I step lightly, my hair bouncing against my face. I huff and push it behind my ear, annoyed at Tovila all over again for curling it into a tousled mass. I don't know what she put on it to get the curls to hold, but they're still here half a day later, and I'm still cursing myself for being so caught up in my own thoughts that I absentmindedly murmured yes when she proposed a new style. My head was spinning with norayasti kings and vasayaste lords and the all-too-human hearts beating in their proud chests. That, and how I might crack their pretty rib cages open to get at the organ meat beneath.

I wish I'd told her what I was thinking. My poor, simpering handmaiden would've cried out, maybe even fainted. I decide to say something particularly bloodthirsty in her hearing later just to see her reaction. I don't think Idriit would mind much. Actually, I think Idriit would take notes. There's a gleam of ambition in her tawny eyes I do not trust, and her sharp chin is always jutting upwards, like she's eyeing the heights to which she aspires to climb. Perhaps with the help of a little well-placed poison, a dagger to the heart while one sleeps...

Though perhaps I am just terrible. Perhaps Idriit is a nice girl.

Somehow, I doubt it.

I shake my head to clear it, cursing as the bouncing ringlets tangle with the motion, obscuring my vision. I can see just well enough to make out Lord Marithan's laughing eyes. I blush vividly, gnashing my teeth at the hit to my pride. He clearly finds me ridiculous. Me. What right does he have to laugh at my hair when he spent yesterday afternoon reading about Lady Uluna's love-bitten neck and heaving bosom?

And why the fuck do I care?

"Is this strategy, O'otani? Do you expect me to go easy on you so we don't mess up those curls?"

I blush a little redder because, well, I can think of plenty of ways to mess up these curls. And half of them have nothing to do with fighting.

I glare at him. "Curls can be tied back. So, too, can limbs be cut off. Let's see how well you embrace Lady Uluna without your left arm."

"I'm ambidextrous, actually," he returns with an easy smile. "And you are making threats with your mouth when you should let your sword do the talking. Now tie back that ridiculous mane, or cut it off, I don't fucking care, and pick up your sword."

"Those? Really?" I laugh derisively, eyeing the two wooden practice swords he has at his feet in distaste. "Is this a joke, Roze? What are we, seven years old?"

"Well, you do have curls like one of my sister's dolls-"

"Oh, fuck you, you prancing vasayastisi!" I snarl, bending down and grabbing one of the stupid wooden sticks. "It might be a dummy sword, but I'm sure it will hurt plenty when I shove it up your pompous ass."

He just grins. "That's not something you'll find in the Fall of Lady Uluna," he informs me. "The Soldier's Secret, though, has plenty of- ahem- swordplay if you're looking for recommendations. Though they never talk about lubrication beyond spit, so it's less instructional than aesthetic, I suppose."

I blush darker than a blooming turtlerose, sputtering half-curses and startled admonitions until I run out of air. Then I just shake my head, tie back my stupid hair, and adopt the stance my swordmaster, Arn D'Verin, drilled into me over and over again. One foot straight forward, the other back and at an angle, knees bent, back straight.

Roze's eyes sparkle as he takes me in. "Curls like my sister's dolls and the stance of one of my toy soldiers."

"This is the stance my swordmaster taught me, and he was a renowned knight for decades-"

"The noraya eats renowned knights for breakfast," Roze scoffs. "You come at a norayasti fighter with a rigid stance, perfect form, and traditional style and they'll have your ass in the dirt before you can blink. That is, if they don't put their sword through your belly."

"If you think a street fighter, a gang lackey, could challenge one of the dimaraste's best knights-"

"I know they could," he retorts, cutting me off. I glare at the interruption, and he looks thoroughly amused. "Knights fight with a great deal of gravitas, but they're highly predictable. The same style of fighting is passed down generation after generation and they all end up with the same set of tricks. A few individual flourishes, of course, but there's a rulebook, and that makes them predictable. And predictable makes you dead."

He parries forward and I dodge, knocking his dummy sword aside with a loud clack. I decide to go on the offensive, putting pressure on my blade in a way that means he'll have to exert equal pressure to keep his steady, then breaking away and using his forward momentum to throw him off balance, knocking him to the ground if I'm lucky. I'm not. He evades, dancing to the left, then he's on me with a flurry of familiar moves. I counter him, his partner in this violent dance, and I don't slow down when I feel the wood splintering into my fingers. When my heart is pounding like a war drum in my chest. When sweat is pouring down my brow and into my tangled mess of curls.

It feels good to fight, even with dummy swords. Like I'm stretching a limb I'd forgotten I had. Fighting Roze feels even better. He's good. Really good. He keeps me on my toes, following me through complicated patterns of attack and defense that most of the palace guards I sparred with couldn't keep up with. I'm not as strong as a man, but I'm fast and nimble, and I know how to use that to my advantage. We each manage to disarm the other several times, but it's never easy.

"Well," Roze says when he finally calls a time out to drink and wipe the sweat from our foreheads, "we've certainly taken care of those ridiculous curls."

I swat the back of his leg with my wooden sword, hard, and smile when he curses.

"Now," he says after he's done drinking and hands the water skin to me, "we fight my way. We fight like the norayasti fight."

This time, when our swords meet, he's a whirl of brutal motion. His movements are less clean, his form off, but he's fast as fuck and he strikes at every single one of my weak points- my breasts, my face, my instep, the back of my knees. He has me disarmed in a matter of minutes, and when I'm on my knees with his wooden sword at my neck, glaring up at him, panting like mad, he just smiles and says "Lady Uluna's chest isn't the only one that's heaving, I see. You've worn yourself out."

"Again," I say after taking a drink from the water skin. "We go again."

He's all too happy to oblige.

This time, I learn from my mistakes. I let go of some of my fundamentals, loosen my form, vary my sets in a way that Arn D'Verin would tsk at, and it helps. I meet him blow for blow, and then I'm laughing, because he's left his left side open and with one clean lunge, I'll have him. I shift forward, smooth as water, but before I can complete the motion, he's pulled a small blade from a sheath hidden beneath his shirt and pressed it into the soft skin of my side.

"Match," he says simply, because the knife would've punctured my kidneys. It's a killing blow and he knows it.

It's also complete bullshit. "That's cheating, Marithan!" I hiss. "You can't bring in outside weapons!"

"Why not?" he asks innocently.

"Because it's unfair!" I seethe. "You didn't tell me you had another dagger on you. You didn't tell me I could've had one on me, too!"

"Fuck fair," he says. "You think the noraya will fight fair, my Queen? You think they'll make honorable opponents? They will take every single advantage they can, exploit every weakness you show, and they won't give a damn if it seems dirty or cheap. And honor means a lot less when you're choking on your own blood."

"No morals, no standards, no shame, right?" I mean to goad him, but he just nods, adding on "and no holds barred."

I learn this the next round when he drives the wooden stick into my tender breasts before kicking my feet out from under me.

Match.

He bends down and before I know what's hit me, he's thrown sand in my face, and used my momentary confusion to put the dull tip of the sword to my throat.

And match.

I finally manage to win the next round, and while I crow my victory, he headbutts me, takes my sword, and presses it to my stomach with a feral grin.

Match.

"Nope!" I protest. "No sir. I'd won. The sword was at your throat. You're dead."

"But I'm not," he tells me. "The sword is wooden, so I'm very much alive, and in the perfect position to knock you out."

"But that's not how this works! I had you, Roze!"

"And then you lost me when you assumed the match was over. That I agreed to be a good boy and stop fighting the second your blade touched my throat. I didn't, but even if I had, I'd still take advantage of your misplaced trust to turn the tables. The fight is over when your opponent flees, dies, or you strip them and take every one of their weapons. Not a moment sooner, dizsariza."

I bite back a sharp retort because, well, he's right. Jana Semiroth won't want to drink tea with me and chat about the weather. He won't reveal his hand, nor stay it just because I've achieved some arbitrary standard of victory, and he most definitely won't play fair. If I move my pieces in the standard linear patterns, I will lose the game.

And this isn't a game I can afford to lose.

When Roze told me I needed friends now more than ever, I rolled my eyes. Why would I stoop to courting the friendship of little lords when my only goal was to drive a knife into Sholu Verlaina's heart and end his sorry existence? What use does a weapon have for friendship? I found Roze's suggestion absurdly, charmingly naïve.

But killing Sholu... it isn't good enough anymore. Repeating my plans to torture him over and over again inside my head like a prayer isn't fucking good enough. I want to be more than a weapon wielded in Shira's name. I want a future, even if I can't imagine what it will look like.

I'm not just a weapon, I'm a woman. And, by some laughable twist of fate, I'm a queen. There's power in that, but up until now I've ignored it entirely, too obsessed with my own pain and revenge to see the title as more than a manacle tying me to Sholu's side, a lie to be endured for Shira's sake. But it's so much more than that- it's leverage. It's a path forward, albeit not an easy one. But I've endured this much, haven't I?

I've endured, but I'd like to live again. Focusing all my energy on destroying Sholu was a goal to hold onto when everything else in my world disappeared in a night. It was penance for the role I unwittingly played in my family's murder. It was divine retribution carried out by mortal hands because Zsavina clearly wasn't listening to my prayers. And it was suicide. I knew I'd die the second he did.

And so, consumed by my monomania, I played right into his hands. How many times has he said he's the only thing standing between me and the world? The noraya and the vasayaste called for my blood, but he spared my life. They wanted me stripped of power, and instead he married me, bypassing their own daughters. How many times has he said that all he'd have to do to destroy me is tell the truth? The wolves would be on me in minutes, and even the tiger inside of me couldn't escape their violence.

He told me he was mercy. My protector. The keeper of my secrets. He said he was all I needed, and I said his death was all I needed, and I ignored everything and everyone else in pursuit of that goal. I cemented the noraya's dislike of me when I killed two guards and spent months tormenting the others when they drew lots to decide who had to come to my room and bring me food. I looked down my nose at the vasayastisi Sholu surrounds himself with, pitying their delusions of grandeur, when I was the one who was delusional. I let my enemy, my captor, become my strongest ally when I should've been building outside relationships this entire time. Friends are leverage. Allies are power. And I find that I want that power desperately. I don't want to spend the rest of my life begging Sholu for scraps of security. I've let him define my relationships to the gangs, the vasayaste, the country as a whole.

Maybe the answer to escaping Sholu isn't raging at him behind closed doors, or stabbing him, or trying to cut his throat with a butter knife. I might not be able to get out from under him completely, but if I have friends, if I have power of my own... he will not dictate how the world relates to me, or how I relate to the world.

I told him I'm going to wear the crown before it wears me, and I meant it. His protection only goes so far. If I want to keep myself safe, I need the vasayaste and the noraya to respect me in my own right. I need to be a queen in more than just name.

And Jana Semiroth? Well, I'm not going to Alu Oshana to negotiate food distribution on Sholu's behalf. Nothing half so selfless. I'm going because I want to establish a relationship with the head of the second largest Shikkan gang on my own terms. I want Jana to think of me as O'otani, the dizsa of Shikkah, not as Sholu's dimarastisi wife.

Men like Jana Semiroth don't have friends, but I hope we can be allies. In the game Sholu and I are playing, he's a potential trump card. I'd be a fool to waltz into his city and propose we work together to assassinate the king of Shikkah right away; the Shotori and Chalnori have treaties, Sholu has the people's heart, and Jana won't want to start a war when he could grow rich partnering with the deme.

Still, power is a siren song, and the noraya does not like to share. He's better positioned than most to challenge my husband. It's not a challenge he'd win, but perhaps with my help, one day it could be. At the very least, I mean to show him that Sholu's new queen isn't an easy target.

I see the possibilities glittering around me like distant stars and want to grab them all and crush them to my chest, giddy and desperate. Elated, even, to realize that there might be a future I can influence instead of one where I'm pulled along by the currents of prime movers I cannot touch.

But I touched the prime mover. He touched me. He came inside of me, my name staining his lips. I blush, disgusted. Intrigued. Confused. I hate him. I hate Jana Semiroth, too. But being queen? Perhaps that is something I will not hate half as much as I thought.

"You've got a glimmer in your eye, dizsariza," Roze teases. "What's making you smile like that?"

"Thoughts of world domination," I reply casually. "What else?"

"Lurid fantasies of my bare chest and rippling muscles?" he suggests with a foxy grin. "Now stop whining and stalling and get back in position. We're not done here."

"Bossy, bossy," I chide. He just swats the back of my knees with his wooden sword, laughing when I jump and let out a very loud squeak. I glare at him for causing me to make such an undignified sound. "Damnit, Roze!"

"For the duration of our practice, you will call me Master Marithan," he tells me coolly, a traitorous smile tugging at the edge of his lip.

"No man is my master," I inform him, "and certainly not one with a flower for a name who spends his lazy afternoons reading smutty books."

"The Fall of Lady Uluna has an interesting plot," he protests.

"Heaving bosoms are not a plot, Roze."

"Don't judge a book by its cover," he replies, fixing me with a look that tells me we're talking about more than just literature. "Now bring your heaving bosom over here and fight me. We'll just call this pillow talk."

"If your pillows could talk," I retort, remembering the disheveled state of his room, "they'd be begging to be picked up off the goddess-damned floor."

"When I'm done with you, you'll be begging the same," he promises. "Now pick up the stick, O'otani. You're out of condition and need the practice."

I grit my teeth and do as he says. He's right, after all. I'm not as strong as I used to be and I'm tired of it.

We spar until the sweat is sliding down my forehead in rivulets, the humidity creating a wild halo of curls around my face so unlike the tamed ringlets Tovila inflicted upon me. Until I'm panting so hard I wheeze, hands on my knees, struggling to catch my breath and still the pounding of my heart. When I finally succeed in disarming him, he smiles wide and drops the practice sword, drawing me forward and spinning me like we're dancing. And in a way, I suppose we are.

"That's the most you'll ever see me dance, Master Marithan," I wheeze, laughing at his silliness, his audacity. "My last swordmaster was always so serious, and here you are spinning me around like we're dancing an azsurette."

"If it were an azsurette, I'd have stepped on your toes far more," he informs me solemnly, handing me a damp cloth to wipe the sweat from my face. He drinks from a waterskin greedily, the wetness sliding down his chin and chest, before he hands me the rest and motions for me to sit down.

"Now, tell me of your last swordmaster while we catch our breath," Roze demands as I down the rest of the water, the taste cool and sweet. "He was a knight, no? Elite, too, I'd guess based on some of the formations he taught you."

"He was a legend," I say, my chest aching with fondness for the gruff old soldier. "Arn D'Verin, knight of the first order and defender of the crown. To me, though, he was just the tough old bastard who made me practice until I could barely walk and taught me how to laugh in the face of fear."

"Your family wanted you to learn from the best, then," Roze says. "That man could make a blade sing. He impressed even the noraya, and that's not easy to do."

I chuckle, taking another long drink of water. "Oh, my family didn't want me to learn at all. They refused me for months, insisting on dancing and music lessons instead. Then a lesser prince of Quar'assam visited the palace, and his guards were of an order of female warriors and assassins known for their sadistic brutality."

"The Shoshari Havthi," he says knowingly. "In Quar'assam, they're revered as goddesses of pain. And Goddess help the acolytes who choose to serve them."

"I wanted to be one such acolyte," I confess with a grin, remembering my awe as I watched the warrior women stalk through the palace like wolves on the prowl. "I followed them around relentlessly. Eventually, one of them took pity on me and agreed to teach me how to use a knife to make a body sing and blood flow like rivers. I told my mother this, and she almost fainted, but she agreed to let me study swordplay so long as it was under the tutelage of a respected knight and not a foreign murderess."

"And she chose Arn D'Verin, the best knight of his generation."

"No, my mother chose some lithe, flowery swordmaster from Telivah," I snort derisively. "A mild-mannered, biddable fool she felt safe around. I hated him. Arn was my choice," I sigh, the memory warm and fuzzy on my tongue. "He came to stay with us for a week to inspect the palace guard, and I saw him fight. I knew he had to be my teacher. I told him as much and he laughed at me, but I found a way to convince him in time."

"Amarin gold?" Roze guesses.

I shake my head. "Arn didn't give a shit about money. Arn didn't give a shit about giving a shit, really. He was a surly old cuss, and he told me he had no interest in teaching a little girl who would never see battle a day in her life. So I waited until he was asleep, picked the lock on his window, climbed into his room, and stole his sword before he woke." I laugh, remembering the look on his face when he realized what I'd done. "I was rather theatrical about it. Brought the thing to breakfast strapped to my hip, grinning like a mad fool. My family was beyond mortified, but Arn just laughed and laughed. And then he agreed to teach the little girl after all, because she had, in his words, 'some big fuckin' balls.'"

______

"That you do," Roze agrees. "I heard a rumor that you ordered Lady Dakara Reis around like a naughty child. She's terribly offended, I'm afraid. Says you clearly don't want her help with the Chalnori noraya all that badly."

I snort. "She's too proud. She thinks herself on equal footing with the deme and dizsa because she has Jana Semiroth's ear and protection. Now, when he asks her of the dizsa, she will not say I am a silent observer, or a mincing dimarastisi. She will say I am cut from the same cruel cloth as my lord husband, and they will know not to underestimate me."

"She expected you to court her favor."

"Does the noraya court favor, or does it demand respect? Is power freely given, or is it snatched by grasping hands and torn apart like so much meat? And if I am to engage the noraya, should I not play by the noraya's rules? I doubt they will listen to or respect a lady with folded hands and a polite smile. So, I flex my claws to remind both of us that I have them."

Roze just looks at me. "You've a brutal soul, don't you, O'otani?"

I bristle, quickly growing defensive. Because I think Roze is the kind of man who would go to Alu Oshana to make sure strangers are fed because it's the right thing to do. Because he is norayasti but seems to resent the power games and violence that Sholu revels in. Is that what I'm doing right now? Reveling in the darkness I've sworn to escape? Am I playing these games because I must, or because I enjoy them?

I'm disturbed that I don't immediately know the answer.

"You painted me as one of your heroines, didn't you?" I ask, trying to sound mocking instead of hurt. "A martyr willing to suffer anything and sacrifice everything to save the one she loves. You thought I was good." I pause, swallowing, the words heavy as stones in my mouth. I use them to build a wall between us, to protect myself from the scorn I'll find if I meet his eyes. "I'm not good, Roze. He's drawn to me for a reason, and goddess save me, part of me is drawn to him. I am impulsive and violent and sometimes blind. I want power and I crave revenge. So, yes, I have a brutal soul and a cruel heart."

He regards me for a moment, then slowly shakes his head. "No, you don't. Not a cruel heart, O'otani. An animal heart." His hand is suddenly right above my breast, and the sweat makes our skin stick together where he touches me.

"What's the difference?"

"Cruelty causes pain for the sheer pleasure of it. Animals... they are wild. They react. When they hurt, they lash out with sharp teeth and claws. They lack restraint and forethought but possess a certain wisdom, and a loyalty man cannot hope to touch."

"Is that why you touch my chest?" I ask archly. "To see where my loyalty lies?"

"I do not think your loyalty lies at all," he says softly. "You've a true heart."

"You think too well of me," I mumble, suddenly embarrassed.

"Nah," he says with a sly grin, "I just think you have, what was it? Oh, yes. 'Some big fuckin' balls.'"

I laugh, and for once, it's not forced or bitter. "I do, don't I?"

He nods. "Oh, huge ones. Massive. Worthy of being immortalized in prose in a book like, say, Lord Galhanan's Lover's Secret. Or is it Lord Galhanan's Secret Lover? I always forget," he sighs, seemingly unaware of how utterly ridiculous he is. It's almost endearing. "Honestly, if you're going to Alu Oshana alone to confront Jana Semiroth, your balls might be bigger than your brains."

I shove him with the wooden practice sword, mock-scowling. "I should have you whipped for such impudence!"

"Oh, that reminds me of a particular scene in The Thief Who Stole my Heart-"

"When I'm in Alu Oshana," I tell him very seriously, "I'm going to buy you some new books. And you're going to read them even though they won't have any heaving bosoms or giant balls in them, okay?"
"I can get my own damn books, O'otani. I'm coming with you, aren't I?"

I was prepared with a sarcastic quip, but his response completely disarms me. "You... wait. You're coming with me?"

"Oh, yes. Someone has to make sure you don't get yourself killed."

"And Sholu is okay with this?"

Roze grins. "Sholu asked me himself. It's a strange bit of politics, having the wife of the deme, who was once the Nordeme of the Shotori noraya, visit the Chalnori stronghold to treat with their lord. If he sends a gaggle of Shotori men to guard you, it might be seen as provocation. The treaties and all that. But he also doesn't want to send you with just vasayastisi or house guards- they're good fighters, but the noraya are a special kind of brutal. I am no longer norayasti, but I remember how to fight like one. And they remember my reputation. So, I'm going. It'll be fun." He says the last three words so noncommittally that I can't decide if he's being ironic.

"A whole city filled with members of a rival gang and starving people?"

"And training with me every single morning, bright and early. It'll be hell." He grins down at me. "You'll love it."

"I heard you were swinging swords with Roze Marithan yesterday," Sholu says conversationally. "Dakara saw you two in the courtyard."

I shrug. "So? It's not like we were trying to hide it. Also, I don't fucking care what Dakara Reis saw. Sands, I don't care if she saw us fucking up against the palace walls." I snort derisively. "Though I imagine the way she described the fight to you was nearly as lurid. She didn't like the way I spoke to her last week, so she's trying to get me into trouble."

Sholu smirks. "And we both know you can get into trouble all by yourself."

"I am trouble, Mesviraste," I tell him. "You should know that by now."

"Oh, do I ever. Trouble is what I like the most about you."

"Masochist," I sneer.

He just smiles back at me, expression serene. "Perhaps. The whip marks on my back ache every time my shirt brushes against them, but I don't mind. I'm glad you marked me. I'm glad they'll scar."

"Then you'll love what I have planned for the finale," I bluff, drawing my hand across my throat in a cutting motion. "So many marks. So much blood."

He snorts. "Must we always play this game, wife?"

I meet his gaze without blinking. "This is not a game to me."

"Of course it is," he scoffs. "When you felt weak and lost, you clung to me like I was the only dry land in a world of open water. When I touched you, your snarls turned to low moans, and I watched your angry features melt into extasy as you came on my hard cock. But that scared you more than you will ever admit, so you ran and hid behind this tired charade of vivid descriptions of my murder and vows of vengeance." He leans forward, closing the distance between us with a soft smile and a challenge in his eyes. "We both know you'll never do it. Even if Shira's life wasn't in danger, you wouldn't want to lose me, too. You're not sure you could survive it."

I bristle at his words, angry because they're true. It's bizarre to admit to myself that Sholu has become a constant in my life, his insanity, games, and soliloquizing somehow comforting because they're familiar. It's true, though. I suppose it was inevitable when everything in my world fell away at once; we were the only two left standing, and as much as I hated him, he never left me alone. Now, I'm not sure I want him to. I'm not sure I could stand the silence.

"You're right, I'm not sure I could survive it. But I'm not sure I can survive being this close to you, either," I admit, my voice suddenly raw. There's so much need there. Need for safety, for comfort, for reprieve. Need to be seen. To be touched. "The noraya will kill me, or the vasayaste will kill me, or the Yukkaiti will kill me, or you'll kill me, or I'll kill myself. I know how Lizsa felt living with a target on her back put there by your relentless ambition. Maybe Roze will find you carrying my lifeless body around Arzsa one day soon."

"You'd let him carry you?" Sholu asks, his voice hard and low.

I laugh. It's more of a bark, really. "I'd be dead. I'd let him cut me up into little pieces and eat me without saying anything because death has nothing to say."

"You're not going to die because I'm not going to let anyone kill you," he tells me with conviction. "Or eat you, either, macabre Amiidizsa. And if you were going to kill yourself, you'd have done it by now. You might be the most stubborn creature that's ever walked this earth, but even you are adapting. Twice now I've heard you sound like a queen. Whether you admit it or not, you like power. You want to keep it, not give it all away. You also like fucking me, but you're too damn proud to accept it and so instead we turn around and around in the same familiar circles. I'm bored, O'otani."

"You have an entire country to play with. I'm sure you can find something that amuses you. Pleases you."

"What if I've found it already?" he practically purrs, running his rough knuckles lightly across my cheek. I hate the shiver that goes through my whole body at his slightest touch. Like it remembers the pleasure he gave me and is now flushed with anticipation, just waiting for a little contact to ignite the spark we carry between us always. It's love and hate and familiarity and contempt, pain and arrogance and shared suffering, horrible truths and pretty lies, lust and a wanting as wide and deep as the sea itself. It's us.

I hate that there's such a thing as us. That we fit together in any form or fashion.

I blush, remembering exactly how well we fit together, and how good it all felt.

"I do not aim to please you."

"And yet you do please me, O'otani. More than I can say. Your fire, your faith, your unabashed violence and bravery all please me."

"Don't flatter me, Sholu," I say in a voice that's surprisingly steady considering the fact that his hand is tracing the curve of my back, teasing my skin with lazy touches. I don't pull away. I should, but I also don't want to be the one to retreat. And I like the weight of his hands on me.

"I'm not flattering you, O'otani," he sighs. "I know you insist on thinking of me as a conqueror, as one who takes, but I've lost as much as you have. I don't know if I could survive losing you, too. You are my weakness and my strength, and I don't want anyone interfering with that. Not Roze Marithan, not Dakara Reis, not Jana Semiroth. Not even you."

"I'm not the one interfering! I didn't plot to overthrow the dimaraste! I didn't conquer Shikkah!"
"Then perhaps you conquered me."

I look away before he can read the conflicting emotions in my eyes. I hate him, but I don't hate the thought of being dear to him. I really should, but it feels good to be wanted. I've felt thrown away so often, and I was lonely long before they died, but now? Now, the absence is like a gaping hole in my life, and at least he's big enough to fill it with... something. Not love, no, but not hate either.

"We both know that between us, I'm the one who was conquered."

"You fought so well and so bravely for so long, O'otani," he soothes, "but the war is over now, okay? All that's left is for us to share in the spoils."

"And what are the spoils?"

"Let me show you," he whispers, his lips brushing against my ear. I shiver and he laughs at my responsiveness, then glides his other hand under my jaw, angling it upwards before claiming my mouth in a consuming kiss. Somehow my arms end up twined around his neck and I'm kissing him back just as hungrily, because I need this. I need him. The realization fills me with horror, but I'm too far gone to care. It's not love. I know that as well as I know my own name. But I also know that this is somehow easier than talking to him. Our bodies speak more eloquently than our words ever could, and the wars we wage with tongues and hands are far cleaner and more honest than those we wage with words.

And, I admit to myself, this is one of the only ways I can exert power over him. I can't risk Shira's life, but I can risk my soul and touch Sholu in ways that bring him to his knees. That have him panting my name over and over again like a prayer. A brutal part of me relishes the idea of breaking his cool façade into shards. He deserves it, doesn't he? He shattered me. Turnabout is fair play, I told Tovila, and I meant it. Sholu and I are well matched. We're made for clashing and war and we've got a taste for the other's blood and marrow.

His tongue slicks into my mouth, moving against mine, and I taste his bitterness and the sweat of his skin and the sweetness of his power. And then I think of Roze Marithan. I hear his voice asking 'did you choose him because you truly wanted him? Or did you choose to immerse yourself in the solidity of a physical connection because your loneliness and pain was momentarily unendurable?'

It isn't pain driving me right now, though. It's my animal heart. My need for release and conquest. For kinship, as strange as that may be, because the cruel thing inside of me recognizes the monster beneath his skin and it makes me feel less broken. Less alone. And that fact in and of itself cleaves me in two. So I use his hands and my tongue and the press of my flushed skin against his to hold myself together. Or perhaps I'm just trying to break myself completely. Burn away the shadow of the person I used to be.

Am I to become his shadow instead?

No, I vow to myself, taking his lip between my teeth and biting until I taste the rich iron tang of his blood. He groans, and I swallow the sound, all grasping hands and wild hunger. I can't tell if this is madness or reprieve. I don't even care.

He tastes good.

You might be the most stubborn creature that's ever walked this earth, but even you are adapting.

Is that what I'm doing? Finding a new way forward? Or am I just drinking poison and calling it a cure?

I don't think I can be cured. Strangely enough, there's something like peace in that realization. That we've gone too far to ever go back. That the place I wanted to go back to, the person I was then, no longer exists. Between the two of us, we killed her.

And now he sounds like he's the one who's dying. There's not an inch of space between us and I can feel his low groans of pleasure reverberate in my own chest. I'm not powerless. I am still a weapon that can bring this conqueror, my enemy, to his knees.

I think I'd like him kneeling at my feet.

Twice now I've heard you sound like a queen. Whether you admit it or not, you like power.

Maybe he's right

And you like fucking me.

Pretty sure he's right about that, too. I should put out my own eyes as penance. I won't, though. If anyone's eyes are going to be put out, it'll be his. I'll leave him his lying tongue, though, so he can scream my name.

For a moment, I'm scared of who- or what- I'm becoming.

But then he pushes up my tunic and pulls down my leggings, and when he's inside of me again, I stop thinking entirely.

___

This is so fucking long. If you've read up until this point, bless your dear soul. This is winding up, though. This is the last major arc. I just can't edit to save my damn life. So instead of a "plot" there's a lot of "wow I got lost worldbuilding and had fun writing this dialogue here have all of it"

the second draft will be less wordy. Somewhat. And the plot will be less episodic. \

Also, one more O'otani chapter then back to Shira and Irei in Kama for a different kind of drama