Radiance (Wraith Kings Book 1)(61)
Excitement took hold. She’d been at Saggara for months now, consumed with her duties as its new mistress and the all the adjustments living in a Kai household entailed. The short visit to the dye houses on the lake shore had only whetted her curiosity regarding the Kai kingdom and its people. She was eager to learn more. “Is it far?”
“Two hours by horseback through hilly terrain.”
Not far at all. She almost said yes but hesitated, remembering all that Brishen had told her of his conversation with Serovek when they returned from High Salure. “Is it safe?”
His brow stitched into a frown. “You have my shield and protection, Ildiko.”
She smoothed away the lines marring his skin with her thumb. “I’m not just thinking of me.”
He turned his face into her hand and kissed her palm. “I know. You’ve witnessed the Kai in battle. We’re formidable enough, and we protect ourselves and our own.”
That was an understatement. Hard, heavy bones, fangs, claws, and a superior agility, the Kai were uniquely suited for battle.
“You don’t have to go if that is your wish,” he continued at her prolonged silence.
She started. “No! I want to go.” Ildiko had left all that was familiar to her to accompany a stranger who wasn’t even human into an alien kingdom where she became the outsider, the stranger. She had learned, thrived and found both love and friendship. No filthy pack of lawless mercenaries would make her a prisoner in her new home.
Brishen glided a hand down her arm before trekking a path over her collarbones and down to cup a breast. His hips rocked gently on hers, and she spread her thighs so he settled more firmly into the cradle of her body. “It will still be a long journey with the return trip. You should sleep.”
Ildiko looped her arms around his neck and caressed the rope of hair hanging down his back. She gave Brishen a mock scowl. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Now kiss me. We’re wasting good daylight.”
Their laughter soon changed to sighs and whispered encouragements spoken against skin sheened in perspiration. Ildiko embraced her lover, her husband, her best friend and counted herself a most blessed wife.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Brishen hoped he might one day take Ildiko somewhere without a quarter of his regiment accompanying them. Caution, however, dictated that they have an escort. The attack made on their company on the great trade road as they traveled from Pricid to Haradis combined with Serovek’s earlier warnings meant he and Ildiko went nowhere alone outside Saggara.
He had reduced their escort to twenty of his more experienced fighters. Unlike the journey to High Salure, they traveled at night. An unfriendly time for any group of raiders who might think of attacking. While they’d come near Beladine borders, those lands belonged to Serovek whose troops vigilantly patrolled and protected them. An unfriendly place for any who wanted to cause trouble.
Brishen glanced at his wife as she rode beside him. She held a confident seat in the saddle, even with the challenge of navigating the hilly paths that led to Halmatus township in the dark. She wore her heavier cloak for the cold nights, but her head was bare. The red hair, which he at first thought garish but now beautiful, shimmered multiple shades of gray under the moonlight. She’d kept her hood down at his insistence.
“You don’t need this,” he told her earlier as they readied to mount and ride out of Saggara. He pushed back the hood, exposing her braided hair and pale features. He’d spent the last hour before sundown studying her face as she slept next to him. Had he truly ever thought her ugly?
Ildiko tucked a few strands of hair that had come loose from her braid behind her ears. “There will be a lot of stares and talk.”
Brishen took her hand to lightly trace the lines of her palm with one nail. “Let them talk; let them stare. It matters not. Besides, you are the hercegesé, wife of Saggara’s herceges. You hide from no one.”
They crossed a bridge spanning a narrow ravine. Far below, a lazy river wound like a black ribbon to disappear around a bend of sheer rockface. A waterfall’s dull roar sounded nearby, background resonance to the creak of wood under horse hooves as their party rode single file over the bridge.
They arrived in Halmatus shortly before midnight. Built in a sheltered dale, the town glimmered like a nest of fireflies under a tree canopy. Pleased to discover that he’d inadvertently chosen the weekly market night to visit the town, Brishen escorted Ildiko through the narrow streets lined with temporary stalls filled with various wares and food offered by Kai farmers and merchants.
Their presence drew a curious crowd, and the stares and talk Ildiko predicted rested heavy on his shoulders and thick in his ears. Ildiko paid no attention, and instead engaged the various vendors in nearly flawless bast-Kai.
Only once did she hint of her awareness of the town’s singular focus on her. She stepped away from the protection of Brishen’s silhouette so that she was in full view of the crowd. Her closed-lip smile gave away her intent.
“Ildiko,” Brishen warned and blocked the crowd’s view just as her eyes slid toward each other and met on either side of her nose. They slid back in place just as quickly, making Brishen twitch and the Kai soldiers closest to them exclaim under their breaths.
Ildiko sighed. “You’ve ruined a perfectly good opportunity to provide gossip for years to come.”