This time Obe gives in completely, and they lose themselves in each other.
Isa began their secret trysts for the thrill of them, for the scandal it would cause if it was ever discovered that the young Saire princess, the Great Elephant’s own flesh and blood, cavorted with a Sentinel—the Crocodile’s nephew, no less—in the halls of the palace.
He was forbidden fruit, and she was seduced by the taboo of him.
What she didn’t anticipate was discovering that he’s far more than the brusque and sullen warrior he appears to be. He proved rather well read and introspective for a man raised for the legions, and surprisingly innocent and trusting. Far too quick to assume that people are good. Despite being four years his junior, she felt like she was corrupting him.
And yet she couldn’t stop. His emotional intensity left her gasping for breath during their first time together, and the way his eyes worshipped her, the way she could see into his soul and feel the power she held over him—intoxicating.
Does it make me deviant that I want more of this? Does it make me wanton? Does it make me a bad person?
Isa decided that she didn’t care. Obe Saai is a choice she made for herself, and only she will get to decide if and when to let go.
They hear the first screams just as they fall into a heated rhythm on the chamber’s large bed, their fingers intertwined like vines, their toes curling into the silken sheets beneath them, breaths mingling as they kiss, bodies edging closer and closer to release.
The screams don’t quite jolt them out of their ecstasy, but the loud thump on the door is harder to ignore. They stop when they hear it again and stare at the door, still entangled in each other. When the noise comes for the third time, Obe pulls out of her and moves to sit at the foot of the bed, where he begins to put on his trousers.
With a frown Isa sits up on the bed and pulls up a sheet to cover her chest. Obe’s back is turned to her, and the muscles of his shoulders are glistening with sweat. “What are you doing?” she asks him.
“Something is off. I need to see what’s going on.” He ties the drawstrings of his trousers and gets up.
“Maybe I should open the door,” Isa suggests. It would not go well for either of them if the person on the other side turned out to be the crown prince or, worse, her mother.
But Obe is determined. “No. You stay here.”
At the door, he listens. The thumps have since intensified to insistent bangs, except no one is demanding entry, which is odd. Slowly, Obe unlocks the door, perhaps intending to peer outside, but before he can stick his head out, the door bursts open, striking him in the face. He staggers backward with a groan.
“Obe!” Isa cries from the bed. “Are you all right?”
He groans again, clutching what must be a busted nose, and in front of him a bulky figure fills the doorway.
Anger and mortification make Isa’s cheeks burn as she recognizes the figure, and she holds her sheet tighter across her chest. “What do you think you’re doing, Manchiri? I told you I was not to be disturbed.”
“Bastard broke my nose.” Obe tilts his head up, trying in vain to stem the gushing blood.
The royal guardsman, a Saire who served in the Sentinels during his younger years, slowly stalks into the chamber, armed with a spear, and something about his eyes looks wrong to Isa.
Creeping fear joins the swirl of emotions roiling in her belly, and she unconsciously shifts back on the bed. “Answer me, Manchiri, or the king will know of this.”
He has been her personal guard for over five comets, and she has known him to be stolid and taciturn, a dependable pillar who lets her have her way so long as he knows she’s safe. But this man in her room . . . she doesn’t recognize him at all, nor the feral hunger in his eyes.
She shivers when a shriek comes in through the door behind him. He takes another step closer, and his spearpoint glistens in the chamber’s dim light like it’s coated in a layer of wetness.
Blood. Spattered all over his blue tunic as well.
Isa shifts farther back on the bed. “Obe.”
Her lover is so preoccupied with looking for something to stanch the blood from his nose he hasn’t noticed Manchiri’s menacing advance.
“Obe!”
“What?” He looks up just as Manchiri decides to lunge for the bed, and what happens next is a blur.
It involves a shirtless Obe leaping several feet and tackling the guardsman so that they crash to the floor. It involves a battle for the guardsman’s spear, both men growling like wild animals as they roll and tumble on the Dulama rug by the foot of Isa’s bed. It involves Isa getting a grip and unsticking herself from her paralysis. She climbs out of the bed and rushes to the dresser across the chamber, where she unearths a sheathed dagger from the top drawer. She wills her hands to stop shaking as she grabs the diamond-studded hilt and pulls, freeing the smooth aerosteel blade from its gilded scabbard.
When she turns around, she sees to her horror how the battle between royal guardsman and Sentinel will be decided if she does nothing: The spear has been forgotten, cast to the side with its blunt end now sticking out from underneath her bed, but Manchiri has overpowered the younger warrior and has his big hands curled around Obe’s neck. Trapped beneath his considerable bulk, Obe kicks and thrashes wildly.
“Manchiri, stop!” Isa screams.
But the guardsman keeps strangling the Sentinel.
What happens next involves Isa doing something that will destroy her. It involves Isa crossing to the warriors and crying out in anguish before she thrusts into the guardsman’s left side with all her strength, feeling the sickening give of flesh and bone at the blade’s sharp point.
Manchiri arches his back as he howls in pain, an almost beastly roar, and the brutality of what she’s done shocks Isa so much she immediately steps back, covering her mouth with her trembling hands and leaving the dagger where it is.
Obe reaches for the dagger’s hilt and pulls, only to plunge the blade back into the guardsman’s side, not once but over and over again, until the bleeding guardsman falls silent and becomes a limp weight on top of him.
Isa’s eyes cloud with tears so thickly she barely sees Obe freeing himself of Manchiri’s corpse—corpse. Manchiri. The guardsman she has known for the last five comets. A corpse, made by her dagger. “I don’t know what’s going on.” Her voice is a shattered thing, a quavering whimper. She claws at her braids because she doesn’t understand. Dear Mother above, a corpse. “Why did he try to kill me?”
Obe is already pulling his tunic over his head. Despite his broken nose and blood-spattered face, his voice is steady, solid as rock. “We have to get out of here. This might be a plot. There could be more coming. We need to hide you.” He steps over Manchiri’s body to pick up the bloodied dagger from the floor where he left it, then goes on to do the same to Isa’s emerald slip, which they discarded in their passion not minutes ago. “Get dressed.” He presents the slip to her. “I’ll take you to the Sentinels’ quarters. You’ll be safe there.”
Isa blinks at him, her mind looping around a single word he spoke. “A plot? What plot? Manchiri was a Saire, for the Mother’s sake! What plot could drive him to this?”
“I don’t know,” Obe says, “but I hear screams out there. This is clearly part of a larger attack. Now get dressed.”