Black Lion’s Bride (Warrior Trilogy #2)

Chapter 22

Zahirah was having a bad dream. Nay, it was worse than that, another savage nightmare, Sebastian realized as he held her restless, trembling body in his bed at the Ascalon palace. She had been exhausted from the eight hours of travel, dozing off and on atop her mount, until finally Sebastian had taken her onto his destrier to ride with him. She had slept fitfully then, too.

Something had been troubling her since Darum, although she seemed determined to keep it from him. Having observed the king's keen sidelong looks at her on the road, Sebastian hardly needed to guess at what caused her distress. Richard had his eye on her. Sebastian bristled at the notion. He had been too long on the battlefield with his king; he knew how relentless—how single-minded—Lionheart could be when he set his sights on something he wanted. But where he did not fully trust his king, he trusted Zahirah. As he knew she trusted him when he promised he would protect her.

He felt the weight of that pledge now, when she lay like a helpless babe in his arms, thrashing and fighting an enemy he could not see. She murmured something in Arabic, muffled, indiscernible words. She moaned, breathing quick and uneven, her lungs laboring as if they might burst. Sebastian tried to calm her, but she was too far gone, too lost to the demons that seemed to hunt her in her sleep.

“Noo,” she sobbed brokenly. “No, not her . . . not my Gillianne . . . “

God's blood, but here it was again, that English name Zahirah had called out before in her sleep. The name she claimed meant nothing to her.

Gillianne .

Although he wondered what more she might reveal if he let her play the nightmare out to its end, Sebastian could stand her suffering no longer. “Zahirah,” he said, smoothing a web of hair from her damp brow. “Zahirah, it's all right. It's just a dream.” He touched her shoulder, and gave her a small shake. “Wake up now, my love. You're safe.”

“Noo,” she cried, still engulfed in the shade of terror. She kicked at him beneath the coverlet, violent and bucking, scratching at his arm that still held her around the waist. Her voice climbed to a shrill, strangled gasp. “Oh, God, no. Let me go! Let me go!”

She threw off his hand and vaulted from the bed in a panic, abruptly jolted awake. Wild-eyed, her hand shaking at her mouth, she gave Sebastian a look of pure anguish before her bare feet carried her swiftly to the open doors of the balcony. She gripped the railing and sucked in great gasps of the pre-dawn air, her petite frame quaking, setting the cuffed pant legs of her dark blue trousers trembling with the aftershocks of a deep, terrible fear.

For a long moment, Sebastian could only stare after her, sitting naked on the edge of the bed. His arm burned where her nails had raked his skin; his legs would bear a score of bruises from her punishing heels. She had fought him like a wild animal, crazed and mindless in her fright. Like a tigress trying to claw her way out of a hunter's snare.

And now she stood across the room from him in shuddering silence, haloed like one of heaven's own angels by the pink-gold hues of the newly rising sun. She had never looked so fragile, or innocent, and Sebastian had never known a love stronger than that which he felt for her now.

He got up off the bed and slowly drew up behind her. She gave a ragged sigh as he wrapped his arms around her. She was cold, her clothing made damp from her distress. She did not withdraw from him, but it pained him to feel how very still she held herself within the circle of his arms, waiting, it seemed, perhaps uncertain of what she should expect from him in that moment.

Sebastian scarcely knew himself. He held her without speaking, listening to the fluttering beat of her heart, his own thudding hard at her back. He felt a tear splash onto his wrist and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

“I can't let you go on like this,” he whispered, not wanting to distress her any more than she was already, yet needing to know what haunted her. “We need to talk about this, Zahirah. All of it, here and now. You have to tell me who Gillianne is. You have to tell me what that name means to you, why the mention of it should terrify you so.”

She swallowed thickly, and Sebastian felt her head shake slightly beneath his chin. “I can't.”

He turned her around to face him. Her cheeks were ruddy and streaked with tears, her pale silver eyes shimmering and ghostly with unspoken pain. He scowled to see that pain, to know that she would not share it with him and let him help her through it. “Without honesty between us, Zahirah, we have nothing. You must know that.”

She tipped her head down, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to look at him. “I would tell you if I knew . . . if I thought it mattered—”

“It matters to me,” he cut in, not allowing her to dodge the subject. “It matters to me that you wake up some nights drenched and shaking, that you are plagued by something so awful you cannot bear to speak of it.” She let out a sob and he grabbed her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “It matters to me, Zahirah. We have an agreement. No secrets, remember?”

Her mouth quivered uncontrollably. “You don't understand. You couldn't possibly understand what it's like—”

“I want to, damn it,” he ground out, unable to curb the harshness of his voice. “God's blood, lady, I need you to make me understand.”

“Sebastian . . .” She shook her head, twisting her arm against his hold. Desperation swam in her eyes. “Please, Sebastian . . . “

He gripped her tighter, probably bruising her. He wanted answers, needed them, but he could see he was getting nowhere. He swore a gruff oath and released her. “You're shivering cold in those damp clothes. Take them off and let's get you into something warm.”

He waited for her to oblige, but she did not so much as budge. Quite the contrary, she wrapped her arms around herself a little tighter, a protective stance that spoke as plainly as a flat refusal. Sebastian scowled, suspicious. “Your tunic and shalwar , my lady. Take them off.”

She shrank back from him, her face pinched with distress and a dread that lanced him as sure as any blade. She shook her head. She would not look at him, but he could tell that she had begun to cry once more.

“Oh, yes, I forgot,” he growled, sounding every bit as savage as she was making him feel. “I am only permitted to see you—to love you—in the dark. Well, that's not enough, Zahirah. I need more than that.” He leveled a fierce glower on her. “From now on, if there is to be anything between us, we will share the daylight and the dark, my lady. No more hiding. Now, take off those clothes.”

For a maddening space of time, she merely stood there. Silent. Still. Even her tears ceased to flow. Then, slowly, while Sebastian's heart slammed heavily against his ribs, Zahirah brought her hands up to the neckline of her tunic and began to untie the network of laces that held the garment together.

It was hard to watch her obey him, hard to abide knowing he had pushed her into this wordless, damning compliance, but he forced himself not to flinch, not to sway. Not this time.

It was nearly impossible to hold her defeated, yet calmly defiant gaze, as she gathered up the hem of the tunic and peeled it up over her head, baring herself to him, just as he had commanded. She held her arm out and slowly released the long silk shirt from her fingers, letting it fall next to her on the floor. Her trousers followed a moment later; the waistband slackened, she slid the pantalets over her hips and left the fabric to crush in an indigo pool at her feet.

Sebastian's breath leaked out of him in a harsh sigh as he looked upon his lover's naked body for what was truly the first time. “Jesus Christ,” he swore, staring at her in stunned disbelief.

Beneath her clothing, beneath the honey-brown color of her skin—a color that faded away in a gradual band at her breasts and across the downy triangle of her pelvis—Zahirah was as creamy white as the finest pearl.

As white as the fairest Englishwoman in any king's court.

~ ~ ~

So, now he knew, Zahirah thought, miserable as she stood before him, watching him gape at her like the freak she knew herself to be. Now he saw her disease, the thing that ate at her heart, at her soul. The sickness that set her apart from her countrymen and her clan. The secret, which, until this very moment, only she and Allah shared.

“Zahirah,” Sebastian said, “what is the meaning of this?”

She glanced down, ashamed. “I have been asking God that very question all my life.”

“This must have something to do with your nightmares. Perhaps it explains your connection to the name Gillianne.”

“No,” she said, desperate to deny the suggestion. “No, it can't have anything to do with this. My dreams are just that, dreams. They don't explain anything. They're not real.”

“The fear they bring you is real enough. I think they would explain much, if you would only listen to them.”

She thought about the anguish and violence of her night terrors, the hideous screaming, the feeling of helplessness and loss. If they held an explanation to anything in her life, she did not want it. She did not think she could bear that cold a truth.

“What about your mother?” Sebastian asked, his voice pulling her out of her dark musings .

“I never knew my mother,” Zahirah answered. “She died when I was a babe.”

“Was she English? Could your mother have been Gillianne?”

Zahirah gave a sharp shake of her head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you don't know my father. He is—” She broke off abruptly, wary of treading down a dangerous path from which there would be no return. “My father is a devout man. He would never taint his blood by taking an Englishwoman to his bed.”

“Then how do you explain it, my lady?” He paused, intensely watching her expression, as if he searched for gentle words but could not find them. “Zahirah, it is obvious. Your pale eyes, your fair skin. My lady, you are not Arab.”

“Yes, I am,” she replied, the shrill forcefulness of her avowal betraying her defensiveness, her rising panic, at his challenge.

It was a charge she herself had never dared whisper, not even when she was banished in punishment to the dank cell at Masyaf, a space so deep and dark within the bowels of the fortress that no one could have heard her, even had she screamed it. She had never dared speak the question aloud, not to her father certainly. Not to anyone.

But she had thought it.

She had thought it every time she bared her skin to the sun's rays, begging Allah to heal her. She had thought it in the throes of the nightmare that woke her in this very room just a few moments before. She had always been able to push the question aside, denying it by example of her devotion—her willing sacrifice—to her father and her clan, but hearing Sebastian voice it now stirred a fear in her so profound it nearly robbed her of breath.

“I am Arab,” she whispered fiercely, needing to believe it. “I am Arab in every way it matters: my heart, my soul. My convictions.” To her dismay, a sob wrenched up from her constricted throat. “Don't you see? This life is all I know. It's all I have. ”

“No,” Sebastian said. He stepped toward her, reaching out to take her hand. “Not all, my lady. Only if you choose it to be so.”

Zahirah looked up into his serious, steady gaze as he closed his fingers around hers and slowly brought her into his embrace. His chest was warm and solid against her naked breasts, the crisp mat of hair rasping against her nipples. He traced the line of her jaw, her chin, his eyes caressing her as sweetly as his touch.

He bent his head down and kissed her mouth. “I love you,” he whispered, his lips brushing hers. “I don't care if you're brown or white. I don't care if you're English, Arab, half of each, or not of this world at all. I love you, Zahirah.”

She squeezed her eyes shut against the flood of relief and sorrow and pure shattering joy that swept her upon hearing those precious words. That he could mean them, that his acceptance of her could be so genuine, so complete, humbled her as greatly as it elated her. She had never heard those words before, never felt this love. Never knew how keenly she had needed it until now.

Tears burned behind her eyelids and in her throat. “Oh, Sebastian . . . I'm so scared.”

“Don't be,” he told her. “You don't have to be scared, my lady. Not anymore.”

He lowered himself before her, taking her breasts into his hands, into his mouth, kissing the variegation of her skin, worshiping the places where she was neither tan nor pale. He knelt at her feet, there, in front of God and the unblinking eye of the rising sun, and he learned every inch of her body, bringing all of her passion, all of her pleasure, into the light.

And then, as she splintered apart in a wave of trembling, perfect rapture, he pulled her down atop him on the carpeted floor, and he loved her further, showing her an ecstasy that would never again abide the smothering pall of the dark.