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What with one thing and another, we never got around to arranging a wedding ceremony. At least I didn’t. The doctors said it had all been too much for me and put me on bed rest for a few days, despite my loud and frequent protests. Blake and Kalen made all the wedding plans and checked everything over with me, but I didn’t really care. Whatever they decided was fine with me.
I was very different from my brother Vannos and Anarr, who really liked the idea of a wedding. I didn’t care much about things like that. I suppose personality-wise, I was more like Larz or Nicarr. Or maybe Derrick. So long as I was married, that was the important thing. How it all happened didn’t much matter. I had decided not to think about the other issue—the whole “Tariq doesn’t really love me” thing.
That decision was courtesy of my Father, because he had been told about Major Bonnos and how he’d tried to kill me. He’d been outraged and angry—and then he had been told about me being pregnant and having to get married right away.
I’d heard he exploded then, and I was afraid of the king. Not that he’d ever so much as touched a hair on my head. He just wouldn’t, and I knew that. But I admired him and loved him so much—enough that I hated making him angry and disappointed in me.
A pretty wedding wasn’t going to make him feel better about it, and he wouldn’t have been impressed to see me in a fancy outfit like Anarr wore when he married. Mikol had been the one who’d had to tell him about the wedding in the end, and let’s just say, Father hadn’t been too happy. Apparently, he was now on his way to Loros and he’d told Mikol he and Omak would be talking about this as soon as he arrived. Omak said, “Oh, was that supposed to intimidate me?”
Father didn’t know the whole story yet, and Omak said he was still on a need-to-know basis, as in what he didn’t need-to-know yet wouldn’t hurt him. “If he finds out, his imagination might run away with him, and he’d have time to build up a whole scenario in his mind that would only upset him and be all wrong anyway. Better to let me break the news in person so he won’t build up a head of steam.”
I guess the steam thing was some kind of human phrase, but we rarely questioned Omak’s sayings and just went along. Meanwhile, the Imperial commandant was investigating the incident with Bonnos, and I’d seen little of Tariq since that night. I’d learned that Bonnos had sent Tariq a message to meet him at the Imperial barracks that evening he had attacked us, saying he had something to talk to him about. It was still uncertain if he were just trying to get him out of the way, or if he’d planned on killing him later too. That explained why Tariq had been late in arriving back at the palace after the attack.
It was all a huge scandal, because the Imperials were so highly thought of and had been considered to be above reproach and above any kind of corruption before this happened. But that’s often the saddest thing about betrayal. It never comes from your enemies, and that’s what makes it so unbearable. That whole situation was a long way from being resolved.
It was two nights later before I saw Tariq again. I’d been so anxious to be with him, because I felt like we had a great deal to discuss, what with the pregnancy, the wedding, and the fact that he had definitely called me nobyo the night of the attack. I hadn’t overlooked that or forgotten it at all.
I’d been over and over it in my mind a million times, and I hadn’t hallucinated it. I tried to manage my expectations, and not think about what he meant by it. It probably meant nothing. Just a slip of the tongue and nothing more.
Or else it meant everything, and I was dying to find out which one it was.
When the knock came on my door late that evening, I had a feeling it was Tariq. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. The guards announced him and opened the door for him as I stood inside, waiting impatiently.
He came over to me and bowed. “I hope it’s not too late. I was afraid you’d already be asleep.”
“No, it’s fine.”
We walked over to the long sofa and sat down. He took my hand in his. This newfound affection he seemed to feel confused me—delighted me—but I was afraid to trust it. Maybe he was trying to be nice to me for the baby’s sake.
“I’ve been worried about you. I was told the doctors put you on bed rest and that it was just a precaution, but I needed to see you for myself. I came as soon as I could. As soon as I could get free. The commandant had so many questions.” He flushed a little and sighed.
“They wanted to clear me first.”
“Clear you? They actually thought you might be involved? That’s ridiculous.”
“Your father and Prince Mikos insisted. They’re just looking out for you. And I think they’re not too happy about the pregnancy.”
“They need to get over it then. If they want to be mad at someone, they can be mad at me. I kept throwing myself at you.”
“I knew I’d be exonerated, because I was innocent. But I was worried…about you.”
I looked up at him curiously. Worried about me? Either he was being nice, which wasn’t at all like him, or he must have meant he was worried about the baby. Funny, I’d never thought about it, but did he actually want a child of his own? Tygerians loved children, and he was older than most to start a family.
I laid my hand on my stomach and smiled at the idea that I would be the one to give this to him—if indeed he did want it. “The doctors say the baby is fine. Absolutely perfect. They put me on bed rest because they just wanted to make sure. Because of who my father is.” I glanced over at him. “They say it’s a boy.”
“A boy? But how could they possibly know so soon?”
I shrugged. “They took scans. They said they could do that now. That’s what they told me, anyway.”
He smiled. “A little prince.”
I smiled at him and then suddenly, we were out of things to say again. Oh, I had a lot of things I wanted to say, but I felt too shy to say them. When he finally spoke again, I expected him to make an excuse to leave, but he didn’t.
“I’ve never been as frightened as I was when I heard that an intruder had broken into your room and was threatening you and your omak.”
“That makes two of us,” I replied, trying to turn it into a joke.
He turned his head to look at me, not taking me up on my effort to turn it into something funny.
