Shadow Queen - By Deborah Kalin Page 0,56

me. ‘Goatgirls have their share of pain, though, and I dare say their share of arranged marriages. I didn’t exactly marry the woman I’d have chosen at the time, either.’

Hurt flared, hot thorns piercing my throat and words. ‘No one forced you to utter the vows.’

‘Political necessity isn’t the same as free choice. Still, I can’t complain. I seem happier in my wife than she is in me, so I suppose you truly are the bigger victim.’

I swung my hand at his smug cheekbone with all my weight behind it, the blow leaving a raw handprint smeared across his cheek.

‘So there is spirit left in you after all,’ he said. ‘Good. I prefer it when you’re brazen.’

Something had changed in his voice: it was lower, and his pupils had dilated. He hadn’t moved, yet he felt closer.

‘Being bound to you is never dull, I’ll grant you that much. And I suppose I should thank you for it, since I couldn’t abide a tedious wife,’ he said. ‘Come, what will you have?’

‘A herd of goats?’ I said bitterly.

His smile sparked lights in his eyes. ‘And goat-leather skirts like Roshi’s, so you can disappear among them?’

A bittersweet hurt suffused me. He had taken everything from me. Since our first meeting, me in my blood-stained finery and him at the head of a mercenary army, he’d used me to further his own ends.

But at the same time he’d protected me.

He’d saved me from Amalia’s rages, sheltered me from her sullen revenge. He’d hidden our indiscretion, saving both of us from a hanging. The smears of weariness beneath his eyes told me he’d barely slept while I lay sick. He’d been truer to me than Roshi, who’d taken my plea for freedom and interpreted it after her own ends. He had accepted my implicit chastisement of the Somners, drightens he desperately needed as allies, because they’d insulted me. I clenched my hands into fists to keep them from reaching out to him.

‘You’re not alone, Matilde,’ he said, his eyes drinking me in. ‘You don’t have to be alone.’

It seemed an eternity before his lips dipped down against mine. The lightning flick of his tongue in my mouth sent a shock through my core.

‘It’s okay.’ Dieter’s murmur soothed away my stiffness. ‘I’m your husband, remember?’

And he was all I had left.

ACT THREE

THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD

TWENTY-TWO

MORNING BROUGHT a strange lassitude. Nestled in bedding smelling of sex – musky and pervasive – I gazed at Dieter as he slumbered beside me. He was more handsome awake, with the sparkle of humour and appreciation in his eyes. The openness sleep gave him, however, was strangely endearing.

Conflicting emotions warred within me. He was my enemy, and I should hate him. For what he’d ordered done to my family, for the binding he’d put on me, for the hex, I did hate him. My thoughts shied away from the painful memories, however.

Simplistic thinking had no place in politics, of the nation or of the heart, and perhaps it was my hate itself that had made me so vulnerable to him in the first place. Hate or love, passion clouded observation, as Grandmother would have said.

Thought of her made me realise that her voice had been missing since I’d awoken from the poison. Surely if anything would have made her mutter, it would be the fact that I was lying in the warmth of a conjugal bed, with Dieter’s outflung arm across my stomach. There was nothing, however. Hoofbeats on the stones of the courtyard spoke of soldiers at their training, or stable thralls exercising the mounts.

Tentatively, I considered my new circumstances. I couldn’t blame what had happened between Dieter and me last night on the binding, or fear for my safety, or even political necessity. It had been a conscious choice, and my own desire, there was no denying it. Perhaps it was time to accept the inevitable.

Dieter had been strong enough and canny enough to take the throne, and with my help he would be strong enough to hold it. Perhaps it was time we worked together instead of against each other.

The sound of Amalia’s voice outside jolted me to alertness. I couldn’t make out her words through the wall separating us, though her voice was pitched high and fast. She was clearly in a mood. I glanced across at Dieter, still sunk in the depths of sleep, and shifted slightly, careful of disturbing him.

Whatever point Amalia had made to the guards, it was sufficient, for soon the latch