“I hope we might leave early tonight,” she murmured to her husband when they arrived at a state banquet for the merchant princes of Ispichov.
“We will do our duty,” Bastin replied, intentionally ambiguous, and moved away to speak to a merchant prince with gold and silver chains dangling from his pointed, barbarous ears. But tonight, Esmene followed. This was one area of their marriage where she had not yet been able to subjugate him.
“Radiance,” said the merchant prince, Eminent Malkhaz Kandelaki, one of the long-lived Lords Merchant in Ispichov. He bowed, smiling at Esmene with the glint of a diamond embedded in one sharp incisor. “Your Highness. Your beauty is blinding.”
Bastin threw her an irritated glance, but Esmene smiled, smiled, smiled. It was mortifying to be seen tagging after him, no matter how gracefully done. But tonight was the night he would come to her bed, and she meant to keep him there, even if it required the crude tool of wine.
Since that first agonizing night together, Bastin had been specific and adamant about the nights he would share her bed. They were scheduled weeks in advance, they were loveless, and they were never more often than was absolutely necessary.
And five years into their marriage, Esmene had yet to become pregnant.
At first, it hadn’t seemed a matter for concern. Esmene’s father sent a woman to educate her on the fundamentals, and the Emperor visited her palace once a month, regular as clockwork. There was no hurry. The great battle had already been won. They were married, and House Melun was notoriously fecund. A child would come, sure as starlight.
Even if it hurt. It was excruciatingly painful. It was humiliating. After their first year of marriage, her father summoned her to remind her that a child was necessary to cement their control of the Empire, and she had had to bite her tongue. How could she tell her father what it was like? Surely,surelythis was not how it was supposed to be between a man and his wife. Esmene heard enough gossip from her ladies-in-waiting to know that the act should be pleasurable. But every month, Bastin appeared, and performed his duty exactly as he had the first time.
He undressed, laid down in her bed, and told her to get on with it.
And there was no child.
She comforted herself with his compliance, at first. It was proof of her victory that she could compel the Divinity, Beloved of Stars, that she could drag him to her palace and put him in her bed. Sometimes that gave her a little vengeful pleasure, that even though hisspiritrefused her, she could command his body. She couldforcean orgasm from him. Those fleeting moments when he grunted under her and began to helplessly thrust were the nearest thing she felt to satisfaction.
But there was still no child.
After four years, she had begun to reconsider. Perhaps she had been short-sighted to alienate him so completely. Four years was a dangerously long time to go without a babe.
“You must come more often,” she had told him when they were done, lying in bed with her thighs clamped together and tears in her eyes. Sex with him did not arouse her. Even oils were not enough to ease the way. “I cannot make you an heir if you only visit my bed once a month.”
“Imustdo nothing,” Bastin replied coldly, shrugging into his shirt. His chest was marked by her fingernails; Esmene had tried to rouse him, but except for a few grunts at the end, hehad done nothing but stare at the ceiling. “I am fulfilling my obligations to you.”
“Bastin.” She rolled over and spoke softly. She had not said his name a dozen times in their entire marriage. “I want to fulfill my obligation to you. A child. I know we began poorly, but—”
“Is this another Melun Proposal?” he asked contemptuously. Bastin was not an ill-favored man, but in private, when he did not have to conceal his hate, his face twisted with loathing. “Do you think to confine me to your bed, as your father confined my father to his? You will find it more difficult, this time.”
“No,”she said, stumbling out of bed and catching his arm. She could feel the hot sting of blood between her legs and let him see it, used her pain as a weapon. “Can we not make it better for both of us? Bastin, it…hurts.”
“Yes, it does.” He shrugged her off and buckled his belt. “Good night.”
Furious that she had humbled herself, she had gone again to her father. But this time, whatever levers he had been able to apply to Bastin four years ago had been removed.
“Do whatever you must,” Duke Melun told her. She had gone to see him in the vast study at Ereseide, the estate named for House Melun’s patron star and the seat of their power. “The Temple will not support us in this, not with that fool Dardinne as the Prior of Segoile. This is becoming a problem, Esmene. There are whispers that you are barren.”
“Not thatheis infertile?” she asked icily. Her beautiful face showed nothing, but inside, she was burning with fury. She wanted to scald her father’s ears with the tale of what she was doing for the glory of House Melun, how she tortured herself with every sexual encounter, how she tore inside because she had never felt anything like desire during the act. How Bastinmade her feel like some base prostitute. Or no,worse,as ifhewere a whore she had summoned, unwilling.
For one moment, the thought rose, bubble-like, that that was the truth.
But no, she was the Empress. Sworn and blessed under the stars, joined eternally to the Emperor and the only proper vessel for his seed. And they had come too far to stop now.
“They will never say the Divinity is infertile,” said Dardot Melun. “It is blasphemous.”
“Father. The Emperor has never been…willing,” she admitted. “It must make it more difficult to conceive.”
It seemed a very long time since she was a little girl, and her father had tucked a silver bellflower behind her ear and told her that she washisglory.
“Then you must make him willing,” he answered pitilessly. “Win him, whatever it takes, for the glory of House Melun. One child, Esmene. That is all we need.”
He had no idea what he was asking.
But Esmene gritted her teeth and tried.
