Page 35 of The Bone King and the Starling

“I’m a thrall…”

“Were a thrall…”

“I just…”

“What?”

“I cannot…” She shakes her head.

“Why?”

“Why?” She sounds shocked. Her lower lip trembles. “Why would you…make such an offer to me?”

“Why do you care?”

“It frightens me.”

Our exchange has become slightly more heated and I find myself riled and wanting to ravage, knowing that I have found awife with whom I can spar, yet annoyed that our sparring over this subject — the subject of her worth — is so constant. I try to ease my tone as I speak next, Puhyo’s words ringing in my mind over again. Easy.

“The gods placed you in my path. When I saw you, they spoke.”

But she’s still shaking her head. “If that were true, you would have made me an offer before bringing me to your bed.”

I find myself unable to counter what she has said with anything but the truth. I rush her, returning to where I sat at her side at the head of the bed. I slide both hands around her neck, tilt her torso back until she’s forced to give me her weight and move in to kiss her. She yields to me, her lips opening like a gift, but I manage restraint like I never have.

“I am weak.” I deny her mouth and instead, plant small kisses over her cheeks. “I have waited a long time for my wife. To have found her, yet be unable to touch her until our return to Ithanuir was too great a torture to imagine. I have…” I falter, knowing this confession will cost me. “I have not taken another before.”

She stares between my eyes, disbelieving. “You are…king…”

“And I am first a believer in Ghabari and Raya. Would he have disrespected Raya so?”

“But…but you…” She shakes her head, seeming to shake off the shock of hearing that hers is the first body I’ve claimed for my own. Her voice grows shrewd as she asks, “Why then did you have Torbun suggest…that I would be offered riches in exchange for my body? You could have simply asked me… You’re the king. I wouldn’t have said no.”

Anger licks up and down my spine, hot and hard to contain. I wrench back, pacing away from her once more and running my hands through my hair. “You would have said yes to the king, but what would you have said to Calai?”

She bites her trembling bottom lip, temptress that she is. I grab my cock. She glances at it and I see that she’s holdingher breath before she exhales words meant to torture me. “You frighten me, Calai. Not just the stories I’ve heard of you as king but your intensity…the way you seem so sure about me.”

“Since when is conviction something to be feared?”

She fists the hem of her tunic and sits back onto her heels. “You don’t even know me. And I don’t know you. We’ve known each other a day.”

“Two.”

She cocks her head.

“I saw you first in the darkness, at your town square. You were strong, tough, even though you are not a warrior and were being intimidated by a much larger boy. That is what I first admired about you. The ferocity I saw in you.”

She touches her mouth. Understanding sunrises in her eyes. “You…were the stranger in the square?”

“I was.”

She touches her chest. “You were very kind. I…” Her cheeks flame pale pink beneath her beautiful brown skin. She glows with her sheepishness, making me want to coddle her to my chest and keep her all to myself, forever. As I will. “I dreamed of you that night. I hoped I’d see you again.”

I smile. “The gods crossed our paths for a reason, Starling. I know that I ask much of you, wife, but even if you still fear me, do not fear the gods. They would not have laid your path over mine for no reason.” I cross the room towards her, knowing I have lingered too long and need to return to the hall. I can hear the rising sounds of commotion, the higher-ranked villagers likely fearing destabilization. Some may even want to challenge my edict. I will need to swiftly put a stop to that. Bloodily, perhaps.

Yet, this is more important.

I wait and watch my little bird make swift calculations in her mind. I know not if she is a believer in the gods, but when shefinally issues me a curt nod, I smile. “You believe me? Believe in the gods?”

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