Without a wound, without a scratch, there was not an excuse Yalira could find to speak to Mathais, to explain her mistakes, to beg forgiveness. She could not play the healer still dressed in the costume of a bride. Instead she watched him, crowned with laurel, disappear into the echoes of his victory.

Just as she was to disappear in the chorus of her own celebration.

In whispering daylight, the crowds had thinned to trailing lines that turned and waved as the chariot passed. Offerings of coin and grain had long since been swept away, but the crushed petals still floated on the street. Although she was nearly tucked beneath his arm, sheltered from the wind that whipped at his golden hair, Yalira shuddered. Hollow dread stole through her veins, leeching the warmth from her skin.

Bright sunlight, aching heat, suffocating ceremony—they had kept reality confined to bounded moments. But now? In the wake of death, Eheia's cold shadow, the next wedding battle filled her with doubt and mute terror.

She had been full of righteous anger in Antalis, ready to endure any abuse he might have inflicted. She had been terrified to hysteria the night she'd delivered the false news of his mutant son. In submitting to this power, Yalira had considered the task with clinical disinterest. It would be another physical tithe—bleeding under the moon, breathing the ether of the mountain—to become something more.

The sacrifice had not seemed so great before now.

Queens and advisors, high-born guests and politicos lined the entrance, ready for continued revelry, more opportunities to leave their tithes of well-wishes. In between each sculpted smile, their faces flashed like jackals.

Andar was her guide to the unknown, a golden flame drawing her into darkness. Bodies crowded around them, desperate to smile and simper. They followed his footsteps, determined shadows, eager to find their dinner seat beside him, to find his ear listening.

Andar had arranged to disappoint them.

With a mouth that echoed in silent laughter, he guided Yalira to a table set apart. Seated for two, to look upon the others from across the room. Among the courses, there would be no place for honey-dripping tongues.

"If I've learned anything about weddings," he said. "It's that there's never any time to eat."

His wryness was only meant for her ear. The absurdity of Andar of Tyr having any sort of wedding commentary would have been enough to twitch the corner of her mouth, but the confident tone—as if he were the king of weddings—broke her face into an incredulous smile. Fueled by exhaustion and hunger, it grew into soft laughter.

The image of the pair, leaning close in private humor, set a flurry of whispers upon the first courses. Olives and herbed cheese were spiced with rumors and innuendo. Wine was sweetened with secrets. Scheming and gossip dominated the banquet tables, and yet the guests seemed happier for it.

"Do they think that we cannot hear them?" she asked, breathing the words over her wine. Her stomach felt too tied into knots to attempt anything solid.

"I've spent so many years ignoring them," Andar murmured. His hot breath on her neck left a trail of gooseflesh. "I imagine they think I am deafened."

Yalira's smile bloomed and withered. She had once feared the warrior, the beast, that destroyed her temple. This Andar was dangerous: the Andar who promised her the power of words. Spice and sunlight. His thumb traced spirals into the back of her hand, his body bent close to hers. She drowned the dryness of her mouth with another swallow of wine.

"Are you attempting to seduce me, husband?" she asked, tripping over the word. When Rishi had given her weapons to use against him, Yalira understood that their wielding required a coyer hand. The game the wives played with him—the strategic seduction—demanded that sacrifice. And yet, her words were as prim and puckered as an elder priestess's, touched with her own breathy nervousness.

"Would you stop me if I said yes?"

"We've discussed it." She turned to stare ahead, resolute. "I'm not running."

Yalira's grip tightened around her wine, anchor and shield.

You can bear this.

The thought echoed with hollow determination. As a priestess of Antala, she was not unfamiliar with the anatomical mechanics that were required of such a thing. She was versed in the physiology of the process, the consequences of coupling. Andar of Tyr would be just another body.

That body's hand moved to brush across her spine. She flinched.

Goddess grant me strength.

Andar's smile twisted, his wolfish eyes shadowed. He withdrew his overwhelming presence, but that bright burning between them was hauntingly resolute.

He did not speak to her for the rest of the meal, did not touch her. Left alone, Yalira searched for Rishi, Oristos, a helpful spirit to center the anxious waves. From her small island, trapped with Andar, Yalira could not find them. Each forced bite of spelt cake, of spiced lamb, turned to ash in her mouth. She drowned away the fear with wedding libations.

Various men stood to make speeches, to share their congratulations. None matched the succinctness of Andar's lieutenant in the rubble of Antalis—To your commander! To your queen! To the pack of lions she's sure to bear!—but their loquaciousness did not fully mask the same message. For all their eloquence and cleverness, as the wine found its way to bloom in their cheeks, tongues loosened and clever euphemisms devolved into laughter. These civilized schemers howled with the same voices as the warriors they disdained.

Andar stood, pulling Yalira up with him, and the world became quiet.

His words to them were incomprehensible in her head, but the intent was clear. The lascivious smiles and congratulatory gestures from the men, the half-buried jealousy from the queens. Yalira swallowed the bubble of anxiety that boiled in their wake, her hand clammy in Andar's grip.

Each congratulations rang with the memory of the priestesses's chanting, each step was further into the mountain. Deeper and deeper into the palace, to an altar where she would be offered for slaughter.

Yalira consoled herself that the loss was less than she once believed. If their words had been chosen, her prophecies and visions tailored, what was she truly sacrificing? If her power was contrived by false truth tellers, was she losing anything at all?

Her fingernails bit into her skin. Pride is not so high a price.

But Andar did not lead her to the deep cavern of his chambers. Though the edge of his bed sat threateningly behind the sheer curtains, Andar guided her to sit before a tended hearth. Ink and paper and oiled wood, those library touches, pervaded. Alien and familiar, intimate and removed.

In smooth movements, Andar handed her a glass of dark wine. Yalira bristled at the flat presumption of his smile, but took it with trembling fingers. She brought the deep red to her mouth, eyes searching for a distraction from the assuming silence.

"I take it that you did not enjoy the contents of that chest."

His words played with a knowing arrogance that sparked familiar irritation near her heart. Yalira clung to it. It was safer than this torture of anticipation.

"Did you read them?"

"Not thoroughly," he said. Lazily indifferent, Andar sipped at his own wine from a lounge across from her. "They did not contain what I wanted."

Curiosity outweighed the flash of indignant fire.

"The reason you stole me from Antalis?"

His bright smile answered. "Admittedly, that choice was unexpected."

They had not delved into another game of truth and lies, but Yalira felt the pull of his words. Perhaps she was not goddess-blessed—perhaps there were no goddess-blessings—but it did not change that she felt the truth as clearly as she felt the silk of her wedding dress against her skin, the heat of the fire against her back.

"And why is that?"

Molten gold burned through her. The long lines of his body were draped and coiled, relaxed and taut. It was as if his form could not fully loose, a strung bow.

"You tell me, Yalira."

"You've already mentioned you didn't like an herb-addled girl holding a piece of power at the edge of the world."

Laughter like rain.

"But you're not an herb-addled girl, are you?" he purred, dangerously familiar.

The hot burn of wine, the pulse of gravity between, alit recklessness. The tendons in his wrist, the strong hands that encircled his glass, the lazy tilt of his mouth—dread became determination. If she were to be sacrificed at his altar, Yalira wanted it on her terms.

With deliberate slowness, she placed the glass aside and moved to sit beside him, to press her hot palm to his skin and seal her sacrifice with a kiss.

His smile did not change. A statue to bear her chaste touch, smoldering gold and bronze held for a moment before discipline crumbled. The flickering energy that lived between them tugged.

Hands left trails of prickling flesh in their path across her arms, her shoulders, as they tangled into her hair. Breaths intertwined, the world fell only to be reformed in the bonds of golden skin and taut muscle.

A curious hand to a flame, his touch pulsed—desire and disgust—against her skin and left her burning. The fire was everywhere, the fingers in her hair, the fist twisted into the smooth folds of her skirt. Breath seared across her lips, her neck. Hips hovered over hers, legs intertwined. His mouth demanded and then fled, pushed and then teased.

A collision of gold and copper, Yalira imagined pulling his head closer to hers, skimming her fingers against corded muscle, capturing his breath to steal his ecstasy. He moved too quickly for her to ensnare, too powerfully for her to control. As certainly as her hands reached for him, they flinched away. The maliciousness of the bed chamber beckoned, igniting the vengeful thoughts she knew she should have, the conditioned fear of this dreaded surrender.

Trapped in his embrace, she was a vessel to his purpose, only she had not imagined that this submission would be so easy.

The heat of the hearth paled to the gooseflesh his retreating skin left across hers.

"Not yet."

"Why?" The word ripped from her lungs, the base of her fear, the heart of frustration. His restraint was cruelty.

Andar's bronze eyes narrowed in amusement. He pulled away, viciously unaffected.

"Would you prefer I ravished you?" He laughed without humor. "It doesn't suit my purpose."

She could not find a word in response. Sounds and emotion escaped her chest, her swollen lips, but they were not speech. Hot shame battled relief and indignation, staining her face in hideous rose. Pushing away, desperate to build a space, to deny that insistent tug between them, Yalira stood and smoothed her skirt. Jaw tight, she bowed to excuse herself.

"Don't leave."

It was a command, but not one of passion. Despite the fervor of his body upon hers, Andar of Tyr was victim to desire. The burning behind his eyes hardened, the softness of his mouth taut. Realization further burned into her blush: she had lost herself to mortal ecstasy and he had not lost anything.

Desperate to cling to a shred of her pride, she balked at his order. "If you don't want me—"

"Do you think you're clever?" he interrupted.

She swallowed, tongue thick in her mouth, voice trapped in embarrassment's vice. Those eyes on her heavy as stone, sharp as obsidian. Yalira crossed her arms across her chest, her skin prickling at their roving disapproval.

"I know what games my wives play." He stood to fill the corners of the room, to burn more brightly that the fire. His words fell to low, dark incredulity. "I never imagined that you would join them."

Yalira found her voice in the pit of her stomach. "What would you have me do?"

Despite the distance and his silence, she was trapped. Andar turned to pour fresh water into his basin, to remove his ornamental clothing, piece by piece. The vulnerability of nudity did not bother him. He met her eyes with the challenge, as comfortable in skin as he was in armor.

"Sleep with me." Long muscles flexed and loosed. His smile dimmed that shimmering anger that lurked beneath golden skin. "Or risk the world knowing you you've already lost the interest of your new husband."

Yalira forced herself to meet his eyes, to ignore the powerful lines of his shoulders, the sharp edges of his chest, the sloping valley below his hips. He was angles and hardness, as soft as the gold and bronze imbued into his skin.

He's just a man.

A man sculpted by gods, a man who owned the world.

Wrapped in the long folds and layers of her wedding gown—unwilling to ask for Andar's help to remove it—Yalira followed him to the bed, her heart a hammer in her chest. She had not expected to be out-maneuvered, not when Rishi said seduction was a simple play.

Inches from his slow breaths, she forced her own shallow and fought her thoughts until dawn. Uneasy rest, asleep next to a lion, the monster that was her husband.

A/N:

Surprise update!