Our Vicious Oaths, page 33
He cursed and rested his forehead against hers. Then abruptly pulled his hand away from her neck. He didn’t, however, replace any distance between them. His body remained pressed against hers and Kadeesha stiffened, every bone in her body screaming at her to push farther away even as something that was disturbing and deep-seated demanded that she haul him close enough to crawl inside his skin. Malachi must’ve felt it too because he let out another savage string of curses. “See, this right here, whatever this draw is that exists between us … It is a severe issue.”
“Agreed,” Kadeesha ground out. She continued to hold firm to the reason she was angry, using it to keep her wits about her. “Did you hold a war council to announce your shifted plans to your inner council and lord primes?” she asked to be crystal clear about the level of insult he’d delivered.
“I wouldn’t call it a formal war council. I called an Assembly of Primes to discuss it and other items.” He answered in a defensive enough manner that told her he knew she had a right to be furious.
She didn’t bother to extinguish the flames that ignited at her fingertips. If he wanted to be offensive, so could she. “I don’t care what you would call it or the reasons you had, the current severe issue is that your choice stripped me of the respect I’m due as a monarch fighting at your side. Instead, you treat me as if I am a subject, or more, a vassal queen at your beck and call, which was never part of any bargain we made. I should’ve been afforded the regard of an invitation to attend that war council and I should have been notified of your change of plans alongside those you did hold in high enough regard to do precisely that with.” She managed to keep her hands at her sides instead of scorching the guilty look off Malachi’s face.
It was a tell that he quickly wiped, though. “As I said, Apollyon business needed to be conducted too, and I couldn’t very well have you, an outsider, be there for the second part. Nor could I explain your presence to my lord primes.”
“Since when do you concern yourself with caring about explaining anything you do to your lord primes? Spare me the bullshit, Malachi.” She shoved away the ridiculous keen hurt that blindsided her. At least she tried to, but every damn single thing about Malachi made her move so differently than she ordinarily would. And it was why she’d flinched before she could hold it back.
Catching it, Malachi’s eyes narrowed, scrutinizing the vulnerable response she’d let slip.
She pushed her shoulders back and held up her chin. She didn’t avert her gaze as if she was embarrassed. Instead, she owned what she’d allowed him to glimpse, skewering Malachi in place with a withering stare.
“You’re right,” he said in a bland tone as if he’d grown bored with the conversation. “My reasons aside, I’ll concede that I dealt you a great disrespect when I did not extend you the regard of a seat at my council table during discussions of war. Any insult or injury was not what I intended, Your Highness.”
Malachi’s stiffly formal tone was one he’d never used with her before, and it was as jarring as metal scraping glass. So was his pseudo-apology. “I thank you for your expressed contrition, Your Grace,” she returned to Malachi as formally, because a tiny bit of breathing room away from how intimate they’d been in his pool and afterward when the Markings had happened was exactly what she needed to eke out.
Distaste rippled across Malachi’s dark stare, dulling the specks of radiant gold among the brown. Malachi quashed it and replaced it with an aloof expression that grated on her every nerve. She ignored her distaste and stepped past the Apollyon king because they’d been in each other’s presence long enough for the day. Over her shoulder she said, “Is Jakobi still available to escort my squadron to the arena? We’ll need to lengthen our sessions as well to coordinate how we’ll best be of aid in an offensive strike versus the defensive support we’d been preparing for.”
“He’s waiting right outside the door,” Malachi said to her back.
As she exited, the formal exchanges they’d ended things with continued to vex her. She told herself it was only because she must maintain some level of familiarity with Malachi so she could coax him to drop his guard at the opportune time.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
KADEESHA STRADDLED ZAHZAH AND ARCED through the sky on the war serpent as the two of them led a training drill for the rest of their squadron. She clung to Zahzah’s neck as they sent a combined volley of red and purple flames raining down on a group of wooden dummies arranged in a cluster on the arena sands below. Like she’d been doing over the last five days, she pictured Malachi standing among the dummies; it was an exercise to prove to herself that the passionate night they’d spent together that ended in the Markings hadn’t affected her in any significant manner, and she could and would kill Malachi as she’d originally planned in a heartbeat—he hadn’t gotten under her skin enough for anything to change about that.
I could eat him right now. Then there’s no chance of such future problems. Zahzah’s solution to Kadeesha’s brooding was delivered gleefully.
Kadeesha chuckled, appreciating the levity Zahzah’s latest offer to turn Malachi into a tasty meal brought her. “We need Malachi alive for a while longer,” she told her old friend.
Zahzah grunted.
The barrage of arrows that whizzed toward them from the right with deadly accuracy and speed wiped away any further thoughts of Malachi. Zahzah clocked them at the same time. The war serpent didn’t surge higher into the sky to avoid their trajectory. That wasn’t Zahzah’s style. She instead pivoted so she faced the arrows straight-on. Her roar cracked across the sky like thunder as she spewed flames that incinerated the wooden missiles on contact. It was glorious to behold, but the chilling knowledge wasn’t lost on Kadeesha that if the opponents who’d loosed the arrows—Apollyon soldiers participating in the training drill whom Shionne stood among commanding—had been using the actual onyx-crafted arrows they’d use in a real battle, even Zahzah’s flames wouldn’t have disintegrated them. Nor would Kadeesha’s. It was an unsettling fact that she shouldn’t place aside, and now was an opportune time to test out if there was a way to counter the advantage Apollyon forces wielded with their onyx weapons.
“Hold back your fire. I want to see something,” she told Zahzah. Kadeesha sent her own flames flying down at the squad of Apollyon soldiers who stood on the arena sands and only directed the purple fire to encircle the fake enemy squad without straying close enough to do actual harm. She knew onyx wouldn’t burn even amid the most scorching of temperatures, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t become excruciatingly hot until it was blistering to the touch. Experimenting with that possibility, Kadeesha picked out four archers among the group and directed flames to leap up and blaze along the length of the arrows they’d nocked. Her flames roiling along the arrows’ shafts vanished as swiftly as they’d sparked. She cursed; the observation wasn’t comforting.
Nearby in the skies, the rest of her Nkita and their kongamatos were fending off similar aerial attacks by other pockets of Apollyon soldiers. There were some who launched assaults with more arrows. And others who made use of catapults and gigantic crossbows mounted on the fronts of war chariots.
A vision hit her of what the killing field would look like amid true war—amid Malachi’s planned invasion. It was one thing to command a squadron whose function was to defend against threats encroaching upon her lands. But Malachi and his army would be the invaders, the ones aiming to carry out a wave of death and ruin and destruction. And she and her Nkita were now oathbound to participate. To aid the Apollyon king in his agenda of mass carnage. She had no love for Rishaud and yearned to see him annihilated. But, as she’d told Malachi before, his desire to spill the blood of others not directly involved in his parents’ murders was heinous. And he was making her party to it.
The knowledge stayed with her throughout the remainder of the exercise, gnawing away at the pit of her stomach. As soon as her feet touched the ground when the drill concluded, a wave of vertigo crashed into Kadeesha, nausea right behind it. Her whole body shuddered as she vomited in the grass. She dragged one hand across her mouth as Leisha ran to her side and gently took hold of her elbow.
“What’s the matter? Are you all right?” her sister asked urgently.
Kadeesha never got the chance to answer. She could only drag in a ragged breath while she clutched her stomach trying to make the dizzying nausea subside …
It didn’t, and she vomited more—lots more—until she was dry heaving and there was nothing left to regurgitate besides bile. Zahzah, thank the Celestials, stood beside her the entire time—the kongamato a silent, threatening presence whose gigantic wings curled around Kadeesha and Leisha and shielded her against onlookers while she lingered in this vulnerable state. Her squad closed ranks too, encircling Zahzah like the kongamato encircled her. She only caught glimpses of their lower halves beneath Zahzah’s massive wings each time she doubled over to retch; the violet hue of their leather pants assured her they were near and acting as a second protective barrier. So were the other kongamatos, who stood interspersed among the flyers.
That comfort was fleeting, though, because her mind was focused on a single question: What in the hell?
Taking a breath, she finally gathered her wits and the waves of nausea eased enough to stop retching. She straightened and wiped her mouth once more.
Zahzah gently nuzzled Kadeesha’s bicep. What is the matter?
“I don’t know,” she answered weakly. Zahzah appeared the picture of calm on the outside, but the war serpent’s worry for her bled into Kadeesha’s mind.
Kadeesha moved to pat Zahzah’s head to soothe her and assure her she was fine. Instead, she found herself leaning against Zahzah for balance, the world momentarily tilting. Leisha cursed and locked her arms around Kadeesha’s waist. She blinked, shook her head, and then forcefully pushed away whatever weirdness had stricken her. She heaved in another breath and gathered the strength to move away from Zahzah, planting her feet in grass that still had the fine sheen of an early morning dew—the parts that weren’t covered with her breakfast, at least—and inhaled slowly. She breathed out just as slowly. After a few more controlled breaths, she was mostly all right, albeit exhaustion seemed to weigh down her limbs. “I’m okay. I can stand on my own,” she was able to tell Zahzah and Leisha at last. Zahzah snorted a small stream of doubtful flames, and Leisha didn’t budge from her side.
“Let’s get the kongamatos back to the aerie,” she said to Leisha.
“No,” Leisha said stubbornly. “You could’ve been poisoned. I need to get you back to the palace to see a healer. The others can take care of the kongamatos.”
Kadeesha clenched her fists because it was a possibility. “Fine. Tell the others to gather the kongamatos and you escort me back and then get Yashira,” she advised Leisha. “My mother will be better at dealing with poison than any healer.”
LEISHA GOT KADEESHA back to her room, insisted she lie down, and then left to fetch her mother straightaway.
Only a brief spell passed before Yashira rushed through the doors, frantically asking Kadeesha to tell her each suffered symptom as she ran to her bedside. Kadeesha recounted the extreme nausea and weakness and dizziness as Yashira laid a slender hand against her forehead.
“You are without fever,” her mother murmured, “a good sign.” She leaned closer and laid the index finger of each hand on top of Kadeesha’s eyelids. She lifted them and peered closely at Kadeesha’s pupils. “No dilation or discoloration,” Yashira observed next. She had Kadeesha stick out her tongue so she could check for any alarming variations of color there. But, again, there was nothing. She ordered Kadeesha to strip bare and meticulously scrutinized every inch of her skin from her scalp to the soles of her feet. Yashira’s eyebrows knitted together when she noted nothing of concern. “You may have been exposed to a toxin that presents any identifying outward effects more slowly,” she said tightly. “How do you feel this moment?” she inquired as Kadeesha re-dressed.
Kadeesha completed an inward probe. “Fine,” she answered truthfully, for the knots in her stomach, the queasiness, the dizziness, the fatigue that had weighed down her limbs had all vanished.
As she sat on the edge of the bed, Yashira eyed her, plainly measuring the veracity of Kadeesha’s claim against what she’d observed herself.
Then her mother’s eyes widened, and discernment lightened her dark brown irises.
“What is it? What has been done to me?” Kadeesha asked. There was this thrumming, restless energy that had sprung up around Yashira that placed Kadeesha on alert. Made her nervous. “Whatever it is, you can brew an antidote, right?” she asked anxiously.
“Have you seen Malachizrien as of late?” asked Yashira abruptly. It was a bizarre question.
“What does Malachi have to do with this?” Kadeesha gritted out. Did Yashira suspect he’d tried to poison her this time? No, that couldn’t be it. He had a vested interest in her living long enough to use her kongamatos in the war.
“Have you crossed paths with the king in the last handful of days?” Yashira asked again.
“No,” Kadeesha snapped, confused as hell. “Not for the last five days. He’s been busy planning an invasion campaign and the myriad war crimes I’m assuming he’ll commit in the name of vengeance that I am oathbound to aid.” She bared her teeth when Yashira clucked her tongue as if she had said something wrong.
Her mother swept a pinched gaze down the length of her. “Don’t be dramatic. Malachizrien is doing what all monarchs in his position would need to do to squelch any future would-be usurpers. As the Apollyon king should be doing, seeing as how he’s sired an heir. I will not have my grandchild, or my daughter, deprived of their life.”
Kadeesha rocked back as if she’d been slapped. “Excuse me?” Then, sensing this was a ruse, she laughed. “I am not with child,” she told her mother, who was either making a terrible joke or going insane. “That is not what this morning’s nausea was due to. It can’t be. I am not in a fertility year, and one is not due to arrive until the next solar year.” Which meant Kadeesha’s window was still several months away. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been fucking Malachi—or anyone else—without a rune in place that suppressed fertility. “I am not pregnant,” she stressed to her mother.
Yashira sucked her teeth. “Your nose, though it is only a subtle change for now, has spread, girl.”
Kadeesha’s hand flew to her nose. Its proportions felt the same to her. She rolled her eyes. Why do I keep falling for this nonsense? “It has not. And you’re delusional, Mother. You may wish I was pregnant to further your aims, but that is certainly not the case.”
Her mother reached into a pocket of her marigold skirts and produced a handful of thistlegrass. “Then piss on this and prove it,” she said before walking to the adjoining bathing chamber, disappearing inside, and reappearing carrying a chamber pot. She dropped the narrow, thorny green stalks bearing milky-white berries instead of leaves inside the pot and placed the pot on the floor in front of Kadeesha’s feet.
She balked at the plant. Then she balked at her ludicrous mother. “Why do you even have those?”
Yashira gave her a look. “Because when Leisha retrieved me from an afternoon tea with Nychelle and informed me of your symptoms, I thought there was a chance your present condition might be the case. So I stopped by my room first to grab some.”
“So you were told I might be dying and yet you carved out time to grab herbs hoping I was pregnant with a king’s venerated baby instead.” It wasn’t a question—she didn’t make it sound like anything except the scathing rebuke it was.
However, her mother remained unscathed, standing calmly beside the bed. She looked pointedly at the thistlegrass. “Are you going to piss or not, daughter? If you oppose the idea that strongly you should want to prove that you are not with child with expediency.”
Absolutely not. She almost refused out of sheer stubbornness and spite. But her lovely mother was right about one matter: She did quickly need to prove that Yashira was mistaken. Now that her mother had placed the possibility in her head, though she knew it was preposterous, her palms were sweaty and she couldn’t get her heart to stop thudding like a drumbeat. She balled her hands into fists and stood up. She shoved down her pants, squatted over the damn plant, and peed in the chamber pot.
“There!” she cried, standing up straight once she was finished. She hauled her pants around her waist and stabbed a finger down at the thistleweed and—“No!”
She stared at the plant. “No!” she rasped once more and sprang away from the berries that had turned a bright pink, as if the thistlegrass had turned into scorpions. “How?” she whispered, shaking like a leaf.
“When a male and female come together in coitus—”
“That’s not what I mean, Mother!” she yelled. “This isn’t possible!”
Yashira brushed Kadeesha’s slender braids over her shoulder so they fell down her back. At first Kadeesha thought she might be trying to comfort her, but Yashira’s gaze fastened on Kadeesha’s Marking—the bite mark felt like a scalding brand after recent revelations. “One of the chief reasons those things fell out of fashion is that they led to great unpredictability in many areas, including tracking fertility windows.”
