Lifting her head, Rea smiled at the sight of the setting sun basking in the last of its warmth. It was getting colder, but at least there was still light, still some comfort she could cling onto.
On the far edge of the horizon, a speck of black appeared. To her surprise, it moved, looming larger, its hazy outline sharpening into a silhouette. Someone was heading her way. On a horse.
Rea’s pulse jumped. Could it be him? Fingers fisted at her sides, she waited. One breath. The dot wavered. Five breaths. The figure started to resemble a human. Fifty breaths. She saw strands of long hair blowing to the person’s right. Hundred breaths. His hair was golden. Two hundred breaths. It was him.
By the time the general arrived at her doorstep, the sun had almost set, and blackness cocooned the valley. Rea could barely make out her own fingers when she looked at them, but she was resourceful enough to produce a lantern to illuminate the general’s way.
His face was haggard, shadowed by an overgrowth of stubble. Crescent-shaped dark circles burned under his eyes. Weariness colored his mesmerizing blue eyes, dulling their brilliance.
“I had to come,” he said clamping a hand over Rea’s shoulder, his gaze assessing her with cool steadiness. “I had to see you. It’s been so long.”
“But why come so late? How will you travel back?” Rea asked.
“I’m not going back.” Tearing his hand away from her, the general stalked into her cottage. Rea scampered behind him, puzzled by his strange answer.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Has something happened?”
“Too much has happened,” he said. “But tonight, none of that matters. I’m here to keep my promise.”
“What promise?”
“Two promises. First, tell me the final wish I must grant you. And second, paint my skin with that tattoo I said I’d get in the summer.”
He sat with his arms drawn protectively over his chest, studying her tools and dyes, murmuring their proper names like a diligent student. He’d divested himself of his coat and underneath, he wore only a shirt.
“I can’t.” Rea’s syllables were tight with panic. “Your highness. You’re the emperor now. I’m not sure it’s appropriate.”
“Can’t an emperor do as he pleases?” There was a cutting edge to the general’s tone, a prickliness, an irritability.
“Please reconsider,” she said. She had no desire to hurt or wound him, even for the sake of a tattoo. He was precious to her, and his agony would only cause her distress. “Imagine the disgust your wife would feel if she saw your back painted with a tattoo on her wedding night.”
To the Suveri, the tattoos were beautiful. They were divine art. But an entire season spent in Ferosia taught her that Alisians did not share that same view abouttattoos. The ones in the capital who viewed her tattoos had recoiled, like they’d seen something horrible.
“Since when did you become such a coward?” He grabbed a thorn from her implements and tested its sharp tip against his forearm. “Aren’t you proud of your tattoos, Rea? Aren’t you proud of who you are?”
“Of course, I’m proud.”
But I can’t hurt you. I can’t hear you scream.
“Then why hesitate? You aren’t forcing me to do this. I came here of my own volition.”
A storm raged in his eyes. Rea wished she knew the cause.
“If you feel so passionately, I’ll do it,” she said. “But don’t ask me to soothe you when you start crying like a babe.”
“I won’t cry,” he said, defiant.
“Strip off your shirt and lie down,” Rea instructed. “I’ll have to prepare your skin. The tattoo will take some hours to complete.”
Thankfully, it was a very simple tattoo. And if she was lucky, the moment the first cut tore into his skin, the general would come to his senses and quit that fruitless endeavor.
Sebestyén dealt with his shirt immediately, throwing it over his head and then crumpling it and laying it like a pillow under his chin. “You’ll draw the tattoo on my back, won’t you?”
She nodded.
The first glimpse of his chiseled chest, matted with dark blonde hair, was so perfect it blew her months of assumptions out of the water. An intense longing took up residence in Rea’s chest, the longing to caress his skin instead of cutting it, to wet his stomach with kisses instead of numbing pine-nut water.
The general lay on his stomach, his back rising and falling to the rhythm of his breaths. His exhales were so loud, they echoed through the night.
Rea steeled herself. With two fingers she dabbed a generous amount of pine-nut water on his back. When the fluid dried, she marked the shape of the tattoo using a wooden stick dipped in powdered black charcoal. Art was in her blood, in her soul, so the pattern came easily, flowing from the tip of her stick as if guided by a divine hand. For one blessed instant, she even forgot who she was tattooing.
Steadying herself with a long breath, she selected a thin thorn appropriate for the tattoo’s size and complexity and slashed over the outline she had drawn.
“That was the first cut,” she said, as blood welled from the deep gash pouring over her meticulously painted outline and smudging it.
The general’s brows furrowed. “Are you sure? I felt nothing at all.”
“I decided to spare you the pain.”
“What do you mean?”
“I numbed your skin with pine-nut water, so you’d feel no sensation.”
“After you scared me with all those stories about sobbing like a child?”
“Those were to dissuade you from getting a tattoo, so I could continue to safeguard the Suveri’s secrets.”
“So Suveri tattoos don’t hurt? Is that the secret?”
“Pretty much.” She soaked up the blood that sprayed from the new cuts she made with a piece of cloth. The rag, which had been white to begin with, turned a deep crimson. “That’s the reason so many of your soldiers and even a lazy pig like General Basa got a tattoo. Do they strike you as men capable of enduring hardship?”
“I didn’t think of it that way.” He relaxed. The muscles under her hands lost their tautness. “Did you also get your tattoos the same way?”
“No. I had to go through sheer agony. The Suveri believe suffering strengths the soul.”
“Makes sense. You’re quite strong.”
“Am I?”
“It takes a special kind of strength to create the art you create.”
They continued to make conversation. It was a boon since it kept Rea’s mind off the damage she was doing to him, and it kept him from falling asleep.
The chilling bite in the air further numbed his wounds so that by the time she finished, even though the pine-nut serum had worn off, the general’s back didn’t sting like it’d been gouged by a knife.
He sat up. “I don’t suppose I’ll be able to see what the tattoo looks like.”
“Unfortunately, I own no mirrors.”
She stretched her arms working off the soreness in her muscles and quickly warmed up a cup of water by building a fire. To it, she added a stock of herbs she kept that were said to nourish the body. Pouring the tea into a cup, she offered it to the general.