The Broken Crown

Chapter 10

Anaïs

The feathery touch of lips ghosted across her shoulder. Even with her head slightly throbbing from the wine and the late hour the night before, she could still notice the softness of the silk that surrounded her. In this cocoon of slippery softness, she felt a pair rough hands on her hips and her heart leapt.

Calming herself, Anaïs forced forward the memories of the night before. Then she forced herself not to cry.

It had been the royal wedding. Wine had been served. Lots of it; so much that no one noticed if a servant stole a few drops for confidence. Of course, the Kahari had been there, and he had noticed her. She shuddered when she thought about what had followed. Luckily, as she had learned, he misinterpreted these shudders.

“Good morning,” he whispered, his voice rough from the hour and the wine, and also from the fact that it was always a bit hoarse. Of all men, at least she was grateful it was someone like him. At least he had been gentle.

Anaïs swallowed a lump in her throat. “Good morning,” she whispered.

She felt him smile against the skin of her shoulder just before he turned her in his arms. His hand stroked the side of her ribs, her back, and she looked at him, lips slightly parted. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes...” Sleep. Anaïs shot up and looked out of the window. The sun was already well above the horizon and glimpsed in the water of the river that surrounded the capital far away. “What time is it?”

The Kahari shook his head and pulled her down. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

Then their lips met, his crushing hers, pushing even as his hand pulled her closer. Two forces melted together into one. Slowing the kiss, Anaïs pushed at his chest. “I must go,” she told him, unable to act out any sort of regret. Instead, she pressed her lips against his before leaving the bed.

The melted gold of his eyes watched her as she dressed. “You’re hard-working,” he said finally. “You will be respected in the South.”

There were stories of the South, most of them terrible. Most of them told how missionaries got lost in the depths of their dark woods and were eaten by the black creatures that loomed in there. Anaïs knew better than to blindly believe those stories; there had been equal myths of the Shadow. Some had said that he was immortal, a part of the castle the same way as the real shadows. That he was nothing but a ghost.

But Anaïs had seen him bleed; he’d cut himself, the day she asked for advice. He’d shown her how sharp the thread she thought could only cut cheese really was. When he did, a line of red vulnerability had crawled from the tip of his finger to his knuckle. He’d brushed it off in his tunic, the way he did the blood of other men.

“What are you thinking of?”

Anaïs blinked and returned to working on the clasp of her dress. “Just...”

In that moment, there was a knock on the door. The Kahari took a moment to groan into the pillows before standing and putting on a pair of trousers. When he opened the door, it revealed Asha. She was standing still for once, not a muscle in her body moving, but all of them tense. She was chewing on her bottom lip worriedly.

“Asha,” the Kahari said, stepping aside to let her in. Once she was standing in the middle of the room, he closed the door.

“Good morning, Anaïs,” Asha said politely.

Anaïs looked down in shame of what Asha might be thinking. “Good morning.”

Then the girl turned to her father – at least Anaïs had gone to thinking that he was her father – and opened her mouth. But what came out was nothing like any language Anaïs had ever heard. It was a tongue that reminded her of a growl, yet some of the words resembled the native tongue that the Tiberan handmaidens sometimes spoke.