Hearts in Zenith (Four Husbands and a Lover)

45. The Intimately Familiar

Back in the Deadhead Company's compound, I sent the stable-hands running, until Breva was cared for to my satisfaction. And couldn't resist brushing her down, while my thoughts returned to the mysterious assassin. A scorpia assassin, a cross-dresser who ignored the Tenets so brazenly, didn't scare me as much as it should have. It was too thrilling a combination of flaws. He was after me... a man was after me! If he wasn't as ugly as sin, I might have even looked forward to the eventual show-down.

The brush glided down Breva's shining mane again and again. How would Parneres fare in place of this man? I couldn't imagine him hunting the streets in disguise, with a blade up his sleeve. His amused eyes, his evasive, slightly sad manner didn't go well with a cutthroat. Plus, something in the way his cousin had slapped him and how this humiliation had diminished him— No, he wasn't an assassin. He was something else.

But what was he? I chewed my lips. The answer was all too obvious with his good looks. A bait. A seducer. A gatherer of pillow-talk. Or, in less flattering terms... nothing that was good for his soul, that's for sure. I had to do what I had promised and save him. And I was stalling. Oh, Parneres, why did you have to run away, my sweet, my beautiful, my... a sigh replaced the last word.

Maybe that was all he was, my sigh. My girly dream. I was a woman with two husbands now and a mother. And yet, I brushed the same strand of Breva's mane, remembering how his face shone on the night we had celebrated Kozima's delivery from Lydia. How I was sure we had a heart-bond on that night. The memories made my heart's ache fresh.

Breva neighed and nuzzled my shoulder sensing my longing. Her neighs were too soft to return me to the real world, but Miccola wasn't so subtle. Her exasperated voice shattered my reverie.

"There she is, hale and whole, your wife and Mistress!" Miccola hollered, spooking the horses.

She was holding Kozima by the elbow. His eyes widened in a helpless plea. Even shortened, the irrepressible curls sprung up in a wild nimbus above the sweating forehead. But at the sight of me, the harassed expression melted into one of pure joy.

While he was out of the house daily to manage the business, this was a rougher part of town, and he must have argued with the guards to let him in until Miccola rescued him. Or worse, they were too friendly, until Miccola rescued him. I made a mental note to find out and put the fear of Indara in any woman who dared to harass my husband.

"Your Grandissima, unless you want your young husband spending the night in our barracks, I suggest you escort him home at your earliest convenience," Miccola needled me. "The curfew is only an hour away."

I mumbled 'thank you', remembering how much she'd always praised Kozima. My eyes must have narrowed to slits, because Miccola let go off Kozima's arm. She blew out a sigh along with some more grumbling about the Empress' cats.

I didn't listen. Kozima didn't leave me for Anastasia's saree. He most certainly didn't look at Miccola with anything but apprehension. I thought about what I would say to him for three months in the birthing retreat. And none of it prepared me for my heart lurching at the first sight of him. The poets praised the new intensity of love a woman finds for men after giving a new life to the world. I was an average woman in that respect—it hit me like a horse's hoof.

"I'm sorry." He dry swallowed after his apology and went on mumbling: "You were due to return today, and the night was falling—"

I drank him in with my eyes. The only thing I could do, despite going weak at the knees with urge. I didn't want Kozima to sleep in the barracks. I really didn't.

"Let me take you home, Zish." My voice, it dropped so low.

His lips parted in a pretty little gasp in response to the huskiness of it.