Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 137958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
“I understand this, Aramus. Truly I do. But I cannot bear being locked in this room the entire time we’re in Firenze. Or even consider how you wish to hide me away for my protection in the coming months as we travel Triton.”
He heard her hand slide over silk his way, but it stopped before she touched him.
“And you cannot know this, but I’m a good judge of character,” she said.
“How would you like me to put that to the test, Ha-Lah?” he inquired.
“Trusting me,” she whispered.
Aramus fell silent.
Ha-Lah didn’t break it.
Eventually, Aramus did.
“If I do that, and all does not go well, it is not my trust in you that will be broken. If others connive, the loss I could sustain is too precious to bear.”
“For we couldn’t quell the Beast?” she asked.
“For I would lose my wife,” he answered.
He heard her soft intake of breath on his words, but she did not expel it to say her own.
“I would not be Cassius. I do not know you in that way,” he told her. “But the two times of our marriage when you let me in, I like what I know. And I would miss it.”
And I want more, he thought, but did not say.
Though he did not stop speaking.
“You did not know my father, my queen, and for this I am melancholy. He was a fine man. A proud father. But an inveterate pirate. He lived for the times he sailed the sea. Which was why he took a wife much later than the age I found you. He was fifteen years older than me when he made my mother his bride. But his love for her, like all the Nereus men, became legend. When his age meant he knew his life was in decline, he told me if he’d have known his world would be filled with her, he would have given up all his years at sea for just one more at her side. And when he died, it was not age that took my beloved mother. It was facing a life without him that did it. This was why I had our priests scour our lands for you so that I would not taste that regret. For I saw in both my parents that flavor was bitter.”
Her tone was near-on gentle when she said, “Oh, Aramus, that is both beautiful and sad.” And when he made no reply, for she was right, he heard her heavy sigh before she queried, “How do we find compromise, my husband?”
“You have a guard everywhere you go, until I say this no longer needs to be so,” he answered instantly. “You allow a servant to taste your food and drink—”
“Aramus—”
He didn’t allow her to cut in.
“I’m telling you how it will be for you to have what you wish, my queen. This is not a negotiation.”
She again went silent.
“A servant tastes your food and drink and you don’t put it to your lips unless one of my men says you can. You can spend time with the women. In this palace. Not in the city. Petals and coins are all well and good, but not every citizen of Firenze was on that street, Ha-Lah. It could be not conniving, but simply something someone says that would cause you upset, or a look they’d give that would be distressing, and I won’t have that either.”
“I don’t know their language,” she reminded him.
“As you’ve noted, many of them speak Valerian,” he returned. “And all of Wodell, Airen and Nadirii have long since adopted that tongue.”
She made no reply.
“We will talk,” he continued. “You will share how you perceive these women. I will do the same. If we feel we’ve come to trust them, your guard will not need to be that close. But you are queen, Ha-Lah, you will always have one.”
“All right,” she agreed.
“All right about your guard, or all of it?” he asked.
“All of it, if I can leave these rooms, meet people, learn about them, see more of this land, even if it’s simply the chambers of the palace of their king. Yes. I will agree. To all of it.”
Aramus smiled and through it said, “Are you an adventurer, my Ha-Lah?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had the opportunity. But the little I’ve had, I know I like.”
She had not had the opportunity.
Something else he now knew about his wife.
“Then we will see about making you safe so you can widen your adventures, wife,” he decided.
“This would be appreciated, husband.”
They both fell silent and Aramus determined that the next night when they were abed, he would not be sharing.
He’d be asking things about her.
In the dark of their room, as quiet fell over them, the entirety of the night and the rum and their agreement settled in and Aramus felt his eyelids getting heavy.