“How are you supplied here?” I ask.
“I have what I need.” His tone is distracted. “And as for you, you’ll find clothing in the chest nearest the door. Feel free to change out of that stained tunic. There is fresh water in a shell behind the house.”
He nods with his head toward the side of the house I did not see when we approached.
“And bandages?” I ask, lifting my chin and forcing any other thoughts aside for the moment. “You may object to mydesire to help treat your wound, but I have steady hands and at least I can bandage it. It should not be rubbed and dirtied by your clothing. If you do not have it tended, you will surely die. And not even of magic. Of mere human neglect.”
He drops my wrists as if they have burned him, and steps back and curls protectively over his wound like an injured animal. If he were not such a large, muscled man, I would say he looks wary of me, as if he is trying to protect something vulnerable from an enemy. I understand the vulnerability, but I am no enemy.
“Leave it be” is all he says, and with that he stalks—or tries to stalk, but there’s a hitch in his step—across to the hanging bed.
He pulls himself up painfully and crawls to the far side of it, hunching around himself like a creature about to lick its wounds.
Fool of a man. If he’d accept my help, he might heal. As it is, I have no confidence that his wound won’t fester. If he wants to die, let that be on his own head. This is the last time I will offer to tend it. I’ve never responded well to stubbornness, and I don’t plan to start bending to it now.
I run a hand over my face. There’s a lamp on the table and a tinderbox. I could light it.
But I’m hungry and there’s no food. I’m tired from the day and worn with a combination of new experiences and jagged sorrow and I find I am suddenly too weary to contemplate anything but sleep.
There may be only one bed, but it’s large enough for myentire royal council. What kind of fisherman has a bed so large? It will certainly suffice for us both. Even if he spends all night in unrelieved physical agony and I spend all night in the emotional equivalent.
Reluctantly, I go outside in the dusky light, creep around the side of the cottage over jagged rocks and soft moss, and I find the place where a giant clam shell larger than any I’ve seen before catches water from a little runnel off the roof. The water smells fresh. I drink from the shell and then bathe my hands and face. I wish I could strip off the tunic here and wash myself entirely, but I am not yet so secure as to be willing to parade about the island naked.
I creep back into the cabin. Oke has not moved, but his breath hitches when I enter, so he is not asleep.
I open one of the chests in the fading light with hesitant hope. There is cloth within as he promised. I draw out the first few things I find. They are all men’s things—his, if I had to guess. They are plainly made and large for me. I draw out a tunic made of sailcloth so thin from wear that it’s soft. It will fall to my knees like the other one did. It’s clean, however, and smells of some faint spice.
With a surreptitious look over my shoulder to be sure Oke’s back is still turned, I strip out of his ruined tunic and begin to slip on the fresh one. The neck hangs open, falling over one shoulder.
Behind me, a sharp intake of breath makes me freeze and steal a look behind me. Am I wrong, or is Oke trembling a little, his back still to me? I think I am not wrong.
I shake my head as I drag the rest of the tunic over my form and roll the sleeves up to my elbows. He should have let me tend that wound.
But such thoughts are soon forgotten as I slip into the wide bed, far from my new husband. He does not greet me. We do not touch. But I feel the heat of his body radiating across the space to me as I curl on my own little sliver of bed with my back to him, like two curving maple seeds on the same key.
I bury my face in my hands, and I try to sleep, but what comes instead is a terrible loneliness that cannot be comforted, for there is no Lieve to nestle into. His warm arm will never drape over me again. His sleepy kisses will never again decorate my shoulders and neck, and without them I am bereft. I let myself sob soundlessly into my hands and I think my grief is private until my new husband sits up, making the bed sway, pads across the floor, and steps out into the night.
I sit up, too, worried I’ve angered him, and I wait, wait, wait, until through the open window I see the white sail of his fishing boat by the light of the moon. He’s out on the water and I know he is not returning tonight. I sigh and fall back onto the ragged pillows.
It turns out that plotting revenge and pondering mysteries do not warm the bed the way a husband can. Not even a husband forced to wed a once-queen and wounded in a way beyond considering.
Chapter Eight
Iwake to the sound of a crash, and I sit up to the sight of a turquoise sea and a perfectly clear azure sky through the open side of the cottage. A brisk breeze roughens the ocean and birds dive, screeching, over the water. Everything is too bright, too perfect, too white in the pale morning light. It is as if they conspire to mock the salt stains on my cheeks.
It feels like a hard tackle block in my throat to remember that I’m here because I’ve lost everything and that I can’t even pore over the trade numbers or discuss the problems with the harbor break wall to distract me from the empty years yawning out before me.
The door shudders while I’m still suppressing grief, and framed within it, holding up a mother-of-pearl fish whose eyes are as round as my own, is a young man.
I swallow, blinking for a moment before I realize who it is.
That chiseled jaw is exactly what I expected to see under the thrush-tail beard. And now that it is gone, the rest of his face makes for a very different sight. He has a strong nose, noble features, and steely green eyes. He’s beautiful, if I am allowed to admit it.
He’s untangled his hair and put it in a tidy knot. A cuirass of pearls is strung in ten separate strings so that they form a garment of their own that lies across his bare chest. Even more pearls hang in long strings knotted loosely around his hips in a wide sash. They clatter in the breeze coming in through the window. His feet are bare and his trousers made of sailcloth—plain and serviceable against the contrast of such extravagant wealth.
And he is… formidable. Powerful. Vital in a provoking way. He looks exactly like what he is—god touched. I have one moment of the strangest sensation that I ought to sink to my knees, that I’m seeing something sootherand distant from humanity that I am compelled to bow, but then I suppress it sharply. I am Coralys of the Crocus Isles. I bow to no one but the gods.
It’s the red stain of blood across the left side of his trousers that yanks me out of that strange sensation and reminds me that my husband is dangerous. Not just in the sense that he is feuding with powerful entities but in a new way. The kind of way that makes my cheeks flush hot and guilt taste bitter on my tongue.
