He stepped back, but Siya reached out to snatch his wrist. ‘Kiss me.’
Maadi held her gaze for a sweetly aching eternity and Siya’s nerves buckled.
‘Unless, of course, you don’t . . .’
In a swift, singular motion, Maadi wrapped his hands around Siya’s waist and sat her on the table, on the map of Wagadou, on their meticulously marked strategy. Siya’s hands rose up to his chest and she felt his heartbeat chasing her pulse. When he gently cupped her face and kissed her, Siya realised that her fear of a broken heart, the thing that scared her more than evil men with daggers and despotic uncles, had led to her suffocating that same heart. She realised this because now she felt she could breathe after holding her breath for so long. Too long. Siya was used to feeling elemental, at one with the wind and in control of nature, but right at that moment she felt at the mercy of all the forces of life flowing through her acutely. Maadi tugged on the belt that kept her gown together and caused it to fall from her body like peel from ripe fruit, as her legs anchored around his waist, her skin pinned to Maadi’s, their bodies moving to the rhythm. Their mouths met and answered every question they’d ever had about life’s meaning; they discovered themselves to be philosophers, questioning and debating despite knowing, asking just so they could answer again and again and again. Maadi carried Siya to her quarters and their roles as commander and sergeant interchanged smoothly, with authority shared and ceded. Siya let go of thinking and allowed herself to feel, and what she felt was held but not captured, at his mercy but all powerful. She felt loved and loved and loved again.
Maadi stroked Siya’s hair as she lay on his chest, his heart beating into her ear and thrumming through her blood, calming her. She smiled into his chest. ‘Say what you want to say.’
‘How did you know?’
Siya hoisted herself up so she could prop her elbow on a pillow and look down at his moonlit face. She traced the arcs of his lips. ‘I can read your quiet.’
His mouth curved against her finger before gently nipping it. ‘Siya . . . I’m not good with words. Never have been. I know how to fight and how to strategise. I do it well. But trying to fight the fact that I am in love with you has been my most challenging battle. When your father was alive, I thought it would complicate things. When he died . . . we had other things to focus on. But it was always a losing battle, Siya. I am tired of fighting. I’ve never been happier to lose. I’m surrendering to it. Surrendering to you.’
Siya hoisted herself up further to whisper her ‘I love you’ into his mouth before kissing him, pouring all of her adoration into it. She didn’t know she was crying until he pulled away to brush a tear away from her cheek.
The corner of his mouth quirked. ‘And I promise I will never ask you to marry me.’
Siya snorted. He knew her well.
‘But,’ Maadi continued, ‘I do swear to maintain the vows I made to you. In front of you, clearing a path. Behind you, watching your back. And I want you to know even when I’m not physically by your side, I’ll be by your side. Protecting you.’
Siya’s heart swelled. ‘And you said you weren’t good with words.’
Within that night that somehow contained an eternity of daybreak, Siya grew so accustomed to Maadi’s heat, to his firm arms securing her and to his whispers against her neck that, when she woke up to find an empty space next to her in bed, she felt bereft. Maadi was the one who usually cooked for them, so she’d suspected he’d gone to fix breakfast. However, upon entry, ready to sneak up behind him and wrap her arms around him, Siya found the kitchen vacant. The atmosphere in their home had shifted the way it did when he wasn’t sharing the same air as her. Still, she quashed the sick feeling in her stomach and called his name. No reply. With stilted, ragged breathing and weakened legs, Siya ran to his quarters. His armour was gone. She rushed to every door leading out of their home, only to find them locked from the outside. Her keys were nowhere to be found. She hauled herself at the doors, threw things at them with all her might, tried to pick locks with trembling fingers, but it was to no avail. Siya screamed till her voice was a rasp, running into every room like a madwoman, trying to find anything that might free her. Every tool had disappeared. Maadi had gone to fight Dyabe on her behalf and he’d locked her in because he knew she would never acquiesce to him taking her place.
In that moment she loved him as much as she hated him. Maadi might die. For her. With buckling knees, she staggered to her chamber and picked up her gold bird of paradise pendant, which had been removed the night before, and placed it around her neck. She dressed quickly and wrapped an emerald-green scarf around her hair. She ran to the only other exit she knew: a balcony that looked out on to the hills and steep mountain road. It was high, higher than any of the trees she’d leapt from before. Siya’s stomach swirled at the sight of the depth. This was a risk. Still, she saw no other option; either way, this was life or death. She inhaled deeply and climbed onto the stone ledge, just as her eyes snagged on a familiar figure on horseback in the distance, getting smaller and smaller by the second. Siya called Maadi’s name, twice, thrice, five times, each time with increased, tearful desperation. He didn’t turn around. Siya swore loudly. The man she loved was a stubborn, brave idiot and, if he ended up killed, she would call on all the priestesses in Wagadou to resurrect him just so she could kill him again. She refused to let him break her heart. Shutting her eyes and inhaling deeply, Siya leapt, not thinking of the amount of space below her but of the mission ahead of her.