The High Commander released his control of Braeden as swiftly as he'd taken it away. The orange-red glow faded from Braeden's eyes, returned to their normal shade of dark crimson. His tattoo was once again just skin and ink. And the devastation in his gaze...That was one hundred percent authentic Braeden.
"Sam," he said hoarsely, dropping to his knees in front of her. "By the Gods--"
She pressed his head against her abdomen, stroking her fingers through his silver hair. "It's okay," she said shakily. She couldn't let him know how badly he'd scared her. "We're okay."
His arms went around her waist. "It had been so long since the last time," he whispered. "I thought that maybe..." His voice trailed off. "I should have known better. My master would never have let us leave Thule if it didn't benefit him somehow."
Her fingers stilled against his skull. "What do you mean?"
"He knows where we are," Braeden said. He tensed, dropping his hands from her waist and raking them through the sand in frustration. "He knows exactly where we are. He always has."
"How?"
Braeden let the sand run through his fingers before pushing to his feet. "It's this accursed tattoo," he said, tracing the intricate lines and curves that covered nearly half his torso. "He branded me with his own blood so he could find me anywhere. My master once taught me there is no stronger bond than blood. I'm his, no matter where I hide or how far from him I go."
"I won't let him have you so easily." She closed the small distance between them and lay her hand over his, placing their interlaced hands over his breastbone. "He might have put his mark on your skin, but your heart belongs to me."
Braeden's somber expression didn't change. "He's sent someone after us, Sam."
She gave him a light shove. "You don't know that."
His rough fingers cupped her chin, holding her gaze captive. "He can't invade my head without letting me into his. I heard some of his thoughts, until he shut me out. He sent someone after us, as soon as we left Thulian soil. Whoever he sent, they're already here in Rhea, searching for us." His touch turned tender, stroking her left cheek. "I should leave."
Sam glared up at him. She'd thought he'd left such foolishness behind in Thule. "And go where? You said yourself the High Commander can find you anywhere."
"But at least I won't lead him to you."
"It's too late to worry about that. You already have." Braeden flinched, but she refused to back down. "He wants something from me, Braeden. I don't know what, but I do know this: Even if we're on opposite coasts, he'll find me some other way. We're stronger together than apart."
"Fine," he said in a resigned voice. "But I want you to promise me something."
"Anything," she replied, and then immediately regretted the word.
"If there comes a time to choose between your life or mine, let me die."
She let out a derisive snort. "Don't be ridiculous." He placed his hands on her shoulders, but she shook them off. "I won't promise you that. Not now, not ever." She had as much right to die for him as he did for her.
"Sam..."
She fought down the childish urge to throw a handful of sand at his head. "Listen to me, you big oaf. We're in the middle of the Rhean desert. In case you haven't noticed, our horses ran off with our packs. Half our money is gone, and we have no water or food." She jabbed her finger at the white towers and domes, still a mile away or more. "The both of us will be dead if we don't make it to the convent by sundown. If I die because we wasted time arguing in this forsaken sandpit , I'll make your time in the Afterlight miserable."
Braeden groaned, dropping his head into his hands. "Oh Gods, the horses. This is all my fault."
She rolled her eyes. "Don't be an ass. If it's anyone's fault, it's the High Commander's, or the merchant who sold us such squeamish mounts." She lifted her discarded sword, dusted off the sand and sheathed it. Giving Braeden one last indignant look, she wrapped the ends of her keffiyeh around her face and began stomping toward the convent.
Despite what she'd said to Braeden, Sam felt the loss of their horses sharply. Walking through the desert was twice as grueling as riding by horseback, and it didn't help matters that she was tired, sore and dehydrated. The dunes rose and fell like the waves of the ocean, forever frozen in time. Sand sucked in each step and nearly refused to give her foot back. Sweat trickled down her forehead into her eyes, stinging and blurring her vision. She stumbled, once, twice. A few times more she nearly fell. When finally she did fall, tumbling inelegantly over a half-buried rock, Braeden was there to help her up.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. It was enough. She touched his hand with her fingers, and together, they pressed onward.
The Convent of the Sun was like no other temple Sam had ever seen. Its design was old and foreign, the architectural heritage of an earlier Age. The main building was a chamfered octagon, topped by an enormous dome, as tall as its octagonal base. An arcade of columns circled around it and then split off, connecting to smaller-domed buildings on either side. A gate with stone pillars and iron beams surrounded the entire complex, and as they drew closer, Sam could see it was well-guarded.
By the time they reached the gate, it was nearly nightfall. The sand had thinned out, revealing the stony plain and rough patches of vegetation underneath. Sam was so exhausted she could hardly stand. She gripped the iron bars of the gate and leaned against it for support.
Her reverie was short-lived. Seemingly from nowhere, a guard jumped down from one of the gate's pillars, tumbling through the air like an acrobat and landing neatly beside them. The guard's face was mostly hidden by a mask, but even the loose garments and scaled chest armor did not entirely disguise her feminine form. Apart from the deep burgundy of the leather scales, she was swallowed in white cloth. The only flesh revealed was the skin exposed by the slits around her narrowed eyes, feet and hands. Her hand went to her hip, brushing the pommel of the long sword strapped to her side by a thick waistband.
Sam didn't know what shocked her more, the guard's entrance or her gender. Theoretically, she had known the Sun Sisters were warriors, but it was one thing to know it and another to see it in person. Her entire life, Sam had to hide behind the guise of a man for the right to wield a weapon. The guard wore her sword and long braided hair with total confidence.
The guard spoke harshly, the words muffled by the cloth of her mask. Sam scrambled to process what she said, recognizing the language as Rheic. Not for the first time since she'd arrived in Rhea, she wished she hadn't let her Rheic get so rusty. Her mother had taught Sam her native tongue as a child, but they'd spoken it less and less as she grew older. Before Sam crossed the ocean from Thule, it had been years since she'd heard a single word.
She opened her mouth to apologize and ask the woman to repeat herself, simple phrases that she still remembered. But Braeden spoke first, his unaccented Rheic fluent."We mean no harm," her brain managed to translate. "We have come here to find someone."
With her face covered, it was impossible to gauge the woman's reaction, but her hand didn't move from her sword. "My mother's sister," Sam said in Rheic, forgetting the word for 'aunt.' "Her name is Nasrin."
The guard showed no flash of recognition, and for a panicked moment, Sam feared she'd traveled across the desert for nothing. But then the guard spoke again, this time in Thulian. "What is your name?" she asked Sam, ignoring Braeden entirely.
Sam hesitated before answering. Why the sudden switch to Thulian? Sam's appearance favored her father more than her mother, so perhaps her foreign blood was obvious. She debated telling the truth or a lie. In Thule, her name was a death sentence, and for all she knew, news of her alleged treachery had crossed the water. But a false name would not help her either. She decided on the truth. "Sam of Haywood, daughter of Their Graces, the duke and duchess of Haywood, formerly Tsalene of Rhea."
The guard's steely eyes widened behind her mask, then narrowed with suspicion. "Stay here," she growled, and then, as elegantly as she arrived, vaulted up and over the gate.
Sam watched her sprint across the convent grounds and disappear into one of the arched recesses. Was she going back for reinforcements, or had she gone to search for Nasrin? Sam's gaze sought Braeden's. "Should we stay?" He shrugged, clearly having no more idea than she.
Sam returned her attention forward, peering between the iron stakes for any sign that an alarm had been raised. None of the guards seemed focused in their direction, but that didn't mean they weren't watching. Other women--and some men--strolled through the front gardens. Many were dressed in traditional Rhean garb, the men in dyed robes tucked into wide, pleated pants and the women in flowing, brightly patterned gowns cinched tight at the waist by broad sashes. And then there were the Sun Sisters in near-identical attire, dressed in white tunics and billowing white trousers caught in at the ankle. Unlike the guards, their faces were bare, and they wore no visible weapons or armor. If even half of the tales about the Sun Sisters were true, that didn't make them any less dangerous .
The ship that had taken Sam and Braeden to Rhea was captained by a Rhean native. Sam had pumped him for information on the Sun Sisters--so little was known about them in Thule, where talk of women warriors was borderline seditious. The captain spoke of them with awed reverence and no small measure of fear. They were more than disciples of the Great Mother Emese; they were the messengers of Her will and the arbiters of Her justice. Their bodies and minds were steel, trained with equal discipline. When the Great Mother's brother Teivel had escaped his prison in the Afterlight and wrought havoc upon the world, it was the Sun Sisters who had shown the Warders how to reseal him. They had smote the demon hordes that remained in Teivel's wake, leveled entire armies and overthrown corrupt kings. They served only Emese and were a rule unto themselves; even the Emperor of Rhea did not command them.
If the Sun Sisters wanted to kill Sam and Braeden where they stood, not a single Rhean would raise a finger to stop them.
Sam shifted her weight from foot to foot, growing anxious. She hated waiting, hated even more that she didn't know what they were waiting for. It had been her idea to search for her aunt among the Sun Sisters. She hoped it didn't prove a bad one.
The guard reemerged from inside the convent--at least, Sam assumed it was the same guard who had spoken to them. Their uniforms and covered faces made it almost impossible to distinguish one from another. But Sam recognized the long black braid that slapped against her back as she marched toward them. Another woman--a Sun Sister with dark brown hair cropped close to the skull--strode beside her.
Sam's heart sped up as they neared her and Braeden. What was the proper way to greet a Sun Sister? Did she curtsy or bow, or throw herself prostrate?
The two women stopped a yard back from the gate, observing her through the spaces between the slats. For once, Braeden's unusual appearance escaped notice; they focused on Sam alone.
"What is your name?" the guard asked her again in Thulian. The Sun Sister beside her remained expressionless.
"Samantha of Haywood, my lady--er--sister," she said, both wary and hopeful.
"Who is your mother, girl?" asked the Sun Sister, the smoky husk achingly familiar.
Sam's gaze ran over her features, over high cheekbones and midnight blue eyes tilted up at the outer corners. Her face was too hard to be considered pretty, but the resemblance was unmistakable. "You are Nasrin, aren't you?"
"Your mother's name," the Sun Sister reminded her gently.
"Tsalene of Rhea, sister."
"What proof do you have?" the guard asked, a sneer in her voice. The Sun Sister--Sam was almost positive she was Nasrin--gave her a quelling look.
Hope and old grief burned in Sam's chest. She'd expected to be questioned, prepared to reveal Tsalene's secrets if she needed to. But it still hurt to think of her, to speak of her aloud. "My mother spoke of her older sister often. She missed you, I think, more than anyone else she'd left behind in Rhea. She said I reminded her of you, that we both took to the sword like a fish to water. The story of how my father and mother met is known throughout Thule, their love for each other legendary. But my mother once told me that it was your father who was responsible for their wedding. He plotted their marriage with the same amount of careful strategizing he used to fight Rhea's wars. She didn't resent him though, not like I would have. He taught both of you to wield a sword, so she made my father teach me too. She was passable with a sword, but you--you were brilliant. But most of the stories she told me about you were from your childhood in the emperor's court. She told me how you once put a frog down the oldest prince's trousers when the oldest prince insulted her--"
The guard let out a strangled snort.
"Enough, Kameko," Nasrin snapped in Rheic. She sighed, her expression softening. "Don't repeat that story here, I beg of you. I'll never hear the end of it." Then she smiled, the same mysterious smile that had made Tsalene of Rhea a famous beauty. "Welcome to Rhea, niece."
A/N: Yay new chapter! Only took me 2 weeks...bleh. I guess that's what I'm going to target in terms of updating until my schedule lightens up. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this addition, and let me know what you think in the comments!