The Devil's Concubine (9 page)

“I don’t understand. You said … uh … I would not have thought he would be

well enough to return to duty so soon.”

He studied her curiously. “Shall I have him come and show you the marks? It

was done. No one ignores my orders with impunity.”

Aliya shifted uncomfortably. “I was angry, but I didn’t want him to die.”

“There was never any possibility of it. If you knew anything about my people,

you know that. The lesson was a painful one, not a death sentence. We feel pain, just as you do, but we heal quickly--most of the time.”

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Aliya nodded jerkily, finding that she was relieved. She’d meant it. As furious as

she was to be treated in such a way, she would not have liked to think the man lost his life only because he had, apparently, misunderstood what he’d been told to do. She

wasn’t completely certain she believed he’d even been whipped. She had heard that the unnaturals were demons, and that was why it was nigh impossible to kill one, but that seemed less likely to be the truth to her now that she had met Talin. For how could they be so very like them and not be the same?

She hesitated when he turned to go once more, but she realized she would rather

know than merely wait to learn her fate and worry over it. “What will happen to me?”

He had already opened the door, but at that he closed it once more and turned to

face her again. “I will take you as my concubine.”

Aliya felt a mixture of anger and fear. “Why? Why would you dishonor me?”

“I have not. I have not threatened to. You will be my concubine. That is a

position of honor, second only to the queen.”

Aliya swallowed against the knot of emotion in her throat. “I am a princess.

Taking me without benefit of marriage would be to dishonor me.”

“You will be my wife--my mate. It is all that I can offer to make things right. I

could not make you my queen if I wanted to. My heir must be pure of blood. The

council would never accept the offspring of a man child.”

“Then take me back! Take me to my father, to live among my own kind--where I

can wed one of my own kind and my children will be accepted.”

“No.”

She stamped her foot angrily. “Why? Why would you do this to me? I have

done nothing to you! Is it to assuage your anger over the insult you think my father gave you?”

His brows dropped ominously over his eyes and his lips tightened. “Because I

want you.”

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Aliya gaped at him in stunned dismay. Finally, her anger asserted itself once

more. “This face? This body? What will become of me when I am no longer young and

desirable to you? Will I be cast aside? Shamed? At least if I was allowed to marry among my own people I would always have the respect of my position!”

“You will have the respect of my people! It could not be otherwise, for I would

not have it otherwise!”

Aliya stared at him dully, fighting the urge to shame herself by yielding to tears.

He either didn’t understand, or he was willfully ignoring the truth. She would not be looked upon by his people as his ‘second’ wife, but a glorified whore, and her own

people wouldn’t even consider her a king’s whore--which at least had some status, for they loathed and feared the unnaturals and would only think of her as tainted beyond

redemption, the cast off unworthy of even the creatures of the underworld.

When she said nothing else, he left her to her solitude, but there was little comfort in it. The barely acknowledged hope that she’d nurtured that he had not come to her the night before because he had reconsidered was quashed. She didn’t know why he just

didn’t go ahead and take his pleasure and be done with it.

Was it some sort of diabolical torture? To allow her hour upon hour, perhaps

days, to dread and wait for the inevitable?

She did dread it, but she discovered that boredom was a very effective remedy for

fear. Cooped up in Talin’s suite all day, she had nothing at all to keep her company beyond her own thoughts and nothing to look forward to except the maids who brought

her food.

They didn’t bring her gown. Each time she asked, they gave her an excuse

instead of producing it. When it grew dark, one came and lit the candles, replacing those that had burned completely. After the evening meal, the maids trooped in again as they had the night before and prepared a bath, readied her for bed and departed again.

By the time she’d spent the following day in much the same way, she decided that

she was going to go stark raving mad if she could do nothing but await her fate. She had never given much thought to what it must be like for the condemned, but she began to

think she had a fair notion.

On the third morning when she woke, she discovered that when the maids had

delivered her breakfast tray, they had also brought pen and ink and parchment. She

ignored it for a while, testing herself against the view beyond the window and

discovering she felt just as frightened and ill each time she looked. If she stood for a very long time without moving, focusing on one spot, some of the fear seemed to lessen, but she knew she was still a very long way from growing accustomed even to looking. The

thought of trying to scale the distance to the earth below boggled the mind.

When she felt that she had endured as much ‘growing accustomed’ as she could

bear, she moved away from that window. After a little thought, she moved on to another, THE DEVIL’S CONCUBINE

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and then another, wondering if there was anything she might see in any direction that would give her some hope.

She found that two of the windows looked down upon a flattened area in the

center of the castle walls. Men, or what looked like men but what she knew must be

unnaturals, were gathered there. Most were lined along the edges of the clearing,

watching, but perhaps a dozen had been paired off and were exercising their skills with swords.

Was it merely practice, she wondered? Or were they drilling for war?

She was inclined to dismiss the last. Talin had said her father was making

preparations for war, and she knew that he must be determined to rescue her. But she also knew, even if her father didn’t, that he could not even reach the kingdom of the golden falcons, let alone wage war against them.

Talin would know that, too. He would have no reason to form up his army and

prepare for a war.

Tiring of standing after a while, she moved to the chair to rest, studying the

parchment.

Talin had suggested she ‘entertain’ herself by trying to design a pattern for the

shutters. She supposed it was perverse, but she was reluctant even to try.

She was bored though, and it seemed better to focus her mind on something

pleasant than to dwell on her fears. After a few minutes, she rearranged the chair,

smoothed the parchment and then simply stared at it for a while, trying to conjure an image in her mind that she could try to draw. Slowly, the image of her rooftop garden began to form. She sketched the arbor that shaded the sitting area where she and her ladies often sat. When she’d finished, she studied the attempt, decided she was

reasonably satisfied with it and began trying to add in smaller details.

She grew cramped, huddled over the page she was sketching on, but once she’d

begun to see the image in her mind transformed onto the paper, she didn’t want to stop.

She drew the miniature fruit trees in huge pots that grew alongside the arbor retreat, the flowering vine that grew all over the arbor, dripping clusters of flowers. And when she had drawn everything that she could recall, she began to sketch herself and her ladies sitting among the cushions.

Try though she might, she couldn’t capture their faces. Even her mind defied her

there, for when she concentrated as hard as she could, she still couldn’t quite visualize their features. She could remember the way they smiled and laughed. She could

remember the times when her ladies squabbled among themselves about one thing or

another, but she couldn’t remember the shape of their faces, or their features. She

couldn’t remember how tall any of them were, or more than the general shape of their

figures.

Had she forgotten so much already? Or had she never really looked at them at

all? Or was it just that she was not talented or skilled enough?

Disappointed and far more depressed than when she’d started, she wadded the

paper up impatiently and rose from the chair.

She had ink on her hands and forearms. She’d dripped ink on the gown she was

wearing, as well, and when she lifted it, she saw the ink had soaked through into her skin.

She was as untidy as child!

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She had ruined the night gown, she realized guiltily. She would have felt badly

about it if it had been her own, but it wasn’t. It belonged to someone else and as poor as she thought it was, it might well be the best that they had.

Perhaps it wasn’t dried yet, though?

Moving to the washstand, she lifted the fabric away from her skin and dipped it

into the basin. The dark stain spread, but she saw that some darkened the water, too.

Taking the soap from the stand, she rubbed that into the ink and began scrubbing it.

The door opened behind her and she turned guiltily to see who it was.

Talin strode into the room, wearing nothing more than a narrow strip of linen

wrapped haphazardly around his waste and dripping water.

Aliya stared at him, feeling her jaw go slack. It wasn’t nearly as great a shock to

see him the next thing to naked as it had been when he’d stripped to nothing, but she found she was far from immune.

Remembering the night before, she felt blood flush her cheeks with

embarrassment. Averting her gaze, she struggled to focus on the task she’d set herself.

She was so busy ignoring him that it wasn’t until the rattling of paper stopped that

it dawned on her that he was looking at her attempt to draw.

Whirling abruptly, she saw that she was right. He’d straightened the sheet she’d

wadded into a ball and was studying it, his face drawn into a frown, as if he couldn’t quite figure out what it was supposed to be.

Embarrassment over her lack of talent superseded all other considerations. Before

she’d even had time to think it over, she raced across the room to snatch it from his hands.

He heard her coming. Obviously, he also realized her intent. Even as she skidded

to a halt and reached for the parchment, he snatched it off the table and held it out of her reach. “I was looking at it.”

Aliya glared at him. “If I had wanted you to see it I would have shown it to you.”

“If you had wanted it at all, you would not have tried to destroy it.”

She made another grab for the paper, sprawling against him when he merely held

it higher. She was so intent on getting her hands on it, in fact, that she’d wallowed all over him, grabbing the arm that held the sketch and putting every ounce of her weight on it to drag it down, before it dawned on her abruptly that he’d gone perfectly still.

When his stillness finally penetrated her focus on the sketch, she stopped

abruptly. Before she could retreat, however, his free arm snaked around her waist.

Her heart flip flopped in her chest, making her feel breathless and more

uncomfortably aware of her body plastered against his hard chest and belly.

“This is very good. Why would you want to destroy it?” he asked after a

prolonged moment of silence.

She glared at him for the reminder. “It is very terrible. A child could do better,”

she snapped, shamed at the crude attempt and angry with him for seeing she had no more talent than that.

“If you meant to throw it away, you will not mind that I have it.”

That comment effectively silenced her. She did mind, but it dawned upon her

finally that she couldn’t best him and take it away from him. The only think she could do to try to save face was to pretend indifference--something rather difficult considering she’d been bouncing all over him trying to take it back.

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“Fine!” she retorted ungraciously. “Amuse yourself at my expense if that is the

sort of thing you find entertaining!”

She shoved at his arm to free herself. Almost reluctantly, he released her, and she

stalked back to the basin. Once there, she simply stared at the ink stained water in the bowl for several moments. As embarrassed and upset as she was about the drawing, she was shaken more by her awareness of him and the tingly feeling running all over her

skin. Right up until the moment that she’d realized he had stopped trying to evade her, she’d been intent on retrieving the parchment and nothing else. In the next moment, her senses sharpened, focusing entirely on Talin so that her awareness of everything else vanished. The clean scent of freshly scrubbed body filled her senses first and then the dampness that still lingered on his skin, the sharp contrast of warmth and coolness

emanating from his partially dry flesh, and the silken feel of his skin over taut muscles.

She hadn’t even been able to span the circumference of his upper arm when she’d

grasped it with both hands trying to tug his arm lower so that she could reach the

parchment--or budge it with all her weight hanging upon it--and the muscle had felt as hard as the stone walls of the tower.

She had liked the way he’d felt against her body, she realized in dismay.