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  Her hand hitched, and stopped, and she looked up at him. Smudges marked her face where she had brushed hair back with sooty fingers, and a dark line smeared outward from one corner of her mouth—she had sucked on the charcoal stylus again. A pleased smile began to curve her lips. Then she frowned.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked in English.

  “My grandson ran about camouflaged,” he replied in the same language, “and collided with the desk in my open study.”

  She winced. “Is he all right?”

  “He will not have damaged himself too badly. We almost all of us do something similar as children.” He planted a kiss on her temple. “What have you drawn?”

  “The summer house in Boston.” She turned her attention back to it with a sly grin. “It’s not quite as large as your stronghold. Papa liked to spend family time in a setting he considered cozy.” She pointed at a window at one end of the top floor. “My rooms were here. Just a bedroom and a bath. And all my stuffies.”

  He opened his mouth to ask what those might be, but she went on.

  “Toy animals made of stuffed fabric, soft and fuzzy. Papa brought one home every time he returned from a business trip, until I had more than I could keep in my room. I left them all behind when I eloped with John, but then I could just hold on to him instead.” She picked up the stylus and added tiny lines to the curve of a sculpted plant.

  “Why do you create images which sadden you, my love?”

  “Because memories are all I have left of who I was and what I had.” She laid book and stylus aside.

  “One day you might see those places again.” He leaned back on his elbows and stretched his legs before him, ankles crossed. “I would like to see Earth.”

  She swiveled a startled face. “But you can’t,” she protested. “Wouldn’t it kill a bonded ruler to leave the planet?”

  “It would, but I need not always be bonded to my province. One day I will tire of ruling, and the Jorann will remove my ruling bond so that my daughter can succeed me. Perhaps then we might travel, you and I. Even now Tolar prepares to establish diplomatic relations with Earth, soon or late. Other races, including humans, will come here. Tolari will go out among the stars. We could be among them.”

  Her eyes glistened. “I can’t leave, not while Central Command wants me dead. If they find out I’m alive, even if I never set foot in human space, no one could protect me from the Chairman. And if Central Command gets wind of the Jorann’s blessing, I would become a prize as well as a target.”

  “Do you regret this, then?” He caressed the youthful skin of her face.

  He sensed her barriers begin to close, but then she went still, her emotional landscape whirling with indecision. After a long moment, resolution swept away the uncertainty. She took a deep breath and turned fully to face him.

  “There have been a few times in these last few weeks that I’ve regretted taking the blessing, because it means I can’t see my children and grandchildren again,” she said. “But being with you—no. I don’t regret that. I can’t ever regret that.”

  * * *

  The hilltop opposite the Monral’s stronghold offered both a spectacular view of the sunset and sufficient distance from the troublesome emotions of others to allow the exercise of a sensitive’s more delicate abilities. Normally. Sharana focused her attention once more on the small crawling creature her student compelled to walk in patterns on a flat rock, and fought the gleeful satisfaction coming to her from her beloved, who had secreted himself since midday deep under the stronghold, in a place where only ruling caste and guards went.

  He plots an assassination. She shuddered. He had always schemed, like every member of his caste, but he had usually listened to her… before the Sural humiliated him. Then he had turned inward, and the confidences he once showered on her diminished and stopped, until she had no clear idea if he remained within the bounds of honor.

  Where had her influence gone? Their friendship began in childhood and grew into heart play. He trusted her more than he had his own father—had trusted her, a bitter thought whispered. No longer. The tens of years they spent as pledge-partners, the ten years of their bonding, had vanished like a mist from the far shores of sleep. Now her Monral directly schemed to send another soul into the dark. Her heart shrank back from it, repelled.

  “Scholar? When may I stop?”

  Sharana started, inwardly cursing her wandering thoughts, and brought her eyes back to her student. Despite the cool breeze, sweat stained the girl’s dark green robe. This would not do; her student deserved her full attention, not this half-consideration. “Release the creature and return to your mother’s farm,” she said, her tone sharper than she had intended. Irritated with her inability to concentrate, she pushed herself upright and left the girl roiling with confusion. Explanations could wait until the next lesson. For now, she could not trust herself to maintain a tutor’s proper discipline.

  She trod down the hill, paying little attention to where she went. Her peds followed habit and took her across the road to the stronghold, where she halted, staring at the great doors in sudden indecision. The Monral was moving, ascending from the hidden places below the keep, and she trusted herself even less with him than she did with her student. Turning aside, she kept to the wall, walking along it until she reached the gate to the outer garden. A huge flat-topped boulder lay embedded in the hillside there, a place to which she often retreated to find momentary peace. She climbed onto the rock and sat with her peds dangling over the edge. The city lay spread before her, and beyond it the glimmering, treacherous sea.

  Perhaps she should spend the evening down in the city. The idea held appeal, but no—it would do nothing to interfere with the ugly emotions flowing into the pair-bond she shared with the Monral.

  Oh my beloved, what have you become?

  Had she made a mistake after all, becoming entwined and entangled with a member of the ruling caste?

  With a flash of yellow, the sun tipped below the horizon, and behind her, she sensed the Monral’s heir leave the keep, heading for her. She kept her gaze on the city as Farric lowered himself onto the boulder beside her and swung his legs over the side, kicking at the rock like a restless child despite the fatigue suffusing his presence.

  “Scholar,” he said.

  “Your father would not approve of such an undignified posture,” she replied, casting him a sidelong glance.

  A snort escaped him. “Neither would he appreciate it of his bond-partner.” He scooted back to pull up his legs and set his heels on the edge. With an insolent grin, he rested his elbows on his knees to complete the discourtesy. “Do you prefer this?”

  “In that position, at least, you will not lose your slippers.”

  His grin tilted at her words, remembering, no doubt, the many he had lost as a child, kicking this very rock.

  “Why are you so weary?”

  “Father intensified my physical training.”

  “Again?”

  “He says only that his plans require me to be at the peak of my abilities.” He lowered his arms and dropped his peds over the edge again. “It has not pushed me beyond my capacity. He ordered the same of a hand of his best guards.”

  She held in the question—against whom do they train to fight?—and instead fixed her gaze on the deepening purples and reds splashed across the western sky. She pivoted to view it more comfortably, which turned her away from Farric.

  He would not answer such a question, even if she asked. Possibly, even he did not know the answer—the Monral kept much in his own pockets. Whether Farric would not answer, or could not, did not matter. The ruling caste of Monralar shared little with those they called upon to advise them.

  “I must prepare for tomorrow,” he said, after a time. With a small grunt, he rose to his peds, robe rustling into place. “I am to embark on another diplomatic mission.”

  She remained where she was, but performed a seated bow. “Fair journey then, high one.”

&n
bsp; “Fair evening, scholar.”

  Chapter Seven

  “You and the Paran, finally?” On the tablet, Marianne’s face glowed. “Joy of the bond!”

  Laura lifted her eyebrows. “This, from the woman who took eight years to figure out the Sural loved her.”

  The young woman stuck out her tongue. “You won’t regret it.”

  “Getting through the rest of the day, that’s the hard part.” Laura leaned back in her chair at the desk in her sitting room. “Is it really so different, being bonded?”

  Her friend gave a solemn nod. “Like… like… I don’t know.”

  Laura snickered. “At a loss for words?”

  Marianne smiled and shrugged happily.

  “You’re in good company,” Laura continued. “The Paran says Tolari can’t find words for it either. Oh, and before I forget, I want to show you something. The last time the Paran took me into the city, an old artisan gave me—you have to see it to believe it. Here.” She turned her tablet toward the whale sculpture sitting on her desk.

  “What am I looking at?”

  Laura turned her tablet around. Marianne stopped squinting and opened brilliant blue eyes. Those eyes had generated no small amount of discussion, back on the Alexander, before Adeline Russell’s scheming had gotten the ship kicked out of Tolari space. John and Smitty had come to an agreement that someone took the summer sky and turned it into glass, then broke it and formed her irises from the shards. Marianne sometimes commented that her eyes were so unusual no one noticed the rest of her.

  The Sural had, though. The evidence of that lay sleeping in Marianne’s arms. What she saw in the man—Laura cut off the thought. There was no accounting for taste.

  “You didn’t see the sculpture?” Laura asked.

  “What sculpture?”

  “All right, let me try again.” This time, Laura put the whales in front of her face and positioned her tablet as normal.

  Marianne’s eyes grew wide, and she whistled through her teeth.

  “You can see it now?”

  “Oh yes. But why turn your tablet around when you can set the view?”

  Laura straightened. “I can set the view?”

  The younger woman quirked a grin. “Someone there will have to show you how. But Laura, that sculpture is incredible. And he gave it to you, just like that?”

  “He said if it called to me, it was mine. And it did.”

  Marianne shook her head in wonderment. “What are you going to do with it? Does the Paran have an art collection?”

  “Yes, but I want to keep it where I can see it every day. Right now it’s on the desk in my sitting room.” She moved away from the desk and flopped into a chair. “So how’s little Rose?”

  “Sleeping all day and keeping me awake all night. I should come to Parania. Maybe if day and night were upside down, her schedule would be right side up.”

  Laura snickered. “I told you so. Now you learn the true meaning of sleep deprivation.”

  “You can’t blame a girl for hoping.”

  “No, but—” The guard by the door to the hall flickered. Laura groaned. “Listen, I have to go. My language tutor is waiting for me.”

  “Have fun!” Marianne reached, and the screen went blank.

  Laura chuckled to herself. Marianne, a gifted linguist who spoke seventeen languages… no eighteen… or was it nineteen now?—anyway, the young woman would find it fun. Laura pocketed the tablet and headed for the family library. When she arrived, Kellandin began, with great enthusiasm and a number of small wood tiles inscribed in Paranian syllables, a lesson she decided to call the Attack of the Pronouns. Symbols moved across the library table like military markers. Masculine, feminine, and… and… whatever it was. The whole concept made no sense. People were he and she. Things like chairs and tables were it.

  When Kellandin finished with her, the Paran was nowhere to be found. Laura took a meandering stroll around the stronghold grounds, picking at autumn-blooming flowers. She took refuge from the sun in a corner of the Paran’s private area of the gardens, under a tree and against the cool stone of a shaded wall, and pulled out her sketchbook.

  It fell open at the Boston summer house.

  “I wonder where my stuffies are,” she murmured to herself, slipping the stylus from its sheath in the book’s back cover. A few strokes added a hint of drapery to the windows of her rooms. Then her gaze fell on the hand gripping the stylus, and the deep groove on her ring finger. She stopped sketching to stare at it.

  The government thugs had ripped even the wedding ring from her hand when they abducted her, tearing her from home and family and leaving her with not a shred of evidence of her forty-one years with John. Not a single gift or personal item. Nothing that had been theirs together. No keepsakes from their children’s lives. Yet the crowning masterpiece of an artisan’s life sat in the sitting room of her quarters, the gift of a man she’d met only once.

  “My love.” The Paran’s soft whisper cut through the welling grief. He had joined her under the tree and wrapped his senses around her, offering love and strength and support.

  She dragged her gaze from her hand to the Paran’s face. His smooth, brown, interesting, beloved face.

  “I love you,” she whispered. Her eyes slid down to the groove again.

  “My heart is yours.” Long fingers covered hers and curved into a gentle squeeze. “Have you changed your decision?”

  “Changed?” She sucked in a breath. She could… see, in a way, the edges of the Paran’s empathic senses curling around her. Her eyes went back to his, then to his hair. Servants had woven it, all of it, into a multitude of thin braids, which they then worked back into ruler’s knots. It must have been where he had disappeared to all afternoon. The braids would minimize the snarled mess that three days or so of no brushing would make of his ankle-length hair.

  He squeezed her hand again, still waiting for an answer.

  “No, I haven’t changed my mind. I think—I think John would want me to seize the day.”

  Tiny lines of tension in the Paran’s face relaxed, and he wrapped his arms around her. The grief and heartache and sorrow that had been roiling around in the pit of her stomach began to ease.

  “We go into seclusion tonight?” she asked.

  “After the evening meal.”

  “How long till it’s served?”

  “It has already begun.”

  She ventured a smile and found it didn’t shatter her face after all. “We’d better get to it, then.”

  * * *

  The heavy, ornately-carved door of the Paran’s private apartments closed behind them. Laura’s heart sped up. Now that they stood on the brink of it, all the reasons he might regret bonding with her raced through her thoughts. A small voice in the back of her mind wailed, What if he doesn’t like what he sees?

  Beside her, the Paran was breathing faster, too. “We are alone,” he said, unnecessarily. The extra guards around the outside of his quarters shone like beacons to senses heightened by anticipation. None stood their usual watch inside. “Are you certain of your choice? Once we start, there is no going back.”

  “I know,” she murmured, turning to face him. “How do we do this?”

  His face lit. “Come.” He took her hand and led her to the sleeping room. Pots of blooming flowers lined every wall, and their fragrance filled the air. “The servants are well-pleased.”

  “You didn’t order them to do this?”

  “No.”

  She took a deep breath, savoring the floral scent. “Your servants love you.”

  “Perhaps it is you, also, that they love.”

  He shrugged out of his robe and trousers and lowered himself to the blankets, pulling her down with him.

  His fingers worked at the fastenings of her robe. She grinned as her robe slid off her shoulders. “What do we do now?”

  A gentle smile played on his lips. “Reach into me with your senses,” he said, taking her hands. His eyes closed, and a
soft radiance grew around her, white in the dim light. Though she couldn’t see it with her eyes, it obscured her vision. His heart unrolled like a tapestry before her. Nothing surprised her, but she saw… all the things he wanted her to know, and all the things he didn’t, the dark corners and childish fears offered up along with the strengths. It took her breath away.

  Her turn, now. The blood ran from her face, and her skin tried to shrink. As much as he loved her, as much as they’d shared, her sensitivity permitted her to see more deeply into him than he ever had into her. Parts of her still lay hidden, and the time had come to reveal them.

  His eyes opened. “Have no fear. You have nothing to fear.”

  “What if—”she swallowed “—I am not what you think I am?”

  “Impossible.” He leaned forward to nibble soft kisses across her lips. “Show yourself to me, my love. Open your heart.”

  His love surrounded her, warm and soft, like a blanket. Something in her relaxed. “I love you,” she whispered, and lowered her guard.

  He pulled her close against his chest. They remained wrapped in each other’s arms for she didn’t know how long, their senses swirling against each other, radiance filling the air, until… until something that separated them dissolved.

  Closer. She needed to get closer. Her skin tingled, and suddenly the Paran covered her mouth with his, urgent and demanding. She pressed against him, skin against skin. Hands stroking, mouths sealed, she straddled his lap, their bodies locked, the ancient rhythm carrying them. Pressure built.

  At the still point on the brink of ecstasy, she could see the way.

  Reflex, instinct, compulsion drove her. She reached out, wrapping her senses around his heart. At the same time, his wrapped in a layer around hers and sank in. The world shifted. She was inside him inside her, feeling him feel her. Her body—his body—she couldn’t distinguish between them. They convulsed into rapture, each crash of ecstasy lifting the next to a higher peak, together.