Page 9

Nine

Laya

Laya collapsed against Luntok’s chest, pink cheeked in pleasure.

“Oh, darling,” she whispered breathily, “tell me you are never leaving Mariit.”

Luntok sighed into her hair, his breath tickling her earlobe.

They’d snuck away after the feast, stumbling and sloshing wine across the wax-glazed floorboards, and were now lying naked beneath Laya’s sheets.

The sun, once high and bloated on the horizon, had long since dipped beneath the golden crocodile jaws that dotted the palace roofs.

Pale shadows streaked through the window screens, painting lines across Luntok’s flushed face.

Laya hadn’t thought she could want him more until just minutes before, when he had been pressing their hips together and moaning her name.

She loved that it was her name on his lips, no one else’s.

She’d wear his name like a brand.

She’d let him carve it with his nails, sharp as razor blades, into her unmarked skin.

“I’d stay in bed with you forever,” Luntok said as he ran his fingers along her back, leaving a trail of goose bumps down her spine.

Then stay.

Laya swallowed the words.

The bustle and alcohol of the feast had made her giddy, but she had yet to completely lose her head.

Instead, she allowed herself to giggle?—and Laya never giggled.

She raised her head to peck him on the lips, her mouth curling and wet and ravenous.

“You must never leave. I forbid it,” she said.

“Would you take me as your prisoner, Dayang?” Luntok asked, grinning.

“Oh, yes.” She clambered on top of him.

The feast wine had given her a playful spark of energy, along with a set of thumbs.

She grappled for his wrists, pinning them clumsily to the sheets.

When she sat up, the room spun around her.

Laya braced her weight against Luntok’s shoulders to steady herself.

Maybe she was more inebriated than she’d thought.

Nestled between the pillows, Luntok feigned confusion.

“And what crime have I committed, Dayang?”

She leaned over him, close enough that she could smell the tang of rice wine on his breath.

“You, my lord, are much too handsome. The other ladies have started to take notice.”

His grin darkened.

He flipped her onto the bed and crawled on top of her.

“Jealous, Laya?” he murmured against the hollow of her throat.

“No,” Laya said.

She threaded her fingers through his hair and pulled back hard enough to make him wince.

The corners of her lips turned up into a smug smile.

She lowered her voice an octave.

“Not as long as you’re imprisoned with me.”

Luntok swallowed, the lump bobbing in his throat.

For a moment, the fire in his gaze dampened.

“I just want to be with you. I don’t care about anything else,” he said, tightening his grip on her waist.

She heard a hitch in his tone, a kind of desperation that stretched deeper than lust.

Of all the women in Maynara, Luntok wanted her .

Be it the wine or the bustle or the desire surging in her veins, Laya wanted him more than anything else on earth.

This was not a war she could win, but she wouldn’t surrender him without a fight.

Laya gazed up at him with a challenge in her lidded eyes.

Rather than push him away, she yanked his lips down to meet hers.

Luntok kissed her back hungrily, as if he were a dying man devouring his final feast, as if they hadn’t made love mere moments before.

He dragged his mouth down her jawline, along the delicate skin of her neck, then lower, lower still.

Her toes curled in delight, and she reached for him beneath the sheets.

Luntok tore himself from her touch with a strangled groan.

“Laya, wait.”

Laya fell back against the mattress, relenting.

“It’s OK if you can’t keep up, you know,” she told him.

Luntok scowled.

“You know I can keep up just fine.”

“I’m only saying,” she said with a shrug.

“We can always do other things while we wait.” Laya looked down, pretending to examine her fingernails.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a smirk spread across Luntok’s face.

“We can do whatever you like, Laya,” he said, hovering over her.

“Tell me something first.”

“Oh? What would you like to know?” Laya’s eyes fluttered shut as Luntok leaned forward, skimming his lips along her throat once more.

“I’ve heard rumors.”

“Rumors?” She let out a dry laugh.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to elaborate.”

He kissed down to her shoulder, and she sighed in contentment.

“There have been stories?—of strange men smuggled inside the palace,” he said, his breath dancing across her collarbone.

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything to do with that.”

His question struck her as oddly specific.

Had she been of sounder mind, she might have thought to question him.

But Laya’s need for him burned stronger than any ember of suspicion she might have harbored.

“Are you suggesting I smuggle all kinds of strange men into my bed?” Laya asked airily.

With a long finger, she traced the column of tattoos on his back.

The muscles in his shoulders tensed as he suppressed a shiver.

“Are you suggesting there are other men?” He parted her thighs and stroked between them.

She gasped in spite of herself.

His smirk widened.

“Oh, Luntok.” She sighed once more as waves of pleasure rippled through every inch of her body.

“You know there are no other men for me.”

Luntok fell silent.

Laya closed her eyes, horrified.

Damn the wine?—she wished the bed would swallow her whole after this rare display of vulnerability.

Luntok withdrew his hand.

She whined in protest, but he kissed her, swallowing her complaint.

“I truly have heard things,” he whispered against her lips.

“Foreigners hidden within the palace walls.”

“Mindless gossip,” Laya said, shaking her head.

She curled her legs around his hips and rocked against him.

A noise like a desperate snarl rose in the back of Luntok’s throat.

She reached for him, helped him slip back inside.

That effectively put an end to the subject.

“I want you,” he said, breathing raggedly as they settled into their usual rhythm.

Laya wrapped her arms around his neck.

Silent promises didn’t count for much, but they were the best she could give him.

You have me, Luntok, she vowed in her head.

Tonight, you have me.

She awoke with an incessant pounding in her skull and the flutter of someone else’s breath against the side of her neck.

Slowly, Laya opened her eyes.

Across the room, yellow light streamed in through the open window.

Outside the hall, she heard the dim chatter of servants on their way to their posts.

She yawned.

The inside of her mouth was dryer than volcanic ash.

As she reached for the pitcher of water at her bedside table, Luntok’s arm wrapped around her middle, pulling her back to the mattress.

“Morning,” he mumbled against the pillows.

“Good morn?—” Laya began to say when she caught herself.

It was morning.

Luntok slept the night at the palace.

Luntok shouldn’t be here.

Panic surged through Laya when she realized their error.

Why did they have to drink so much at the feast?

She bolted out of bed and shrugged on her dressing robe.

“You need to leave before someone sees you,” she told him as she fished around the sheets for his clothes.

Luntok sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“At least give me a moment to wake up first.”

“No time.” Any second now, a maid would knock at her door, summoning her for breakfast.

Laya plucked Luntok’s trousers from the foot of the bed and threw them at him.

They hit him squarely across the face.

“For Mulayri’s sake, Laya,” Luntok said, annoyed.

He grabbed his trousers and yanked them on over his legs.

Before he turned toward the balcony, Laya saw the disappointment flash in his expression.

Gone was the softness of the previous night.

The girl who stood before him, impatient to push him out the window, was the version of Laya who paraded about the court, haughty and unmoved.

Good.

Laya brushed aside the guilt.

The more she disappointed him, the faster he would leave.

She watched him, impatient, as Luntok finished dressing.

He avoided looking at her as he headed to the balcony.

In the terse silence, his words from the night before returned to her.

They rang out, clear as a gong, piercing through her drunken haze?— foreigners hidden within the palace .

Laya frowned.

She thought back to her mother’s brisk walk through the courtyard, of the nervous glances she’d cast over her shoulder as she hurried to the eastern wing.

Hara Duja had met with someone in secret during the dawn feast.

Someone in the palace must have told Luntok about it?—but who?

Laya hung back to study the back of his head.

His dark hair was mussed from sleep.

The faint scratches she’d etched into his shoulder blades glowed dully in the morning sun.

As she watched him, her stomach turned.

Luntok loved her.

He had never lied to her before.

He didn’t look at her as he swung one leg over the balustrade.

She grabbed the collar of his vest to stop him.

“Luntok, wait.”

“What is it?” He looked up at her.

Laya tried to ignore the glimmer of hope in his gaze and forced her face into a neutral expression.

“What was it you said last night?” she asked.

“About those strange men smuggled inside the palace?”

The shades swung shut over Luntok’s eyes, which, mere hours earlier, burned with nothing but love for her.

“Oh, that,” Luntok said.

He stared back at her stonily?—a challenge if Laya ever saw one.

“It was just something I overheard.”

Lies, she wanted to scream.

Questions fought their way to her mouth, but pride kept Laya from asking any of them.

Most days, she relished the competitive undercurrent that pulsed between them, making every interaction feel like a dangerous game.

That was what drew her to him when they were younger.

Unlike the other noble children, who groveled in response to Laya’s taunts and cruelty, Luntok was willing to match her.

At fifteen, when Laya decided she wanted to have sex, Luntok was the only boy she respected well enough to invite into her bed.

By then, she already saw him not as the traitor’s grandson, but as the forbidden treat she’d never have to share with anyone else.

They were older now, and they sought more from each other than passing thrills.

For once, Laya was ready to admit that things between them had changed.

Luntok’s challenges were starting to feel less like a game and more like an actual danger.

But that morning, she didn’t have time to press him.

She stood, still as a statue, as Luntok hopped down from the balustrade.

He landed with a quiet thud in the bushes below her window.

By some miracle, no guards were passing through.

He disappeared into the gardens undetected.

Laya slammed the window to the balcony shut.

She sagged against the cool glass pane as a wave of nausea crashed over her.

First, her mother.

Then, Luntok.

Who else was keeping secrets from her?

She turned to her wardrobe and started to get dressed.

The unsettled feeling hung over her like a cloud as she washed her face in the water basin and brushed the knots out of her long, crow-black tresses.

The queen’s furtiveness was nothing new.

Hara Duja would place all her faith in that string of crusty, old advisers before she even thought about trusting Laya.

But this was Luntok, the man who loved her unabashedly, who would give up his sword arm for a chance to be with her.

Laya had thought she could read him as easily as she could read any of her cow-eyed worshippers.

What if she had been wrong?

Laya tried to push her doubts aside as she made her way to the terrace.

Her father was waiting, a pipe sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he sliced a sweet bun in half.

Eti sat across from him, legs swinging underneath the table.

She didn’t look up as Laya sat down, her eyes glued to the gold pellet floating above her palm.

Eti’s goal for the next year was to pull from that pellet a metal filament no thicker than a strand of hair?—an act, Laya knew, that required intense concentration.

“If it isn’t my Buaya-Laya,” her father greeted.

“What would you like for breakfast? A tall glass of water, perhaps?” His eyes twinkled, and he smiled at her knowingly.

Unlike her sisters, Laya had inherited his sharp, clever chin.

She regretted that she didn’t inherit his smile as well.

Her father had such a broad smile, which captivated everyone to whom it was directed.

It was the smile of an inveigler, not a king.

“Water. Yes, we can start with that,” she said as a servant set a glass and place setting in front of her.

“You disappeared early last night.” He watched as she finished the water in a single gulp.

“Too much wine,” she said, holding out her cup for the servant to refill.

“I suppose none of the boys you had fawning over you had anything to do with it.”

“Father,” she chided, the questions that had been plaguing her momentarily forgotten.

He chuckled, sending a cloud of pipe smoke over his shoulder.

“You were always destined to break hearts, Laya. I pray to the gods you will spare mine.”

She smiled into her lap.

Her father was the only member of her family who didn’t find her horrible.

“And what of your admirers, then?” she teased.

During the feast days, all the noblewomen flocked to the king, young and old, married and unmarried alike.

Like Laya, they adored his colorful stories and booming laugh.

It amazed her that her mother never got jealous.

Maybe she was proud that the king could command such rapt attention.

Laya surely was.

“You’re very kind to think so highly of your father, but I’m afraid I’m too old for admirers.” When he smiled at her, a burst of warmth spread inside her chest.

“Oh, Father,” she said, “I could never think lowly of you.”

The king and queen were nothing alike.

At times, she wondered how they came to fall in love.

They were born under different moons?—her father, who laughed at the worst jokes if only to make the teller feel at ease; and her mother, who offered her thin, tight-lipped smiles only sparingly.

As Laya grew older, she came to understand.

Her mother was the firm, solid ground in which her father planted his roots.

And for her mother, he was the tree that stretched high into the heavens.

His branches swayed in the wind but didn’t break.

Hara Duja needed someone who could enrapture and enchant, who bent to the court and its many demands?—at least, on the surface.

With his winning smile and his cleverness, her father could do all these things.

Once, her mother remarked that he was more powerful than the rest of their family combined.

Laya laughed then, but as she grew older, she realized it had never been a joke.

The king opened his mouth, surely to wave aside Laya’s compliments, when something beyond her head caught his attention.

“Ah, there you are, Dr. Sauros. Come, join us.”

Laya turned.

Her jaw dropped open.

A man unlike anyone Laya had ever seen hung back at the entrance of the terrace.

He wore ill-fitting Maynaran clothes?—a shirt buttoned all the way to the throat and trousers that tapered off laughably above his knees?—but he was not Maynaran.

She could tell by the way he held himself, a stiff posture unknown to this island, and his western-style spectacles, which pinched his abnormally high-bridged nose.

When he opened his mouth, a peculiar nasal accent came out.

If Laya had not been so stunned by the foreigner’s presence, she might have laughed aloud.

“Thank you, uh, Your Majesty,” the man said.

He took a few tentative steps toward the table where Laya and her family were seated.

Behind his spectacles, his eyes darted from side to side, overwhelmed by the sight of the Gatdulas.

But when his gaze fell on Laya, his expression steadied.

The spectacles magnified his eyes, which were round and bright and full of questions.

Up close, he appeared curious, not overwhelmed.

She scowled in return.

He continued to stare brazenly at Laya, not as though she were a gift from the gods, but like she was some stubborn equation.

If the king had not invited him over, she would have had the guards escort him out.

Who did he think he was if not some common foreigner?

Laya didn’t know this man, but she decided in that moment that she hated him.

“It’s probably time for you to meet my daughters,” Hari Aki said jovially.

He gestured to them.

“This here is Dayang Laya. And fiddling over there with her metals is my youngest, Dayang Eti.”

Eti jerked to attention at the sound of her name.

Her eyes settled on the stranger, blinking as if she had just noticed his presence.

“Father, who is this?” she piped up.

Laya frowned at the king.

“Yes, Father. Who is this?”

The king chortled, unperturbed by their questions.

“Don’t you see, darlings? I thought I’d surprise you.” He rose and clapped the strange man on both shoulders.

“This here is Dr. Ariel Sauros. He’s one of the finest scholars on this side of the Untulu Sea. I’ve invited him to stay with us a while at the palace as our honored guest.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with us,” Laya said.

To the king’s right, the man named Ariel cleared his throat.

Her gaze snapped to his.

She could have sworn she heard him bite back a chuckle.

“I was about to get to that, my dear.” Hari Aki looked pointedly at Laya, a silent warning sign she had seen over a thousand times before?— Be nice .

He drew another puff from his pipe, then guided Ariel to his side of the table.

“Dr. Sauros is a skilled linguist, philosopher, and writer, among other things. He’s traveled all the way from Orfelia, so I suspect we have a great deal to learn from each other.”

“Orfelia?” Laya echoed, incredulous.

“That pathetic little colony to the east?”

“They speak a wide variety of tongues in Orfelia, including Salmantican, which I hear is rather useful in the Sunset States,” the king said, brushing off Laya’s concerns with a wave of his hand.

“I invited Dr. Sauros here to teach you some of them as your language tutor. Notwithstanding, he arrived much earlier than anticipated. We plan to announce his visit after the feast days, when we shall throw Dr. Sauros the celebration he deserves.”

“So, the Orfelian is to remain a secret. At least, until the feast days are over.” Eti, who couldn’t resist a bit of intrigue, perked up in interest.

Hari Aki beamed at her.

“Precisely, my dear. And until then, your mother and I are relying on your discretion.”

Laya’s eyes narrowed.

“But?—”

“Dr. Sauros may be our secret for now. But in the meantime, I hope you will treat him with the respect he deserves,” her father said calmly.

He looked back at her with his inveigling smile, and the last protest died on her lips.

Another lie.

Laya knew from the thin crease in the king’s forehead?—the same crease that appeared each time he brushed off the myriad sycophants prowling about court.

She gave the Orfelian a cold stare.

He was busy pulling at his sleeves, visibly uncomfortable in his borrowed clothes.

Her father was too clever.

He wouldn’t reveal his hand, no matter how hard she pressed.

Neither would Mother, nor Luntok.

As for the foreigner?—Laya’s gaze hardened the longer she observed him.

The Orfelian was hiding something.

However, it was not the time to pressure him for answers.

Laya returned the king’s smile with one of her own.

“Yes, Father,” she said, nodding.

“I understand.”

Primly, Laya reached for a sweet bun from the center of the table.

The Orfelian took a seat across from her.

Hari Aki engaged him in cordial conversation, and she let the subject fall for the time being.

Out of the corner of the eye, she watched the man.

He was more than some bumbling fool, as she had assumed when he’d first appeared on the terrace.

Several times over the course of their breakfast, she caught him staring back.

He had an inquisitive, nonthreatening gaze, but it was constant enough to make Laya clench her teeth.

A servant swept over with a fresh pot of tea.

Laya glanced at the Orfelian over the gold-encrusted rim of her cup.

Notes of citrus and honey wafted from the liquid’s surface, tickling her nostrils.

The Orfelian’s foreign features blurred in the hot steam?—with time, she might make sense of them.

She frowned into her tea.

Her mother and father, and now this Orfelian?—they were playing a game of bluffs, the lot of them.

They could lie to her as much as they liked.

Laya knew how to play this game too.

She did not possess her father’s smile, but she liked to think she had inherited his cleverness.

And, unlike the others, she knew who would be the first to crack.