The Gantean (Tales of Blood & Light Book 1) (7 page)

Hot, flushed, and distressed, I hurried back towards my alcove. Dancing with Costas had been a stupid thing to do, if only because it would anger Ghilene, but the man sapped me of all good sense.

Someone tapped my shoulder before I could reach the safety of the alcove. I whirled, identifying the tall man who had stood at Jaasir Amar’s side only moments earlier. He lacked the carefully planned refinement of most of these men of the Ten Houses.

“Hello.” He offered a quick smile and a hand. “I’m Laith.”

“I—I’m Lili.”

He gestured towards the dancing couples behind us. “Care to dance?”

“No, thank you.” I hadn’t recovered yet from my first dance.

He shook an admonishing finger at me. “That’s not wise, you know. You’d generate less suspicion if you would dance with someone else after that…interesting…display. I’m trying to help you. I haven’t as much experience with dancing as most of these dandies, but I’m a mage. It won’t be awful.”

I shook my head. “I really—”

The mage—Laith, he’d called himself—grabbed my arm and pulled me back towards the dance floor.

“It’s not my style to force a woman to do anything she does not wholeheartedly desire, but in this case, I really must insist. I promise I have no designs on you. I’ve been sent by my damned brother.”

“What?” I allowed him to guide me into position. He did not have Costas’s finesse, and because of that, we stumbled awkwardly through the star figure.

“Jaasir Amar—my half-brother. I have the dubious honor of serving as his personal mage. A rather uncomfortable arrangement, if you must know, but we’re learning how to rub along together. He wanted me to tell you—wait, let me get this right, Jaasir has
such
a knack for a cutting phrase—‘to keep your talons out of Costas Galatien.’ A cordial message from my little brother.”

I stared up at Laith, who stood nearly a full span taller than me.

“Don’t look so worried.” He swung me too forcibly into the turn before we began the figure again. “First of all, I’m not some lecher bent on seducing you. When it comes to aetherlight, like does not attract like. I’ve seen the color of yours, and there’s no way in the hells of Amatos we could ever bind. We’re too alike in color. It would never work, so put your mind at ease. I’m only a messenger. I have no interest in Jaasir’s intrigues, but I feel it my duty to warn you—Jaasir’s a tenacious son of a bitch.” Laith threw back his head and laughed. “Son of a bitch. Gods, I amuse myself.”

“I’m lost, sir.”

Laith released my shoulder and waved. “Forgive me. You wouldn’t understand the joke unless you knew Jaasir’s mother as I do. Suffice it to say, my half-brother likes to get his way, and in this case, he thinks his way is Costas Galatien. He won’t listen to me, though anyone can see it won’t work.”

“You mean that your brother has—has—amorous affections for the prince?” I blurted. Ghilene had mentioned odd rumors.

Again Laith laughed. “Amorous affections! To say the least. I’d call it an unhealthy obsession, myself, though anyone who can see the Aethers knows they won’t suit.”

“See the Aethers?”

“Yes, you know, what a mage does?” Laith made a complicated gesture whose meaning eluded me. “Manipulate the aetherlights?”

I recalled what Tiercel had told me about aetherlight, that it was the same as what we Ganteans called bloodlight. Of course a mage could see that.

“How do the…aetherlights...tell you that your brother and Costas won’t suit?”

Laith produced a half-hearted, secretive smile. I stepped on his foot, and he caught me to prevent a fall. “For the same reason I know you and I won’t suit. It’s all in the nuances of color. Let’s go speak somewhere more practical,” he said. “Neither of us appears suited to dancing while conversing.”

He pulled me back to the alcoves and ducked into a private one, sitting and gesturing to the opposing bench. “Aetherlight controls everything,” he said. “It’s a fact. Jaasir’s aetherlight is mauve. Costas’s is gold. It’s a bad color fit. End of story.”

“Aetherlight.” I said the word to practice it—if I called it bloodlight, I would reveal that I was Gantean.

But Laith took my response as question. He threw both hands up and said, “Aetherlight! Yes, aetherlight! The blood of magic! The color of your soul! Do they teach laymen nothing? Gods!”

“I know what aetherlight is,” I snapped, crossing my arms. “But I don’t understand what bearing it has on—on anything.”

“I can tell you, on no uncertain terms, that you were drawn here, to Galantia, to the Brokering. Wherever you came from, whatever your plans, you were drawn here.”

“I came because of Ghilene Entila—”

“No,” Laith interrupted. “You were drawn here by Costas Galatien like water moving with a current.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. Is it wise to say this sort of thing in public?”

Laith flapped a hand in the air. “No one’s listening. I would know. Look, it’s your aetherlight. The heat attracts the chill. I’ve seen it a thousand times. His is warm—the warmest. Yours is very cool. Aetherlight controls everything. You may think an event or an attraction is serendipity, coincidence, pure chance, but it’s not. It’s the aetherlights at work.”

I tilted my head and studied the man before me.
Might he be a little unhinged?

“I’m giving you this warning,” Laith went on, “because you seem like an innocent. Your aetherlight wants to bind with Costas’s. There will be some very unhappy people if it does.”

“Bind? Do you mean an ung-aneraq?” I spoke the Gantean word without thinking.

Laith froze across from me, one hand stuck in his dark hair. “By the gods, you’re Gantean? Tell me that word again. Tell me what it means.”

I could have kicked myself. I said nothing.

He lifted his hands in a placating way. “I’m not prejudiced. I couldn’t care less where you’re from. Really. My brother, on the other hand—he has a special hatred for all things Gantean. But I can forget to mention your heritage to him. Tell me what that word means and your secret is safe with me.”

I sighed. “Ung-aneraq. The blood-heart-breath. It is the cord of blood—aetherlight that ties together two who have mated.”

“Ah, yes. It is the same thing we Lethemians call a bind.”

Silence stretched between us. I hated that I had been so foolish as to reveal my secret. Consternation furrowed Laith’s forehead; distress tightened my jaw.

The curtain to the alcove snapped open. Ghilene glared down at me. “What did you think you were doing, dancing with Costas?”

Laith hopped to his feet, bowing. “Lady Ghilene.”

Ghilene turned to him—thank goodness—and lifted her hand. Laith kissed it.

“You’re a mage?” she said, surveying his white attire, thoroughly distracted for the moment.

“The mage Laith, at your service, my lady.”

“Laith?” she cried. “
The
Laith? Laith Amar? Laith of ‘Laith does what Laith wants” fame?”

The mage lifted his brilliant blue gaze and grinned. “The one and only, my lady. And what Laith wants, at this very moment, is to dance with you.” With a debonair gesture worthy of an experienced rake, he took Ghilene’s arm and guided her from the alcove, casting one glance over his shoulder at me, as though to say,
You owe me for saving you
from her.
I took a deep breath and rose. I had a prince to meet.

A
gold
-framed clock presided over the ballroom, set into the wall and wider than the span of my arms. The Lethemian gods representing the hours were rendered on the face in delicate detail, painted with gold and silver leaf that sparkled in the magelight. As the second hand approached the double-faced figure at the top, I slipped from the ballroom.

I now understood—after asking Palace servants a few pointed questions—that the six crystal pillars girding the Palace each supported a garden. These were the crystals that had been taken from Gante long ago, from our Hinge. The red crystal in Nautien’s amulet heated against my chest as I approached Costas’s opal garden at the westernmost point of the Palace.

I moved as silently as a Gantean on the hunt, but the hall was empty—everyone had either retired or remained at the Brokering ball. The garden’s heavy door opened to my turn.

My sense of magic sprang to life. The night before I had been too anxious to notice the prickling that coursed through my limbs, or perhaps I had attributed any magic to Costas Galatien’s presence rather than the crystal garden itself. Now the pale blue walls glowed like a southern mage’s stone, the cool light surging and retreating in a rhythmic beat. The magelight orbs were not illuminated; only the walls cast the intermittent light. I moved deeper into the garden, finding no sign of Costas or anyone else.

White, blue, and violet flowers bloomed everywhere, flashing in the beat of the light. The mageglass lattice screened the midnight sky; the stars glimmered through the gaps in the web like gems scattered on velvet.

My limbs quivered with the chilling pulse of the opal walls. I found the nearest white marble bench and collapsed into it, shivering and closing my eyes against the incessant flashing of the walls and the increasing cold in the air.

“Are you all right?”

My eyes flew open. Costas stood five spans away from me, brightening and fading in the flickering light. He leaned against a white stone pillar that rose from the blue floor.

“The crystal’s magelight does take some getting used to, doesn’t it? Opal’s light is very cold.” He stepped towards me. “That’s why I like it so much.” He offered his hand to help me to my feet. “Close your eyes if it gets to be too much.”

“Why did you send for me?”

Costas laughed. “You have no wiles, Lili. I find that quite refreshing. You aren’t like any woman I’ve ever known.”

“Leila,” I said without thinking. That sayantaq slice of my soul wanted him to use my real name.

“What’s that?” He pulled me into a grove of dwarfed trees near the back of the garden.

“Nothing.”

“No, you said ‘Leila.’ Why?”

I shifted side to side. “Leila. That’s my true name, not Lili. Lili is only what the Entilans chose to call me.”

“Leila. Leila. It suits you. It’s lovely.” He put his hand on my cheek to force our gazes to meet.

I had seen insects stuck for eternity in the amber of Gantean birch trees, and now I knew how they felt mired in the sticky sap. His eyes caught me and pulled me in; I could think of nothing but the kiss we had shared the night before.

He put his mouth over mine as though he had read the thought in my eyes.

“Please—,” I said when he pulled away. I wanted more. His body provided a circle of warmth amidst the cold garden.
So
warm
.

He stroked his thumb over my lips.

“More,” I whispered.

He didn’t need to be asked. I put my hands on his upper arms. As soon as I touched him, I fell into the trance that came over me after knotting nets for hours.

Heat seared my fingers, and the cord I had imagined twinning between us during the dance became a visible, tangible thing made of gold and blue strands. Its steady illumination intensified as we kissed.

He mouthed the bare skin of my neck. “You smell of fir trees and wintergreen,” he said. “I noticed that when I danced with you.” His lips ran over the hollow of my throat, brushing Nautien’s anbuaq. “I wanted to put my face here and inhale you.”

I pushed on him to make space between us. “We shouldn’t do this.” Even I could hear the inconsistent quaver in my voice.

Costas drew up and flicked my tormaquine with his finger. “Why not?”

“We are too different. You are the Prince, and I’m just—”

“Don’t tell me you’re nobody again. I like your difference. I like how easy and quiet you are, like cool, gentle water. You soothe me whenever you are near.”

I thought of the Gantean men, who used to call me bird-girl and mock my shyness. “Men usually wish me to be more forward.”

“I have had enough of forward women to last me a lifetime. I would hazard a guess that they only wish you to be more forward because they lack confidence. You are so delicate, so soft; they don’t know what to make of you. I don’t lack confidence.” He wrapped a finger around a tendril of my hair that had slipped from my braid.

“No, clearly.”

Costas laughed and tugged my hair. “The kitten has teeth! Now, let me hear no more of this nonsense that we are too different. Underneath snobberies,
I
believe we’re all the same. We’re people, no matter our standing in the world. Aetherlight runs through us.”

I nodded, though I could not entirely agree.
Iksraqtaq
would always stand apart; the duty of the Hinge weighed on us in ways the sayantaq southerners would never understand. “What is this called?” I asked Costas, pointing to a cluster of white flowers to steer the conversation into shallower waters.

“That’s the glory-of-the-snow.” He plucked one of the tiny blooms, tucking it behind my ear and letting his fingers run along the edge of my jaw. “There’s something so charming about your innocence. You don’t even know the flowers. Your previous suitors have neglected you.”

“We have few flowers in the north,” I explained. In Gante the only bloom I’d ever seen was the purple saxifrage that littered the ground near the Hinge cavern, and that only survived because of the unnatural year-round warmth of that place.

“Do you like it when I touch you?” he asked. His fingertips had not moved from the side of my face.

“Yes.” I could not deny something so obvious, but I could not meet his gaze, either.

His hand shifted to the back of my neck. “You get so still, like a frightened animal. I’ve never met such a shy woman. I admit it throws me, even as it thrills me. I cannot read you.”

I told him the truth, though it might have been better to lie. “It’s just—Ghilene would be angry. I fear what she will do if she finds out about our meetings.”

“Ghilene? Forget about her.”

“She won’t like it—”

“She’ll never know, and if she finds out, will she dare to argue with me?”

I didn’t find his cavalier attitude comforting, but I couldn’t bring myself to explain my situation. Shame—for being Gantean, for being considered both savage and criminal—made me hold my silence.
What would he think of me if he knew I was Gantean?
I craved his attention too much to risk revealing my secret.

He ran a finger down my throat until it probed Nautien’s anbuaq. “Feel how warm this red stone is,” he murmured. “It has its own heat, like a magestone. It entrances me. I felt your presence, all through the evening, without ever looking for you.” He pressed a palm over his chest. “I felt it here.”

“I know,” I whispered. “When we danced, our aetherlights”—I remembered the Lethemian word—“came together.”

“The stone’s getting warmer,” Costas murmured, still caressing it. “Feel it.” He wrapped my hand over his own on the anbuaq. My head spun from the throbbing walls, the blazing anbuaq, and his warm body.

He ran his fingers into my hair, uncoiling it with a practiced motion. The air thickened as if I had stepped into Yaqi
,
and my knees lost their hold on my weight.

As I fell against him, he leaned back into the opal crystal walls, tilting me so we slid down together. I ended up in his lap, my dress belled over us both.

Some small, reasonable Iksraqtaq
voice inside me resisted, telling me to stop this madness. I pushed into his chest with my palms, though the labor of putting space between us fatigued me. “I can’t,” I murmured half-heartedly.

“Why?” His hands moved over my body, pushing aside clothing, finding skin.

“I’ve never done this before, and—”

“Are you so inexperienced, pretty Leila? How?”

“I’ve never done this,” I repeated stiffly. No Gantean would mate in such uncertain circumstances, with someone the Elders had not given her for the purpose.

“Good. I like knowing you’ll only be mine.” He caught one hand in my hair as the other gathered my skirts around my waist.

His breath tasted faintly of mint leaves. The steady thrum of the crystal’s light had trapped me in its rhythm; whatever connection had risen between Costas and me kept me yoked in the moment.

“Wait!” I said again.

“Why?” he said again. “It’s too late. The aetherlight grips us. I’m no mage, and even I can feel it. Can’t you? It’s all around us.”

I did. Warm bloodlight submerged me like a rising tide. “Is that how it works?” I breathed. No one had ever told me in Gante. They had never told me mating had this magic in it.

“Only between us, Leila. It only works that way for us. I’m the only one who would suit you this way.” Releasing my hair, he twisted one hand around the twine that held my tormaquine and Nautien’s anbuaq. The leather bit into the back of my neck. He pulled my mouth to his.

We never stopped kissing, not even as he turned me to my back and covered me with his body. He worked so fast; his experienced hands shaped me into the arrangement he wanted.

“Yes?” he whispered, one hot palm sliding up my thigh.

“Yes.” I gave myself up to the raw fury of his bloodlight licking at me with warm tongues of heat. I could put up no further resistance; I didn’t want to, though I remembered the mage Laith’s words:
Your aetherlight wants to bind with Costas’s. There will be some very unhappy people if it does.

Costas put his body above mine and pressed my legs apart. I could not distinguish between the burn of the bloodlights from the burn of my flesh as he pushed. I squeezed my hands into his back and bit his shoulder to stifle a cry as he moved inside me. My body strove to be closer, closer to him, as though I needed every exposed bit of our skins to touch.

Coils of bloodlight spun between us: soft, swirling strands of mine, indigo and opal, and strong arrows of his, gold and black. In Yaqi, red aetherlight blossomed from Nautien’s anbuaq in strands like veins, weaving our bloodlights together into a living cord that ran from my chest to his. The lights burst and shattered. Costas bit the leather twine around my neck as he finished, falling over me with a pleasurable weight.

You cannot fight the binds of bloodlight. Like the tides, they pull, and if you stand in their path, they will capture you and draw you out with them to sea.

Once at sea, you have a choice. You can swim or you can drown.

T
he crystal walls
no longer pulsed, instead offering only a vibrant, soothing glow. We remained quiet for a long time. Costas held me but did not move from atop me. The magic had not released us yet; I saw the bound cord of our bloodlights still twisting and thickening. Nothing could separate us now but a blackstone blade, the Gantean ulio that was the only tool I knew of that could cut bloodlight.

The cord we had made would be visible to any mage who could see the Aethers. Too late, my common sense returned.
What had I done?
I thought of the snake in Ghilene’s jewel box, and Ghilene herself, who would be furious if she ever learned what had transpired here tonight. Laith Amar’s warnings ran in my head. The Palace was full of mages, and Costas was no doubt the object of their constant scrutiny.

The pleasant languor fled my body. I sprang up and attempted to rearrange my hair into the semblance of order.

Costas straightened his own clothes, smiling with an uncomfortable sort of satisfaction. I could not meet his gaze.

“Remember,” he said, rising to his feet. “This is our secret. Tell no one. Not yet. There’s a great deal I need to arrange.”

Distress uncurled in the base of my spine. He was Lethemian, sayantaq. He didn’t understand the significance of the cord—the ung-aneraq—we had just made. To him, it was nothing. He could have as many of them as he wanted, he could take lovers at a whim, as all southerners did. I shuddered with revulsion at the thought. To me, the cord meant something else. A lifetime bond of blood and light and breath. Sacred.

Clang!
Down in the ballroom, that ornate clock began to strike, signaling the end of the hour of Amatos.
Clang!
The distant bell rang in its tower. I caught my breath.

Clang!
I took one step away from Costas. He lifted an arm to pause me, but I turned and fled towards the door.
Clang!

“Wait!” he cried. “Where are you going? Leila!”
Clang!

I flew down the western wing’s hall.
Clang!
Each ring of the clock bell only increased my panic.
What had I done? What had I done?

Clang!
The final ring struck just as I arrived on the ground floor. I cast a glance over my shoulder, but Costas had not followed me. A strange emptiness crawled across my neck. I pressed my palm against my throat. The leather that carried my tormaquine and Nautien’s anbuaq was gone. It must have fallen from my neck after Costas had bitten it.

I froze, torn between my urgent need to return for the necklace and my aversion to facing Costas. I gripped my skirts with clammy palms and retraced my steps back to the garden, but the door handle wouldn’t turn for me. My hand shook as I knocked and whispered, “Costas? Costas, please, let me in?”