Her eyes flare with disgust. “Why?”
“I imagine they believe it will soften a king’s heart toward them and make him stay his Eryx blade.”
She stills. Then asks, “Has that ever work?—”
“Not once in the history of our two kingdoms’ pact,” I answer before she can finish asking.
Another mulish silence.
Then she abruptly lies down on the stone floor, curling herself into what I can only describe as a ball of human defeat.
More strange feelings. And though I have completed my first night’s duty, informing her of her role as the Eryx Oblation and forcing her to abandon that ridiculous “I’m not the princess” lie—I find myself hesitating to leave, even though I was expected at the nightly briefing several ticks of the moon ago.
Perhaps I should stay, just until she falls asleep. It is a strange instinct, one I do not fully understand, but?—
“Unless there’s some rule about you standing over me all night, can you please go?”
It is not for an Oblation to command a king. But her voice has a strange wavering quality to it.
And I sense there is something she wishes to do in private. Perhaps the monthly bleeding my father warned me of.
I leave.
And soon after the door clicks shut behind me, I hear a strange hiccupping sound from the other side.
It sounds like...
A memory from a raid a few solars ago flashes through my mind. We never take the lives of females. But for some reason, the party of Desert Travelers we caught attempting to cross our wastelands without paying the proper fees included many of them, and one was quite small.
Though we spared her, she clung to the body of one of the males we’d slain, wailing “Papa! Papa!” over and over. Her cheeks ran wet with some strange liquid, and the sounds she made were unlike anything I’d ever heard, broken and pitiful.
The cries coming from the Eryx Oblation echo hers too closely, and they scrape at something in my chest.
“Son, what are you doing? Everyone is waiting for you at the battle briefing.”
I straighten, startled. My father stands before me.
I was so singularly focused on the sounds coming from my room that I did not hear him approach.
“Is the Oblation crying?” he asks.
Before I can respond, he waves the question away. “They do that sometimes. Yet another manipulation tactic. I swear, they have legions of them up their sleeves. Imagine if they actuallyused those clever minds toward helping their kingdoms amass power.”
He turns. “Now come, son. We are all waiting for you in the war chamber.”
I fall into step beside him, while the Door Gravel assigned to me follows at the mandated ten paces. “Did you not consummate the marriage, then?” my father asks as we walk.
“Not yet,” I answer. Then, after a considering pause, “Perhaps not ever. She is rather… angry.”
“I had an angry one once.” My father rubs his chin, almost fondly.
“The first of the three. She slapped the Mountain Goat guard and wailed about how unfair it was to serve as the Eryx Oblation after living her entire life under the luxuries we provide her kingdom.”
My father makes a scoffing hiss in the back of his throat. “I held out, though. She did not allow me to consummate until the sixth night. I almost gave up and slit her throat without her submission—though Eryx does prefer a conquered bride. But they always try the same tactics. Generation after generation, they never change.”
He gives me a sidelong look. “I am sure your princess will offer herself to you as well.”
“Perhaps,” I reply. But something uneasy twists in my chest. I cannot leave it there. “But Father… she does not seem like the ones you described.”
