The Blood Mirror

Tisis began crying, tears streaking silently down her cheeks, making her cosmetics run, and still not giving up. She was hurting Kip, and she was definitely hurting herself.

“Tisis. Stop. Tisis!” Kip whispered.

She didn’t listen to him.

He grabbed her hips and held her still. “You’re hurting me.”

“I can do this,” she hissed.

Much as he’d tried to avoid the common areas in the public baths, Kip had been around enough to know that his horn wasn’t freakishly huge. It wasn’t that; he doubted he could fit his littlest finger inside Tisis. She said it wasn’t her hymen, either. That had broken when she was young. This was pure muscle, and it was clenched so tight that if he’d been inside her when it clamped down, he’d have been left with a jerky stick.

“Tisis, stop.”

She released her hand’s death grip and sat on him, defeated. “What do we do, Kip?” Her sitting felt far nicer than anything else she’d done, but perhaps that was just an absence of pain.

“You’re beautiful,” Kip said. “And I’m lucky to have you.”

Her expression softened from its desperate anger. She lay down on him and rested her head on his chest. She tried to speak, but then dissolved in tears.

Kip figured it was better than her sleeping with her back to him silently as she had for the first three nights. Maybe it was his own fault. With the shock of the battle and their flight and Goss’s death at the Chromeria and Tremblefist’s likely death at the cannon tower and Kip’s declaration that he wouldn’t be going with Tisis to Rath, they hadn’t even tried to make love the first night.

The second night, she’d found out that he really did plan to take the Mighty to war, instead of going to Rath with her. She’d been furious with him, and he’d been mortified at the idea of having to strip naked and expose his body and his scars in front of a woman whose beauty would make a goddess cringe. She’d blown out the lamp, handed him the olive oil, and gotten in bed, legs spread, silent, her whole demeanor saying, ‘Just get it over with, you animal.’

Despite a lack of personal experience, Kip hadn’t been completely clueless—he’d thought. Tisis had gotten spitting mad with his fumbling, finally taking charge herself. And… nothing. He’d found nowhere to go when he was on top, not because he was an idiot; he’d found nowhere to go because there was nowhere to go. They’d pretended to sleep, back to back.

The crew’s jokes the next morning had been unbearable. And that was when Kip had missed his opportunity. He should have confessed to… whom? One of the Mighty? None of them had even hinted that something like this was possible. The randy captain? Ugh. Someone, anyway, that things weren’t going well. Or going at all.

But how stupid could you look? What kind of mockery did that invite? I took a beautiful woman to bed, and I didn’t know what to do?

The third night had been better and worse. Tisis hadn’t told any of her slaves, either, apparently as ashamed as Kip was. She’d failed her family too many times, she’d said. She wasn’t going to fail again. But she’d decided she wasn’t going to take it out on Kip, and then she’d begged his pardon.

They’d made some perfunctory moves at kissing and caressing—and tried and failed again. She’d been furious, but not at Kip.

I should have made love with Teia when I had the chance.

The one thing Kip had thought he’d definitely be getting when he’d agreed to marry Tisis, he was being denied.

Maybe he should let the marriage be annulled.

But Andross had assigned Kip to this task. He would assume that the failure was a deliberate betrayal. The Chromeria needed Ruthgar bound to it by the Guile/Malargos marriage. This was bigger than Kip, bigger than his frustration. Tisis and her family needed it, too, though the Guiles had gotten the better of the bargain. She had been a hostage of the Chromeria, a guarantor of the end of the Blood Wars between Ruthgar and Blood Forest. She could leave Big Jasper legally after she was married, but leaving before that without permission was a breach of the articles of peace—something damn near akin to an act of war.

In normal times the Ruthgari hostage leaving without permission would be a diplomatic gaffe understood between friends. During a war in which the loyalty of Ruthgar was in question, it would be far worse. If Eirene Malargos actually was on the brink of siding with the Color Prince, regaining her beloved sister would give her freedom to join him if she wished it. If the Chromeria handled the gaffe poorly, though, threatening her, it might actually push her into the Color Prince’s camp. Annulling their marriage could mean breaking an alliance.

Tisis’s sobs had quieted, and she shifted as if to get more comfortable to sleep on Kip. Which was actually really nice. Way better than frigid silence. But the motion made her leg brush Kip’s horn. Great. Here for a moment he’d nearly forgotten about it. She froze.

She sat up. Her makeup had run, and her eyes were puffy, and there was clear snot under her nose. “I should at least take care of you,” she said, her voice sniffly, right on the verge of crying again.

It was not a thought that hadn’t occurred to Kip in the last four nights.

Kip the Lip was back, already speaking: “In the history of the world, there have been five great unromantic invitations to romance, but this… this outshone them all.”

She pounded a fist on his chest. “Kip! Not funny!”

“You’re smiling.”

“I am not.” But of course she was. Her face was a war of humor and frustration and despair and tears. “It’s either smile or cry, and I hate crying.”

“I have an idea,” Kip said.

“What?”

“Not a good idea, mind you.”

“What is it?”

“All I can promise is that it’s a little better than crying.”

Chapter 8

If this had been any other time in his life, Gavin could have taken the shock, absorbed it silently, and gone on to the next appointment of an overfull day. In every down moment, he would have chewed through the surprise. He would have lain it down for six or ten hours, not thinking about it at all. And then, passionless, he would pick up that shock late in the day and rationally decide what to do about it.

But in this gray hell, there was nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Nothing else to think of. Little to see except the expectant face of Marissia, like a loyal hound expecting a beating.