On Fire's Wings - Christie Golden [114]
“I am cursed,” he whispered. “The Dragon has taken everyone that I ever loved. There is none in this world more wretched than I.”
“Yes, there is,” Kevla whispered.
He did not roar his anger. He did not scream his grief. Swiftly, and in terrible silence, he reached for the knife he had dropped, seized Kevla, forced her to the ground and pressed the blade against her throat.
And yet still he hesitated.
“Do it, great lord,” Kevla whispered. “End my misery and avenge your son.”
He straddled her, as his son had before him, trembling not with passion but with agony. Her face remained calm and she closed her eyes. With a bitter oath, he hurled the dagger into the night and rose.
“I cannot kill you,” he said, “My life is yours this night. But oh, Kevla, you do not know what you have done!”
She sat up. Her hand went to her throat and he saw a thin trickle of blood that looked black in the moonlight. Rising, she said, “You mistake me. I know full well what I have done.”
He turned away, shaking his head. “You know only part of it. The rest—by the Great Dragon, it seems I have made mistakes at every turn of my life. Your mother was right.”
The mention of Keishla seemed to jolt Kevla out of her stony grief. “My mother? What does she have to do with this?”
He made his decision and faced her then, looking her in the eye. He observed with dull surprise that she was almost as tall as he was, and he was no short man.
“Your name is not Kevla Bai-sha,” he said. “In a better world, it would have been Kevla-sha-Tahmu.”
Her eyes widened. “You—you are my father?” At his nod, her hand flew to her mouth and she whispered, “Then Jashemi…did he…?”
“He knew,” Tahmu said heavily.
“By the Dragon…that was what he tried to tell me, and I would not let him speak….” She began to cry, sinking slowly to the earth. “That was the bond between us. That was what we felt, not….”
Tahmu had thought he would enjoy seeing her suffer, but the sight gave him no pleasure. The fury in him was spent. Kevla had not known, and Jashemi had obviously made a deliberate choice to rebel against the laws. The boy’s desire for Kevla—his love, Tahmu mentally amended, for he knew that Jashemi would not be tempted by any lesser emotion to violate so primal a taboo—had driven him to it. To his surprise, Tahmu found himself kneeling beside his daughter and putting a tentative hand on her bowed shoulder.
“Your mother wanted me to tell you, when you came of age,” he said. “Tell you that you were conceived in love, not out of a base desire. Sahlik wanted you and…and your brother to be together, to know one another. I should not have tried to hide you—hide my own shame, bury my mistakes. And now, I have paid for that, with betrayal in my family and the death of my son.”
Her slim shoulders shook. He rose, looking at her sadly. He had no comfort to offer her.
“You’re not a kuli,” he said at last. “Nor was Jashemi. Kulis have no hearts with which to feel love—or to break. Get up, Kevla. Return to your own fireside, and leave me to my men and my wife.”
She sat up, wiping at her wet face. “Please kill me,” she said. “I can’t—I cannot bear this!”
“Your life or death belongs to the Great Dragon now.”
He watched her stumble to her feet, and then slowly walk back toward the encampment. Tahmu’s breath caught as she stepped into the heart of the fire, and disappeared.
He sat for a while, alone in the dark, thinking about his life and the choices he had made. What if he had married Keishla? Would the Clan really have been damaged past repair? What if he had brought Kevla openly into the House, not caring what Yeshi thought? Or if, after his wife had discovered Kevla’s identity, he had acknowledged his daughter then?
He knew Jashemi’s heart, and knew that at the beginning the boy had only wanted to know his sister. If he had been openly encouraged to do so, perhaps this sibling bond would have stayed innocent.
Jashemi…what if Tahmu had listened to his son’s hesitant