Anestan blinked at the warm sun on her face. She closed her eyes and stretched, the scratching of her nails against her palm telling her that she did not dream. Her limbs felt stiff. It was the price she paid for the wine she'd drank the night before. Just enough to numb her before they'd retired to the bedroom. Farahd was Anestan's first experience bedding a man, and although she didn't find the process entirely unpleasant, it provided a pointed reminder of what she'd lost.
She moved in increments to her other side, the silk sheets hissing beneath her exposed skin. Farahd’s bare back came into view, the broad expanse broken by thin scars. His sides rose and fell with the slow and steady breath of a man asleep.
Resentment swelled within her. That he would sleep so soundly, naked and vulnerable next to her, stirred her temper. What was she to him but a playing piece, now captured? For all his noble words, his actions told her that he thought her little more than a girl, harmless and easily dismissed.
Her gaze on the rise and fall of her husband’s back, Anestan reached a hand beneath the heaping pillows to feel up and behind the wooden headboard.
A patch of canvas met her fingertips. Ah, she thought to herself, didn’t think to look here, did they? Farahd's soldiers had searched the room the morning of the wedding, but it had been hasty. The entire process had been hasty. Even her wedding dress, which should have been extravagant beyond anyone's dreams, had been held together in places with pins, the seams unfinished. She suppressed a snort. But what could she expect? She was one of the jheranun, a daughter of a House that stretched back to the founding of Hajinn. She had few illusions of romance. Farahd needed the First Seat, and as she was the only scion of the First House, he'd taken her to make his claim legitimate. Pointless posturing.
With careful hands, Anestan extracted a wad of cloth from beneath the canvas. Slowly, she thought as she brought the wad of cloth before her. If he catches you now, there will be questions even you can’t answer.
From within the folds of cloth, Anestan pulled a silver dagger. It was too small to cause anything more than laughable harm to the hardened soldier. Anestan handled it with care. The venom of the desert's hooded rogue, a particularly poisonous breed of snake, coated the blade. She would have to but prick the surface of Farahd’s skin and his death would be assured. It would be so easy.
Anestan turned the knife over in her hands, considering. The knife had not been her idea. Her mother’s face, pale and sickly as the sounds of battle rained down upon the palace, shone from the depths of her memory.
“He’ll want to take you for wife,” her mother had said, drops of sweat glistening on her forehead by torchlight. “They’ll look for traps, but only for traps with a trigger, not ones wielded by a human hand.” Her mother had disclosed the location of the dagger. “Please, Anestan,” she had said, “we need you. The war is lost.”
Anestan’s lip curled. They needed her now did they? After sixteen years of being largely ignored, now they chose to whisper in her ear, “This is your chance, Anestan. Make us proud.”
Ten years ago she would have given anything for such a chance. She would have given her life to have her parents treasure her as something more than a prize to be married off to another jheranun. Sixteen years ago, they had hoped for a son, a strong and virile heir. Instead, they had birthed her—plain little Anestan.
She’d started bribing the cook when she was eleven. The herbs to stop her mother from conceiving had been difficult to find, but with the help of Nehara, her childhood playmate and constant companion, she had been able to manage. When she was fourteen, she’d begun to dispose of her bastard brothers with quiet efficiency. It had been damned near impossible at times. Bastards were always so cautious. And now, with a simple prick of the knife, could she claim succession to the First Seat? If she killed Farahd now and freed her mother and father, there was still the chance they would not name her as heir. Her mother was still of childbearing age, and her father had shown signs of interest in grooming a bastard for the part. He could always sire another. It would be simple for them to shunt her aside again. And what would they give her? A pat on the head?
YOU ARE READING
Songweaver's Awakening
FantasyIn Hajinn, singing isn't just forbidden: it's well known that it drives people mad. When Rajheem, a boy who loves music above all else, is plucked from his lowly existence to become the personal minstrel to Raja Helen, Third Seat of Hajinn, he is o...
