Page 74 of Warrior's Reign
“Hmm.”
Vykhan rose. “I’d like to take Reign for a walk.”
“Don’t show her the armory yet,” Aanyah said. “I want to be there for that.”
“I’d like to see the gardens,” Reign said quietly. “Where my flowers came from.”
“Very well,yada’ami.”
She took the offered hand and allowed him to raise her to her feet, then they left the house.
25
The Twins werea sliver in the sky, but discreet lighting added a subtle glow when they emerged outside, Vykhan leading the way around the house. It was a one story, sprawling complex in immaculate repair despite its age. Signs of modernization here and there, but mostly it seemed as if the buildings had been left as they were when first built. It would have been centuries ago. Her fingers brushed the wood as they walked. She rarely saw homes of this construction inside the city.
He stopped them at a section of the garden where the night-blooming flowers perfumed the air with such a subtle scent she closed her eyes and inhaled, centering herself in order to capture the elusive fragrance. Which was the point, of course.
When she opened her eyes again, the harmony of evening creatures in her ears, she beheld her betrothed standing under the wash of moonlight, a black opal sheen in his hair, his eyes dark.
Vykhan watched her quietly, a peace in his gaze she was loath to interrupt. “Growing up in this garden,” she said softly, “would make a Vow of Silence seem a simple thing. If it were my parents, they would make me spend hours here, learning to sit still and not speak.”
He tilted his head. Her fingers itched, as usual, to run through the hair streaming over his shoulder. To rest on the muscled chest under the silk of his robes.
“They are my family’s gardens,” he said finally, voice deep in the quiet. “We allow others here rarely.”
“So I’m family now?”
He gave her a quizzical look. “You are my betrothed. What is ours is now yours.”
“We aren’t married yet.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “About that bone I have to pick.”
“An odd phrase,” he murmured. “Sometimes I think half your speech is lost in translation.” Vykhan moved forward, close enough to reach out and grasp her hand, lifting it to his lips. “Don’t worry over such things,yada’ami.”
Her breath caught at the casual term of endearment. A term Yadeshi males only used with females in very specific circumstances. “Why?”
Vykhan drew her into the circle of his arms, resting his chin on top of her head. A loose embrace, but she would never be able to be held by him and not note the strength in his body, the constant awareness.
“Some things,” he said, “have no straightforward answer, but simply are. Is it not enough that I love you?”
Words strangled her throat. “You’ve never said so.”
Amusement in his voice now. “And you think I would take to wife a female I did not love?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out. What advantage there is for you in this.”
He drew away, lifted her face with a finger under her chin and studied her expression. “Perhaps I don’t seek advantage. Perhaps I only bow to what mustbe.Is that not the Path? To accept the inevitable with grace?”
She scowled. “And I’m inevitable? Like flies or taxes?”
“You,” he said, “are everything.”
Maybe it was the cover of night that allowed him to speak like this. Reign fell silent, stunned. His words were almost absent emotion, mere statements of fact.
“And perhaps,” he continued, “that is what I fear.”
He led her further down the carefully cultivated paths to a lush copse of grass under flower trees.
Reign crouched in the garden, running her finger through the soil. She looked up at Vykhan.
