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Richard held the back of Kahlan’s neck as he kissed her brow. “I’m relieved that you weren’t hurt. You frighten me the way you get it in your head to put your life before mine. Don’t do it again?”
Kahlan smiled. She didn’t promise, but instead changed the subject. “I’m worried about you leaving the safety of the palace. I don’t like you being out there when a Sister of the Dark is about.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“But the Jarian ambassador is here, along with representatives from Grennidon. They have huge standing armies. There are a few others here, too, from smaller lands—Mardovia, Pendisan Reach, and Togressa. They’re all expecting to meet with you tonight.”
Richard hooked a thumb behind the wide leather belt. “Look, they can surrender to you. They’re either with us, or against us. They don’t need to see me, they just have to agree to the terms of surrender.”
Kahlan touched her fingers to his arm. “But you are Lord Rahl, the Master of D’Hara. You made the demands. They expect to see you.”
“Then they’ll have to wait until tomorrow night. Our men come first. General Kerson is right: if the men can’t fight, we’re in trouble. The D’Haran army is the main reason the lands are ready to surrender. We can’t show any weakness in our ability to lead.”
“But I don’t want us to be separated,” she whispered.
Richard smiled. “I know. I feel the same, but this is important.”
“Promise me you’ll be careful.”
His smile widened. “I promise. And you know that a wizard always keeps his promise.”
“All right, then, but hurry back.”
“I will. You just stay away from that Marlin fellow.”
He turned to the others. “Cara, you and Raina stay here, along with Egan. Ulic, I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’ll make it up to you by letting you come with me so you can watch me with those big blue eyes and make me feel guilty.” He turned to the last of them. “Berdine, since I know that you three will make my life miserable if I don’t take at least one of you, you can come with me.”
Berdine turned a grin on Nadine. “I’m Lord Rahl’s favorite.”
Nadine, rather than looking impressed, appeared dumbfounded, as she had throughout most of the preceding conversation. Nadine finally turned a haughty look on Richard. She folded her arms across her breasts.
“And are you going to boss me around, too? Are you going to tell me what to do, like you seem to enjoy doing to everyone else?”
Richard, rather than getting angry, as Kahlan thought he might at the insult, looked more disinterested than ever.
“There are a lot of people fighting for our freedom, fighting to stop the Imperial Order from enslaving the Midlands, D’Hara, and eventually Westland. I lead those willing to fight for their own freedom and on behalf of innocent people who would otherwise be enslaved. I lead because circumstances have placed me in command. I don’t do it for power or because I enjoy it. I do it because I must.
“To my enemies, or potential enemies, I deliver demands. To those loyal to me, I issue orders.
“You are neither, Nadine. Do as you wish.”
Nadine’s freckles disappeared as her cheeks mantled.
Richard lifted his sword a few inches and let it drop back, unconsciously checking that the blade was clear in its scabbard. “Berdine, Ulic, get your things and meet me out at the stables.”
Richard scooped up Kahlan’s hand and pulled her toward the door. “I need to talk to the Mother Confessor. Alone.”
Richard took Kahlan down the passageway crowded with muscular D’Haran guards wearing dark leather and chain mail and bristling weapons to an empty side hall. He pulled her around the corner, into the shadow beneath a silver lamp, and backed her up against a wall paneled in age-mellowed cherry.
With a finger, he gently squashed the end of her nose. “I couldn’t leave without kissing you good-bye.”
Kahlan grinned. “Didn’t want to kiss me in front of an old girlfriend?”
“You’re the only one I love. The only one I’ve ever loved.” Richard’s features distorted in chagrin. “You can understand how it would be if one of your old boyfriends showed up.”
“No, I can’t.”
His face went blank for just an instant and then went crimson. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Confessors had no boyfriends as they grew up.
The deliberate touch of a Confessor destroyed a person’s mind, and in its place left only mindless devotion to the Confessor who had touched him with her power. A Confessor always had to restrain her grip on her power, lest it be accidentally released. It generally wasn’t difficult; her power grew as she did and, being born with the power, the ability to restrain it came as naturally as breathing.
But in the throes of passion, an experience she hadn’t grown up with, it was impossible for a Confessor to maintain that restraint. A lover’s mind would unintentionally be destroyed in the distracted, unrestrained apex of a Confessor’s passion.
Confessors, even if they wished it, had no friends save other Confessors. People feared them, feared their power. Men, especially, feared Confessors. No man wanted to get within striking distance of a Confessor.
Confessors didn’t have lovers.
A Confessor chose her mate for qualities desirable in her daughter, for the father he could be. A Confessor never chose for love, because the act of loving would destroy the person she loved. No one willingly wed a Confessor; a Confessor chose her mate, and took him with her magic before they were wedded. Men feared a Confessor who had yet to choose a mate. She was a destroyer among them, a predator, and men her potential prey.
Only Richard had defeated that magic. His unequivocal love for her had transcended her power. Kahlan was the only Confessor she had ever heard of who had the love of a man, and could reciprocate that love. In her whole life, she had never imagined she would fulfill that most exalted of human desires: love.
She had heard it said that there was only one true love in a person’s life. With Richard, that was more than a saying: it was the dead cold truth.
More than any of it, though, she simply loved him, helplessly and completely. That he loved her, and they could be together, sometimes left her numb with disbelief.
She dragged her finger down his leather baldric. “So, you never think about her? You never wonder…?”
“No. Look, I’ve known Nadine since I was little. Her father, Cecil Brighton, sells herbs and remedies. I’d bring him rare plants now and again. He’d let me know if there was something he wanted but couldn’t find. When I went out to guide people I’d keep an eye out for what he needed.
“Nadine always wanted to be like her father, to learn what herbs helped people and to work in his shop. She’d go with me sometimes, to learn how to find certain plants.”
“She only went with you to look for plants?”
“Well, no. There was a little more to it than that. I—well—sometimes I’d go visit her and her parents. I’d go for walks with her, even if her father hadn’t asked me to find some herb. I danced with her at the midsummer festival, last summer, before you came to Hartland. I liked her. But I never led her to think I wanted to marry her.”
Kahlan smiled and decided to end his twisting in the wind. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. She wondered briefly at something he had said to Nadine, at what more there had been, but then her mind was spinning from the feel of his powerful arms around her, and his soft lips against hers. His tongue glided across the inside of her front teeth, and she sucked it in. A big hand slid down her back and pulled her hard against him.
Then she pushed him away. “Richard,” she said breathlessly, “what about Shota? What if she causes trouble?”
Richard blinked, trying to banish the lust from his eyes. “To the underworld with Shota.”
“But in the past, as much trouble as Shota caused, she always seemed to have a nugget of truth in the trouble she wrapped around it
. In her own way, she was trying to do what needed doing.”
“She’s not going to keep us from getting married.”
“I know, but—”
“When I get back, we’ll get married, and that will be that.” His smile made a sunrise seem boring. “I want you in that big bed of yours that you keep promising me.”
“But how can we get married, now, unless we do it here? It’s a long way to the Mud People. We promised the Bird Man, and Weselan and Savidlin, and all the rest, that we would be wedded as Mud People. Chandalen protected me on my journey here, and I owe him my life. Weselan made me my beautiful blue wedding dress, with her own hands, out of cloth that probably took her years to earn. They took us in. They made us Mud People. The Mud People have sacrificed for us. Many have given their lives for our cause.
“I know it’s not the kind of wedding most women dream of—a whole village of half-naked people covered in mud dancing around bonfires, calling the spirits to come join two of their people, having a feast that goes on for days with those strange drums and ritual dancers acting out stories and all the rest… but it’s the most heartfelt ceremony we could ever have.
“Right now we can’t leave Aydindril to go on a long journey to the Mud People just because we want to. Just for us. Everyone else is depending on us. There is a war going on.”
Richard pressed a gentle kiss against her forehead. “I know. I want the Mud People to marry us, too. And they will. Trust me. I’m the Seeker. I’m giving it a lot of thought. I have a few ideas.” He sighed. “But right now I have to go. Take care of things, Mother Confessor. I’ll be back tomorrow. Promise.”
She hugged him so tight it made her arms hurt.
He finally separated from her and looked down into her eyes. “I’ve got to go, before it gets any later, or I’ll have men getting hurt in the dark up in those passes.” He paused. “If… if Nadine needs anything, would you see that she gets it? A horse, or food, or supplies, or whatever. She’s not a bad person. I don’t wish her ill. She doesn’t deserve what Shota did to her.”
