Page 55

A shout goes up from the warriors around Memnon, and soon, the men and women guarding him break away to peer into the various rooms.

“No one is to take the room on the far end of the hall,” Tamara declares. “That one’s mine.” With that, she strides toward the last curtained doorway, Katiari shadowing her.

Memnon turns to me. Would you like to see our room?

You already have our room picked out? I ask, arching a brow.

Well, it’s the king’s private quarters, so I figured it was the best room in the palace.

I follow Memnon down the hall toward a room no one else is lingering nearby. Drapes a thick, rich wine color hang from the doorway, obscuring what lies beyond.

Memnon holds those drapes open, and the two of us enter. The first thing I notice in the spacious room is the bed, more massive than anything I’ve ever slept on. At the foot of it rests a chest painted with stylized griffons.

Across from the bed is a table laid out with the king’s trinkets—a decorative knife, a small stone carving of the god Mars, a partially opened bag of polished knucklebones, and a tabula game board.

“Look out the window,” Memnon says, nodding to the gap in the stonework on the far side of the room.

I head over to it, already noticing the briny smell blowing in from outside.

The scent reminds me of salted fish and that call to adventure these horse riders feel when they look to the horizon on the grasslands.

Laying my hands on the cool stone, I peer out at the sun-glittered water and the royal docks. A red ship currently bobs at the dock closest to us, its white sail rolled up, the great eye painted near its bow, peering up at me.

“This is yours. All this is yours,” he says.

I turn back to Memnon, and his eyes shine a little too brightly as he watches me.

“I will conquer the world,” he vows, echoing his long-ago words to me, “just to lay it all at your feet.”

A shiver courses through me at the devoted, ominous pledge.

Memnon crosses over to me, his gaze searching mine. “I know you’re afraid of Rome, but I am not. I will not bow to that boy king.”

I stop myself from saying that Nero is hardly still a boy.

“Nor will I tolerate their incursions any longer.”

Deliberately, Memnon lowers himself to his knees, then presses a kiss to my lower belly. “The only one I bow to is you.”

Alcohol and victory are a potent combo for a Sarmatian.

Shouts and songs ring out in the palace dining hall, where Sarmatian warriors and nobility have crammed in with their spouses and children. Wine and kumiss flow freely, along with the feast that the palace staff were already cooking up.

The skull goblets have been brought out and passed around, each of us drinking from this conquered ruler or that, while warriors retell their stories of victory.

“Aye, Memnon, there’s still time to make Cotys into a drinking vessel!” Itaxes shouts.

Cheers rise at that.

Memnon smiles, holding his wine by the lip of the cup, but offers nothing else.

A large form sidles up to my side. “Does your new home please you?” Zosines says, a bite in his words.

I remember his earlier disdain. I take a sip of my spiced wine. “Very much. Does your newest wife please you?” I ask.

He studies me for a moment, a small smile on his face. “Very much.”

“What are you onto?” I ask. “Number five?”

“You’re keeping track of my wives?” Zosines asks, raising his eyebrows. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were interested.”

“In what? Castrating you?” I fire back. “Because I’ve taken a keen interest in that.”

Zosines laughs, genuinely amused. “If you did that, all the women would cry.”

The man is delusional.

“Yes,” I agree, “they would—tears of joy. There might even be a feast in honor of the occasion.”

“I know you tease,” he says, “but I give my wives pleasure and children. What more could they want?”

I guffaw. “I don’t know, Zosines, maybe a life beyond sex and motherhood?”

He tilts his head, considering me. “I forgot,” he finally says, “you are still struggling to conceive. Of course you would see this topic differently.”

I hate how his words gut me. How I feel suddenly close to tears. I take another long drink of my wine, trying to drown my emotions.

Unaware of my turbulent thoughts, Zosines places a hand on my shoulder and leans in to my ear. “Now, here is a serious question: Are you sure my brother is doing it right? Maybe he needs a little help.”

I shrug off his touch and give him a withering look. “Surely you are not offering.”

Zosines raises his eyebrows. “And get my balls lopped off?” he says, laughing a little, though his expression appears strained. “No, my queen, lovely as you are, I wouldn’t dare.”

But his eyes linger on me in a way I cannot read but do not trust.

Do you want to slip away, my queen? Memnon’s voice cuts through the conversation.

Gods yes.

Good, because there just happens to be one more room I wanted to show you.

I down my wine, then thrust the now-empty cup into Zosines’s hand.

“Do you want more…?” His words fade away as I push through the crowded room, making my way toward Memnon.

When I get to my king, I take his hand, his eyes lighting up when they drink me in.

I didn’t realize you were so eager ? —

I practically drag him toward the exit. Whistles and hollers accompany our departure, the guests clearly assuming we have much more intimate plans than we do. Then again, knowing how other evenings have ended, they are probably not terribly wrong.

On the way out, I catch Zosines’s eye. Memnon’s blood brother wears a knowing smirk, and when he sees me looking, he lifts his cup as though to toast good luck.

I grimace, tearing my gaze away.

We leave the rowdy sounds of the dining hall for the quieter hallway. Eventually, the noise falls away altogether as we move deep into the castle, until the only sounds that remain are the lapping of the waves and the cry of a seabird beyond the palace.

You’re unusually quiet , Memnon says. Did you not have a good time?

It was all right. I hold off on revealing what Zosines said to me and why it got under my skin. I’m just happy to be alone with you. It’s the one thing we rarely get, and right now I savor it like it’s a sweet.

Memnon reels me in, wrapping an arm around my neck and pressing a kiss to the crown of my head. Me too, Empress.

Memnon weaves us through the labyrinthine halls of the palace until we get to a portiere, its wine-red drapes already drawn back.

Beyond them, the room is cast in darkness.

It’s not until Memnon forms a ball of light and sends it drifting into the room that I see the shelves and shelves of stacked scrolls.

I gasp at the sight. There have only been a few times I’ve seen this many texts in one place and never at camp. Adjacent to the wall of scrolls is a table with a familiar wax tablet and stylus resting on it.

“My reading room,” I say, as I’ve come to call the tent Memnon sets up for my studies. “You set one up for me here.”

His eyes crinkle. “How could I not?” he says. “Once we fully move in, this place will be crawling with Sarmatians, and you will no more have your peace here than you did at camp.”

He glances at the room around us, which has been painted a deep red and trimmed in lines of sage-green and golden-yellow. “I’ve placed a ward on this room to hide it from all eyes but ours, so when you want solitude and a hidden place to study, you will not have to rely on ley lines.”

I move over to the scrolls, my fingers hovering in the air close to them.

The reverence I feel stops me from actually touching the papyri.

This is what Zosines did not seem to understand.

There truly are so many things I yearn for, things poets and philosophers, rulers, and scholars have written about.

I do not exist solely to procreate, nor does any other woman.

Rotating away from the wall, my eyes land on Memnon. Memnon, who has always valued me for who I am and not what I offer.

I cross back over to him and throw myself into his arms.

“Thank you,” I whisper against his neck, pulling back enough to press a kiss to his lips. Thank you.

Too good. He’s too good; this is all too good.

Memnon’s hand comes up to my face, his thumb stroking my skin. “This is nothing . Now, are you going to actually open the scrolls, little witch?” he says, a smile on his lips. “I know you want to.”

I grin at him, backing up before returning to the wall of scrolls, the writings beckoning me.

However, once I reach them, I find that I really can do no more than touch the rolled texts, my heart pounding loudly.

Memnon comes to my side and, unlike me, he has no such qualms. He takes a roll of papyrus out and unrolls it.

“Read this to me,” he says, not bothering to look at the language written on it. Instead, he moves to a nearby cushioned chair in the corner and settles himself into it, the wooden frame groaning a little at his weight.

I glance down at the text, noting that it’s written in hieratic, a script version of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

I start from a random point in the text. “‘Thy heart is weary. Thy soul is in thy hand. The sky is revealed. Thou fancies that the enemy is behind thee; trembling seizes thee…’” I glance up from the text to see Memnon smiling at me, a soft look in his eyes.

“You really are a natural at this. But I expect nothing less from my mate.”

I flush under his praise.

“Please,” he says, “continue. I want to hear how well-read my wife has become.”

I move over to him then, the scroll still in hand.

“‘Thou findest a fair maiden who keeps watch over the gardens.’” I sit down on Memnon’s lap, straddling his legs. “‘She takes thee to herself for a companion?—”

Oh, it’s that kind of story…

I knew I chose well , Memnon says, his hand drifting under my kurta and tunic. Then lower still.

“‘And surrenders to thee her charms…’”

What charms are these? Memnon says.

I skim the scroll. “It doesn’t say. It moves on entirely?—”

I suck in a breath when Memnon’s hand strokes over my folds.

Shame , he says. Charms could mean so many things…

I set aside the scroll and slip off Memnon’s lap and onto the stone floor beneath him. I have a few ideas of what charms she might’ve shown him…

My magic slips out of my palms, unfastening Memnon’s leather trousers and tugging them down. With the action, his cock springs free, jutting from between his legs.

Memnon’s brows rise, surprise lining his features.

It’s cute that you didn’t expect this , I say as I pull off his boots and stockings, then his pants, leaving him bare from the waist down.

Memnon swallows. I’m still unclear what charms ? —

I wrap my hand around his shaft and take the head of him into my mouth.

Reflexively, Memnon thrusts against me, the wooden chair groaning beneath him as his breath comes out in a harsh pant.

I really should’ve known the night would end this way. It always does.

I take him deeper, my tongue running over his slit, and I taste the salty precum gathered there. I moan at the taste of him and the full feel of his cock in my mouth.

I begin to work him then, taking him deep enough to make my eyes tear up and my throat work, my tongue laving the underside of his cock.

Memnon groans, threading his fingers into my hair. “Gods, my good little witch,” he praises me, his grip tightening as he begins to thrust into my mouth.

My core clenches uselessly as I’m held tighter to him.

Without warning, Memnon’s magic spills out of him, wrapping around me long enough to cleave my clothes from my body.

I release his cock from my mouth and give him a questioning look.

“Still not sure what charms the text was talking about,” he says, his power tugging me up from the ground.

I let it, following his magic up until it poises me over Memnon’s lap, the head of his damp cock just beneath my entrance.

“Perhaps you could give me another demonstration?” he says, his eyes wide and guileless.

I bite my lip to stifle a laugh. “I was unclear, wasn’t I?”

He grins. “A little. I’m sure this will help.” His magic lowers me down ever so slowly onto his cock, and bit by agonizing bit, it enters me, stretching the walls of my core as it goes.

I watch him, my lips parting at the wonderful ache, until I am fully seated.

Now it’s me who’s panting harshly as I feel the delicious pressure and throb of him inside me.

Slowly, I begin to move, rising only to come back down on him.

He groans again. This is agonizing.

It’s charming, I correct him.

Memnon dips his head, taking a nipple into his mouth and sucking hard on it, like he can drag more sensation from my breast. Sweat beads on his forehead as he forces himself to hold still while I set a slow pace. My movements are gentle, sensual?—

“Fuck, I’m sorry, Roxi—I love your charms, gods how I love them. But I cannot take them anymore.”

With that, he stands, dragging me up with him. Still seated inside me, he takes my legs and wraps them around his waist as he moves us. My back hits a nearby wall, and Memnon’s magic is there, propping me up in place.

His smoky-amber eyes flick to mine. “Hold on.”

That’s all the warning I get.

He pulls out of me only to brutally thrust back in.

Just as swiftly, his cock retreats, only for him to hammer into me again—and again and again.

He fucks me senselessly, his balls slapping against my skin as sweat collects between us, his cock driving deeper and deeper. It’s all I can do to hold on.

I’m stretched around him and held in place by his body and magic as that sweet friction and those powerful, punishing strokes drive me closer and closer to the edge.

Then, all at once, I tip over it.

My limbs tighten around him and my core clenches as I shatter, my orgasm rippling through me.

Memnon groans, cupping me to him, his teeth lightly running along my shoulder as he feels my climax through our bond.

And then he’s coming, emptying himself inside me, his hips snapping forward as he tries to seat himself deeper still.

His orgasm draws out my own, the aftershocks going on and on.

Memnon holds me close, his arms around my legs, his face nuzzling my neck.

He presses a kiss to the skin of my throat. “I’ve made a decision, my queen.”

“Mmm?” I stroke his hair, a happy, little smile playing at the corners of my lips. Awkward as this position is, I think I could stay here forever.

“I think I want you to read to me every night.”