Page 9 of The Second Marriage

Taral didn’t mind. The procedures had to be followed, but everyone knew this marriage was strictly a business arrangement, and Taral was glad to be spared the effort of pretending he was pleased or excited. Better to dispense with all ceremony and send Sejun’s people back to Merek in short order. Then the two of them could settle into their new roles of comfortably ignoring each other.

He would never have agreed to solicit offers if he thought there was any chance of a successful marriage. What a fool he had been. Now they were both trapped, Taral and Sejun alike, and there would be no getting out of it until one of them died. A bleak thought.

He stood waiting at the top of the steps, watching the treetops sway in the breeze. As the first cart passed beneath the gate on the road below, Taral heard footsteps coming through the passageway behind him, and he turned to see Sejun approaching, hair damp and face stamped with a wide smile.

“There you are,” Sejun said, as if he had been searching for Taral. “Did you have pleasant dreams?”

“Pleasant enough,” Taral said.

Sejun came to stand beside him and his hand settled at Taral’s lower back. Molten heat pooled in Taral’s belly. Two days after their second marriage, he still bore red prints over his body and a dark string of bruises on his throat that his fingers found again and again, absently stroking the tender spots in any idle moment.

“Let’s see what it is my people have sent for you,” Sejun said. “Hasri handled all the arrangements because she knows what’s proper and I hardly know where my own left foot is. I hope they brought all my books, although I know that doesn’t count as a dowry for you.”

Taral glanced over at him. “You like to read?”

“Oh, only silly novels. The merchants who come through Merek cater to my habit. They know I’ll overpay for anything I haven’t read before.”

“We can set aside a room as a library for you. Our collection here is limited to religious texts and farming manuals.”

Sejun smiled at him. His hand crept to Taral’s waist and drew him subtly closer. Taral’s silent admonitions to himself had no effect. He let himself be drawn and leaned into the warmth of Sejun’s body, hoping to catch a trace of Sejun’s scent. He hadn’t been this close to Sejun since their night together in the throne room.

He could easily justify his responses to Sejun during heat, but this ongoing receptiveness unnerved him. He meant to hold Sejun at a polite distance, to be friendly enough as they went about their separate lives, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about the soft press of Sejun’s belly against his own, or the casual way Sejun had handled him, as if he were completely confident that Taral would enjoy everything he did.

Taral had. His old, treasured memories of Jaysha’s kisses had been painted over by Sejun’s. He loathed himself.

His only comfort was that he could sense almost nothing through the bond. Sejun was there, but muted, as if Taral were hearing him whisper through a closed door from another room. Taral had at first been afraid that he would have no privacy at all, but if their bond was as weak as it seemed, then he was a closed door, too. Sejun would know nothing of his turmoil.

“Your neck,” Sejun murmured. His free hand came up to touch the bruise closest to Taral’s jaw. Taral, having lost all control of himself, lifted his chin to give Sejun better access, and Sejun took it, trailing his fingertips down the chain of marks, stirring Taral’s blood beneath his skin. He was more animal than human, even now. He would let Sejun take him right here on the steps—push his robe out of the way and mount him. He was growing wet merely from the thought of it.

“Ah, here they come now,” said a voice, and Taral jerked with surprise and straightened in Sejun’s grasp as Sejun’s father came out of the fortress and joined them on the stoop.

“And there’s Batsal,” Sejun said, pointing to a man walking up the path from the road. He left his hand where it was on Taral’s hip, wholly unconcerned about—what? His father seeing him more or less chastely touch his husband in public? They were doing nothing illicit.

“Let’s hope he brought everything he was meant to,” Sejun’s father said. He nodded at Taral in greeting. “Good dreams, Your Highness?”

“Very pleasant,” Taral said.

The path was too narrow for the carts to navigate. The dowry came up on foot, one chest at a time, and Taral stood there at Sejun’s side the whole while as the courtyard slowly filled. He listened with one ear to Sejun’s cheerful conversation with his father and brother about people Taral didn’t know. Sejun’s hand on his hip was hot as a brand.

Nothing of interest or excitement had happened in Taral’s life for the past ten years, and he had liked it that way. His days were predictable, filled with work and excursions into the mountains. He kept busy and was happy enough. He had understood the shape of the rest of his life and made his peace with it. But now all of that had changed; in less than half a season his quiet life as Tadasho’s maiden uncle had been entirely transformed.

Sejun had unearthed all the old grief Taral had worked so hard to bury. The pain of those days of his first marriage—his first first marriage—had returned to him in full life and color. He was lost in the past with no clear way forward.

He went out later that day, when the entire household was distracted by the business of carrying the chests into outbuildings and arranging the contents as Iniya saw fit. Taral had warned her that most of it would be sold, but Iniya kept pretending not to hear him; Iniya wanted to have nice things. But that was a problem for the Taral of next week. The Taral of today needed to get out of the fortress.

At the far end of the stable, past all of Merek’s fine horses, Tadasho’s one remaining horse stood dozing in his stall. He raised his head as Taral rapped on the stall door and walked forward to bump his nose against Taral’s shoulder. Imaginatively named White Ears by Iniya’s oldest, owing to his white ears, he was a good horse—an entirely acceptable horse—and had careful footing on rough terrain. Taral patted his nose and said, “What do you think about going for a ride?”

The rain had ended, leaving the evergreens dripping and the mountains shrouded in low clouds. Taral guided White Ears through town and there turned off the road onto the narrow, switchbacked dirt path that climbed the mountainside to the top of the ridge. Tadasho ended there, at the valley’s farthest reaches. On the other side lay the kingdom of Barun, nestled in a valley much larger and richer than Tadasho’s, and at the bottom of that winding mountain track lay the fortress where the royal family lived. That was Taral’s destination.

White Ears was accustomed to long treks through the mountains as Taral searched for fossils and whatever unusual rocks he might find. The horse put his head down and plodded along. The sky was still too dark for Taral to know when noon came, but he listened to his stomach’s demands and ate cold dumplings as White Ears walked. By early afternoon they were in the valley.

Barun and Tadasho had been on friendly terms for many generations. There were no guards set on the path, and the few farmers who saw Taral pass by only waved at him. He brought White Ears to a stop where the track met the main road that followed the river through the valley. The fortress sat on a rocky spur, huge and white, dominating this part of the valley. Its freshly whitewashed walls and bright red roofs made Taral shamefully aware of how stained and shabby Tadasho had become.

Well, all of that would change now.

He could see Jaysha’s window from here, high on a south-facing wall. In the room within, he had once spent a furtive, heated hour learning how to kiss. If Jaysha stood there now, looking back at him, Taral couldn’t say.

He turned White Ears around and rode back up the path toward Tadasho. He was married now, and he needed to be home before nightfall.