The Vixen Trials

More kissing??

"You can't kill and tell,
but do you kiss and tell?"

Malek

Malek usually enjoyed his daily sword training lesson with the Hattavah, but something was off. After Keilah left, the Hattavah seemed to be struggling to hold back a smile and it wasn't because Malek had done something silly like dropping his shield. Something was up, but what?

After they splashed themselves clean with a bucket of well-water, Malek followed the Hattavah back to his room

"Time to dress nicely," the Hattavah said with a mocking grin. "We're off to be kissed, or at least you are."

Trepidation flooded him. "Not that Lady Silsa. I refuse. I quit. I will wash your smalls for you Hattavah and sleep on all your daggers and even eat your bowl of lek-duck soup, but not another kiss like that."

"No choice, I'm afraid. It's your duty to draw them off me."

Malek snorted. "No lady of sense would chose me over you. You have the mystery, the intrigue, the danger. I just nearly killed the Queen-Priestess. A failure actually. I think I'll take off these earrings."

"You leave them on," Dakkoul ordered. "And wear that tunic of yours, the nice one that you wore at the Fox dance."

"Lost it," Malek said with a casual shrug and a strong hope the Hattavah would not probe.

"Lost it?" Dakkoul exploded. "How could you lose something special like that? That's a gift you can't buy. Only a winning Fox-dancer gets one. It's a collectible."

"Sold it, then." Hadn't got nearly what it was worth either.

Dakkoul muttered away for a bit, then said, ungraciously, "You can have this nice tunic of mine then. Think I'll select this tatty one here, the one that makes me look very ordinary."

"I'd rather wear what I have on," Malek said tightly but he was forced into one of Dakkoul's iconic Hattavah outfits, a dashing black tunic with a silver trim and with a flashy looking dagger tugged into his belt

"You know," Dakkoul said with a cheeky glint in his eye. "It occurs to me we look rather alike".

"Not that alike," Malek demurred, a sense of alarm creeping over him. It was one thing to kiss a willing girl of his own choosing, quite another to be forced to perform for a strange lady with an audience watching. He really didn't want to do that again.

"Very alike," Dakkoul proclaimed with a suspicious hint of jubilation in his voice. "I bet if I called you the Hattavah, they'd believe me."

So that was his terrible, terrible plan. "No, they wouldn't. You are very well known."

"Not since the shunning. I haven't been out much since then. And those ladies are young. They won't know me."

"Lady Silsa would know."

"She'd probably like a good joke. I'm going to suggest it to Lady Keilah."

"Don't you dare," Malek said, horrified. "They want you."

"My kisses are my own," Dakkoul said loftily. "You do precious little else. You would actually be helpful to me, which was your stated wish."

"I lied."

"What a pity I believed you."

Unfortunately for him, Lady Silsa did think it was a brilliant idea. "Serve them right, for tricking me about kissing. Daddy said they were teasing me. Well, I'll tease them back." She proceeded to giggle the entire way there and even Keilah kept chuckling.