There was lots of thinking to be done and she preferred to do it in the dark, before the day imposed itself.
She had decided long before that day, only motivated by her rendezvous with the Great Khan, that she would seduce her husband.
Not for Somadina, nor for her father, but for herself and for the fourth path.
She turned the logic over as Nkiru worked through her hair, oiling and combing.
Meanwhile, Azul schemed.A man like Ragnar Valthorne did not need to love her—love was too soft a word for what she needed, too easily confused with possession.What she needed was simpler and harder to obtain: his respect.The respect of a dangerous man who had decided she was worth keeping.Not as a decoration, not as a political instrument, but as something he valued in the way he valued his own blade—because to lose it would be to lose something irreplaceable.
That, she could work with.
Ragnar Valthorne could have any woman he wanted.She had no particular feeling about that.The Steppes had different conventions, she understood, and she was not so small as to make herself a prison when she could make herself a throne.What she needed was the position behind him, the space, the backing, the name.
With that, she had room to breathe.
Without it, she was simply a girl being sent to die in a foreign country.
Azul planned to fully take the role of his main wife.In Oblivia there were numerous costumes and ideologies.The idea of a main wife that stood above the rest was universal.She had access to rights and safeguards concubines did not, which explained why many main wives did not care who their husbands slept with in their own time.As in Rome, do as the Romans do.He simply has to be devoted to his values, she thought, watching in the bronze mirror as Nkiru finished the last braid.I can cultivate his devotion to suit my needs.
She trusted her beauty as much as she trusted her brain.All men had weaknesses; this one was no different.She had seen the whip scars.She had pressed her fingers into his wound and watched him kneel and not looked away.She had held a blade to his throat and found him interesting rather than frightening.That was the truth of her, and she would not perform otherwise.
If he was the man she thought he was, that honesty would be more disarming than any performance could be.
And if she was wrong about him…
Azul looked at herself in the mirror.The woman who looked back was composed, her face hidden by a heavy pearl veil, dressed in deep green that made her eyes seem lit from within.
It was a gamble she’d have to make, to assume that Ragnar was inclined to a woman like her.
You can stay, she had told him,If you want.I don't mind.
She hadn’t said those words by mistake; she wanted to see just how far a few hours had pushed his heart.
He stayed until dawn; she was a light sleeper, and the little snake alerted her once he was gone, emerging from its hiding place.
Six hours.
Not once had he tried to touch her, nor did he sleep or move from his position, and in her wake, her hairpin was missing.
A smirk graced her lips.
Ragnar Valthorne had spent two days deciding he felt nothing in particular.
The sedative had left his system slowly, the way a tide goes out over shale.By the second day he could ride without his vision doubling.He made up his mind to simply not think of her, and so he prayed fervently to Ukhel, Lord of the Seven Gates, to cast her out of his mind.
And yet.
Ukhel had declined his prayers over and over.
General Thane, who had learned to read silences across nearly a decade of campaigns, rode beside him.When the Khan wished to speak, he would speak.When he did not, a wise man kept his tongue behind his teeth.
"The capital is an hour ahead," Thane said.
Ragnar grunted.
"The formal banquet isn't meant for three days.If we slow our pace—"
"Onwards."
