Page 17 of Lies That Blemish (The Ember War #3)

Aisling

When the morning light filtered through the open tent roof, I smiled, looking up to find Kohen watching me sleep. I was draped over his bare chest, tangled in his arms.

“Good morning, my queen,” he said.

Queen . Is that what I would become?

“Morning.” I kissed him chastely before going over to the washbasin to brush my teeth and wash my face.

It was back to reality. I was already thinking of the Lottery and how to tell Elaine I married Kohen Badshah!

“Are you freaking out?” Kohen asked as he came up beside me.

“A little,” I laughed, looking down at the ring on my finger. I had zero excitement when Alek gave me a ring, but every time I looked at this one, it gave me butterflies. Which reminded me I’d have to tell Alek.

“Regrets?” Kohen asked, hurt lacing through his voice.

I peered over at him, meeting his blue-eyed gaze. “No,” I said firmly. “Just a lot of stuff to deal with. I think we should keep this quiet for now until I figure out how to tell everyone.”

I pointed to the ring.

Kohen nodded, but was acting closed off. He brushed his teeth quietly, and then we stepped outside together, hands threaded through each other’s.

I felt different after last night. Older somehow? I was a wife. How the hell had that happened?

“I have to tell you something,” Kohen said beside me, and my stomach dropped out. That didn’t sound good. He was acting off.

I faced him, and he took my face in his hands. “Remember when I told you there would be a time when your power wouldn’t work?” he said.

I racked my memory and nodded. “You said I would need it, and it wouldn’t come to me.”

Kohen sighed. “When that happens, you are with Maxim.”

Chills rose up my arms. “With Maxim, how?”

Kohen was silent for a moment. “As his wife.”

A lump formed in my throat as my heart picked up speed in my chest. “Do you think it will still happen?” I asked him. Now that he was seeing multiple futures, I hoped this one wasn’t possible.

Kohen brushed the hair back from my face. “You are my wife. That won’t change,” he said, but his face betrayed his true answer. He wasn’t sure what he thought anymore.

Liana landed with Onyx beside us, and I peered over at her.

‘We should get back. The cadets are coming out of the Wilds.’

I nodded. Looking down at Kohen’s mother’s ring on my hand one last time, I pulled it off and slipped it onto the locket chain at my neck, the one with my mother’s picture in it. Kohen watched me quietly, and I chewed on my lip.

“I’m going to call a truce between our people. Draft up some kind of long-term peace agreement or something we can both sign.” Continuing to bomb each other now was just stupid.

Kohen nodded. “And when you are ready to tell them of our marriage, I will gladly sign Imbria back into Amersea. We can rule it as one. Together.”

“You would do that?”

He nodded. “We are stronger together.”

I didn’t want to leave him. I wanted to drag him back into the tent and never leave. He seemed to be thinking the same thing.

“We can do this.” Kohen grasped my fingers. “A short period of hardship for a lifetime of happiness.”

He pulled me into his arms and kissed me as I smiled against his mouth. “You are like a ball of sunshine sometimes,” I told him.

“And you are like a rain cloud sometimes.”

I laughed as he kissed my neck.

“I’ll miss you. Please don’t stay away too long,” he begged.

I ran my fingers through his hair, but my mind was on what he’d said about marrying Maxim and not having my power, about Valor getting killed or Victory getting kidnapped.

“Kohen, what if all that bad stuff in your visions comes true?” Because there is nothing I would not do to protect my sisters.

He brushed his finger over my lips. “Don’t worry, I will always protect you.”

“I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about my sisters. My people.”

“I will protect them, too,” he declared.

“That’s valiant, Kohen, but how can you possibly? Your powers are great, but Maxim’s might be greater. You cannot come at an entire army with fire and future sight.”

He gave me a cocky grin then. “Yes, I can.” There was an all-knowing smile on his lips.

“What are you talking about?”

He eyed the tent and then Liana and Onyx. “I wasn’t ready to show you this yet. It’s still a prototype.”

Then he dipped into the tent and came out with a small wooden box.

My brows drew together. “What’s that?”

Kohen peered up at me. “This is what our future children’s children will fight wars with. I saw it in a vision from a time when I’m not even alive anymore.”

“What?” I asked, shocked. “How is that possible?”

He shook his head, unlocking the latch on the box to reveal a…

“What’s it called?” I asked as he gripped the steel base of the object.

“A gun,” he told me, and for some reason, chills raced down my spine.

“What does it do?” I stepped closer, inspecting it. It was a huge L-shaped hunk of metal, but the point of it was a barrel with an opening. There were tiny metal cylinders in the box that Kohen loaded into the back of the… gun.

“It shoots projectiles out. Like an arrow launcher but smaller, more deadly, with the force of a train. Like a cannon you can hold in your hand.”

I gasped.

“I’m still working on aiming, but here… stand behind me and watch.” He held both arms out before him, gripping the weapon with his finger on a little lever. Then he aimed at the remaining brick wall of the burned-down house.

“Plug your ears,” he told me.

“Why?” I asked.

“Trust me,” he said.

I did, and then a foreign sound ripped past my ears, like something had cracked open and echoed throughout the canyon. Even the force of it reverberated through my chest. I gasped as a small puff of smoke curled up from the back of the weapon.

“What did it do?” I asked, looking around for some damage.

“It was too fast for you to track since you didn’t know what to look for. Come here.” He stowed the weapon at his hip and then walked me over to the wall. When I saw a perfect hole punched through the brick, I gasped.

“It went through brick?” An arrow couldn’t do that.

Kohen nodded. “Imagine what it could do to an enemy’s heart…”

It was an unsettling thought. I’d never seen such an incredible weapon before.

“How many of these do you have?”

“Just one. I’ve been working with my blacksmith for two months, perfecting it. I got the vision the night you found out… the truth,” he said wearily.

If we had a hundred of these, we could take Luska in one night.

“Can you make more?”

“With time.”

I nodded, smiling. “Good. I should go. I have a thousand things to do and?—”

His lips were on mine in an instant, and I melted into his touch. It reminded me of last night and the pleasure I’d felt, the way he’d tenderly made love to me and called me wife any chance he got.

“Everything will be okay,” he whispered into my ear before stepping back.

It should have felt like a promise, but instead, it felt like a consolation. Like he was warning me of a storm coming and to take cover.