Clans of Luteri Bk. 02 Ch. 01-02

He didn't know how much time passed before he felt something, like Aslin's scent on a still day. No more than a hint of a sense of her, an echo. He held his breath, waiting. Nothing. Shai had judged him for his hate, taken his bond from him. He would never forgive himself.

He felt the lightest touch in his mind, like a trailing end of the bond. He caught at it, his heart pounding.

"Aslin?" he said, sitting up, leaning over her.

She turned her head to see him, her eyes opening. She looked at him and her face crumpled, beginning to cry. He turned her around and pulled her to him. She buried herself in his chest, his large hand behind her head, stroking her silky hair. He waited, feeling the bond more clearly. She didn't withdraw. When the bond was strong enough, he reached out and touched it, holding his breath.

She opened it and they were deep in the exchange. When his eyes cleared, Kane took her face in his hands, putting his forehead on hers.

"I promise this to you," he said. "I swear it, Aslin."

His sense of her finally drifted and he felt her body relaxing into sleep. He lay there, feeling her, the bond pulsing in him, sore, yes, but it was alive. It was alive and in all his life he had never felt such relief.

A low knock came at the door, Kane looking toward the doorway of the bedchamber. He slowly got up, untangling himself from Aslin, pulling the covers over her and sitting on the edge of the bed. He wiped his face with his hands, feeling a thousand years old. He stood and walked through the front room into the hall and opened it.

Kavini, the Corsaire High Lord, stood there, alone. The man's face was wary.

"Will you speak with me, Kane of Tavishi?" the High Lord said stiffly.

"Of course," Kane answered, his voice low. "She is asleep."

Kane stepped back, the man moving past him. Kavini stopped beside him and looked into Kane's face, his eyes searching. Kavini blew his breath out and moved into the room.

"The bond is alive?" Kavini confirmed.

"Yes."

"Shai's mercy," Kavini said.

Kavini walked into the bedchamber to look at Aslin, her hand curled under her cheek in the glow of the lamps. Kane stood in the doorway.

"These were her rooms when she was a child," Kavini said, his voice low. "Although she was mostly in our rooms, she was so young. But she loved coming here. I thought she might recognize it."

The man continued to look at her as if he didn't believe she were here, as if she would disappear if he looked away.

"So like Maleen, her mother," Kavini said. "Fifteen years since I was told they both died and I can still barely say my oath's name. We were not bonded. I didn't trust my beast with her, but I loved her like we were."

Kavini stepped closer to Aslin, looking down at her. He reached to touch her hair and then he stepped back, his hand falling. He looked at Kane and his face tightened. He came out of the room, going to the high thin windows in the main room by the table, looking out. Kane waited. The High Lord finally turned around, facing him. His voice was bitter.

"It was Maleen who wanted peace between our clans, who urged me past my hate. I tried to set it aside for her. Like you, she was my better half. She was full of Corsaire fire, so full of life. Always in the gardens, singing, tending her flowers. I have never felt more happiness than the day she handed my daughter into my arms. So fifteen years ago, when my daughter was five, I rode myself into Tavishi Hold with a truce band on my arm as you did today. You weren't there, and I was grateful for it, not to have to see your face. I came to see if Bache would agree to ask his son Kane to give his oath to my daughter."

The man's jaw clenched and his teeth came up briefly.

"You hadn't killed Bevin yet, who was not a clan warrior. Bevin was a poet, always wandering in the mountains, composing. They were not alike, but Ruthe had always protected him. When we found him under that tree, I remember Ruthe didn't scream or rage. He just pulled Bevin's body across his lap and wept like his heart was broken. But the more I saw of Tavishi, the more I felt my hate."

Bevin. No, Bevin hadn't been a warrior, and Kane hadn't killed him in battle as he'd killed so many other Corsaire. It was the worst thing Kane had ever done, young and hot, looking for revenge after Helene was taken, feeling so helpless in the face of her pain. Helene been young and beautiful, at her first festival, and a Corsaire had brutalized her and his sister couldn't even speak she was so hurt.

He had just wanted to kill Corsaire. He and three other Tavishi had spotted the Corsaire man alone in the mountains, following him, finally finding him under a tree bent over a folio of papers, not even noticing their approach.

They had abandoned him dying there, his guts out, his folio of papers scattering bloody across the ground, the wind taking them.

Looking back as they rode away at the man lying on his side under the tree, Kane had been troubled by a face he would have liked on anyone but a Corsaire. He hadn't been able to shake it, a sense of such deep unease, no relief coming to him from the act. Just the sense of something so very wrong, irrevocable.

Then Ruthe had taken Maele, who hadn't even been with him that day, and at the time Kane would have killed Bevin ten times over to escape the bitter truth Ruthe had handed him—that when he had stabbed Bevin he might as well have put the same weapon through the friend he had loved like a brother.

"Tavishi were hissing," Kavini said. "By the time I got to the hall, I just wanted to kill Tavishi until you were all dead and couldn't touch another Corsaire, mine to protect, all of them, every villager and small child and brave warrior. Every dreaming Corsaire poet. I almost couldn't make the offer, the hate was so black in me."

Kavini seemed to struggle to continue. He took several breaths.

"Bache had lost your mother to the sickness, his bond, and he looked weary, still grieving. I thought of Maleen in her garden at home with our daughter, of how much I loved them, how grateful I was she still lived—." Kavini stopped again, breathing. "It gave me strength. But my heart was still twisting in me for it. I asked Bache to present you—you, his son Kane, who would one day have Bevin's blood staining your hands—with the choice to give your oath to my daughter. My sweet and beautiful daughter, whom I loved like a plant loves the light that feeds it. My daughter, who wouldn't get a choice."

"She did," Kane said.

Kavini broke his dark stare to look at him, blinking, as if in reliving his bitterness he had forgotten Kane was there.

"What?"

"She did get a choice. I found Aslin in Alveria," Kane said. "I had no idea she was my oath. All I saw was an unprotected Corsaire female. She bore an Alverian name. I took her prisoner. I didn't beat her, but I was cruel. I stripped her, humiliated her."

Kavini looked away from him, his jaw jumping.

"The next day," Kane said, "I learned that she didn't know who she was, what she was. She didn't know we were enemies, didn't understand my hatred for her. I told myself I didn't care, that she was Corsaire and that was what mattered. I had planned to bring her on the ship to Tavishi Hold to my father—."

Kane stopped. Kavini's breath drew in sharply, understanding. He nodded.

"I want to think I would have decided to ransom your oath today after I executed you in the courtyard," Kavini said, his face bleak, "but the truth is that I still don't know what I would have done. I didn't care why you'd brought her here. I only saw the opportunity to hurt Bache, my old enemy. His son and his son's oath under my hand, in my hall. It would have killed him."

Kane nodded, running his hands over his face again, rubbing his eyes. He dropped his hands. He gestured at the bedchamber.

"I fell in love with her before I knew she was my oath," Kane told him, "and if you do not see the irony in that, then you have no sense of the absurd. I protected her. I made arrangements for her to stay in Alveria with my friend Jaime, who agreed to shelter her for me. But Alveria wasn't safe for her. I was going to tell you when I returned to Luteri so that Corsaire could retrieve her and then confess my dishonor to my father. I knew I had put her ahead of my clan. I didn't know what else to do. She was so obviously innocent of all of it."

Silence. Kavini was staring at him in disbelief.

"My debt to you would have been great—," he finally said, hesitant.

"There is no need," Kane interrupted him. "I didn't make that decision for love of Corsaire, High Lord, believe me. Killing Bevin—." He stopped, looking away. "What happened to Helene changed me. I was sick with hate. Then Ruthe took Maele, whom I loved more than myself, and the pain of that made my hate bottomless. I couldn't feed it enough. I feared if I brought someone so innocent to my clan that the feud would take me completely and I would never come back from it. And, as I said, I already loved her."

The High Lord was watching his face closely.

"Then I learned who she was, that she was my oath," Kane continued. "But Aslin had been raised Alverian. Our traditions had no meaning for her. So I courted her in the Alverian way, asking her permission to put the bracelet on her arm in their oath ceremony. She found it in her to love a Tavishi who had been cruel to her, and she agreed, and we went through their ritual there, and she was happy for it. So you know. She did have a choice."

Kavini was still staring at him. The High Lord blinked hard, looking down. He finally nodded.

"I feel joy for the bond, and I am so grateful to Shai to learn she is alive. But I don't understand how my daughter came to Alveria, Kane. I would very much so like to know who took her from me, from her own hold, what happened to my oath, Maleen. There was nobody with Aslin? She was alone there?"

"She was completely alone."

"Does she know anything?"

Kane shook his head.

"She doesn't remember anything before she was six, although I think she recognized you in the hall today. She was raised in an Alverian home for children with no parents.When I met her, she was lying in a field singing a Luterian cradle song to Alverian words. I couldn't understand how she could possibly be there."

"My poor child. I have heard it is a savage land. This is where you found her in Alveria, in this home?"

Kane hesitated. He couldn't keep the truth from her father. There were no secrets in the clans. But he had never imagined he would be the one to tell Kavini. He took a deep breath.

"No, High Lord," he said in a neutral voice. "Aslin was enslaved there. Her caretakers at the home had given her to an Alverian lord who sold her for sex. I bought her at an auction for five thousand hecs."

Kavini slowly reached behind himself for the chair blindly, sitting. He stared into nothing. After a moment, Kane came and sat opposite.

"The Alverian lord was not kind to her," Kane told him, "and I'm not sure what else he did. I have never asked her. But she was not completely brutalized. I didn't know it at the time, but her virginity was preserved because for Alverians it increased her...value in the sale."

Kavini's eyes had gone entirely black, hooded.

"This Alverian lord," he said softly.

"Dead. She was taken after the ceremony, another man who had bid on her and who stalked her without my knowledge. I—," Kane said, stopping. He looked down at the table. "My other form came to protect her. I killed the Alverian lord and the men with him and the one who took her. But my beast found her and I couldn't stop the bonding ceremony. I couldn't even want to. I wasn't in control."

He looked up. Kavini was staring at him, the black fire in his eyes slowly dying.

"You shouldn't blame yourself, young Tavishi," Kavini said quietly. "You gave your oath justice. And Shai chooses such things, who will bear her mark."

Kavini turned and stared into nothing again. Time stretched between them, quiet. Strange to sit with this man in silence as he sometimes did with his own father, the same weary grief on both of them. Kavini spoke again, his voice raspy.

"When Maleen and Aslin died, all my hope for peace between our clans died with them. I have lived comfortably inside my grief and my hate for Tavishi for fifteen years. And when you brought my daughter here, a gesture of respect, so I would know her first, I did not even consider, not for a single moment, that you came in peace. And now all I can see is my daughter flinching when I looked at her with hate in my eyes and I do not believe my oath would ever have forgiven me for it."

Kavini stood, looking down at Kane.

"I want to ask if you will allow me to spend a small time with my daughter in the morning, as you obviously intended in bringing her here," he finally said.

"We will stay as long as Aslin wants it, High Lord," Kane answered. "Corsaire are her clan."

Kavini released his breath.

"You will stay the day tomorrow, then. I cannot ask more than that. We are her clan, but so is Tavishi. She is your oath and your bond. I will give you a Corsaire escort to Tavishi lands. We took the small packhorse mongrel and stabled him, but your warhorse is still in the courtyard. He attacks any Corsaire who approach him. He is well trained. You will want to see him settled."

Shaol. Kane looked at the doorway to the bedchamber.

"I will sit with your oath, if you will allow it," Kavini offered stiffly, seeing it.

Kane nodded, glancing at him.

"Thank you," he said absently.

Kane walked to the door and opened it, pausing to glance at the doorway again. Kavini saw it and a small smile came to the corners of his mouth.

"See to your horse, young Tavishi. She will be here safe when you return."

Chapter Two

Kane opened his eyes. He felt like he had slept for years, no idea where he was. It took forever. Not in Tavishi Hold. Not in Alveria, not on the ship. The ship. Luteri.

Aslin. Corsaire Hold.

It came back in a chunk, all of it. He looked at the window. Dawn. He always woke at this time.

Kane got up and made a fire in the hearth, blowing with cold, returning to the bed, seeking her warmth. Aslin was on her back, her dark hair over her pale shoulders, long lashes, her mouth parted, her cheeks flushed with sleep. He had undressed her before coming to bed last night, his oath drowsy and mumbling, unbraiding her hair, and now he traced the line of her delicate arm, her skin soft.

The bond was still open. Neither one of them had closed it. He folded back the covers to see her breasts. He cupped a pale swell in his large brown hand, his palm rough, bending his head and sucking gently on a pink tip as it hardened under his mouth, his fingers finding the other, tugging on her nipple with his teeth, his cock hardening in anticipation.

She sent him sleepy pleasure, one of the best parts of the bond, that sharing of sensation when they coupled, physical. She was waking. He raised his head and looked at her, her dark eyes opening. She stared up at him, his hand still cupping her breast. Then her hips squirmed under the blankets.

"I need to use the accommodations," she said, her cheeks flushing more.

He smiled at her, and then laughed, leaning down to kiss her.

"Now you've done it," he said. "I do, too."

He got out of bed, the early air still cold in the room. He retrieved his shirt, tossing it to her. They didn't have their things. He went to the door. He'd go bare and make it quick. Nobody would be up this early.

She put the shirt on and stood up, looking down at herself doubtfully, and then she shivered, her nipples rising to hard points with the chill, her arms coming around herself. Her hips moved, her legs pressing together, which he watched, grinning.

"Come, Corsaire, before you wee on the rug like one of Jaime's spoiled puppies."

She narrowed her eyes at him as he grabbed her hand and opened the door, looking out into the hall, one way and then the other, finding it. He turned his head, finding her eyes on his back end. He grinned as she looked away, caught.

He darted and she followed, right behind him. He got to the door, holding it open for her as she slipped through, closing it behind her. When she came out she was shivering again, her teeth chattering, and he was rubbing his hands together, resisting the urge to cover his cock and balls, achy with cold.

"Go back to the room, Corsaire. Put more wood on the fire and get under the covers so I can warm myself on you when I return, but if you fall asleep you know I'll only wake you."

He paused to watch her walk down the hall very fast, not running. No, Aslin wouldn't run inside a place, that wouldn't be proper. He grinned again watching her little round butt swaying quickly under the shirt, bliche hips, her hair mussed. He sent her a surge of lust as she scuttled in, narrowing her eyes at him from around the door. She sniffed, closing it behind her.

He did what he needed to, returning to the room, very cold now. He grasped the door to open it. The latch didn't move. He jiggled it, trying again. Locked. He knocked softly. Nothing.

"Aslin!" he hissed.

She wasn't asleep. He could feel her through the door, a wave of amusement tinged with keen nervousness. He heard muffled laughter. He knocked again, clear in the hall.

"Aslin!" he called louder.

He waited.

"It's freezing, Corsaire. You'd leave me to your relatives?" he complained through the door.

Another wave of amusement, refusal.

"Problems, Tavishi?"

Kane turned his head to see Ruthe leaning against the wall not far, watching him, his arms crossed. Kane heard more laughter from behind the door. He looked Ruthe down and up. The man was dressed and in a wool cloak and looked warm.

"It would have to be you," Kane sneered, "because there's nobody I'd rather meet more in a fucking icy Corsaire passage with my cock hanging out and my oath laughing at me from the other side of the door."

Ruthe grinned.

"I can't say I'm impressed, although I'm sure it's larger when you're warmer."

Kane faced the door.

"Let me in, Corsaire, or I'll smack your bottom a great deal more than last time and you won't enjoy it nearly as much!"

Humor and indignation. Refusal. Soft laughter from Ruthe to his left. More muffled laughter from inside. The Corsaire had a loud laugh that she always muted. She must be on the bed with the wool coverlet stuffed in her mouth. Kane's eyes narrowed at the door.

"I memorized the dirty Alverian song Jaime taught me when he was drunk with the filthy words and I will stand out here and translate it singing, Corsaire. There are seventeen verses and I'll sing it in my best, loudest voice, which I'm told is off-key, although it seems fine to me. The words won't rhyme, but I'm sure your relatives won't mind. Let me think how it begins. Ah, I have it," Kane said, clearing his throat, humming to find the key, wavering. He began in a loud voice. "There was a young—."

The lock was thrown and the door opened. He dragged her out immediately, still in the shirt. Her hand was clamped over her mouth to stifle her laughter, long helpless strings of breathy chuffs and snorts behind it, because it wasn't proper to bray like a donkey, her eyes overflowing with humor, her dark hair all around her.

Then she saw Ruthe and she startled and her hand came down and all the laughter left her in a moment. Kane saw she hadn't realized. She must have had her head buried under the covers as well. Fear crossed her features as she recognized him.

Ruthe saw it, looking grim. Kane glanced between them.

"Don't fear him, Aslin," Kane told her. "Ruthe is your clan. He would have protected you if he'd known."

He ignored the surprised glance Ruthe sent him. Aslin slowly turned to Ruthe.