Head high, she entered the ceremonial chambers. Her step faltered. A dozen soldiers from the palace guard stood near the bedchamber. There was no sign of Prince Wanieer. Only the magistrate in his dark robes, and her father—who was in consultation with the master of the guard.
The trail end of the guard’s assurance she heard. “…these new chains are twice as thick. He will not break them so easily.”
Aruk. Chained with arms and legs outspread, naked on the enormous bed. His bruised left eye was half closed, his jaw swollen and lips split.
Yet as her eyes met his, he grinned.
“So my daughter is here,” her father said abruptly. “Now we must find a way to get a rise out of him.”
“Slyworm powder?” Fin Ketles suggested.
Her father nodded, turning to look at Aruk. “We’ll force it down his throat if we must…” He paused, for Aruk’s cock no longer lay heavily against his thigh. “Or perhaps my daughter’s beauty is all that was needed. Go to him then, Jalisa, and put your hand to his. We will not use the altar this night.”
To marry them. To marry Jalisa…to Aruk.
Just as her father had married her mother, simply to legitimize the heir. And then he’d enslaved his unacknowledged queen with chains made from her love for Jalisa.
So, too, could Jalisa see the same happening to Aruk. His love for her would bind him stronger than any iron chain. That he would be trapped, as she had been, in the role that her father had decided for him. With no freedom, and no choice. And soon drugged so that other women could be bred on him.
None of it would Jalisa ever allow.
Heart thundering, she approached the bed. His gaze devoured her, as if he’d been as starved for the sight of her as she had been for him. His arms were outspread, chained to the corner posts. Thick iron cuffs circled his wrists, the skin beneath raw. Pain lodged in her throat as she climbed onto the bed, kneeling beside him, and placed her hand against his.
And how was she supposed to act now? As if he were a barbarian who’d forced her?
She supposed it didn’t really matter anymore. Yet she spoke quietly enough that her voice would not carry to her father and his advisor, observing from near the bedchamber’s entrance.
“You are bare again, warrior,” she said softly.
His grin didn’t spread as she expected it to. Instead his smile faded and his voice was hoarse as he told her, “You don’t want to be a bride. I will refuse the vow.”
And be beaten again? No.
“I said that I would like to choose,” she reminded him. “And to marry a man that I love. So I will happily be your bride, Aruk.”
His eyes blazed. “Then where is that magistrate?”
Approaching warily with crimson ribbon in hand. Jalisa took a moment to look at the chains that held Aruk to the bed. Truly thick they were.
“Did you break your chains in attempt to escape?”
“And come for you. I was near to it before the guards rushed me. And like a fool, in that small cell I swung the broken chain at them instead of lashing it like a whip.” A dull flush climbed his cheeks, as if in embarrassment and shame. “It matters not. A full night we will be bound together in this bed. I will break them again—or the bones in my hands. One way or another, Jalisa, this night you will be free.”
A full night—because the ribbon that the magistrate weaved through their fingers now could not be untied until dawn, or their marriage would also be undone.
The magistrate looked across the chamber to her father, who called out, “Begin!”
To Jalisa, the magistrate spoke her string of royal names before asking, “Do you pledge yourself to this man and swear to be his faithful wife?”
So very fast and dizzying her pulse was, rushing the blood through her veins. “I will.”
“And you, barbarian—”
“Aruk of the Dead Lands, son of the Fang Clan, Keeper of the Sacred Oath,” Aruk said in a raw voice. “And ‘warrior’ to this woman who will be my wife.”
“Do you pledge yourself to this woman and swear to be her faithful husband?”
Fiercely he vowed, “Always I will.”
“Then upon a kiss that seals your vows, you shall be wife and husband.”
So swiftly Jalisa claimed him, bending over to capture his mouth beneath hers. So sweetly he kissed her in return, silently echoing the vow he’d just spoken, his love heating and sweetening every tender caress of his lips.
“Now shed the wedding gown, daughter, and mount him.”
Jalisa froze. Dread and sickness coiled beneath her heart—where moments before, only joy and love had resided.
“Wife.” Aruk’s low, rough voice brought her gaze to his. “There is only me.”
Only Aruk. Her husband. With trembling fingers she unlaced the ties at the top of her shoulders. Bound hands meant that everyday gowns could not be so easily removed—and the observers could not have fabric concealing the consummation. So her wedding gown had been designed for simple removal, and included a gossamer undergown that allowed her to stay covered while not truly hiding anything beneath.