Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks [161]
She understood all of that in the very moment Kylar’s opening eyes met hers. She tensed and immediately her hair was back up in its ponytail, tight enough to hurt. Two waves of feeling raced through Kylar, the second chasing the first, and even with her emotional stupidity or however Sister Ariel had said it, Vi could name his feelings through the very air. The first was desire, and though it was physical, it wasn’t only physical. A month of cuddling the woman he loved had been a month of foreplay. But right after that, he withdrew.
“Vi,” Kylar choked out. “I can’t even be here.” He ignored his own nudity, and her near-nudity, looking into her eyes and letting her read his.
Her rapists had shattered the bond between sex and intimacy, leaving her only with fucking. In ring raping Kylar, she’d left him with only intimacy. The difference was, the only person who could damage Kylar as she had been damaged long ago was Kylar himself. The integrity between what Kylar’s body did and what his heart felt was still intact. He was sorely tempted, but so far unbroken. If he cheated on Elene, he would be a cheater in his own eyes—for the rest of a very long life.
He’d turned and walked out of her dream.
Vi cleared her throat and met Sister Ariel’s gaze. “Things with Kylar are fine.”
69
Dorian knew he was in trouble as soon as the dancing girl entered the throne room. He’d been meeting with the Graavar chieftain, a hulking highlander whose raven hair hung in great mats to his waist. The Graavar were a powerful highland tribe, and Grakaat Kruhn was highly regarded by all the tribes. He had come to test Dorian. It was a harmless bit of highlander play, mostly—the highlanders hadn’t made a serious attempt at independence for more than a century—and Grakaat had found Dorian satisfactory in all ways. Until this.
“Your Holiness,” Grakaat Kruhn said, his half-lidded eyes too self-satisfied by far, “I would like to present you with a gift to seal our treaty.” He gestured and two girls came forward. The dancer was about sixteen, the other, who held a highland flute, was perhaps thirteen, and though they were both pretty, Dorian had no doubt they were the chieftain’s daughters.
As the dancer began a sensuous rondaa, most of Dorian’s guards and all of his courtiers averted their eyes. The highland version of the dance was different from what Dorian had seen as a youth. The girl wore a wide garment with exaggerated wide shoulders from which were suspended strips of cloth. Around the hips, the cloth had bells sown in. As her sister played, each gyration of the dancer’s hips made the bells tinkle and revealed glimpses of her nakedness beneath. As in the lowland dance, the girl appeared to float, chest and head immobile while her body tantalized, but the lowland dance was more focused on the stomach, which this girl had fully covered. Nonetheless, in moments Dorian was drawn in. The chieftain’s daughter was talented.
The rondaa gave way to a beraa, and removed the last doubts from Dorian’s mind about what that chieftain intended. The beraa was faster, more erotic. The girl clapped her hands in time over her head, exposing the sides of her breasts, her hips snapping side to side, but now also undulating front to back in a motion that would torment any man with a pulse.
Dorian was trapped. He wasn’t sure if he was glad that Jenine was sequestered for her moon blood or if he wished she were here. Perhaps her presence would have changed things. Grakaat Kruhn wouldn’t have his daughter dance a beraa for the Godking unless he planned to give her to him. A marriage to seal a treaty had far less weight in the north than it did in the southron realms, but the smile that had been on the chieftain’s face told Dorian something else.
Dorian thought that taking many wives would have quelled the rumors he’d begun by entering the castle as a eunuch, but if anyone found out that he wasn’t using his harem, the Halfman jokes would