was I to know?”
“Because you know me now. Because you got to know me, the real me.” He couldn’t look at her. “You could have told me at Vernadam. Any time in the days we spent together, the infinity of blissful days that we held together.”
“I was afraid,” she said, holding her hand awkwardly, still touching his face. He leaned into her as she stroked his cheek. His breathing became suddenly slightly heavier, his heart thumped in his ears. “Afraid you’d be … upset. A fear that turned out to be accurate, I would point out.”
“But it wouldn’t have been,” he said, his voice low, his eyes now on hers, gazing into them. “Not if you’d told the truth before all the hell broke loose. Before there was threat of war. I wouldn’t have been angry if you’d told me then. If you’d been honest and not tried to hide forever-and we could have …” He took a breath, felt a pulse within him, the deep thrum of his desire.
“We still could,” she said, slipping closer, drawing her forehead to his with her hands then slipping her arms around him. “I still want you. I’ve missed you … the touch of you, the feel of you against me in the cold night air …” Her hands ran down his robes, clung tight to him, pulled him against her. “I want you,” she whispered in his ear, and her mouth found his earlobe and sucked on it gently, her soft breath against the side of his neck causing Cyrus’s entire mind to blot out any thought but her …
He was both acutely aware of every moment and yet it blurred around him as though he were in a stupor of tiredness. She pulled him down, onto the nearest bench, and he felt her hands lifting the hem of his robe, felt the rustle of cloth as she tugged her breeches down and he heard the sound of her leather boots echo on the floor of the amphitheater. Her kisses were tender yet forceful, and every one of them seemed to awaken some beast within him that had been locked away for the last month, clamoring quietly to get out, chambered in a room of bleakness and despair but now afforded a view of the sky and charging toward it with all its strength.
He kissed her back, roughly, and it was just as it had been at Vernadam. He craved her, kissed her on the side of her neck, sucked on the sweet skin there and heard her moan as he unlaced her cloth shirt’s collar and slid it up. She kicked off her breeches underneath him and it turned loose his animal excitement. Something froze him, for just a beat. “Won’t somebody see us?”
“They’re all gone,” she said. “Off to bed, and won’t be back to the garden until tomorrow afternoon.”
“But …” He sat there, feeling foolish but still wanting her, held back by an invisible tether. “You’re still a married woman.”
Her eyes were on his, and he could see that she wanted it too, wanted him. “That never stopped you before.”
“I thought you were a widow before.”
“So did I,” she said, pulling him closer, “but so little is my regard for the man that this almost seems more delicious than before.” She pulled him close and kissed him, and they melted together into action and activity, the cold night air made warmer by Cyrus’s skin pressed against hers, held by her embrace until they had finished.
“You’re a man of commendable vigor,” she said, her voice muffled from her face being pressed against his chest. She reached a hand up and brushed her hair back so he could see her face, glowing, almost resplendent. Her shirt had been lost in the moments between her initiation of their second lovemaking and his arrival on the floor. He felt the stone chill against his back and bottom, but it seemed to soothe his hot flesh. “The Baron could never manage to satiate me in such a way as you have.”
“Don’t talk about him when you’re with me,” Cyrus said, but it came off snappish, and he saw her flinch from his words. “It’s been a month; of course I’d have some pent-up desire.”
“You have years of desire, my love,” she said with a sigh. “And your vigor is hardly something new; how many times did we engage in such things at Vernadam? I’m only pleased that you haven’t grown tired of me quite yet.” One of her hands slipped down as she smiled.
“Stop,” he whispered, imploring her. “Not here. Not again.”
“Why not?” she asked. “I used to come here as a child, you know. With Milos and my father, whenever a convocation was held. We had three of them, two within a year of each other. This is a sacred place to us, here in Luukessia, because of the connection Enrant Monge has to our ancestors.” She lifted herself off him, exposing her upper body, and causing him to bristle as she got to her knees, causing him to tremble at the sight of her nakedness, the scars that crisscrossed her body still visible to him now, obvious, inescapable signs of her torment,
