Page 89 of Zalis
“That is an ill omen,” he said, quoting what he would have considered superstitious nonsense not long ago. Now that it was about him and his mate, it did not seem like nonsense.
“No,” Gemma said.
“Do not feel the need to elaborate.”
She grinned over the rim of her cup, clearly amused. “Omens are make-believe. This is real. We’re real.”
“This is real,” he agreed. “A love match has been all I ever wanted, yet this is better.”
She was radiant, pink rising in a flush on her cheeks at his words. Still holding her cup, she asked, “What do we do now?”
“We drink.” Zalis raised his cup in her direction and drank. The hot liquid scalded his tongue, partially immunizing him against the bitter taste.
Gemma drank and visibly flinched. “That’s… interesting, but not relaxing.”
He took another sip to verify. “It is vile.”
“It’s just bitter. Sugar will help, or is adding sugar to the ceremony tea forbidden?”
There was a high probability that adding sweetener to the tea blend was another ill omen, but it was nearly unpalatable.
He did not understand. The numerous guides he read on conducting the ceremony had not mentioned the bitter nature of the tea or offered suggestions to mitigate the taste.
A warning would have been appreciated.
He brewed it incorrectly. That had to be the fault.
Or he had misunderstood entirely. The importance of the ceremony was not the tea or the excessively sleeved robes, but sharing a moment together. This moment.
“It is our ceremony,” Zalis said. “We can do as we please.”
He fetched the massive canister of sugar and set it in the middle of the low table.
“Do we really need that much sugar?”
“It is best to be prepared.”
Gemma laughed. “Is this a lesson about problem solving together? Or communication?”
“Perhaps. It is about starting our journey together,” he said, adding a generous spoonful of sugar to each cup. “We can pretend that the tea is delightful and suffer, or we can fix the problem.”
“How do we start? With a polite lie or with a painful truth?”
“Yes,” he agreed.
She finished her cup and gently tapped the cup against the table, silently asking for a refill. “Sugar really does help. It’s woody and astringent but I could see this served with a pound of sugar and over ice. It’d be refreshing on a hot day.”
Zalis had another sugar-heavy cup. He was glad that he had decided to wait for the ceremony, rather than insist that Gemma drink a cup on their first night together. If they had gone through the motions of the ceremony then, it would have been exactly that, empty gestures. This felt real.
“What’s the look for?” Gemma asked.
The silken robe had slid, exposing her shoulder. She resembled a flower that blossomed in the winter, pink petals against snow. She appeared delicate, fragile, but he knew she was not. Hehad never known anyone with such strength of will and such resiliency.
“You look like a flower in snow,” he said, which barely expressed the depth of his feelings. He burned for her. He always would.
“You look very nice too.”
“Tell me again.”
