His eyes met hers. “Can we fight for each other?” he asked softly.
Fight for each other. Not just for an alliance, but for each other. She felt the soft knocking at her heart.
They ate quietly, exchanging reassuring glances. When they were finished, he stood and offered his arm, as she expected. She took it and let him walk her back to the sanctuary. The returning ease between them brought back a comfort she’d missed.
When they reached the alcove, she stopped and turned to him. Mikael pulled her closer, threading his fingers in hers. He smelled of smoky earth and lemon thyme, and she breathed him in. His touch, his warmth… “Stay,” she found herself saying.
His lips parted in surprise, and he nodded.
Norah led him inside the sanctuary, where he waited for her cue. She wavered. “I didn’t mean… intimately.”
He nodded again.
She wondered if he could hear the lie on her lips, but she couldn’t allow herself that tonight. Not yet. Her mind wandered back to what she’d once told Tahla—that she’d only hoped for friendship with Mikael, to be strong allies.
That wasn’t true.
She wanted more between them.
But she hadn’t given herself to him since their wedding, and they seemed to be different people now. Different people who needed to make this step forward again, as if it were the first time. But before that could happen, she needed them fully well, and for that, she needed more time, with him. She needed them to be closer.
They stood in the candlelit silence.
“Can I simply sleep beside you tonight?” he asked.
Sleep. She needed sleep. But she didn’t know if she trusted him. She didn’t know if she trusted herself.
But she wanted him to stay, and she nodded.
He reached back, between his shoulders, and pulled his shirt over his head and then sloughed off his boots. Then he lay on the bed under the quilts with his arm stretched out to his side.
She glanced down at her dress. A nightgown would be more comfortable, but she had absolutely no intention of changing clothes with him so close, even in the side bath chamber.
Norah sat on the edge of the bed and then shuffled back and under the quilts. She laid her head on his outstretched arm, and he pulled her close to him. The heat from his body seeped into her, quieting her shiver. She let his nearness calm her, and she closed her eyes in the warmth of his being.
Then she drifted into dreams.
When Norah opened her eyes again, it was morning. Mikael lay beside her, his breaths long and rhythmic. She’d slept deeply, feeling safe, feeling right. Was this right?
She shifted back, careful not to wake him, and propped her head on her elbow. He lay on his back, and she gazed over the patterned skin of his chest and torso. It wasn’t often she was free to simply look at him, to study him. Close and unhurried.
At the base of his throat, shoulder to shoulder, spanned a thick collar of inked design. Overlapping shapes like plated spears edged the top, with hanging banners like the night sky. The color of his skin created an image against the black, resembling the peaked arches of the kingdom’s architecture. She reached out and drew her fingertips across it. She liked this one. He bore the only one like it. The other designs were the same as those of the lord commander—the braided motif on his right chest and the banding that ran to his right shoulder around a ring of mountains centered by a sun against a black circle. This one she didn’t like. Without thinking, she scratched at it with her fingernail.
“They don’t come off,” he said, his eyes still closed.
She bit her lip.
“You don’t like my markings?”
“Not this one,” she admitted. “It’s the same as the lord commander’s.”
He opened his eyes and turned his head toward her, inhaling a waking breath. “It’s when we fled Bahoul,” he said.
She ran her fingernail over the ring of mountains.
“To Kharav,” he added to his story as she made her way along the design. Her fingers grazed the sun. “And I became salar. It’s Soren’s story too. It’s why he bears the same.”
“He has a black sun. Yours is the color of your skin against a black circle.”
“Because I’m salar. My skin is the sun.”
Norah drew her brows together. “Why a sun?”
“That’s what salar means.”
She almost laughed. “The Shadow King is called the Sun?”
“Yes,” he said, giving a small smile. “As are you. Salara.”
She drew her hand back to the design across the top of his chest.
“It’s called a khlavik,” he said. “The mark of salar.”
She traced the patterned bands circling down his arm, admiring the intricate detail. “What do these mean?”
“Histories of our people, duties, my purpose,” he said.
She brushed a bare space on his left chest. “There’s nothing here.”
“It’s not finished.” He was quiet for a moment. “I’d saved it for Mercia’s defeat, but instead it will be the story of you becoming my salara. I haven’t gotten it yet because I was waiting for the right time. I wanted you to be there.”
“To get the marking?”
He nodded.
This was important to him, she knew. And what was important to her was that he was letting her in. It was more than just his words now, more than just his touch. He was building her into his story, giving her a piece of him.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” she asked. “I mean, maybe you should think about it more.” She tilted her head slightly as the corner of her mouth turned up. “It doesn’t come off.”
He chuckled as he rolled to his side. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since you agreed to wed me in Aviron.” His eyes shone brightly in the light of the morning. “Will you come with me, Salara?”
“I’ll come,” she said softly.
He smiled.
“What will it look like?” Norah asked as they walked past the gardens and toward a large temple. It had been two days since he’d told her he wanted to write their story in ink, and that was where they were headed now.
“I don’t know. We go to Salta Tau, and the Gift will show her the story and give her the image for my body.”
“Salta Tau?”
“Mastera of the ink.” He stopped and took her hand. “This is very special. It’s a ceremony, a long one. Soren will be there, and my mother.”
She nodded. She could tolerate the lord commander for a time, so long as she didn’t have to speak to him. Or look at him. Or acknowledge his presence.
They reached the temple, and he led her through a series of halls back to a large open chamber. As he’d said, Salara-Mae was there, as was the lord commander. They stood on opposite sides of the chamber from each other. In the center of the room stood an old woman. She wore a simple, light linen gown, with her long white hair pulled back into a thick braid behind her.
The woman bowed. “Salar. Salara.”
“Salta Tau,” Mikael greeted back, bowing his head.
Watching him, Norah did the same.
The old woman spoke in the Kharavian tongue, but Mikael answered so that Norah could understand. “I come for the story of my salara,” he said.