Page 55 of Our Vicious Oaths
“No,” Kadeesha snapped, confused as hell. “Not for the last five days. He’s been busy planning an invasion campaign and the myriad war crimes I’m assuming he’ll commit in the name of vengeance that I am oathbound to aid.” She bared her teeth when Yashira clucked her tongue as ifshehad said something wrong.
Her mother swept a pinched gaze down the length of her.“Don’t be dramatic. Malachizrien is doing what all monarchs in his position would need to do to squelch any future would-be usurpers. As the Apollyon king should be doing, seeing as how he’s sired an heir. I will not have my grandchild, or my daughter, deprived of their life.”
Kadeesha rocked back as if she’d been slapped.“Excuse me?”Then, sensing this was a ruse, she laughed. “I am not with child,” she told her mother, who was either making a terrible joke or going insane. “That is not what this morning’s nausea was due to. Itcan’tbe. I am not in a fertility year, and one is not due to arrive until the next solar year.” Which meant Kadeesha’s window was still several months away. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been fucking Malachi—or anyone else—without a rune in place that suppressed fertility. “I amnotpregnant,” she stressed to her mother.
Yashira sucked her teeth. “Your nose, though it is only a subtle change for now, has spread, girl.”
Kadeesha’s hand flew to her nose. Its proportions felt the same to her. She rolled her eyes.Why do I keep falling for this nonsense?“It has not. And you’re delusional, Mother. You maywishI was pregnant to furtheryouraims, but that is certainly not the case.”
Her mother reached into a pocket of her marigold skirts and produced a handful of thistlegrass. “Then piss on this and prove it,” she said before walking to the adjoining bathing chamber, disappearing inside, and reappearing carrying a chamber pot. She dropped the narrow, thorny green stalks bearing milky-white berries instead of leaves inside the pot and placed the pot on the floor in front of Kadeesha’s feet.
She balked at the plant. Then she balked at her ludicrous mother. “Why do you even have those?”
Yashira gave her a look. “Because when Leisha retrieved me from an afternoon tea with Nychelle and informed me of your symptoms, I thought there was a chance your present condition might be the case. So I stopped by my room first to grab some.”
“So you were told I might be dying and yet you carved out time to grab herbs hoping I was pregnant with a king’s venerated baby instead.” It wasn’t a question—she didn’t make it sound like anything except the scathing rebuke it was.
However, her mother remained unscathed, standing calmly beside the bed. She looked pointedly at the thistlegrass. “Are you going to piss or not, daughter? If you oppose the idea that strongly you should want to prove that you are not with child with expediency.”
Absolutely not.She almost refused out of sheer stubbornness and spite. But her lovely mother was right about one matter: She didquicklyneed to prove that Yashira was mistaken. Now that her mother had placed the possibility in her head, though she knew it was preposterous, her palms were sweaty and she couldn’t get her heart to stop thudding like a drumbeat. She balled her hands into fists and stood up. She shoved down her pants, squatted over the damn plant, and peed in the chamber pot.
“There!” she cried, standing up straight once she was finished. She hauled her pants around her waist and stabbed a finger down at the thistleweed and—“No!”
She stared at the plant. “No!” she rasped once more and sprang away from the berries that had turned a bright pink, as if the thistlegrass had turned into scorpions.“How?”she whispered, shaking like a leaf.
“When a male and female come together in coitus—”
“That’s not what I mean, Mother!”she yelled. “This isn’t possible!”
Yashira brushed Kadeesha’s slender braids over her shoulder so they fell down her back. At first Kadeesha thought she might be trying to comfort her, but Yashira’s gaze fastened on Kadeesha’s Marking—the bite mark felt like a scalding brand after recent revelations. “One of the chief reasons those things fell out of fashion is that they led to great unpredictability in many areas, including tracking fertility windows.”
Kadeesha touched the Marking that Malachi had left on her with numb fingers.Everythinghad turned numb, so much so that it took a moment before she could make her tongue work. When it finally moved, she said, “And you oh-so-conveniently forgot to mention that detail before,” her voice dripping venom at her mother. But that acid was truly for herself, because as much as she’d used Yashira as the easy target, her condition was not her mother’s fault. She hadn’t slept with Malachi since before the day of the challenge, when Yashira first noticed her Marking. Not that there’d been much sleeping …
“I need a tea,” she said hoarsely. “Mother, I need a thistle-berry tea. I need you to brew it for me and do it quietly,” she pleaded. She braced for her mother to argue, to downright refuse, or to impress upon her the hefty value in bearing Malachi an heir. She was already shoring up defenses against the crushing blow any of those responses would deliver. She let out a breath, which she’d been keenly aware of holding the entire time, when Yashira’s sharp-eyed stare gentled.
“If it is what you want, then I’ll brew it. The ingredients must be mixed under the protective watch of Nyaxia, when the moon shines brightest at night, so it’s safest for you to take. You’ve gotten some luck there, as the cycle is right, but it still means I can get it to you no sooner than the morning. In the meantime, I’ll fetch you a tonic to make the nastier symptomsof a new pregnancy vanish in case they arise once more before the morning,” her mother promised.
“Thank you,” Kadeesha heaved out.
“In the meantime,” Yashira cautioned, “stay away from Malachizrien until you’ve terminated the pregnancy if you do not wish for him to know about it. I’m assuming it was a bit too soon after conception when you last saw him. But now that you’re at the stage where a thistleberry test works, if you see Malachizrien, as the father and the other bearer of the Markings that link you two, he’ll be able to scent the pregnancy even in these earliest stages.”
Nodding to her mother, Kadeesha wrapped her arms around herself. When she thought about Malachi’s reaction if he were to find out … She couldn’t say for certain how he’d react, but she knew the issue would result in a vicious clash between the two of them.
And for so many reasons she couldn’t articulate, the idea of such a confrontation dismayed her.
DESPITE YASHIRA’S WARNING, she couldn’t hide away in her room. If nothing else, it was her turn to visit Samira in the infirmary and read from her favorite poetry collection. The Apollyon healers hadn’t suggested it; in fact, they’d downright snubbed it as a valid remedy. Among her folk, though, there was an old belief about stories being fuel for the soul. So somewhere along the timeline of Aether history, the idea developed that reading to a loved one who might be forever lost in the throes of a healing sleep was a way to coax them torouse. It may have only beenfolklore unrooted in any magical healing theorems,as the pedantic Apollyon healers condescended to remind her each time they stumbled upon Kadeesha reading to Samira, but that wouldn’t stop her. She’d do and try everything at her disposal that might evenmerelyincrease Samira’s chances of coming back to Kadeesha. In the face of all of that, Malachi could sniff her neck all he wanted … and then kiss her ass. This was her body, her decision, and he could go fuck himself.
Her hands shook as she opened the leather-bound book in her lap; the immensity of beingpregnant,for Celestials’ sake, had left her lightheaded and with a stitch in her chest all day. She inhaled deeply, reminded herself she’d take care of it when Yashira brought the thistleberry tea, and tried her best to shove the renewed panic aside. She was having little success. But she was in the infirmary for Samira, not to nurse her own damaged psyche, so she pressed on anyway. She bent forward and kissed Samira’s cheek. “I’m here, sister,” she told the female she’d been close with since they were both toddling around the palace’s nursery. “Which poem would you like to start off with today?” she asked conversationally, then swallowed the lump in her throat when only silence answered.The love sonnets.It was the answer Samira would have given if she were awake.Thatparticular topic was the last thing Kadeesha wished to be immured in right now, but, again, it wasn’t about her. She flipped open to the center of the book, where twelve of the most famously penned love sonnets in the realm began.
“Lornian love poems? I never would’ve pegged you as the type,” drawled Malachi’s amused voice.
She froze. Then, she scolded herself for the pitiful reaction and swiveled around to stab him with an icy glower. “You’re interrupting. I’d like privacy with my sister. Go away.” Thesooner he did it, the better. Then perhaps she could avoid any unnecessary topics of conversation that’d be a moot point in the morning.
Malachi, who stood too damn close, only a fraction of an inch behind her—how the hell did this slab of a man move so quietly?—arched an eyebrow. Her eyes traced the shape of it without her consciously thinking to do so. Then, they dipped to his lips that were smugly pressed together. She traced their lush curves too. Amid a lashing internal bewilderment, she realized she’d come to damnably like that ever-imperious eyebrow arch and that rankling smirk. Both draped him in even more wicked darkness, in near-overwhelming carnal energy, above what already cloaked him by way of merely existing. She scowled, because why in the hell was she indulging in such musings? Especially at this precise time?
All she needed to be thinking about was how to shoo Malachi very, very far away.
“I said leave,” she hissed to him. “It wasn’t a request. You’re intruding.”
