Chapter 35

SARKIN

My fingertips trailed down Klara’s spine, skimming over the swell of her cheeks, making her twitch and shiver, making me smirk.

“Sensitive?” I asked, rolling into her in our bed, tugging her into the crook of my arm. How long it had been since I was so comfortable with a lover…

I thought it a blessing that I felt this way with my wife.

“Yes,” she said. Though I couldn’t see it, I heard her smile.

I smelled her hair, savoring this with her before the rush of the morning began. I rubbed my lips over the delicate—and sensitive—tips of her ears. I knew she needed to sleep, but I just wanted a few more quiet moments with her. We wouldn’t get any during the illa’rosh .

“Why had you never taken a lover in Dothik?” I asked, a question I’d been curious about ever since learning she’d been a virgin in Lishara’s temple. “Surely you had males vying for your attention.”

Saying the words out loud brought a discomforting feeling with it. One I thought might be jealousy . It was strange and foreign. It made me feel restless, and I hated the feeling. By nature, I’d never been jealous over past lovers. Some had tried to make me so, but not once had they ever succeeded.

And now I was jealous over faceless Dakkari or human males who might have tried to seduce my wife into their beds, long before I’d ever known her?

It was laughable. And irritating because I was getting jealous over a hypothetical, not a truth.

“Most men stayed away from me,” she said softly. “My scar kept many away. I’d learned most people don’t like to look at it, so I’d tried to hide it a lot. Keeping my face down, not making eye contact, keeping to the edges. Never bringing attention to myself.”

I jolted. To the Karag, scars were meant to be displayed. On females, they were considered attractive, alluring.

“I liked the archives. I never needed to hide there,” she told me. “Though in a way, I guess I was. There were other males, but I could always see their true intentions. They wanted to get close to me to get close to my family. Dannik usually scared them off, and I didn’t care for a single one.”

“You never wanted to experience sex? To know what it felt like, being with someone that intimately?”

“I did,” she said, her head lolling back onto my arm so she could meet me eyes. She smiled lazily. We’d made love twice—once in the bath, once in our furs. We were both sated, sleepy. “And now I do.”

I chuckled. “Is it everything you thought it might be?” I teased gently, capturing her fingers when she traced my lips. I nipped at them with my teeth.

“Oh, yes,” she whispered, all seriousness even though her eyes twinkled in the golden light of our dwelling. “No complaints at all.”

I grunted.

“Do you wish I was more experienced?” came her unexpected question.

“What?” I asked, frowning, rolling onto my side more so I could see her better.

“I’m not bad at sex, am I?”

I scoffed. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am,” she said, her tone earnest. “You’re my first lover, Sarkin.”

“And last,” I growled, a delicious possessiveness curling low in my belly.

She smiled. “You’re my first husband too.”

“And last.”

It looked like she wanted to say something else. Perched on the edge of her tongue, her smile dying as a shy expression overtook her teasing amusement. My heart picked up pace in my chest.

Come on, aralye , what are you going to say? I wondered, though I thought I knew.

You’re my first love too was what went unspoken, a silent thing between us.

And last, I would inform her.

Klara swallowed the words, and I stroked my fingers over her exposed shoulder, feeling the softness of her skin, still warm from our bath.

“Because I’m inexperienced with these things,” she said instead, going back to where the conversation had deviated. “I’m only acting on instinct.”

“Then I will tell you, wife,” I rasped, my lips replacing my touch, trailing them up her neck to her ear. A full body shiver racked her, a little gasping breath shuddering from her. “That you have only the most perfect of instincts.”

And it’s madness…wanting you this much, I thought, capturing her lips for a gentle, lazy kiss.

For the first time in my time as Karath to the Sarrothian, I wanted to lock myself away with her. Just for a little while. I didn’t want to burden myself with Elthika migration or Elysom politics or the heartstones in Dothik or the preparations for the journey back to Sarroth.

Selfishly, I just wanted to stay in this bed with Klara. I wanted to fall asleep beside her and wake up to her, with no pressing obligation of needing to be anywhere else.

When had I ever felt like this before?

“I brought you gifts,” I told her, pulling away from our bed of furs to snag the satchel from the ground near the doorway.

She rose onto her elbow, her full breasts on display. “Gifts?” she asked, hesitant but hopeful. Curiosity rose in her luminous and inquisitive gray eyes. “Really?”

“From Elysom,” I said. “One day, you will see our capital city yourself. It is quite a beautiful place. But until then…”

I crouched down and dug into the bag.

Klara gasped when I pulled out a beautiful floor-length dress, made of silver hatchling scales with shimmering jewels sewed into the bodice.

“Sarkin, it’s so lovely,” Klara murmured, reaching out to touch the material. “I’ve never seen anything so fine.”

“I thought you might want to wear this on Akymor. It’s a special day in Sarroth—it marks the end of the Elthika’s mating season, before they begin to nest with their eggs. I hold a celebration at the citadel for my kya’rassa , and there are small parties in each of the villages. I try to visit them all through the night.”

She was staring at me, that shy expression on her features again. She looked down at the dress when her cheeks flushed, rubbing the material between her fingertips. “I would like that.”

Satisfaction burned in my chest.

I pulled out my next gift. Her eyes alighted on the pair of them, jeweled hair clips, crafted of the purest of silvers.

“So you never have to hide your scar,” I told her, thinking of what she’d just told me. “Especially not from me.”

She sucked in a quiet breath, meeting my eyes. I thought hers went a little glassy before she blinked swiftly.

“Thank you. I…I don’t know what to say. You spoil me with these pretty things,” she said, touching the clips when I placed them in her palms, running her fingertips over the etched metal.

But pretty things didn’t make her truly happy, did they?

I thought my last gift might though.

“One more,” I said.

“More?” She laughed.

“I saved the best for last.”

Her eyes nearly bugged out of her skull when I pulled an Elthika scale–bound book from the bottom of the bag.

“Sarkin,” she breathed. “That’s a…that’s a…”

“A book?”

“Yes!”

I chuckled, knowing I made the right decision. Books weren’t usually for sale in Elysom’s collections, but I’d offered a price to a private collector, one he hadn’t been able to turn down.

She reached for it eagerly, and I grinned, shaking my head when I saw her hands were trembling.

“Don’t worry—I didn’t get my filthy hands all over the pages,” I informed her, thinking back to when I’d first bumped into her at the marketplace in Dothik.

“Oh, Sarkin,” she breathed. Now she was actually blinking back happy tears as she carefully flipped open the cover, thumbing through the first few pages. “And it’s in the universal language!”

“It’s in both,” I informed her. “It’s translated from Karag—you can see the original text in the last half of the book. When we return to Sarroth, there is a scholar there who can help you learn to read it. Most of our books are written in our language or a blend of Karag and the universal tongue. It will expand your available reading material at the very least, learning Karag.”

“Of course,” she said, her shoulders rising with a deep, determined breath, as if she was ready to begin her tutoring now. “I’ll learn it.”

“It’s a history of Elthika,” I told her. “I thought it would be useful to you.”

I grunted when she launched herself at me. I caught her around the waist, the book pressed between us.

She kissed me. “Thank you. Kakkira vor. I love it. I…”

Again she stopped herself, whatever she’d been about to say next, though we both heard it. Then she beamed at me.

“You shouldn’t have shown this to me because now I don’t want to sleep,” she said, sighing, running her fingertips over the cover, the scales making a sound as her nails stroked over them.

I smiled. “How about I read you a few pages in the Karag language?”

“Would you?” she asked, brightening.

Her passion for learning, for knowledge, for books—so pure and loving—only made my affection for her grow all the more.

“Of course,” I told her, taking the book from her grip gently. We lay back in the bed—I was getting used to sleeping closer to the ground, in a nest of furs. Klara’s eyes ran over the foreign letters on the page, her head pressed into my shoulder.

Anything to get her to relax for tomorrow, I thought.

I began to read…because dawn would come much too soon.