Radiance (Wraith Kings, #1)

by Grace Draven

She might be chattel, but she would remain dignified.

By marrying the prince, she became a duchess, a Kai hercegesé.

She was a challenge to look upon without wincing, but he very much liked her wry humor.

She exhaled slowly. The space between her eyebrows stitched into a single vertical frown line. “Had you crawled out from under my bed when I was a child, I would have bludgeoned you to death with my father’s mace.”

As soon as they were gone, Ildiko broke into a smile. “It’s you.” She didn’t bother hiding the relief in her voice.

“The most popular advice is to make sure the room is so dark I won’t be able to see my hand—or yours for that matter—in front of my face.” Brishen’s shout of laughter echoed throughout the room before he clamped down on his mirth and settled for a wide grin and luminous eyes that glistened. “I’ve been told something similar, only we should consummate at noon, when I’ll be virtually blind.”

Her hands jerked in his grasp before she arched an eyebrow. “Wolf,” she said softly. “Horse,” he replied just as quietly. Ildiko’s lips twitched before she finally gave in and let loose a peal of laughter.

Ildiko whipped around to find Brishen running toward her. He grabbed her one-armed around the waist and lifted her off her feet, never breaking stride as he ran for safety. “Not the wedding present I intended for you, wife,” he said on shortened breaths. “I’ll make it up to you later.”

“You know, except for the gray skin, black nails and the one glowing eye looking at me, I could almost mistake you for Gauri.” He gave her a sleepy grin. She paled and frowned at him. “And then you smile,” she said. “Bursin’s wings, but that’s a blood-curdling sight to wake up to at any time of the day.”

The spirits of our dead leave this world but gift the living with their memories—what we call mortem lights. We keep those memories alive in a place called Emlek. They are our history, what defines us beyond how we look or the sorcery we’re losing.”

“I’m harmless, Anhuset. You don’t have to protect him from me,” she joked gently. Anhuset stared at her, mouth unsmiling. “Mortem fever can make a Kai go mad. I’m not protecting him from you, Your Highness, but you from him.”

She was ugly; she was beautiful, and she was his. “My Ildiko,” he whispered.

Loneliness is an empty void. We look for that friend in the light.” His glowing eyes squinted a little, deepening the laugh lines at their corners. “Or in the case of humans, in the dark.”

“Will you be that for me, Ildiko,” he said. “That beacon in the void?” Ildiko’s heart cracked. Loneliness had been her most constant companion, the silent shadow that hovered over her for years. If there was one thing she understood, it was the emptiness of the internal void. Her reply might not make sense to him now, but she’d explain later when they were alone. She reached out, fingers tracing the herringbone pattern of his chainmail sleeve. “The void is vast, like the sea at night and no land in sight. I’ll be the beacon, Brishen.”

“You make a very handsome dead eel, my husband,” she said and winked. Sinhue and Kirgipa both gasped. “For a boiled mollusk, you wear black quite well, my wife,” Brishen shot back, and his smile stretched a little wider.

He allowed himself a small chuckle then. “I will conquer kingdoms for you if you but ask it of me, Ildiko.”

“But you please me more surrounded by things of beauty than things of war.” He continued to amaze her, this Kai prince with his wolf smile and radiant soul.

“I have a fine husband indeed,” she said aloud to herself as she soaked up the morning rays. “I wholeheartedly agree,” the subject of her thoughts replied.

“She’s handy with a blade. Should you no longer want her as a wife, give her to me. With enough training, she’d make a decent shield mate.”

“That was quick.” Brishen chose not to reveal that his more rational cousin had thwarted his plans to spit his mother on the point of his sword like the scarpatine she was.

Ildiko was halfway to a dead sleep when Brishen’s soft words in her ear brought her awake. “Sleep here each day, Ildiko.” A sweet warmth suffused her. She entangled her legs with his and hugged his arm to her waist. “As you wish. Just don’t steal the blankets.”

“You, on the other hand, make me rich with your dyes and your friendship. You’re far more valuable to me as friend than foe.” Brishen laughed.

“I’m not human, wife,” he whispered into the darkness. Shock rounded his eyes at Ildiko’s response, slurred with sleep and nearly incoherent. “But you’re still mine, husband.”

Ildiko thought it ironic how a people who shunned the daylight were known for creating something that grew more beautiful with exposure to it.

Lorus flower tea prevents a man’s seed from catching in the womb, but it tastes so foul even the memory of it makes my stomach turn. Surely, there is nothing so pleasurable to make it worth drinking that swill.” Her comment made Brishen laugh outright, his fangs gleaming white in the room’s twilight.

Brishen loped toward them, long legs flexing as he cut across their path. Ildiko had barely slowed her horse when he caught up, grasped her saddle pommel and landed behind her in a smooth, running mount. “That is the worst display of showing off I’ve ever seen,” Anhuset said in forbidding tones. “Of course it is.” Brishen wrapped an arm around Ildiko’s waist and pressed himself against her back. “I’m trying to impress my wife.”

The glow of Brishen’s eyes provided the only illumination between them, but it was enough to gild the tiny light as it flickered and bobbed between them. “My sister,” he said softly. “Or her memory at least.”

“She was never formally named, but I call her Anaknet. I’d seen eleven seasons when she was born.” The tiny mortem light floated toward him and balanced on the back of his hand. “She was born with a club foot, an imperfect child and unacceptable to Secmis. I thought her pretty.”

“Secmis murdered her four days after her birth. She broke her neck. I saw her do it.”

“Anaknet is why I am who I am, wife. Because I refuse to become like the monstrosities who bore us.”

He still wanted Ildiko—fiercely, but to savor instead of conquer.

“I wouldn’t survive the affections of a dozen Kai women, cousin. Besides, only one can cool the fire.” Anhuset’s lips twitched. “And that one isn’t Kai. What has Ildiko become to you?” “The fire.” He nodded once to her and started to leave the arena.

He saw her as she’d always seen herself—as simply Ildiko. For her, it was enough; for him, a gift beyond price.

“I want you, Ildiko. Want to sink so deep into you that neither of us will know where one ends and the other begins.”

“My beautiful husband.” she said. “I see radiance.”

“An excellent choice to pair the scarpatine with the potato, Your Highness. They are better together than apart.” Beside her, Brishen choked into his goblet. He wiped his mouth with his sanap. “What a waste of good scarpatine,” he muttered under his breath. What a waste of a nice potato, she thought.

She pulled the edge of one of the sheets toward her and paused at the sight of the jagged rents. She frowned. “You have to stop destroying the bed linens.” He shrugged, blithely unremorseful. “Only when you stop destroying me.”

Ildiko gasped. “She’ll kill you for that when she wakes up.” Serovek winked and took a flat rock one of his soldiers handed to him, along with a folded blanket. “No she won’t. I’ll tell her you did it.”

“We don’t need another warrior, Highness. We need bait.”

“We were unimportant, you and I. We weren’t supposed to mean anything to anyone.” A slow, deep sigh escaped his lips, and his right eyelid opened, revealing a glowing, lamplight gaze. Brishen’s voice was hoarse from disuse but still clear. “Woman of day,” he said slowly. “You mean everything to me.”

“Prince of night,” she said in a watery voice that echoed another moment when she’d greeted him with the same words. “You’ve come back to me.”

She watched him now with an expression softened by post-coital languor. “I think I fell in love with you during our wedding.” Her statement sent a rush of euphoria through Brishen that left him lightheaded.

“It took you that long?” he teased. “You are difficult to win. I tried very hard during our first meeting in the gardens.” Ildiko sputtered. Her leg slid between his knees, riding higher to rest against his thigh. “Calling me a hag is not the best courtship gesture.”

“It’s a shame you’re my son,” she purred. “You would have made a magnificent consort.” A surge of bile burned up his throat.

“I love you, my blood-thirsty hag.”

“Not a paler light,” he said. “A radiant one, from a woman in whose presence I will never be blind.” “Love me,” she whispered against his lips. “Always.”

She’d done it! Rent the veil between worlds and brought forth an unconquerable legion bound to her commands.