The Warlord's Daughter (11 page)

“Your legal husband.”

“H
USBAND
?”
Awrenkka spat out the word as if it were a bad piece of meat. She scrambled to her feet, shoving away his attempt to help. Disbelief blazed in her eyes, her chest heaving. “There was no decree. There was no joining ceremony in absentia. There is
no marriage.
”

“There is a provision in Hordish law that allows for a marriage-by-proxy in the event of the warlord’s death. I was your father’s choice.”

“A handshake between the warlord and his crony?” Her hands were balled into fists. She’d squeezed all the blood out of her knuckles. “He’s dead. The war is over. The arrangement is void.”

Aral drove a frustrated hand through his hair. He’d assumed that shocking her with the news would work in his favor. She’d accompany him to his ship if not meekly then at least out of tradition and respect. She argued every one of his points. He missed his battlelord days on the bridge, when everyone in his sight was required to follow his orders or else. It had become apparent quite quickly that his best-laid plans were laughably insufficient. He’d acted true to the battlelord he once was and as if Awrenkka were the obedient daughter she once was. The old molds no longer fit.

They never did, he thought. That was why they were here.

“Peace alone doesn’t void the agreement. Else you’d have marriages dissolving across the galaxy with the end of this war.”

“A victory for all Drakken women in that case. Marriage is a man’s invention. Another word for
life sentence.
”

“Some people marry for love, Awrenkka.”

The note of candor, of hope, he knew slipped into his tone caused a deep and telling blush in her. It wasn’t he that she despised, he realized, but the concept of their marriage—and that it had been done without her consent. He’d never considered her consent. It was
implied.
Apparently not.

What did he know about women? Other than Kaz, that was. Awrenkka was in a different category entirely. She was a wife. This marriage business was far more complicated than he’d ever imagined.

“I have choices now,” she railed at him. “I will not go anywhere or with anyone unless it is of my own free will. I’m a free woman.”

“
Free?
Is that what you think you are?” Her misguided sense of independence nearly stole the last of his patience. He redoubled his efforts to hold onto his temper. “You aren’t free. Nor am I. No Drakken is. Peace is the word bandied about nowadays, but the war lasted a thousand years. That’s an eternity. The rancor, the distrust—on both sides—will be with us for some time to come. The Triad, for all their good intentions when it comes to unification, intends to keep us Drakken confined to our home planets or in these camps for a good long time.”

“Not me. I’ll live on the run if I have to.”

“Living on the run isn’t freedom by any means.” He heard the weariness in his voice. He was tired of running, and it damn well showed.

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Her mouth was firm, her eyes determined. Then she seemed to crumble. “Fates, I’m
married.
” She cast her gaze around with the desperateness of a trapped animal. Her dread yanked at his heart, and made his skin crawl at the same time.

You’re imposing your will on this woman.
Blast it. He was not a monster like his father. Or like her father. They were different.

Weren’t they?

A believer’s cheery voice shattered the tension between them. “Good day to you, priestess.” A small child accompanied him, thin and hollow-eyed. “Sister, please bless my daughter. She’s been ill. The camp medics have given her nano…nano…”

“Nanomeds,” Aral supplied.

“Aye, a miracle. She’s already improved. But the blessing of the goddesses is what she needs most.”

Awrenkka’s smile was genuine as she circled her thumb over her heart. “May the goddess heal your child.”

“Thank you. Thank you. May the goddess be with you, sister.”

“And also with you.”

The man returned the sign of the goddess and departed. Awrenkka was incredibly convincing. The robe looked as if it belonged to her, as if the calling came naturally. If they remained in the camp any longer, he might very well have a full-fledged priestess on his hands.

When he’d rather have a wife
in
his hands.

Her cheeks were streaked with dust and perspiration, not tears. A lesser woman would have wept by now. Awrenkka was made of stronger stuff. That strength only intensified his desire to protect her, to care for her. To make her his. The look on her face when she recognized him revealed all he needed to know. Mixed in with her qualms about him and his intentions and her well-founded abhorrence of loyalists had been a bright spark of relief and joy. Seeing her reaction, feeling her warm hand on his face, he’d nearly lost control, something he’d held to without fail all these years. It had taken everything he had not to sink his fingers into her flame-dark hair and pull her close. He wanted to do so now. If not for being toughened by denial and self-discipline, and the indisputable fact he was in the middle of Zorabeta refugee camp with a woman who looked as if she wanted him dead, he’d have done it.

“Ten years, Aral,” she said. “Ten years since all those old men, rubbing their hands together at the prospect of me as their wife, their trophy for their good service to the warlord. Then I saw you.” A gentler note crept into her tone. “You looked so sad. So alone. I knew just how you felt. I thought I’d finally found someone like me. The next minute, you were just like the rest of them, dismissive and stuck up.”

“I wanted to keep you safe from my family.”

“By humiliating me? By making me feel stupid and plain and clumsy?”

“I thought none of those things.”

“I saw it in your eyes, Aral.”

“What you saw was a young, inexperienced man whose breath was taken away by a beautiful girl.”

Awrenkka went still, her voice softer. “Beautiful?”

Real feelings for him glowed in her eyes before she lowered her lashes and retreated behind their thick veil. “You acted like you despised me.”

“To protect you. To keep you far away from my family. If Karbon had seen any interest in you at all, he’d have competed for your hand until he won it.”

“I wouldn’t have given it to him.”

“It wouldn’t have been your choice. It would have been the warlord’s choice. I would not have been able to bear your suffering at my father’s hands. You have no idea what he’d do to others. No idea.” Old, dark memories screamed. Aral stopped himself. He needed to reassure her, and he couldn’t be doing a more piss-poor job.

“They’re ruined, I’m afraid.” He rested the mangled remains of her eyeglasses in her hands. “I bent them into shape as best I could.” The right lens was gone. The left was cracked but seemed to be intact enough to allow her to see. He slipped them onto her face. Almost shyly he adjusted her glasses until she took over, pushing the crooked frames higher.

She squinted up at him as if she found the awkward tenderness of his gesture strangely endearing. Him
endearing?
Bah. His wife was bringing out many attributes he never knew he had. Negotiation, for one. Years of being a battlelord had acclimated him to having his way, being in control. He hadn’t felt in control for one blasted moment since reuniting with her.

Kaz strode up to them. Concern tightened the edges of her mouth, a sign of anxiety he wasn’t use to seeing. She showed her fears only rarely since Bolivarr’s death. His relief at Awrenkka’s fractional softening toward
him evaporated with the certainty she bore bad news. He’d sent her to process Awrenkka’s booking at the port authority office to speed up their departure. It should have been a simple task. Her appearance told him it had been anything but. “Rumors are flying about the fight. It’s all over the camp. They’re calling her the boxing priestess. The head sister is going through the ranks, trying to find out who it is.”

Without hesitation, Awrenkka pulled the priestess robe over her head. She balled up the fabric and shoved it under her cloak. “If they try to find her, they won’t find me.”

“Unless they are looking for a pregnant woman.”

The disguise was brilliant, if unintentional, Aral thought. “I have your data square. Do not show it for any reason unless we agree.”

“And no more gladiator matches.” Kaz observed Awrenkka, her hands folded at the small of her back. “You can kick some serious ass. I’m just glad it wasn’t mine. Were you trained in martial arts? Or do you come by beating a man to an inch of his life with a food tray naturally? They say the gornut never falls very far from the tree.”

Shame sparked in Awrenkka’s eyes at Kaz’s goading. Fury, too. As much as the warlord’s daughter wanted to distance herself from her sire, she had her pride, and perhaps more than a touch of his temper. She was, after all, her father’s daughter, whether she liked it or not.

Just as he was his father’s son. It seemed they both despised their genetics: both wanted to escape it, and yet found themselves trapped by their ancestry more often than not.

“Perhaps I am more like my father than I want to be,
but I offer you my genuine apology for calling attention to you, as well as to me. Take it. That’s more than the warlord ever gave me or anyone else.”

Kaz nodded. He suspected her respect for Awrenkka had grown from her original impression of a spoiled, sheltered girl. She turned to him. “There’s more, Aral. They’re looking for a battlelord. The warrant was generated by outside authorities. High up, judging by the buzz going on in there. What I know, I only overheard, but it came from the Ring.”

Zaafran, Aral thought. Was he trying to track down Aral in the wake of his “disappearance?” Quite possibly. Finding him would be like picking a microbe out of a mud puddle, but not impossible, especially if he cast a large enough net, like stopping each ship in and out to see who was flying it.

He’d long had doubts about the sentiments of the high command about his role in their victory. Giving credit to a Drakken, a battlelord, no less, would only weaken their image as the stronger power in this conflict, and the
rightful
power. The resistance movement would exploit that weakness. Aral coming and going as he pleased was a dangerous proposition for the new government. Zaafran must see it, as well. Why else had he never revealed Aral’s role publicly? It was telling indeed. Maybe now the man had developed second thoughts on letting him go free. He didn’t think Zaafran would go that route. They’d built a trust over the years, an understanding. But the man was under a tremendous amount of pressure, faced with regrouping loyalists and the discovery of the existence of a surviving child of the warlord. Desperate measures would not be unexpected.

Putting Awrenkka at even greater risk.

And nothing Kaz herself didn’t already suspect.

He scanned the immediate area for any sign of the meddling trader and his guard friend. He hoped she’d tied him up with fines or paperwork for interfering. “To the ship,” he said.

“Guards,” Kaz warned.

Four camp guards were pushing through the crowd, stopping refugees and demanding what they knew or had seen. At least one priestess was being questioned. Wren cast her gaze around, looking for a way out as the sensation of being trapped, of being tracked, returned. Then Aral was at her side, strong, reassuring. “Split up,” he told Kaz. “Meet me at the ship, ready to depart.”

Kaz hurried away.

He undid the fasteners of the shirt sticking damply to his torso, revealing a hard, muscled body and bronzed skin. He’d camouflaged his tattoos. Their faint outline was visible in the blinding, yellowish sunlight. He did have another shirt on underneath, but it was a tank, nothing more than a black scrap of fabric. He draped the shirt over her shoulders and urged her in the opposite direction from Kaz. She hoisted the wadded-up robe higher to keep it from slipping out of her blouse. It won her a few smiles from passing refugees. “Many blessings,” an old woman said, patting her on the arm.

“Good to see new life after so much death,” another refugee told them, tattooed and toothless. A veteran. Warily she glanced around for the ex-soldier she’d knocked out, and hoped he and his friends weren’t searching for her.

Their boots hunted for traction on the gritty street.
Gravel shifted under his heels, turning to smoky clouds of dust with each stride. Something hollow and metallic collided with her toe. Aral caught her before she took a nosedive. “Why didn’t he ever see to your eyes? It was outright neglect.”

No one other than Sabra had ever gotten angry on her behalf. “Kidnapping, murder, genocide, plus the proper training of my half-brother—it took time. The warlord was a busy man.”

He made a derisive sound in his throat. “We’ll see to your eyes first thing, Awrenkka.”

“Wren,” she said. “Awrenkka is the warlord’s daughter, the woman whose value was in who she’d be bred to. Wren is
me.
”

“Breeding. Is that how you see marriage? No wonder you despise the concept.”

“That’s the real reason he never had my vision repaired, I suspect.” She pushed on her glasses. “He wanted to keep his prize racehorse hobbled so she couldn’t run away. If I couldn’t see, I couldn’t very well escape, could I?”

“Would you have?”

“If I’d known what I know now—about my father, about his battlelords, and what crimes they committed—yes.” She felt his hands tense. “You, I wanted to run away
with,
not from.”

“But not marry me.”

“I have no issue with the trappings of marriage. I don’t want the trap.”

“The
trappings?
” She met his dark eyes, saw the desire there. It made her skin warm all over.

He turned a corner. The tents were closer here. Ahead was a knot of guards ordering around a few
refugees. He spun her so fast in an about-face that she almost lost the robe.

Gasping, she clutched at her stomach, hoisting it higher. It won her several concerned glances from those passing by. He had her up against a tent. “Put your arms around me. Do it,” he demanded at her hesitation. Then, lower, he whispered in her ear. “They’re watching, talking about us.” He flattened his hand on her fabric-stuffed belly, tenderly, as if she carried a real child—theirs. His breath tickled her ear. “Pretend we’re lovers. People, even the guards, give lovers privacy. In both our cultures the natural inclination is not to stare at kissing people but to look away.”