Chapter 13—The Lone Politician

“Are you a pedophile?” She knew he wasn’t.

Even so, the bug-eyed alarm on his face was worth it. The guy was ridiculously hard to rattle. Probably had something to do with all those irritating sage-like thoughts of his. Were all men in love like that?

“Why would you even say such a thing?” he asked.

“Because I keep catching you staring at kids and smiling like a creep.”

“It’s the families, Genie. I want a family. Can you ever broach a subject without making it sound like a crime or a lewd punch line?”

“Hey, I grew up in a brothel, whaddya expect?”

“Well there’s your answer. What did you want to know about it?”

“I can give you a family if you want it.”

He hesitated for only a moment. “I’m not making a wish.”

And as she gave her trademark smirk back, she shoved the sad little knot of his misunderstanding deep enough to never see the light of day.

It had been a lie anyways.

***

The scent of pine and flowers blew past her cheek, mixing with the fresh linen and cottons of her bed. It lit upon her like a melody as she neared consciousness. A dream of desert and sands peeled back, almost reluctantly, as though the dancing desert woman held her back.

“You will figure it out, sweetheart,” she had said while pushing Kyanna into clumsy spins and shimmies. “The dance is all in the natural movements of a woman’s walk. Move as you are prone to do and you shall find what you desire.”

The last of those warm fingers, though, faded as her eyes fluttered open to her cream and silk embroidered canopy.

As she blinked up at it, slowly taking stock of the warm arm slung over her lower waist, she remembered Einar jostling her awake as he lifted her dozing form up the steps. He’d held on even as she blinked around owlishly, conscious enough to make out the ragged form of the worried king in his housecoat. Once he’d registered that both of them were fine, he had proceeded to demand Einar report on all that had happened to him and the council in the morning before allowing them to wearily head to bed. The moment her head had hit the pillow she was out once more. Kyanna was by no means a night owl.

She found herself turning her head to trace the features of Einar’s sleeping face. The prison brand on the left side of his neck was bare to the soft light filtered through the white, gossamer curtains, which rippled gently in the breeze.

She couldn’t recall ever feeling so infinitely peaceful.

Remembering their kisses in the carriage, how comforting and innocent they had been, she slowly trailed her fingertips up the arm held over her. It seemed strange to think that the first time she would experience such a pure, gentle expression of affection would be when she was married and allowed, even expected, to end such passion in bed. Jeremy had always been as daring with his kisses as he’d been in his attempts to be with her, the unobtainable princess. His kisses had been hard, determined, but it had been wild enough to satiate the long-forgotten hunger of her smothered heart, a taste she never thought would also be satisfied by compliant obedience to the rules.

Einar shivered as her hand lilted across his bare shoulder to the scar on his neck. His mouth jerked into a smile, and he turned his face towards the pillow.

“Tickles. Stop.”

She smiled. “The great warrior Einar Burkinly, weak to tickles?”

The hand at her hips came out to swat her fingers away. “Oh no. Great secret out. Hrmph.”

His face left his pillow only to nestle against her neck besides the thick chain of her wedding pendent, out of her sight.

“Mmm, wife,” buzzed his lips against her skin. His arm returned under the blankets only to wrap more tightly around her waist.

“I don’t recall giving you permission to handle me so intimately,” she said, though wryly.

“But so warm…smell so nice…”

When she just continued to smile and found somewhere else for her hands to trace, his breathing once more evened and slowed.

Kyanna, however, couldn’t have fallen asleep even if she wanted to. His scent had overrun the breeze and bed, filling her with thoughts of favorite leather couches on stormy days and morning dew. Her heart didn’t so much as speed up as strengthen in its thuds till it beat against her breastbone like a stony fist.

When she could take it no longer, she tugged lightly on his earlobe.

“You have that meeting with the council. I heard the chime for sixth watch some time ago.”

He groaned. “I thought I was the Apple King?”

“You are no such thing until my father retires, and the Apple Prince still needs to do as he’s told.”

“Mmm…apples sound good right now. If I be a good prince and get up, will you make me an apple pie?”

“Couldn’t you just ask for one?”

“I want wife apple pies. They’re the more powerful, divine form of apple pies.”

She couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “You’ve never even tried them, and you’re making my neck all wet with your breath, back off.”

But he only did so after licking it, making her squeal.

“Uck! Stop! Gah!”

Then he was holding himself above her, grinning that puppy-dog smile that made his eyes dance. As she had known on waking, he was shirtless, bearing both fine muscle and skin mottled by scars to her view.

Sunlight caught on the crystal of his marriage pendant, casting tiny rainbows across his chest.

Then his eyes skimmed down her body beneath his, taking away the boyish factor of his grin to something else. Yet another smile to add to her ever-growing list.

She reached out to hook her hands around his neck, thinking of pulling him in for another kiss or of letting herself touch the lines of his form bared to her, but stopped. A cold whisper passed across her mind.

What was she doing?

Hadn’t she been wildly in love with Jeremy just a week ago? Even a few days ago?

Her breath grew sticky in her throat.

When he did lean down, she tensed, but he only left a soft, slow kiss against her cheek before rolling away and off the bed completely.

“I’m allowed to take you with me, right?”

She sighed, mentally pushing away the chill of her thoughts. “No. Silly you should even ask.”

“I don’t see how. You’re the one who was raised a princess, I haven’t even been trained yet.” There was a clack of china as he poured water from the pitcher into the washbowl.

“Key word here is ‘princess.’ Sure, the Queen and King made me study politics, but only so I could advise my husband and make sure he didn’t do anything too stupid.”

Einar gave a puff of air out his nose in brief humor. “What, so you can threaten to make him sleep on the couch if he wants to tax people out their arses? They all know you’re going to be the brains of our operation, so why even bother to make a show of it?”

Kyanna sat up to stare at him, or rather, his scarred back as he splashed water into his face.

“Are you serious?”

Wiping his face with a towel, he turned back to her, eyebrows furrowed.

“What?”

“Women don’t do politics. It isn’t…civilized. My parents were extremely progressive just to teach me as much as they did about running the country. Sure, not everyone is unable to flex outside of the idea, and there are exceptions to the belief, but those on the council and many of the country’s nobility are. If I appear with you in the counsel room it will only discredit you.”

He slung the towel over his neck and frowned. “How so?”

“It will make you appear like a weak ruler who has to depend on the weaker capacities and unstable sensibilities of his wife.”

His frown deepened, taking his eyebrows down with it. “And coming off as a weak ruler would just endanger us all, wouldn’t it?”

“I thought that much was obvious. You can’t be this politically obtuse, you were in the army. Surely there’s politics in the line of command and such.” And believe it or not, she was always disappointing everyone with her choosing to be politically obtuse, despite knowing better.

An uneasiness wilted the lines of his shoulders and tension in his face.

“Um, about that…”

Oh, Fivar. “Might as well tell me now before I find out.”

He pulled the towel back down and into the bowl. “I only ever got as high as captain. I, uh, kind of left on my own after that.”

She blinked. “But all those stories of the battles you won—“

“I won them either on my own or with whatever men you can command as a captain, and I only got there because I was stronger than most and had a brain, but I think if they just hauled hay bales and packed elk for a few years or actually took the time to plan ahead rather than spending the night before drinking and sneaking off to whores…”

His tone had gotten rather dry, and his words so sour she could almost taste his bitterness. He didn’t look at her as he wrung out the towel and took to wiping down the rest of his torso, which she did her very best to ignore, and failed.

“You…so the invasion of Syan’s fortress…”

“Just me. With the help of a few insiders. You don’t make many friends throwing people into a place like Hrathbern.”

“And Syan—but they say he was a sorcerer, but sorcerers don’t exist, do they?”

“They’re not supposed to exist,” he said. “Or at least haven’t for a very long time. But I didn’t give him the time to prove otherwise. I just helped deliver the poison.”

A V-shape scar, which framed his right shoulder blade like a dragon’s mouth, lowered down for a bite as he reached back to get between his shoulders. She wondered if it was the one he had obtained trying to save his friend during his prison break.

Her hands had gone damp, but not cold.

“Just—just when did you leave?”

“Um,” he leaned his head back in thought. “Sometime after the battle of Rust Canyon?”

Her jaw dropped. “That was halfway through the campaign! They said you fought in every battle!”

“Well, I did, from a distance. Not part of the group. It’s amazing what a few well-placed rock falls, a bit of rope, and some old fashion smoke and mirrors can do. The desert folk have some amazing culture, but they’re not the best with armor. Once I found an outlook where I just needed a pile of arrows—“

“You shot down an entire five battalions?!?”

“I’d have run out of gloves and my fingers would have bled through before that. Do you have any idea how much weight is pulled on that string?”

She shook her head. “If you were so talented at espionage, why didn’t you join the Shadow Core?”

“I tried, but they got all offended by me even asking. Apparently, you have to be trained from childhood from a special family or something. So I just, you know…thought I’d prove myself otherwise. I really did like the kind of work they did, mainly because it was solo work.”

But when he hung up the towel and turned around, she was still gaping.

His face flushed red, and his eyes dropped to his feet.

When she just continued to sit there, in shock, he said, rather weakly, “I don’t do well with crowds. Actually I, um…I’m not that much of a people person in general.”

She managed to scoff. “But you’re such a chatterbox! And all your stories—you speak them so well—“

“That’s to you.”

“Especially to me! If you’re shy, wouldn’t that make it harder to speak to the woman you love?”

“I didn’t say I was shy. I can speak just fine, but I don’t say the right words and I don’t get a lick of all that fancy speech, you know, not being blunt and saying it all indirect and inoffensive or knowing what not to say—I accidentally started so many fights in the army, you know that?” Scowling now, he looked back up at her, just to look away as he went elsewhere in their new royal chambers to the wardrobe. “Idiots and losers and children and…”

He trailed off, more uncomfortable than she had ever seen him.

Somehow, it just amused her.

“And you decided to pick up a career in politics?” she said, snidely.

“All I wanted was to marry you.” He popped the doors of the wardrobe open with a hard yank.

“What did you think would be involved with that?”

“I figured, as long as I got to be with you, it’d all work out.”

“The fate of countries, possibly even instigating a war without meaning to by offending the wrong dignitary—“

“But that’s why I have you, right?” He closed the door, a fresh white undershirt on and a navy tunic in his hand.

She laughed, remembering her most recent adventure of dumping poop on a duke’s head.

“Oh Fivar,” she wiped at her eyes. “You don’t know what you ask.”

Even so, she slipped off the bed and padded over to tug the tunic out of his hands.

“This is casual wear, only for our apartments and outings with just the two of us.” She pulled out a much more fitting royal vest of deep maroon embroidered with swirls of gold, paired with a cream shirt with billowing sleeves. “This is fit for meetings with the council.”

His fingers brushed hers as he took it, though his face was still very red.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“For what? Being unbelievably out of this world?”

He frowned. “What?”

She flicked his forehead, making him wince.

“Don’t be stupid. No one just ‘plans ahead’ like everyone else could and ends up nearly single handedly winning a war and taking down a sorcerer tyrant. You might as well be a god.”

He stared at her. Slowly, the new smile from that morning eased back on, wide and, dare she say, lewd.

“Does that make me good enough to bed?”

She rolled her eyes. “So that’s what this was all about.”

But as she turned to get dressed herself, his arm around her waist stopped her.

“No really,” his breath puffed over the spot where he had nipped her the night before and his nose slid against the shell of her ear. “Does it make you want me?”

Instead of answering, she grabbed the red vest hanging at his side and stuffed it over his head.

“Just get ready for your meeting already.”

Despite all that she had said, she did walk with him down to the meeting room set aside specifically for the king and the counsel. On the way she did her best to give him a shortened, condensed revision of the council members, though Einar had met them before to be introduced by the king, it hadn’t been nearly enough to get to know their temperaments. He wanted to hold her hand, but she expressed it was more appropriate to give her his arm and allow her to hold on to the crook of his elbow.

At the door, he gave her one last scared puppy look (no one would have believed it from the kingdom’s bravest even if they saw it), before entering it, a guard beside the door announcing him as the crowned prince.

Then it closed and Kyanna found herself struck by a sudden epiphany: could it be her father had chosen her a man unversed in noble etiquette so she would be forced to act properly being the one who knew better?

The longer she thought about it, the wider her eyes grew.

If her husband had been learned, he might have pressured her to act correctly, which she would have fought back against almost instinctively. But give her awkward, untrained Einar…

Rather than curse, Kyanna found herself smiling as she turned and walked away.