“Yes, Empress?”
“In case I have not told you often enough, I appreciate you more than I have words to say,” Tasia said. “You’ve become every bit a little sister to me as Adela.”
Linna looked startled. Her cheeks pinked. “I – thank you, ma’am.”
Tasia hugged her. “Speaking of Adela, you should get back to her. I don’t like her spending her evening with Darien without you to watch over them.”
“Milo is with them, Empress.”
Tasia smiled. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. Still, I will feel better knowing you are there.”
Linna returned her smile, clearly pleased. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be going so –” She spared a quick glance for Joslyn. “I’ll be going so you can both get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”
“That it has, kuna-shi,” Joslyn agreed.
Linna’s smile grew even larger. First called a sister by her Empress, now called kuna-shi by her Commander. She opened her mouth to respond, closed it, and scurried from Tasia’s chambers.
Tasia watched her go, one hand resting lightly on her abdomen.
Joslyn nodded at the hand. “Well? Do you feel anything growing?”
Tasia turned back to Joslyn and snorted out a laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous.” She made a face. “I don’t think I’ve felt my privacy so invaded since a Wise Man inspected me following my first monthly blood.” Tasia took her hand from her belly and stepped close to Joslyn, lacing her fingers behind Joslyn’s neck. “Now. Let me show you what I’d always hoped for on my wedding night.”
As always, Tasia’s touch had a way of melting away Joslyn’s tension and anxiety as nothing else did. Once they were finally alone in the dark and empty bedchamber, bare skin to bare skin, touched by nothing but one another and the gentle night breeze coming from the open window, Joslyn felt herself relax from the week’s tumult at last. And when release finally came – first for Tasia, then for Joslyn – she felt whole again. Safe. If only for one night.
Joslyn rolled off Tasia, settling beside her, observing her own heart as its rate returned to something more normal as Tasia let out a deep sigh.
“In another world,” Tasia said, “you are the one who wears a crown and walks beside me at every ball.”
Joslyn smiled and slipped an arm beneath Tasia’s shoulders. A small part of her found the comment to be bittersweet. But only a small part.
She kissed Tasia’s brow and did not fight the gentle tug of sleep.
#
The room was familiar. It had the shape and feel of Port Lorsin’s palace, and yet it was not. A throne sat at the far end, high-backed and ornate, with lanterns casting dancing shadows across the figure sitting upon it. Joslyn did not want to approach the throne, but her feet carried her forward anyway. She did not want to kneel before the throne’s occupant, but her knees bent anyway.
“Rise,” the figure rasped weakly, gesturing with a gnarled hand adorned by heavy rings, and Joslyn rose. “I suppose you think yourself clever, don’t you, Joslyn of Terinto?”
She kept her head bowed respectfully, despite the fact that she wanted to lift it and look the man who spoke in the face.
“Making yourself consort to the most powerful woman in the Empire,” he went on. He spoke slowly, deliberately, as though speaking at all cost a quantity of energy that he barely possessed. “It’s quite a station to rise to, for a barbaric nomad such as yourself.”
“Who,” Joslyn said, finding she had to fight to produce every word, “are … you?”
“Oh, I think you know the answer to that.”
“The … deathless … king,” Joslyn guessed.
“And?”
“And … the … undatai.”
“Precisely. And you, Commander, you have work to do on my behalf,” the deathless king declared. “Since you seem insistent upon thwarting each assassin I send for your lover, your false Empress, I want you to bring her to me – to bring both of you to me. There is more than one way to skin a deer.”
With great effort, Joslyn managed to lift her chin a fraction of an inch. It wasn’t enough to see his face, just enough to see his skeletal hand, papered over with skin so pale it was nearly translucent and weighed down with its rings. One of those rings, Joslyn saw, bore the double-eagle crest of the House of Dorsa. Another bore the stylized sun surrounded by the serpent – the sigil of the Order of Targhan.
“You shall not … have either … of us,” Joslyn said. She curled her hands into fists.
He chuckled, a dry, wheezing sound, like wind pushing through a tent flap. “Are you so sure I will not? I believe you already said you would accompany her to the East. It is only a little farther to go to find me, and since I have already had the pleasure of tasting both of you, it should not be difficult to –”
“Get … out … of my … head!” Joslyn shouted. She willed her limbs to move, to respond to her commands instead of his. She succeeded in a sort of stumbling lunge forward, but then everything went black, and she was falling … falling …
And with one sudden, choking gasp, she was awake.
Joslyn jerked into a sitting position, reaching automatically for Ku-sai’s sword.
But Tasia’s room was empty, quiet. The window overlooking the courtyard below was ajar, and the muslin curtain rippled in the breeze. The fire had died completely, leaving the room cold and black. Beside her, Tasia lay with her mouth hanging half-open, her chest rising and falling in contented sleep.
Joslyn stood and walked a lap around the room. She peered into the servant’s quarters, but the room was as empty as it always was. Then she walked around the foot of Tasia’s bed and gently cracked open the door into the antechamber. The room beyond was dark. Nothing moved within, and the only sound was Linna’s quiet breathing.
Satisfied that the threat had only been in her dream and not anywhere within Tasia’s bedchamber, Joslyn climbed back into bed. Tasia made an annoyed whimper in her sleep and rolled over, throwing one arm over Joslyn’s bare chest.
Joslyn lay silently in the dark, staring at the ceiling. Sleep did not find her again until just before dawn.