The Centurion's Woman

Chapter 26

IXILLIUS CLOSED THE door behind him and took off his sword belt. Alex was standing by the table, her side to the door, the cup she used to hold water for drawing in front of her and her face hidden behind a wall of hair. She cringed when he dropped his weapons and belt on the bench loudly, but made no other move.

        His temper had cooled considerably, his earlier fury replaced with the cool calmness that usually followed it. He was still angry beyond words, driven there by the hurt she had done him. He turned from her and started putting on his armor for the day ahead.

        After a few minutes, Alex came around the table, past the bed, to stand beside him. She drew on the table some familiar figures from their first conversation, when he'd asked about her past and she'd told him of a husband that had left her after just a year when no child was kindled. Turning back to fastening his armor, Ixillius wondered briefly now if that husband had lied to her about the lack of child and left her due to her confounding her-ness.

        "Ixillius?" she asked quietly.

        He glanced over his shoulder at her and the water sketches on the table. Her face and body were still turned partly away from him, her silhouette shrouded by her hair. The gods must hate him, he still wanted her badly, ached for her to agree to be his wife.

        She'd added the woman her husband had left her for, and drawn a moon cycle that they'd often used to count the passing of time. It took a moment to realize that she was holding out her hand to him, one of her fingers slick with blood. His knife from the top of the bed was lying on the table, unsheathed.

                                                                ***

        Alex had wracked her brain trying to think of a way to explain this so he could understand, and when she finally thought of it, it was so simple. He was radiating anger as she sketched out herself and Jeremy, then turned away to finish getting dressed in his armor for the day, pointedly ignoring her as she drew in Cindy. That was fine. If he was watching intently, he would have noticed the knife, and would have tried to stop her from cutting her finger. Then she wouldn't have been able to explain anything.

        "Ixillius?" she asked quietly.

        She knew he wasn't going to look closely at first, he was too angry, but the blood on her hand would catch his attention fairly quick. She held out her cut finger to him and waited.

        He cursed at her through clenched teeth, his hand clamping around her wrist as surely as any shackle. She didn't pull away, but smeared the blood across all her fingers with her thumb and opened her hand to show him the red stain. He shoved her fingers into the wash bowl, steadily cursing at her as he tried to wash the blood off and see how bad the cut was.

        "Ixillius?" she asked again, pulling her hand up and smearing the blood across her fingers again.

        This time she was able to stop him from immediately dousing her hand. She pointed with her other hand and looked up at him, the question plain.

        "Sanguinem," he answered.

        "Sanguinem," she repeated, then turned and tapped on the table, pulling his attention from the tiny cut on her finger to the drying figures on the table. "Alex, Jeremy, Cindy," she tapped on each figure as she said their names. "Cindy," she repeated, "luna, sanguinem, luna, sanguinem, luna, sanguinem. Alex," she said, catching and holding his gaze, "luna, luna, luna, sanguinem, luna, luna, luna, luna..." She let her voice trail off.

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        Ixillius turned from her hard glare, his eyes dropping to her bloodied fingers. Her voice carried on in his thoughts. Cindy, moon, blood, moon, blood, moon, blood. Alex, moon, moon, moon, blood, moon, moon, moon, moon... Her bloods came rarely. Sometimes a sign of a woman being barren.

        His father's first two wives had rarely occurring menstruation as well, mostly as an insult to Ixillius's uncle who had discarded both women as potential brides for that very reason. Ixillius had been born of the first, his mother and brother then dying in his brother's birth. His father's second wife and Ixillius's then infant sister had fallen to a fever that nearly claimed Ixillius as well. His father's third wife, Annia, was blessed with regular bloods, and she often shied from the marriage bed to avoid kindling a child too soon after the birth of Ixillius's young sister. Ixillius had been expecting to hear that she was pregnant again very soon. His father was tenacious.

        "Alex, no blood. No blood, no Alex Traversi," she said it firmly.

        Of all the ridiculous, idiotic... That was why she refused him? She might not bear a child to him? She tried to pull away and he held her in place, reaching past her to soak his fingers and wrapping his arm around her to draw on the table, pinning her in place against him.

"Ixillius father, Ixillius mother. Mother, moon, moon, moon, moon, blood, moon, moon, moon, moon, moon," he paused, exasperated. "By the gods, woman, that's idiotic!"

        He spun her in his arms and trapped her face between his hands, the last of his anger melting at the surprise on all her features. That was it. That was her only reason.

        "How can you be this smart and that stupid at the same time?" he asked gently. "I love you."

        At first she resisted his kiss, then he felt her hands on his neck and her lips parted. Suddenly he was lost in the sensation of her mouth and the lovely things it could do with his. He pulled her away from the table and pushed her backwards to the bed, stripping off all her clothes. Heeding the advice of his friend, he didn't bother stripping off his own coverings yet.