“At least someone appreciates my cooking,” I tell her.
She licks the stone where the meat was and looks up for more.
“Don’t pretend it’s good. I can barely eat it myself.” I give her another strip. “When I lived in the city, I ate at the cookhouses. I never made a single meal until I moved out here. You can see how that’s going.”
She purrs and works on the second strip, and I go back to the basin.
I wash the plates, the pot, and the serving bowl, and I leave Esme’s cup last. I hold it in front of me and stare like a fool at the faint imprint of her lips.
She asked me to let her go. She sat across from me with her chin up and her voice steady, and asked me to let her go. I told her the truth. She can leave whenever she wants. She can stay as long as she needs. I’ll ask nothing from her. I meant every word, though I could tell she didn’t quite believe me. Her face told me she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. If she can’t trust anyone, it’s all her parents’ fault.
She’s frightened of me. At the market, her eyes went to my stinger, and the fear hasn’t left her since. She told me not to touch her the first time I offered her my hand. Her parents used law and money to control her, and the old male they chose for her would’ve used the marriage contract the same way. I won’t be another male who does that to her. Whatever my blood wants, she keeps her choice, and if her choice is a life far away from me, she’ll have it.
I set her clean cup on the shelf and let myself admit the rest, since no one is here to hear it. I want her across my table at every meal, I want the sound of her voice to fill these empty rooms, and I want more than that… More than I have any right to think about while she’s asleep in her bedroom and afraid of me. I could carry the wanting for the rest of my life without ever laying it on her. The rut is what I can’t carry, and it will come whether I allow it or not.
Varys’s tincture barely works on me anymore. If Esme stays, the rut will begin in full, and once it begins, control becomes temporary. My instincts will narrow to one command: chase, catch, mate, claim. The male who promised to ask nothing of her will be gone, and what’s left could attack her, hunt her through the house, out in the desert…
So, my kindness has a limit I didn’t tell her about.“Stay as long as you need,”I said, and I was honest, but lying at the same time. Because I can feel it boiling in my blood. I hate that the one decent thing I have to give her comes with an end she can’t see coming.
I finish in the kitchen, put out the lights, and decide before I reach my room that I’m going to see Varys the next day.
I barely sleep that night, and I leave before the sun is up. The women’s doors are closed and their rooms quiet.
I take the car down the valley road, with the cliffs still black on both sides.
Varys lives in the center of Haara. Shaman work pays well here. Scorpii bring their shamans bloodline questions, mating troubles, venom rites, fertility fears, and every curse rumor in the desert. They pay handsomely for the answers, so a good shaman never lives poor.
Varys could’ve bought a place high on the cliffs, with the old families, where the air moves and the terraces catch the wind. He stays at the center instead, at the level where the main stairways and bridges cross, so that no client has to climb half the city to reach him. His house is broad and deep, carved straight into the black rock, with clean shade cloths over the entrance, and a heavy door worn smooth where clients push it open.
He opens before I knock a second time.
“Osric Aren.” He smiles wide enough to tell me he’s been waiting for my visit. “The male who went to Concord for one bride and came home with two humans. Come in before the neighbors count a third.”
“Does the whole city know?” I step past him.
“The whole city knew before the portal shimmered closed behind you. Aldric Elmsley’s daughter and her servant girl, riding down the valley road in your car.” He shuts the door andwaves me deeper into the house. “I’ve heard the story from four clients already. One of them doesn’t even like you, so I charged her double.”
I want to be angry about it but can’t manage any anger at all. Everyone in Haara talks, but Varys has never once repeated anything I’ve told him inside these walls. Exasperation is the most I can offer, and he sees it and enjoys it.
His receiving room is the finest room I’ve been in since I sold my house in the city. Cushioned benches line two walls for waiting clients, shelves of sealed vials cover the third, and racks of old family records fill the back, behind a low stone table and a lamp that’s burning low.
We sit down, and the jokes stop, though his face stays warm.
“The tincture’s failing,” I tell him. “Three drops used to put the heat out. Now they barely lower it. I’ve been taking more, though I didn’t tell you. I had to take four last night.”
“I expected it to fail at some point, if I’m honest,” he said. “No tincture holds a rut down forever. Your body has learned its way around it. That’s what happens when a male takes it as long as you have.”
“Then make it stronger.”
“I will. Five drops instead of three, and when five stops working, seven, and every dose will buy you less than the one before it.” He rises while he speaks and starts drawing vials down from the shelf. “Higher doses buy time, but that’s about it. I need you to hear that part, not just nod at it.”
“I hear it.” I watch his hands measure and pour. “There’s more. She’s my mate. The clicking starts every time she’s near me. I’ve kept it down so far, and she doesn’t know what it is.”
He keeps measuring and pouring without a word. He takes his time before he answers.
“A human,” he says.
“A human. So, tell me the truth. If she’s truly mine, if the bond is real, would she survive the sting?”
