Page 7 of Dark Shaman: The Lost Treasure (The Children Of The Gods #98)

TAMIRA

A s Tamira and her companions made their way back from the gazebo, the air was already thick with humidity, promising another sweltering day in their tropical prison, but at least it hadn't rained today.

The monsoon season was the worst time on the island.

She still remembered the days they had lived in what was now northern Lebanon.

It had been so much cooler there and not as restrictive.

The concubines had always resided in a harem, but back then, the security guards had been posted to keep them safe from unwanted intruders and not to keep them imprisoned within.

She still remembered going shopping at the market, providing small charities to the local humans, and having a life that was much more well-rounded under Mortdh's rule than what it had turned into under his son's.

When she'd belonged to Mortdh, her duty had been to pleasure the god and, if the Fates willed it so, bear a child, and it hadn't been a terrible burden at all. Mortdh had been generous with his affections.

After Mortdh's demise, Navuh had taken over, installing Areana as the queen of the harem shortly thereafter.

Naively, Tamira had thought that things would get better since he wasn't interested in any of his father's concubines and had given them freedom to choose human lovers as long as they resembled him so he could claim their children as his.

That illusion had been quickly shattered when they'd discovered that any sons born in the harem would be taken from their mothers and raised elsewhere in the compound.

Even Areana had been subjected to the same fate.

Her mate had taken the two sons she'd given him away from her and had them raised by the Dormants in the breeders' enclosure.

The boys grew up with vague memories of their birth mothers, if any, and became warriors and commanders in Navuh's army.

The one exception was Kalugal, who had somehow remembered Areana and had managed to sneak into the harem on occasion as a little boy.

He had inherited his father’s compulsion ability, which was how he was able to make the guards let him through, but Areana had feared for his life and told him not to do that.

How could she love a male whom she considered a threat to her children?

Navuh didn’t care what happened to his own sons, and he cared even less about what happened to the daughters of his so-called concubines.

Only two girls had been born to the harem ladies and taken away to the breeders’ enclosure. After that, Areana had negotiated with Navuh to let the girls remain in the harem and grow up with their mothers. Still, they were not allowed to transition, and they had lived and died as humans.

Both fates were cruel, and Tamira had a hard time hiding her deep resentment of Navuh from Areana, who loved him despite being subjected to the same cruelty.

Love was apparently not only blind but also completely misguided and misplaced.

If Tamira hadn't known better, she would have been prompted to believe that Navuh had Areana under a thrall, but that wasn't the case. The Fates must have hated Areana when they'd burdened her with a truelove mate like Navuh.

Then again, Areana was the only one on the planet who was capable of reining in Navuh's cruelty and insatiable appetite for power. If not for her, the world would have been in an even worse place than it was now.

The harem didn't have a connection to the outside world, but that didn't mean that Tamira had no idea what was going on.

What she knew came from books that were lagging a few years behind current events, but at least she had that narrow window into the world, and as long as she kept her head down and pretended to be contented with her lot, she could continue to order books from the catalog approved by Navuh and get them delivered to the harem's ever-growing library.

It was a delicate balance, one she'd perfected over thousands of years.

As they passed the herb garden, she scanned it for the gardener she'd seen there at the start of their morning stroll, but he was no longer there, and she was surprised to realize that she was disappointed.

She'd caught only a brief glimpse of him earlier when he'd dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead to the ground, his wide-brimmed hat sliding forward to hide his face but revealing his sun-streaked, light brown hair.

The posture of abject submission should have been pathetic, but something about the tension in his shoulders and the way his hands had splayed against the earth as if grounding himself had caught her attention.

Or maybe it was his bottom that had been sticking up in the air. It was a nice, masculine bottom, and after living for as long as she had in captivity and seclusion, even that was a source of excitement.

"Did you find anything interesting among those herbs?" Liliat asked.

Tamira realized that she'd slowed her pace and had been staring too long at the neat rows of plants. "I'm just appreciating the garden. Someone has been growing medicinal herbs for what seems like a while, and I only noticed it now because of the strong smell."

Raviki laughed from ahead of them. "Are we really reduced to admiring plant life for entertainment? What's next, placing bets on which wave will reach the highest on the cliff?"

"Don't mock," Liliat said. "Remember the time we spent cataloguing cloud formations? Or when Beulah convinced us to learn seventeen different forms of calligraphy?"

They reached the entrance to their underground palace, the temperature dropping blessedly as they descended into the climate-controlled interior. The transition never failed to remind Tamira of descending into a tomb—fitting, perhaps, since they were all buried here.

She could barely remember her life outside the harem, before she had been delivered to Mortdh as an offering by her father, but she remembered a house full of windows, with a front and back yard, and children playing outside.

There had been joy there that was lacking inside the various compounds Navuh had built for his people over the millennia.

Why had the Fates cursed her with beauty?

If she hadn't been so strikingly beautiful, she wouldn't have been offered like a sacrifice to the god, and she could have mated an immortal of equal station and built a home and a family with him.

Then again, if what Navuh had told them was true, the world she'd left behind was gone and the gods were dead and with them all the immortals and humans who had lived in Sumer.

Before entering the dining room, the three of them stopped at the jade-inlaid basins to wash their hands, a ritual unchanged over the millennia.

The scents of fresh bread and coffee greeted them, along with the quiet murmur of voices.

Areana sat at the head of the table, her ethereal beauty undiminished by age or captivity. Beside her, Tula was gesturing animatedly about something, her latest man-toy seated at her side like a trained pet. Beulah and Sarah occupied the chairs across from them.

"Good morning, ladies," Areana greeted them, her voice soft and melodic.

"I apologize for missing the walk. Since Lord Navuh informed me last night that he expected a busy day and was leaving at sundown, I thought I would be able to join you today, but something urgent came up that I needed to attend to. "

When Areana had first arrived, Tamira had been sure that her gentleness was feigned. No female got to be the head of a harem without being a ruthless cutthroat. But it was impossible to fake a character for thousands of years, and in the end, she had to concede that Areana was indeed a gentle soul.

That didn't make her weak, though. Or timid. She managed the harem efficiently, maintaining the elaborate fiction that this was a functional household rather than an expensive prison and mostly succeeding. Thanks to her, the human staff enjoyed an almost normal life in the harem.

"You missed nothing of note," Liliat said, taking her usual seat, third chair on the left. "Unless you count our fascinating discussion of Rolenna's latest artistic disaster."

Rolenna cast Liliat a glare that should have killed her on the spot. "My artistic disaster, as you called it, was part of my training. No one gets to be a master artisan on their first try." She smiled cruelly. "I still remember your astronomy phase."

"That was different," Liliat protested. "I successfully mapped the visible constellations from this latitude."

"After two hundred years of trying," Raviki pointed out.

Tamira settled into her chair and reached for the coffee pot. The familiarity of routine was a balm for some, an ever-present thorn for her. How many thousands of mornings had played out exactly like this? The same faces, the same seats, the same elegant place settings?

"Actually, there was something different today," she said. "I saw a new gardener in the herb garden."

Sarah looked up from her book, while Beulah set down her teacup. Even Tula paused in whatever she'd been talking about with Tony.

"A new gardener?" Areana's perfectly shaped eyebrows rose slightly. "We haven't gotten anyone new in months."

"New to me, then. I haven't noticed him before. He was tending the medicinal herbs, and when we approached, he prostrated himself, trying to follow protocol."

"Smart man," Raviki said. "You remember what happened to the last one who dared look at us without Lord Navuh's permission."

"That was seventy-five years ago," Beulah said, her voice tinged with its usual bitter edge. "And he also dared to speak."

"Hardly a capital offense," Sarah added dryly.

Five thousand years had worn away most of their capacity for outrage, leaving only a weary acceptance of the rules that governed their cage.

Tony shifted uncomfortably beside Tula, and Tamira felt the familiar pang of sympathy for the newest addition to their prison. He was still new enough to be horrified by casual mentions of callous executions.