A Kiss of Fire (A Kiss of Magic #2)(48)

“Are they?” Fatima asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Unwelcome. Are his advances to you entirely unwelcome? And do not lie to me for I will know. Do not lie to yourself either, for that will only blind you to your own needs.”

Ariana flushed and looked away from the other woman.

“Your son is a very…compelling man. More so than I ever gave him credit for in the past. But that does not change the fact that I am here against my will!”

“Hm. So you do admit to some feelings for him. Some…passion.”

Ariana wanted to deny it, but she found she couldn’t lie to either of them.

“Passion and feelings are two separate things,” Ariana said in defiance.

“Not at all,” Fatima contradicted. “Passion is as much a feeling as it is a physical state of being or acting. My son craves you with great passion…but if you think it is just the physical then you are very mistaken. That is proved by your very presence here in this room.”

“I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you mean,” Ariana said with frustration.

“My son is afraid of his passion for you. He fears what it will drive him to do…what it has already driven him to do. In all his autumns as raja, I have never known my son to ask for anything for himself. I have never seen him act selfishly. He has sacrificed everything for his people. But you…he has risked everything for you. He has acted on his own desires. Not without much thought…I am sure he weighed all his options and the ramifications of his actions most thoroughly—it is in his nature to do so—but after weighing everything in his mind he still decided you were worth the risk. Has anyone ever valued you so highly before? To the point where they would risk everything to have you?”

“That isn’t the point,” Ariana said quietly.

“Isn’t it though?” Fatima regarded her with a measured glance. “What is life to us if we are not greatly valued by another? I know men and women alike who would sell their souls to both hells for a chance at being on the receiving end of the devotion my son is showing you.”

“He does not feel devotion. It is obsession. An unhealthy obsession.”

“It is true. He is obsessed with you. But where is the line between devotion and obsession? Do you know where it is? For I do not. Is my son obsessed with the well-being of his people, or is he merely devoted to them? Or is it both? Can you consider the possibility that he is both where you are concerned?”

“Whatever he feels for me is unhealthy,” Ariana said. “If he would just accept the fact that I am out of his reach then perhaps he can—“

“But you are not out of his reach. You are most decidedly within his reach.”

Frustrated she exploded with, “But I shouldn’t be! I shouldn’t be here!”

“And yet you are. Perhaps you should accept that and move on from there.”

“I don’t want to accept it! I have a life with all of its responsibilities awaiting me back home. I will not forget them simply because I have crossed a border!”

“No one is suggesting that you do. I am merely suggesting that you should accept where you are now. Calm yourself. Live in the moment. Let the future work itself out as it is meant to develop. In the meantime, explore what is around you. What is available to you. Learn about the world you are living in and the people in it.”

“I…I am learning about this world.” More than she had ever expected she would. She was also coming to understand it more than she had ever expected she would.

“I can see that you have,” Fatima said knowingly. Too knowingly. There was something of wisdom and insight in the woman that only came with age, experience and ability.

“Are you Jadoc?” Ariana asked sharply.

Fatima smiled. “Would that make you feel better? To know my insights into you are easily explained by my power and not from a keenness that comes with instinct?”

“It just makes sense. You seem to see so much and with such confidence.”

“Would it surprise you to know I am what your people call a non? A being without majic?”

Ariana’s jaw dropped open. She blinked widened eyes at the woman.

“That is not possible. Your son is—“

“A very powerful man. Yes. Both of my sons inherit their ability from their father’s side.”

“Then how is it you know so much about what I am thinking and feeling?” Ariana asked, distrusting.

“Perhaps it is because once, long ago, my sons’ father felt the same passion for me that Sin feels for you, and I for his father. We were an unwelcomed match, Jirar and I.” Fatima’s eyes, a dark duplicate of her son’s, grew distant. “It was frowned on for a rajan heir to take a non, even as a concubine. A lover, perhaps, but not as an exalted concubine and certainly never as a wife. But I had just been sold by my father into a pleasure house to pay for his debts and as a virgin my maidenhead was a valuable thing for the man willing to pay the right price. Sin’s father was raj then—heir—and his father was still alive. He was his father’s only son despite his father’s many wives and concubines. The fate of the entire crown rested on his head alone. Jirar had come into the pleasure house with three of his friends and when he saw me…saw how crudely his friends were treating me…saw how wholly terrified I was…he purchased me outright for an extraordinary amount of money. It is a price still talked about in the pleasure houses…when pleasure girls are dreaming that a prince might come and sweep them away one day.