Black Lion’s Bride (Warrior Trilogy #2)

Chapter 27

Zahirah hesitated outside the door of the king's chamber, her heart pounding against her ribs like a caged bird. She had waited until it was fully dark outside before she climbed down from the roof terrace, wanting to be certain the king would be alone. Standing there now, she had no doubt of that fact. There was no guard posted in the hallway. One subtle squeeze and a click of the cold iron latch in her hand told her the door was unbarred from within. Lionheart was waiting, and it seemed he had met her conditions just as he had agreed.

She exhaled deeply, willing her last remaining shreds of doubt to be expelled along with her spent breath. Cleansed and steady, she gripped the latch and pushed open the door.

A single oil lamp burned in a marble alcove in the far right of the room, providing meager light for the large, lavishly appointed chamber. It limned the wide carpet on the floor, and cast a fiery glow on the solitary figure clothed in a hooded white gown and standing at the open window of the balcony.

“My lord,” Zahirah said quietly, announcing herself as she entered, her gaze sweeping the corners of the apartment, searching to make sure no guards secreted in the corners before she focused once more on the king's broad back. She pulled the door closed behind her and took a step farther into the room. “I hope I have not kept you waiting overlong, my lord.”

He grunted, and for a moment she tensed, wondering if she had irritated him with her delay, for there was a dark undercurrent to his tone, an air of restrained anger in the growl that seemed to answer from deep within his chest more than off his tongue. But then he raised his hand out to his side and beckoned her forward, and that particular anxiety ebbed.

She moved on silent feet, the soles of her sandals not so much as whispering on the thick weave of the rugs beneath them. She could steal up behind him in a heartbeat and have done with it, she realized, weathering a giddy sense of relief to think her task would be so easy, so quick. Slowly, she gathered the hem of her tunic and slipped her hand up to her waist, feeling for the handle of her dagger. She took care not to rush, knowing he could turn around at any moment and discover her purpose.

As if just then sensing something amiss behind him, he lifted his head and pivoted his chin over his shoulder. Listening? she wondered. Zahirah froze where she stood, letting her tunic fall back around her legs. “W-would you care for wine, my lord?” she asked, spying a carafe and goblet on a table near the divan.

He slowly dipped his head, a wordless nod of agreement. Cautiously, Zahirah walked over to the table and poured him a cup of the strongly aromatic wine, watching with satisfaction as he returned his gaze to the moonlit courtyard outside. She had no intention of seducing the king this night, and so long as he remained where he was, his back conveniently turned to her as she prepared to steal up behind him, she was mere moments away from completing her odious task.

With one hand wrapped around the carafe as she poured, Zahirah used the other to efficiently retrieve her blade from its sheath, the soft hush of the steel clearing the leather sleeve swallowed up by the gurgle of the flowing wine. She held the dagger close to her belly, the king's drink steady in her left hand, and carefully crossed the space of floor to the balcony where he waited, unsuspecting.

He seemed somehow larger in the moment she neared him, not more than an arm's length between them. This close, he seemed more substantial, his shoulders wider, standing perhaps taller, certainly more dangerous, even without the benefit of his leonine countenance turned on her in ferocious confrontation. He held himself still, but he seemed to crackle with power, leashed and restrained, but, given its head, lethal.

She could do this, she assured herself when doubt rose to seep insidiously into the steel of her resolve. God help her, she had to do this.

As by instinct, her training leapt to life like a fire in her soul, showing her the way. She inched closer to the king's unmoving bulk, her fingers flexing on the grip of her blade.

“Your drink, my lord,” she cooed in an easy, soothing voice, all warmth and promise. All deadly falsity. She stood behind him and reached around the thickness of his left shoulder with the goblet. He turned slightly, bringing his right arm across his chest to take it from her. His fingers brushed hers, a momentary, searing contact. She drew away from that unsettling touch with a gasp, and the instant his hand closed around the jeweled stem, Zahirah lashed out like a viper.

She raised her dagger up and brought it down in a savage arc at his back, thrusting the blade into the space between the wide slabs of his shoulders. She struck true and hard, but something was not right. The blade jarred in her hand, buckling. It skidded down with the force of her blow, renting the back of the king's pristine white robe. She grunted in surprise, jolted momentarily in utter astonishment. The king did not fall. He merely leaned forward slightly, shifting but a half pace forward from the contact.

Before he could move, before he could call for his guards, Zahirah shook off her dazedness with sheer force of will. He had to die. She had to finish this! Regrouped now, with a cry of animal fury, she lunged wildly and drove the dagger home once more.

Another strike, another grating skid.

Impossible!

She tried to blink away the madness before her eyes, but it was there, glinting in the lamplight, indisputable. She had hit metal, not flesh; hard steel links, not bone, not the heart of the English king.

And then, in the instant it took for the realization to set in, she began to understand the true depth of her mistake. For at that moment, between one breath and the next, the king turned to face her. Only it was not the king beneath that hooded white rag she had savaged.

It was Sebastian.

Staring at her, his nostrils flaring with every breath he sucked into his lungs, he took a single step forward. He flung the cup of wine at the wall; it crashed and clattered like a bell.

Zahirah stumbled backward. “No,” she whispered, putting her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no. No.”

She shook her head, praying he was not real, desperate that the hate-filled face before her was but a trick of her mind. She prayed she would blink and find that this was just a cruel mirage. But God was not hearing her prayers now. Sebastian was real, as real as the enmity flashing in his eyes, as real as his roar of fury as he advanced toward her, making her cower before him, craven and shaking.

With a harsh oath, he gripped the front of the caftan and tore it off. His surcoat went with it, falling to the floor and leaving him standing before her in bare chain mail, a warrior honed of steel and cold hard purpose. “All along you've been planning this,” he accused, his voice deadly calm. “All along, Zahirah, from the day I first saw you in the market, you have played me for a fool.”

“No,” she said, rushing to deny it. She never thought him a fool, never intended to hurt him like this. “Sebastian, no. It wasn't like that. Not at any time—”

“Oh, no?” he fumed. He stepped forward, his boots trampling the tattered silk that lay beneath them. “Even now you prove it. Your very denial is an insult. A further betrayal.”

“Sebastian, please. You must believe me. I never wanted to betray you.” She choked on a sob. “I love you.”

He scoffed, and it scalded her like acid poison. “Don't say that. I won't be fed any more of your lies. We're well past that now, my lady.”

Zahirah backed up, fearing the look in his eye. Belatedly, she felt the dagger, still gripped in her fist. She heard her father's promise repeating in her head, his threat that Sebastian would die if she did not fulfill her mission. “The king,” she murmured numbly. “Sebastian, I need you to take me to him. I need you to tell me where he is—your life depends on it!”

He laughed at that. It was a terrible sound, bitter and contemptuous. “The king is safe, somewhere you'll never reach him.”

Zahirah shook her head. “I have to find him! Sebastian, you don't understand. I have to do this. He has to die, or else—”

“Or else?” he snarled. “What, will you kill me to get to him? Here. I'll make it easy for you.” He yanked at the neckline of his mail tunic, clearing the bare column of his throat. An open, easy target. She stared at him, appalled. “No?” he taunted viciously. “Mayhap you'd rather finish what you started all those weeks ago in camp. It was you, wasn't it? The whelp who nearly gutted me when I intercepted the attack on the king. It was you.”

“I had no choice, Sebastian. I was sworn. I am sworn. It's no different than you, pledged to fight this war for your king. I have taken the same pledge, made the same vow to my people and my God.”

“No,” he growled. “We are not the same, Zahirah. When I fight, I do it openly, with honor. I fight face-to-face and hand-to-hand with my enemies. Your kind would creep in under cover of night to stab yours in the back. Do not deign to compare us; we are not the same. Not in any way.” His jaw hardened, the muscles in his face stretching tight across the bone. “You and I were never the same.”

“Sebastian, please, hear me out. Let me explain.”

“I think your presence here explains everything plainly enough.”

“It is not the way it seems— ”

“Hah! That is rich, Zahirah. Spare me your further contortions of the truth. I have heard enough of them.”

“No,” she said. “You must know the whole of it. It was me that night in the king's camp. I stabbed you, and if you had not stopped me, I would have killed your king. I didn't know you, Sebastian. All I knew was I had a mission to complete. I had made a pledge to my clan . . . to my father, the head of that clan.”

Sebastian's hard gaze narrowed in dawning comprehension; there was ice in his voice. “Rashid al-Din Sinan is your father? It was him—the Old Man of the Mountain—whom I found you speaking with in the street yesterday, wasn't it?”

Zahirah nodded, hating to admit that she shared Sinan's blood, shamed that this was one more lie between them. “Everything changed once I met you, Sebastian. I changed. I didn't want to deceive you. I knew that if it meant I would lose you, I could not go through with this task. I wasn't going to do it, but then my father was here in Ascalon. He knew I had weakened, and he knew that I had fallen in love with you. He threatened me, Sebastian. He said that if I did not fulfill my pledge, you would die. I could not let that happen.” In spite of her fear for the man who stood tense with fury before her now, Zahirah reached forth to touch him. “He will kill you, unless I kill Lionheart first.”

Sebastian stared at her, absorbing her revelation in judicious silence. She could see that he was uncertain he should trust her, perhaps he was unwilling to now. She had given him so little truth, how could she hope that he would believe her now? And even if he did believe her, would he care? He looked down to where her fingers rested on his arm, then jerked away from her touch. “Get out.”

Zahirah recoiled at the venom in his command, feeling his withdrawal from her as though he were slamming a door in her face, forcibly shutting her out. “ Sebastian, please don't push me away. What I've told you is the truth. I swear it—”

“I said, get out.” His eyes blazed furious in the dim lamplight. He put his hand out, pointing to the open balcony. “Get out, Zahirah. Before I decide to throw you on the mercy of the king as you well deserve.”

It slowly registered to her that he was giving her freedom when he had every right to hate her, to hold her accountable and see her pay with her life for the crime she would have perpetrated this night—despite her reasons. Dimly, she recognized that there was feeling there, that the searing intensity of his gaze might hold more pain than contempt. Desperately, she clung to that hope.

“Come with me, then,” she said, her voice quaking for the uncertainty of what lay before her. “Come with me, Sebastian. Let's both go now, while we have the chance. We can leave this place. We can go somewhere new, and be together as we had planned.”

He stared hard at her, considering, she prayed. She flung aside her dagger—the hateful symbol of everything she was—and reached out to him, palms up, beseeching, nothing to hide. He looked to her hands, but he would not take them. And then he was stalking toward the bed in heavy silence. He threw off the coverlet and with one firm yank of his arm, tugged the sheet free. Twisting it into a rope, he tied one end to the balcony railing and kicked the length of it over the ledge.

“Go,” he ordered woodenly. “Take the rear gate. The guards don't yet know who, or what, you are. They'll let you pass.”

Zahirah shook her head slowly side to side, bringing her hands up to the place in her breast that felt as if it were being rent asunder. “Sebastian . . . don't. Don't make me go without you.”

He shut his eyes and turned his head away from her. He would not look at her. He would not listen. “Leave now, Zahirah. I never want to see you again.”

She hesitated, unable to move .

“Now, goddamn it!” he shouted, startling her into motion.

With tears burning her eyes, sorrow clogging her throat, Zahirah crossed the space of floor to the balcony overhang. She climbed over the railing and took hold of the knotted sheet, then shinnied down to the garden below and raced, headlong and heartbroken, into the bracing chill of the night.