Oleander

XXI. Valerian (part two)

"You cannot," she said, fighting to keep her voice smooth though her heart was rife with fissures. You must be certain, Yalira, she told herself in those shared breaths. There was no firm proof her priestesses survived, and there was no proof that they had burned. You cannot wager their lives again. She pulled away to meet his eyes through the sincerity of downcast lashes. "There is nowhere for me but here."

His mouth twitched as if he meant to counter her. Yalira silenced the clever words, his brilliant charisma, with fierceness and softness. Gentleness and temptation. A kiss.

"I promised not to run," she whispered. "Remember?"

Andar nodded, his gaze dark with the memory of summer sunlight and waves against the shoreline. A lifetime ago. His callused fingers met the angle of her jaw, the fullness of her lower lip. Golden eyes traced the lines of face before hardening in confident, unbreakable decision. He returned his mouth to hers with the force of a mayfly's wing.

"Then I must march north sooner than expected."

Faint and smothered, a pained moan escaped Oristos. Andar, hideous and golden, beautiful and scarred, did not falter as he turned to the man who loved him.

"Return Queen Yalira to the party," Andar said in unflinching command. Between breaths, any softness evaporated. Spine straight, shoulders carved from marble, he'd returned to the flawless image of soldier and king. "And then we must discuss the next moves forward."

Oristos swallowed, his jaw clenched tight. Yalira moved to take his hand, but her friend flinched from her touch. She schooled her surprise into a queenly curtsey, bowing her head to the tyrant she'd promised to flee, the man she could not yet leave.

Without a glance spared for the corpse cooling behind him, Andar left the gardens in steady strides. Trapped in hesitation, Oristos did not move until Gallus cleared his throat. His mismatched eyes flickered to Yalira before darting toward the palace. A faint flush streaked across the planes of his face.

As they returned to the glow of the revelry, the truth—every inch and piece of it—on her tongue, Yalira tried to explain. "I am sorry, Oristos. Please understand. I—"

Running a hand through his hair, he interrupted. "If these threats cannot reach you, to what lengths will this enemy go? In the inevitable escalation, who else will fall?"

Yalira immediately knew for whom he spoke. Andar was undefeated in battle, a prodigious strategist, but he was not immune to poison, not invulnerable to attack. "You worry for him."

"I worry for all of us. This division? I fear this empire cannot survive it."

The lie echoed in the discordance of his voice, the growing bloom of color on his cheeks, the nervousness in the burnt sienna of his eye. Yalira did not condemn him for the falsehood, but its ring of uncertainty and mistrust sealed her voice. She would wait to explain the treacherous note left in her chambers, the shadowy woman who held the blade over the ghosts of her priestesses.

Laughter grew louder as the firelight of the revelry touched their hems. Yalira paused to return his cloak, to extend the peace offering of a small smile.

"Yalira," Oristos murmured. He shifted between his feet and stepped closer. His voice softened to the faintest of whispers. "Do you feel anything for him?"

The tortured concern tugged at the sinews of her heart, the corners of her spirit that had yet to grow callused. He asked, knowing that any answer promised misery. Yalira took his hands in hers and met his light and dark eyes in painful sincerity.

"I can hardly explain it. Like a captive star, I cannot escape him," she whispered. Each attempted flight, all her plotted machinations, they had led to her current place: cherished and beloved at Andar's side. Despite it, she was determined to keep that intimate gravity in her control. "But no, I do not love him, for that is what you truly ask."

Relief and pain warred across his face before dissolving into dull resignation. Though his lips curved in effort, no joy met his eyes. "For our friendship, if you have any affection for me, I ask of you: whatever your goals, do not see him hurt."

Yalira nodded slowly. Their balance between friendship and loyalty had not yet been tested, not with the force Oristos asked of her now. Frail as it was, the promise was not difficult to make. The fall on the mountainside. His unprotected back as he slept. She had not been without opportunity to harm Andar of Tyr. She had not had the strength and, for all her lessons in unkindness, Yalira doubted she had grown any stronger.

Moreover, she understood the balance that reigned in Semyra.

And his weight in that balance.

Burning memories called—his silhouette against an inferno, against a rain-soaked sky—and twisted her stomach. It twisted further with the slow-burn of anxiety, the ghostly blade against the throats of her priestesses, that her choices might not be her own.

The gentle wave of relief that washed over Oristos, however, loosed the taut coils of regret and dread around her heart. Only moments removed from an assassin's death, and she worried more for tender feelings than she did for the implication of the body left in the garden's center. Gritting her teeth, she pushed the thought away.

Oristos fastened his returned cloak and pressed his mouth to her brow. The searing heat of it, a brand on her unspoken promise, retreated as quickly as his echoed footsteps across the night-touched marble. She knew he'd rejoin Andar, disapproval in his heart, but support and strategy on his lips.

And after, Andar would leave him, full-knowing the extent of the man's underserved affection, return to his rooms, to her, hungry to own another piece of her.

The thought nauseated her knotted stomach.

Yalira smoothed away her frown with a practiced smile to charm inebriated wives into swift confidence. Her reentrance was as if she had not left. The women cried out for her return, called her to their sides, greedy for gossip and secrets, heedless of the dark intrigue that lived in the palace shadows. She could tempt them with small pieces of truth: moonlit embraces with Andar in the garden. It would infuriate the queens, naturally, but each gesture of affection from Andar of Tyr meant another tally of power.

And tallies, she required. The revolving circuit of gold and influence, their interplay, kept her goals within reach. The sliver of support Andar had shown in the forum sparked new attentiveness in hearing her plans for the slums, and slivers of silver followed. Each drafted loan, each humble donation, gave her a fraction more of control. She could not afford to lose this upward cycle, not when her growing number of projects pulled at purse strings.

Her efforts in establishing a refuge for the orphaned children required more support than the contracts she'd already arranged, and any extra coin would not go amiss in addressing the continued slow burn of the purging illness. In the pittance of a salary she awarded herself for tending to those still dying, Yalira saved for her own purposes: a fund for the living ghosts of her priestesses. No, she had no poverty in charitable projects.

A certain Liora nu Hestion, and her heavy husband's heavier fortune and influence over the treasury balance, would be an important gain. Smiling at the women who begged her attention, Yalira's eyes scanned the room for the woman and her wandering eye.

After a circuit, Yalira found her, tucked away in a shadowed corner, wrapped in a wicked embrace. The light blue of Liora's dress was tangled into deep crimson. Always aware of Yalira's plans, and always connected to the pulsing artery of gossip among the highborn, Rishi winked. Her hands twisted into Liora's dark curls.

Yalira's smile turned wry as she accepted a glass of wine. She'd expect that donation in her philanthropic account come sunset. The golden vintage, however, was not sweet in victory. Above the gentle roar of the party and its wine-heavy voices, the persistent drum of her pulse could not be ignored. In each beat, the pain across Oristos's face, the careful affection in Andar's voice, the looming shadow of faceless enemies, echoed.

As did her words to Oristos.

She wondered why the truth sounded so false in her ear.

And if she might drown it away with indulgence's promise of abandon.