"How can we stand in this room and blame natural disorder on divine vengeance? Are we not men of logic? Of thought?" Oristos's voice rang through the forum with seductive insistence. "Plagues, famine, chaos—these are the challenges nature sets before us to overcome with reason! Pray to your gods, but do not leave them to fight our battles."

Rishi yawned loudly beside Yalira. The feigned boredom of it drew irritated eyes, but the Lytvian queen only smiled in blithe apology. She turned to beg again, whispering her discontent.

"Let's go bathe or ride or drink... anything besides this dull bickering."

Yalira shushed her, her lips tilted. Rishi had soured at the uneventful wedding night, at Yalira's inability to seduce Andar. She puckered further at the thought of attending more forum sessions and fewer parties. Rishi disliked this strategy. But Yalira was hungry for news, for the hint of a new path, and for the chance to endear the elite of Semyra to her side in the wake of Andar's refusal. Each of these meetings afforded her opportunity: she had brought a tonic to ease old Emrys's aches, begrudgingly made a poultice for Rodan's leg. Smiles and medicines traded for trust.

Rishi's feigned attempts to valiantly endure, however, were distracting. The Lytvian queen's fickle whims toward their goals—and her reluctance to use the forum—made it difficult to strategize. Although she'd spun a tempting future, she seemed ambivalent to achieving with any plan outside of Andar's chambers.

Lyroc stood to counter Oristos, his smile oily beneath his cropped beard. "But the timing, my friend! A wave of illnesses through the slums, rebellion in Prynia, Volys amassing an army at the rumors of Tyran invasion, stillborn sons and whispers of far worse... can we afford to pretend to be blind to this pattern?"

"What whispers do you speak of, Lyroc?" Oristos smiled in lazy challenge. "Or do you mean to trade in gossip and secrets?"

The forum rumbled with laughter. They had taken Yalira's slight against the man—the idle comparison of his flattery to womanish prattle—to heart, and the returning pulse of it scattered chuckles through their sessions. A petty legacy, but one that twitched the corners of her mouth.

Rishi groaned again.

"Let's go," she said, pulling Yalira's attention from Lyroc's rebuttal. It was false pleading, but the willful ringing spurred her to stand. There would be no room for intrigue if Rishi was not in the mood to help her.

"—at the temple of Carthas. A flayed back, a single eye!" Yalira froze, the long golden touches of light, arrows against the marble, brushed her hem. "How can we not look to the divine?" Rishi's arm through hers tugged, the queen oblivious to the words. "The gods must be displeased."

"The gods do not punish the innocent." Yalira's voice rang from that highest tier of the forum, raining on the audience below with the low authority of a high priestess as she pulled away from Rishi. But while the proclamation garnered approving nods from most, Lyroc son of Lyroc sneered. His features were symmetrical, his eyes bright, his jaw sharp. And yet, in that moment, Yalira had never seen an uglier creature.

"She cannot speak here without permission," he snapped. "She should not speak here at all."

Andar, who had been silent, answered softly. "You speak of your queen, Lyroc son of Lyroc."

Lyroc did not flinch from the gentle danger that hissed across the floor. Paradoxically, it filled him with fervent purpose.

"It is she who brings these dark omens! A woman in the forum! A priestess turned queen! Antala's disfavor! It is not too late to undo this mistake!"

The room echoed with held breaths, uncomfortable pulses. Yalira knew these men, wealthy and educated, considered themselves experts in all subjects despite their lack of personal expertise. And yet their assuredness floundered in the face of greater confidence. An affliction, to be certain.

"You speak truth, son of Lyroc." Yalira moved towards the forum stairs, stealing the same sunlight that Andar enjoyed summoning to his advantage. "I was priestess before queen."

Her spirit crowed in that beating heart of her cut argument, the glow against her spine. The room stirred with the concession, its implied accusation. Semyra, in all its hideousness, had taught her to weild truth with a new edge. It was shaping her into something new, something this world had never seen.

And I will use it. I will play a different game.

"Hear me. The gods do not punish the innocent when kings are led astray. If you question Andar of Tyr, if you question his path, look to him answers." Yalira's eyes met hawkish bronze, ignored the thin silver stripe she'd inflicted on the mountainside. She stepped from her eclipsing position to let cool morning light fall upon him. "No pox, no disfigurement. Is this the image of a man divine-punished?"

He was no stranger to using his appearance, his innate charisma, to his advantage. And now—forcing away that hideous irony of the gods blessing such villainy—Yalira used it for hers.

Sitting at the lowest point in the tiered hall, glowing in morning's breath, Andar of Tyr was masculine stoicism, strength and virility. Seated though he was, his physical power sang from his relaxed posture. He was burnished gold and light twisted into sinew. Perhaps they had grown blind to his beauty, endured to the bright sun, so she reminded them.

"If there is disfigurement and divine displeasure, look elsewhere. But do not let this search stop us from what is important." Their attention followed her mouth, each syllable. "If there is disease and suffering, let us not fall prey to childish squabbles. Let us stand against them."

"What do you suggest, Queen Yalira?" Oristos called, his mismatched eyes lowered to her feet. His voice was softness and deference, cadence and lilt miles away from their private conversations.

"I'm afraid that I am not an expert on war or rebellion, but allocation of proper sanitation and medicine to areas of disease would be a start."

"With what funds?" Lyroc cried. "So like a woman to offer up idealism as practicality!"

"With my dowry." Without thinking, the answer came like lightning. "With the spoils of Antalis."

In the agreeable whispers, offering the last of temple did not burn as sharply as she had imagined. Perhaps the spiderwebs that had fractured through her foundation diminished its worth, perhaps the loss of prophecies bought softened the blow, perhaps gold and tapestries were meaningless things in the face of power.

"A generous queen!"

The cry came up from within the crowd—from where Yalira could not discern—but it caught like wildfire through the room. It stirred amongst the lower-class representatives, for it was their jurisdictions affected most severely. It stirred amongst the high-born, for it was their pockets spared.

Rishi's mouth found her ear. A soft-breathed warning. "Do not help build him into something you cannot topple."

But there was no room for a reply. In powerful strides, Andar bounded up the forum stairs to steal her away from the queen, from caution and censure.

"Walk with me."

Their last conversation had been their wedding night. The uncomfortable words followed by the interminable hours of wishful petrification, that effort towards silence and stone next to a sleeping predator. Days after of brewing mortification.

"Surely you'll be missed," Yalira murmured as he led her into the morning. It was childish, that warm whisper of embarrassment at her cheek. He had woken long before she had mussed her dress, her hair—dripped her own bright blood on the linens—and fled back to her rooms. Andar had not seen that shameful flight, but his presence sparked its memory as if he were recalling its details with wry pleasure.

He waved off her quiet dismissal.

"Oristos can handle it the rest of the itinerary."

Yalira considered picking at his blasé attitude, his inattention to his empire. Unfortunately, she knew better. For all his passivity in the forum, Andar was acutely aware of its inner-workings. Leaving Oristos to argue with the high-born was more likely careful strategy than a slothful vice she wanted to see in him.

"Not Rodan?" Yalira asked, gently intrusive. The absence of the man had not been mentioned. It seemed his presence was so mild in comparison to his golden brother that he was functionally invisible.

"I've given him other things to attend to for today," Andar said. He waved, smiled, to a group of passing traders who bowed to him. "He's not important."

Arm twisted into his, Yalira shrugged. "The brother of the king, the man who holds the loyalty of the high-born." She glanced up at him, smiling dryly to soften the accusing edge of her disbelief. "Seems important."

Their path weaved through the upper market that surrounded the forums. Jewelry and figs and pressed olives instead of the vendors of the slum that hawked flat bread and watered wine. From the rivets of the fountain that carried the lifeblood of fresh water, a cheerful gurgling accented the daily bustle.

"My brother knows his place." His confidence almost erased the suspicion Rodan had garnered in her mind.

Andar paused their steps to consider an offering of saffron and pepper advertised to him. The matronly wife of the vendor lamented his leanness with affectionate worry—a symptom of bland food, she claimed. In gracious reply, Andar promised to send the palace steward to return to their stall. His presence cast happiness onto the surrounding citizens, but his words, only for Yalira, were low with insisting gravity, soft with feigned lightness.

"Do you know yours?"

Liar. Doubter. Murderer.

"A generous queen to a beloved husband. A humble slave to her renowned conqueror. Another concubine in an overcrowded harem." The answer, her wry tone, lifted a corner of his mouth before he returned to the perfect politeness he wore for his people. Blithely irreverent, words in his ear, she asked, "What would you have me be?"

"The truth."

Yalira blessed him with the fullness of her laughter, the brilliance of her smile. Its hard edge thin as a surgeon's blade, insubstantial as smoke. "Fear not. The truth is all I have left to give, Andar."

The eyes in the market that had tracked their golden king now flickered to her spritely glow. Just as it tempted their attention, it pulled Andar closer to her, a feather caught in her current, motes trapped in her breeze.

"Enough with games, sweet wife." But his voice was gentle more than reproving. In the slow amble of their walk, the overnight dew soon to vanish in summer's heat, Andar kept his body close to hers. A picture of easy affection, newlywed interest. "Why save my people? Why care at all?"

"I'm adopting them." Yalira relaxed her hand in the crooked cage of his arm, softened her smile for the following eyes. "Seeing as I have so few left of my own."

Their steps continued, though the conversation trailed into silence. Muscles beneath her fingertips tensed and coiled, gentled and smoothed.

Yalira asked, "Does this upset you?"

It was Andar's turn to pause, to laugh, to steal the sun's rays for himself.

"It pleases me." He freed his arm so that he could brush his thumb across her cheek. "Gods, Yalira. It pleases me greatly."

Trapped against his palm, Yalira could not escape the insistent burning between them. The energy that shivered and pulled. In plain view of the market crowds, he leaned towards her, pressed his forehead to hers. Salt and spice, he threatened to suffocate her thoughts.

A/N:

October is dedicated to Oleander's ghost readers! I see you!

Lots of answers on the horizon--last change to throw in your guesses :)