Page 30 of The Second Marriage
“Taral, stop. Give me a moment.” He couldn’t think clearly. His heart was a cold, sour lump inside his chest. Nothing had ever felt worse than Taral’s rejection.
He would survive this, surely. This humiliation. This marriage.
He tucked his hands inside his sleeves and rubbed at his face. When he was confident there were no tears visible, he turned back to Taral and said, “We’ve bonded. We can’t dissolve that. And I can’t pretend to be indifferent to you with the bond tugging at me all the time.” He touched his chest, the spot just to one side of his heart where Taral’s emotions burned or warmed depending on their temperature. “But perhaps it’s for the best if we go our separate ways. If that’s what you want, I’ll make my peace with it.”
“I would have to be a cold man indeed to turn away from you now.” Taral stood and approached Sejun with his hands extended, and Sejun hesitated for a moment but did then clasp Taral’s hands in his own. “The One God saw fit to bind us, and I’m not wise or bold enough to defy Their blessing.”
Sejun’s eyes stung anew. “I wish you had told me sooner.”
“I should have. I thought we would take longer to like each other, and in the meantime I could settle my old feelings and move forward. But I can’t seem to keep away from you.” Taral shook his head. “Truth be told, I was humiliated. I thought you would cast me aside if you knew, and I told myself I was worried about losing your dowry. But really I was worried about losing your regard, and spending the rest of my life bonded to someone who hated me.”
The painful tension in Sejun’s chest eased slightly. Taral’s hands were cold, and Sejun gave them a gentle squeeze. “I don’t think I could ever hate you. I am angry with you, though. My head is spinning. I need some time to think about what you’ve told me. We can talk about this more in the morning if we need to.”
“All right.” Taral hesitated, then said, “Would you like me to sleep somewhere else tonight?”
“No. Stay here with me. I sleep better when you’re near.”
“Ah, Sejun,” Taral murmured. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to Sejun’s forehead. “Of course I’ll stay.”
CHAPTER13
Sejun slept all night without stirring or dreaming. When he woke in the morning, Taral was beside him in the bed, awake and looking out the window. Sejun rolled toward him and pressed his face into Taral’s neck, and the feeling of Taral’s arm sliding around his waist prodded at the deep, bruised ache at the bottom of his heart.
Taral rubbed his back in slow circles. The bond was awash with his affection for Sejun, which Sejun had previously felt only in small, quick bursts, there and gone again. What a brutal gift to receive now that he knew for sure, having heard from Taral’s own lips, that Taral didn’t love him.
At last, Sejun pulled away and turned onto his back. “Will you tell me about him?”
“Who?” Taral asked, then sucked air through his teeth. “You mean—”
“Your first husband. You don’t have to. But I think I’d like to know, if you don’t mind.”
Taral was quiet for long enough that Sejun thought he was going to refuse. Then he said, “His name is Jaysha. He’s the younger prince of the royal family of Barun. I met him because of Gurratan. His uncle married Jaysha’s aunt, and once when I was visiting in Barun we went to the fortress to celebrate the twin moons, and Jaysha and I danced together all night. We wrote letters for months. My mother insisted on soliciting offers, and Jaysha’s came the next day, and I burned all the others. I thought I was the luckiest man alive. We were meant for each other.”
He was describing exactly the kind of romance Sejun had always dreamed of. Sejun swallowed as he stared at the ceiling. He shouldn’t have asked. He could never match Taral’s memories of this lost, perfect Jaysha.
“But we weren’t, in the end, meant for each other at all,” Taral went on. “The One God didn’t see fit to bind us. Our temperaments weren’t suited, I suppose. I could have married him and then been desperately unhappy for the rest of my days. There’s no use in wondering what might have been.”
“But you do wonder,” Sejun said, because he could feel Taral’s wistfulness, the longing that still lived inside him.
“It was a long time ago,” Taral said finally. “Sejun, don’t think any more about this. I shouldn’t have told you. I’m married to you now, and I honor our bond. We performed the rituals and drank the wedding wine. That’s what matters to me now, not something that happened years ago. It feels like a different lifetime now.” He pushed up onto one elbow and touched Sejun’s cheek so that Sejun turned to look at him. “My husband. I’ll have no other in this life.”
His words brought unbidden tears to Sejun’s eyes. Lying as they were, with Taral gazing down at him, there was no hope of hiding his reaction. He let the tears slide down his cheeks without turning his face away, and if Taral thought less of him for that, then so be it.
“Oh, Sejun,” Taral said, and his thumb wiped the moisture away with more tenderness than Sejun had ever thought he would experience at Taral’s hands. “How can I make amends? Let me try to be good to you. I can’t say I’ll manage it. But I would be grateful if you permitted me the attempt.”
“I will permit it,” Sejun said, and was even able to produce a smile.
* * *
Sejun’sformless agitation and distress followed him around all day like a mist on the high slopes until it finally congealed into anger and settled, at last, on Iniya. It was safer to be angry with Iniya; if he let himself be angry with Taral, he was afraid of how deep that anger might run, and how it might shape his marriage. He would have to live with Iniya forever, too, but he wasn’t bonded to her. He didn’t want to contemplate a lifetime spent bound to someone he resented, awash in Taral’s emotions and all the while soured against him.
No: he would blame Iniya. Taral would never have agreed to this marriage if Iniya hadn’t hassled him into it. It was Iniya who deserved Sejun’s ire.
He woke in the night and couldn’t get back to sleep—no surprise, with so much weighing on his mind. He lay in bed with Taral breathing peacefully beside him and pictured storming into Iniya’s solar and staging a dramatic confrontation. He would fire off any number of scathing accusations, and Iniya would admit that she had, in fact, done something terrible, and would beg for Sejun’s forgiveness and perhaps cry a little. He got himself so stirred up with his fiery thoughts that he finally had to get out of bed and go walk along the colonnade for a while until the cool night air quelled his temper.
He felt somewhat more rational in the morning. Accosting Iniya wouldn’t change what had happened and would only cause strife. Any harsh words he directed at her couldn’t ever be unspoken. And he couldn’t say he didn’t understand why she had proposed such a scheme. Her family’s security outweighed the happiness of a stranger. He might have done the same in her position.
Still, he couldn’t stop his stewing, which distracted him from all other occupations as his thoughts went around and around in close, fretful circles. Instead of going to check on Tejal’s progress with the murals, or to see how the whitewashing was coming along and talk for a while with the workers, he sat on the balcony after breakfast and watched the sunlight creep westward across the mountains. After a while, he saw Abiral out walking with the baby on his back, heading toward the garden plots with Ujesh at his side. Sejun rose and went out.