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Sakshi stared at the bed in the center of the royal bedchamber and tried not to hyperventilate.

“You’re looking at it again,” Malini said, poking her hard in the side.

Sakshi met her eyes in the mirror. “Am I just supposed not to look?”

Malini snorted, her hands still working busily away in Sakshi’s hair. “When it makes you this jumpy? Yes. You get all worked up and in your head, you’re going to trip and fall flat on your face before you even get to the bed, and then the entire Guija delegation is going to judge you and wonder what exactly their princess is getting herself into.”

Well, there was an entirely new anxious scenario to play over in her head eighteen times before the betrothal ceremony that night. “Thanks, Malini. You’re such a help.”

“I guarantee she’s just as nervous as you are. Just because you’re a high-and-mighty monarch now doesn’t mean nerves aren’t natural. Breathe. Ignore the bed. Fall back on your Queenly Queenliness Training.”

Despite the unsettled fizzing in her stomach, Sakshi had to smile. “Priya always did frown when you called it that.”

“She put you through a course that would make any aspiring guildwoman wince. Well, now you’re a master craftswoman of the art of Queenship, and your reward is a wife. Nice work if you can get it.”

Sakshi was still smiling, but her fingers drummed slowly on the arm of her chair. “It feels more like another challenge than a reward.”

Malini smacked her on the shoulder with the flat of the brush.

“Ow!” Sakshi said, and rubbed the spot. “Attack on the Royal Person!”

“Please,” Malini said. “I could stab you right now and your guards would say you deserved it. Oh no, I’m marrying a beautiful wife, so beautiful that it’s not out of the question that my neighbors might get mad at me for taking her off the market, but the betrothal ceremony makes me nervous, so I keep moving around without permission to look at my damn bed while this very nice person tries to do my hair and not accidentally draw blood with a hairpin.”

“It’s just… a small bed,” Sakshi said.

“You know you’re supposed to fuck her in it? The intimate size is part of the symbolism.”

Sakshi knew that. The knowing wasn’t the problem. “Thanks, Malini.”

“No problem,” Malini said cheerfully. “Now hold still.”

Princess Maricela of the Guija was a tall, statuesque woman whose curves were the muse of artists across the continent. Her beauty had been legendary for twenty-five years, and even now in her early forties she made young ingénues look pale naïve shadows in comparison. Sonnets had been written, great art painted, and had this been a less enlightened century, wars would have been fought for the reward of her perfect smile.

Yet for all these years, she had refused every marriage offered to her. She could have been an Empress, or a Queen Mother of a country where heirs of the body inherited. She could have ruled over the court of a country much larger and more glittering than Sakshi’s small mountain nation, hemmed in by more powerful neighbors. She could have had a bedmate whose physical charms came closer to her own than Sakshi’s, who liked her sensible strong mountain body but was aware that she would never be a muse for artists.

When the late Queen had taken Sakshi’s hands between hers in the Inheritance Ceremony, and announced to her the name of her bride-to-be, Sakshi had scarcely been able to believe her ears.

Now Maricela stood in her doorway, in naught but a long flowing white nightgown, and Sakshi’s mouth was as arid as the driest desert.

“Come into my chamber, and be welcome,” Sakshi said, and took pride in the fact that her voice only cracked a little over the ritual words.

Maricela took four precise steps, with her ladies-in-waiting at either elbow. “I am honored.”

Behind Maricela, three stonefaced Guijan diplomats filed into the room.

“The honor belongs entirely to this House,” Sakshi said, aware that the words came out sounding slightly too fervent. “Will my lady consent to come to my bed and spend this night with me, that we may be troth-plighted before the world?”

Maricela stepped forward again, leaving both ladies-and-waiting and diplomats behind her. “With my body I will make my troth.”

“With my body I will make my troth,” Sakshi echoed, and held out a hand that did not shake.

Maricela’s hand was cool. Sakshi devoutly hoped that her own was not clammy.

She drew back the covers on one side of the bed for Maricela, and held them high enough to slightly obscure Maricela as she climbed into the bed. Even the most regal of women could not look entirely dignified climbing into a raised bed, and the Guijan observers were still in the room, along with Sakshi’s own observers.

When Maricela was successfully installed in her bed, Sakshi turned to the room. “I have taken the Princess Maricela into my bed. Here I declare my intention of betrothal. Let you go forth and stand guard for us.”

“Hail!” Sakshi’s observers said as one, clanking their wrist bracelets to their shoulders.

The Guijans inclined their heads to Maricela, then Sakshi.

After they had all clattered out, and the door had been shut and ostentatiously locked behind them (Sakshi was glad for the ceremonial bar she could lower across on her side, although she was under no illusions that she could keep Kumail from bursting through if she was in danger, bar or no bar), she turned once more to the bed.

“Well, that’s them gone,” she said, trying a smile.

For a long moment, she thought Maricela’s unparalleled beauty was not going to crack, and that the supreme awkwardness of this night would have to be carried through with that remote politeness set like a mask upon her betrothed’s face.

Then, slowly, Maricela’s lips turned faintly upwards. “Come to bed. My feet are cold.”

“That cannot stand,” Sakshi said, the tension flowing out of her and leaving her light-headed. “I shall have to give you warm woolen socks as a betrothal gift. They are an absolute necessity up here in the mountains, my lady, I can assure you.” The sock chatter had carried her back to the bed, and as she gingerly raised her side of the covers and climbed in, she maintained her light tone with an effort. “For tonight I can offer you my shinbones to warm yourself by.”

There was no immediate assault by frozen toes, however.

“I have heard that the Zahari spring is beautiful, even though its winter may be fierce,” Maricela said. “I have only visited one time before, in high summer.”

Sakshi knew this. She also could feel Maricela’s nerves, almost as tangible as her own. They were not in this bed to talk about the weather.

“My lady,” she said, gentling her voice, “I wish to say one thing clear. Though we be betrothed, though we be married fifty years, I shall never ask of you what you are not willing to give. I am the Queen, and you shall be my Consort. If we rule Zahar well together, what we do in our bed is not for Zahar to know, and matters only to ourselves.”

Maricela did not speak for a long moment. Then she said, “Yet there is still the bedding ceremony.”

“Ceremony, yes,” Sakshi said. “There are always ceremonies here. This was a hard country in centuries past, and some of the superstitions still hold, for all that people scoff at them in the light. Ours are not as bad as some of the lowlander kingdoms, I believe.”

“You are meant to make me a woman tonight,” Maricela said, stark as the tower wall.

Sakshi smiled. She should not have, for the conversation was a tense one, but in times of stress she generally found herself smiling. A certain bared-teeth grimace at the world, perhaps? She hoped it would not convince Maricela that her life partner had taken leave of her senses.

“I am meant to consummate the betrothal,” she corrected. “So that neither of our countries can back out of the agreement before our wedding without the most convincing of reasons.”

“And if either of us finds the other not a virgin, we can storm out and announce it to the guards.”

“That is entirely outdated,” Sakshi said. “Unless one of us was pregnant, what difference would it make? And even if we were, the child would not inherit in Zahar, so it still would not matter.”

“You are telling me that you would still marry me, even if I were pregnant with some man’s child.”

Sakshi drew her feet up underneath her, sitting like a child amidst her pillows. “You are still a Guijan princess, and you represent a treaty with a powerful neighbor. The late Queen arranged our marriage – she saw in you the match that would help me to rule Zahar, and she was the wisest of women. A pregnancy would not change these things.”

“You are very pragmatic,” Maricela said. Her dark hair spooled around her on the pillowcase, and Sakshi could imagine winding it around her finger.

“And also,” Sakshi said, her voice softer, “I would ask you whether you had consented to it. For I know the Guijan court, and I know that a woman would have to be quite desperately in love to risk falling pregnant while unwed. The more likely alternative would require my intervention.”

For the first time, Maricela met Sakshi’s eyes fully. A person could drown in Maricela’s eyes. “I do not follow.”

“My lady,” Sakshi said, “I have assassins. I should send one to eliminate the villain, and claim your child as my own. Superstitions have their place; no one would dare tell me I could not possibly father a child, if I said otherwise.”

“And if I said the man was my lover?”

Sakshi bit her lip. “Is there such a man? Because I have not thought… I know three Queens ago, she had a lover and they made him Captain of the Guard. But that was the Queen’s lover, not the Consort’s, so it was easier to integrate him into the palace hierarchy. I am sure we could arrange something, but I have not put anything in place –”

She could not quite help feeling some small sense of loss, deep in her stomach. She had only just met Maricela, and there was no love yet kindled. Yet still, she was her betrothed – and even for a Queen, there was always that tendril of hope that said perhaps, against all odds, I shall find love with her. To be barred from that dream from the start would be a hard thing, even if it affected Maricela’s work as Consort not at all.

“As it happens,” Maricela said, interrupting her, “there is no such man. And no such babe.”

Sakshi let out the metaphorical breath she had been holding.

“But it means something to me,” Maricela continued, “that you would have been kind, if there had been.”

“Lady,” Sakshi said, “I mean only ever to be kind to you.”

She judged this a good moment to draw from her hair the slender sheathed knife that all Zahari women wore. Maricela’s eyes widened, seeing a blade appear in her betrothed’s hands.

Sakshi smiled at her, trying to look reassuring, and drew the knife swiftly over the inside of her forearm. A few drops of blood welled up in its path, joining the bruises from her last sparring session, and she rolled her arm on the sheets between them.

“There,” she said, looking with satisfaction at the smears. “Superstition has been satisfied. We are each other’s now, and come morning we will stand on the balcony and wave at the crowds.”

Maricela stared at the blood, her eyebrows drawn together. Then she said, “May I?” and held out her hand for the knife.

Sakshi handed it over. If her betrothed wished to murder her in her bed and start a war, there were less chancy ways, like smothering her while she was asleep. Sakshi liked her odds against a knife; she did not think Maricela had the hand-to-hand training she did.

Proving her point, Maricela looked at the knife as if it were a snake in her hands. Her fingers were long and delicate, and the sight of a blade in them made Sakshi’s blood run hotter. Hush, she told it, this is not the time. She is not for you – not now, and perhaps not never.

“I too will pledge my troth with my body,” Maricela said, a half-echo of the ritual words, and drew the knife across her arm.

“My lady!” Sakshi protested, too late. Where her cut would blend with her training marks on battered skin, Maricela’s would stand alone on a virgin field.

Maricela held the knife out to her. “You may give me a bracelet to cover it, if you desire,” she said. There was a smile hovering at the corner of her lips, one not donned for the glare of the spotlight.

“I shall,” Sakshi said, closing her fingers around Maricela’s – and then, feeling utterly daring, raising them quickly and fleetingly to her lips. “But my betrothal gift shall be this knife, for you are a woman of Zahar now, and we wear them in our hair.”

“If I be a woman of Zahar, and your woman,” Maricela said (and oh, how Sakshi’s traitorous breath caught in her throat at that last), “then you must stop calling me my lady and use my name. I trust you know it.”

“It is a measure of honor in Zahar,” Sakshi said, “and I would not yield one measure of your honor.”

“But here, in this bed?”

Sakshi smiled. “Here in this bed we may simply be Sakshi and Maricela.”

“I would like that,” Maricela said, and they smiled at each other, the knife held between their hands.

“My cheeks hurt from smiling,” Sakshi said, leading her bride back through the balcony doors into their cozy bedchamber.

“You smile so widely, it is no wonder,” Maricela said, though there was no sting in her words. “I shall have to teach you to smile like a Guijan princess, full of reserve and hauteur. It barely stirs the lips, and you will never tire.”

Sakshi laughed, leaning her head against the shoulder of her tall wife. Wife! It still sent a shiver up her spine, though it be now some twelve hours since she gained one, in the garden far below. “If my cheeks hurt, your feet must hurt still more. I cannot believe you Guijans suffer so for fashion. And that you have not all broken your ankles long since.”

“But I am no longer a Guijan,” Maricela said, stepping down out of her torture shoes. “So my heels are Zahari heels. I must give Malini a pair, I saw her looking longingly at them.”

“You say longingly, I say dubiously,” Sakshi said. “Or judgingly, knowing Malini.”

The shoes had made Maricela’s legs look even longer than they already were. Sakshi had known better than to look, to yield to the urge to pine for something that was not yet given her, but on her wedding day, it had been hard to hold strong.

Maricela had been so very beautiful in the garden, in her vibrant gown, with flower petals in her hair. They had stood handfast before both their peoples, and vowed to be consorts until death and to serve Zahar with their last breaths; Sakshi could still feel Maricela’s hand twined in hers when she flexed her fingers.

“Were this Guija,” Maricela said, “we should not have escaped this lightly into our wedding night.” She stepped away from Sakshi to her dressing table, carrying her shoes in her hand. “They are the loudest and most rowdy of affairs.”

Sakshi sat on the edge of the bed, watching Maricela remove her jewelry. She was always so careful and neat, placing each piece in its place and locking it with the key. If any thief was to enter this chamber, their life was already forfeit, and Sakshi did not care overmuch what jewels they might attempt to snatch on their way to the scaffold; her own jewelry cabinet was much less tidy. (That is, the jewelry cabinet that contained her usual pieces. The state jewelry cabinet was downstairs, run by Malini, and Sakshi never interfered there.)

“I have heard that they strip the brides and throw them in the bed naked,” she said, keeping her tone casual despite her voice’s traitorous urge to become excited about such a thought.

“They do,” Maricela said, her face contorting in disgust. “All the ladies of the court prepare the bride, and leave her wedding gown lying on the floor for the groom to walk across when he arrives. Then the men arrive, and they say such things! I had always to turn my face away, and to pretend that I did not hear when I was told that it would be my turn next.”

“I am glad that our traditions are more sedate,” Sakshi said. “No less barbarous, perhaps, with the betrothal night custom, but less public at least. It means that our wedding night may be our own, if everyone knows we have been closeted together these three months gone.”

Maricela turned in her chair and waved a finger playfully at Sakshi. “I have read about Zahari customs too! The balcony wedding night tradition, where you show off your bride to any Zahari citizen who comes to gather in the gardens below – back in the centuries where inheritance was still heirs of the body, was that not to display the bride’s pregnancy?”

“Well, yes,” Sakshi admitted. “Before we sensibly chose to limit the monarchy to women and changed the inheritance laws, it was considered very lucky to come to your wedding night with a babe on the way.”

“Traditions are nonsensical,” Maricela said. “I am glad that we are done with them for the night. Come undo my dress.”

The peremptory command made Sakshi smile, but she was already on her way to the dressing table. The little buttons at Maricela’s neck were fiddly, but Sakshi’s fingers were trained with a blade, and they made quick work of them. She only had to resist the urge to follow her fingers with her lips, but that was no new temptation.

Sharing a bed with Maricela these three months gone might be tradition, and Sakshi had nothing to complain of, for it had turned a beautiful stranger into an ally. It was impossible to remain aloof from someone when they curled against your side in the night, sharing your blankets and even your breath, or when they woke from a nightmare and you gave them the protection of your arms. From such closeness, intimacy was built, and from intimacy came the beginnings of trust.

No, Sakshi could not quarrel with the wisdom of bygone generations, except this far: it was bloody hard to want your wife so badly, and to have her be so close, and not be able to do a single thing about it. She couldn’t even touch herself in the stillness of the night, because Maricela was there next to her and would feel it. She had to lay silent and sleepless, aching and wanting.

(Luckily there was a bathtub for alone time – but that was a faint shadow of what Sakshi longed for.)

Yet Sakshi remained obdurate in her resolve. She would not pressure Maricela into any physical intimacy that she did not first invite.

At first it had been merely a matter of principle. She had thought, when she let herself think, that two women thrown together in such a way would eventually find their way to each other, and had simply wanted to let Maricela take the first step into that phase of their relationship.

But as time went on, she had become increasingly sure that Maricela might not want such a thing at all. There were all those years she had remained unmarried, despite as many offers as there were goats on the mountains. There was the fact that there had never been a whisper of scandal attached to her name, which even in conservative Guija did eventually happen to most women of the court, even if it was just talk of surreptitious flirtation with a handsome soldier. And there was the evidence of Sakshi’s own eyes – Maricela had never once initiated any physical intimacy with her, beyond the simplest hand threaded through her arm or ceremonial handclasp.

(Sakshi did not count the nights. To wake intertwined in their small bed was only to have fallen to the night goddess’s dreams, and not a conscious choice at all.)

If ever Maricela was to change her mind, Sakshi would be there.

And if she never did – if all she wanted was to be the consort at Sakshi’s side, now and forever – then she was still Sakshi’s bride, and her honored wife.

“My turn,” Sakshi said, and moved so Maricela could undo the ribbons at her back.

Maricela’s fingers were brisk and businesslike on her spine, and Sakshi closed her eyes against her own imagination.

Sakshi awoke with a kink in her neck, a throbbing headache, and her wife’s hand on her shoulder. “Grggh,” she said, very intelligibly.

“Come to bed,” Maricela said, pulling the ledger from underneath Sakshi’s cheek. Sakshi hadn’t been aware she’d been using it as a pillow. She hoped she hadn’t smeared the ink with her face – her steward Sania kept duplicates of all her records, but she would judge, and there would be that eyebrow…Sania was more than a little intimidating.

“What time is it?” Sakshi said, giving in to a jawbreaking yawn and watching her wife quickly and decisively restore order to her work desk. “Have I slept through first bell?”

“First, and second. I woke and found myself cold, and feared you had gone one of your terrorizing prowls again.”

Sakshi grinned, even though her eyes wouldn’t quite stay open all the way. “A Queen must know the inner workings of her court, especially in the dark hours when mischief may be afoot.”

Maricela had obviously heard that particular pious aphorism too many times to be impressed. She pursed her lips. “A Queen should take her rest, and let the bakers get on with their work without worrying that their ruler will suddenly turn up in their kitchen.”

Sakshi liked her night prowls. She was a new Queen, and not everyone in her mountain land thought the late Queen Priya had chosen the right Heir. There had been factions, in the months before Priya’s decision; Sakshi still wondered, in the still quiet hours of the night, whether her cousin Rashmi’s supporters had truly become reconciled to her reign, or whether they merely licked their wounds and waited. The only proof would be time, and vigilance the only guard.

But Maricela was her bride, and there had been no internal unrest in Guija for some centuries. Surely there was no need to share the depths of her worries – she need not raise fear in her bride’s mind, simply because she liked to walk the palace at night and peer into the shadows. There might not be anything there. There might not ever be anything there.

“No terrorizing prowl tonight,” she said, peaceably. “Only a silly Queen falling asleep over her books, like a student before an exam.”

“You work too hard,” Maricela said. Her brows were drawn together, her face a picture of concern. “Come to bed, and let the numbers wait until morning.”

Sakshi rose from her chair, sweeping her pens into the pen-stand, a beautiful piece of art that Maricela had brought with her from Guija and gifted to her new wife. “I hear and obey, my lady.”

She had found that she could not quite break the habit of address. She did try, sometimes, for she could tell that Maricela liked to hear the sound of her name. But she was Zahari, and the salutation felt right in her mouth, almost like a caress. She wondered if Maricela heard it, or only the bare shape of the words.

As she went to take her first step across the colorful sweep of their rug and towards the close coziness of their bed, her foot chose that moment to remind her that while she had awoken, it had not yet joined the party, and would like to remain abed for some time yet.

Maricela caught her as she stumbled. Her arm was stronger around Sakshi’s waist than Sakshi had expected. “Take care!”

“My foot is asleep,” Sakshi said, ruefully. “It agrees with you that second bell is no time to be wakeful.”

“It is a very logical foot,” Maricela agreed, which was about as fanciful as Sakshi had ever heard her be. She suppressed a smile, turning her face into the side of Maricela’s shoulder.

Outside their window, Sakshi could hear the soft, far-away tune of a lute – one of Maricela’s countrywomen was wooing a baker’s boy, and played for him to while away his early travails. Sakshi imagined for a moment wooing a lover with a lute, but quickly discarded the idea. Not only could she not play the Guijan instrument, but she had never been melodically inclined. Her lady-love would clap her hands over her ears and beg her to take her lovelorn ballads elsewhere.

“Were I you,” Maricela said, her arm still clasped around Sakshi’s waist, “I should sweep you up and carry you to bed. Are all Zahari raised to be so strong?”

“I do not think I am incredibly strong,” Sakshi said, surprised, although of course she had been trained from her girlhood. And yes, if she had need she could carry Maricela without great strain. Maricela’s willowy body would be no challenge.

“Well, I do,” Maricela said, her voice somehow odd in the moonlight. She cleared her throat. “But as I am not, you will have to persuade your foot to carry you.”

Sakshi tested the offending appendage. “I think it will take my weight, though it protests mightily. May I lean on you?”

“Always,” Maricela said, and helped her to bed.

Sakshi’s eyes were already closing as she laid her head on her pillow. Third bell approached, and her head still swam with Sania’s assessments of the new irrigation project.

Yet she could still feel the press of Maricela’s arm around her waist, and her lips were turned up as she fell into slumber once more.

“It is only an allergic reaction,” Maricela said.

Sakshi’s bride was lying among the pillows, making an artistic picture of a stricken princess. Were there a famous portrait artist in the room, she would leap at the opportunity to write her name in the annals of art history. She would capture the drawn pallor of the royal cheeks, the suffering that etched the lines of her beauty more clearly than ever, the languid limp fall of her hand among the blankets and the curls that curved wildly across her bared white neck.

“Only an allergic reaction,” Sakshi echoed. Her voice felt wrong in her throat, as if someone had scraped it with a seashell, top to bottom. “You swooned in my arms.”

Now that would be the moment immortalized in oil paint, since artists were banned from the royal bedchamber and would never see the picture that Sakshi saw. A state dinner, her Consort at her side, the pomp and pageantry rolling on around them, an important trade deal under active negotiation – and then Maricela had said, “Sakshi,” in a strange, urgent undertone, her hand grasping desperately at Sakshi’s elbow, and Sakshi had turned just in time to catch her swooning form before the gaping audience of three kingdoms.

“You will find,” Maricela said, her voice thready, “that mountain mushrooms do not agree with lowlanders. Or something of that kind.”

Or Sakshi’s spymaster would find that one of her cooks was in the pay of some unseen enemy. She did not want to leap to this conclusion, but her wife lay white as chalk among the bedclothes. The doctor had come and gone, and promised to return in an hour; her calm reassurances had loosened the clutch of pain balled in Sakshi’s stomach, but still it throbbed.

“You have never liked mushrooms,” she said instead, and took that too-white hand in her own.

Maricela smiled. It was weak but gallant. “So I shall blame them, and forevermore insist that they remind me of this night, and ban them from my plate. Shall you judge me?”

“My lady,” Sakshi said. “Maricela. You shall ban anything from our table with a word.”

“But I would not deny you your strange obsession with the fungus,” Maricela said, the smile still hovering on the colorless lips.

I would not deny you any pleasure. “We will find what has poisoned you, whether it be natural or not.” Damn. She had not meant to say that. But Maricela was no babe. She would have already grasped the possibilities, for that was what it meant to be a Queen’s Consort.

And now she was doubly endangered, for Sakshi was under no illusions that she had not betrayed herself in her hall tonight, to all but her swooning wife.

She had caught Maricela in her arms and supported her, thankful for her stout mountain strength that made Maricela’s slim form no burden at all. She had held up her free hand to her queensguard, racing all a-clatter to her side in an appalled instant. “Doctor,” she had flung at Kumail, and then taken Maricela up into her arms and carried her out of the hall. She had only taken her as far as the throne room antechamber, where there was a comfortable couch she could lay Maricela on and await the speedy arrival of the doctor, but Sakshi knew what her face would have been like in those first moments, laid bare for three nations to see. She had learned in her Heir training to cloak her feelings under pressure, to subsume her own emotions beneath her royal mask, but she had never been faced with a trial like tonight, her wife lying still in her arms.

If a Queen’s Consort was a target, how much more was a Queen’s beloved?

She could not lie to herself and say that a flower had not begun to grow, these past six months. She had not known how much, until she was faced with its extinction.

“Sakshi,” Maricela said. “I will be fine. I am of sturdy Guijan stock, for all that I look as if a stray wind might blow me down the mountain. I shall lie about and make you fetch and carry for me, and before three hours has passed you shall think me a thoroughly annoying invalid, and then very soon I shall be back on my feet.”

It was too long a speech. She was winded by the end of it.

“Hush,” Sakshi said, and succumbed to the overwhelming urge to rise from her chair and go to the bedside. “Hush, and rest.”

Maricela was quiet for a long moment, regaining her breath. Then she said, “I cannot rest, unless you are here with me. I listen to your breathing in the dark, and know that all is right.”

Sakshi closed her eyes, biting the inside of her lip.

“Come to bed,” Maricela said, and rested her hand lightly across the backs of Sakshi’s fingers.

Sakshi slid under the covers, blew out the candle at their bedside, and lay her head on the pillow next to Maricela’s. “Rest,” she said into the darkness.

If someone had done this, she would take her ceremonial knife and cut their throat herself.

Maricela moved, and their foreheads rested against each other.

“Now who is up too late?” Sakshi asked, leaning her hip against her desk and crossing her arms over her chest, exaggerating her stance for comic effect.

Maricela looked up and smiled. She sat cross-legged in her huge armchair, her posture that of a carefree child, but the dossiers she was reading were heavy work. “I want to know everything about your cousin’s people. This is an important week, for all that you Zahari keep saying it’s just the midsummer holiday.”

“Family reunions can be fraught in Zahar,” Sakshi agreed, picking her words carefully. “But we do try to set our differences aside at Midsummer.”

“Well,” Maricela said, brushing a stray curl back behind her ear, “I plan to charm your cousin Rashmi and her daughters until they become the staunchest of your allies, and even you have to agree that they are unlikely to become malcontents intriguing against your rule.”

Her illness a month since still hung over them like a half-glimpsed shadow, for all that she had recovered some time ago. The doctor said that she thought it had been an allergic reaction, but she would not swear to it; Sakshi could yet feel the dead weight of Maricela in her arms and the race of her heart. Maricela joked about mushrooms, and was careful to sample new dishes with only the smallest of bites, but she slept closer to Sakshi and Sakshi often woke with her curled against her side.

Sakshi would not let any danger touch her again. She had already spoken to Kumail about being Maricela’s shadow during midsummer; with Rashmi, her daughters, and their supporters in the palace, she would not leave Maricela unguarded for an instant.

It was an added complication, having your heart walking around in the world, exposed for all to see. She had not prepared for this in her Heir’s training; she wondered if Priya had foreseen it. The Queen had been the most astute and penetrating of women, and Sakshi had assumed long since that she had perceived Sakshi’s enormous crush on the remote and alluring Princess of Guija. But a crush was one thing, and what she now felt was another…could Priya have known that Sakshi would find her heart’s mate in the marriage she arranged?

“Be careful with Rashmi,” she said, clearing her throat. “She is all mildness in conversation, but her words have hidden meanings. Often I come away from talking with her feeling as if I have been in a duel, and that I have been in some way the loser.”

Maricela smiled, and it was not entirely a nice smile. “You forget, my Queen,” she said, “that I am Guija by birth. I am no Zahari swordswoman, but Guija duel with words, and there I am accounted a master.”

“I look forward to your duel, then,” Sakshi said, and extended her hand. “Will you leave the preparation for the morn?”

Maricela set the dossiers aside and accepted the hand, rising fluidly to her feet. Then she winced. “Oh, my neck! You have the right of it, I have been too long studying.”

“Let me help,” Sakshi offered. “I have experience in teasing out knots after a day of training.”

Maricela shed her night-robe, laying it neatly over the back of the armchair. Her nightgown was voluminous, even in the warmer summer nights; only the fabric had changed as the months passed, not the cut or style. Sakshi, who slept in a simple sheath and trusted to her pile of blankets, in the way of her people, had never ventured a comment. She could imagine a Maricela less fully clothed, but she would not push her for the world.

“I would like that,” Maricela said, over her shoulder. “If you can work magic with this ache in my neck, I will be eternally grateful.”

They climbed into bed together, and Sakshi directed Maricela to turn sideways, to place her at the best angle. “Tell me if I hurt you.”

She had not touched Maricela like this before, for all that they slept in a small bed and woke pressed near each other more often than not. In sleep all was innocent; in waking, her fingers traced the nape of Maricela’s neck and she needed to focus on remembering to breathe.

“Do not massages often hurt before they heal?” Maricela asked.

Sakshi swallowed, letting the experience in her fingers assume the reins, for truly she was struggling to focus. “If you tell me, I will know where the knot is worst.”

“Ah,” Maricela said, and then was silent under Sakshi’s hands.

Sakshi concentrated on the massage, even as her thoughts tried to fly away. What would the seventeen-year-old Sakshi say, if she could see herself now? The young Queen’s cousin, still some years away from being taken seriously as a potential Heir, perched high above a diplomatic ball, peering through the balcony rails down at the whirl below? Princess Maricela had been the star of the ball, a tall majestic goddess of a woman who was the sun to a universe of orbiting planets, and Sakshi had not been immune. How she would have marveled, to see her fingers trace across Maricela’s skin, to see them dip below the high neckline of her nightgown, seeking to find and solve her pain.

Oh, how she longed to seek it with her lips.

Maricela made a soft sound, and it went straight to Sakshi’s head. Stop, she begged her body, but it would not listen.

“There?” she asked, and her voice was rough to her own ears.

“Yes,” Maricela said, “there,” and her voice was full of a combination of pain and pleasure, as Sakshi’s fingers pressed against her.

Sakshi was never going to be able to massage someone again without thinking of this night.

“Better?” she asked, when at last Maricela shuddered and stretched, testing her neck.

“Better,” Maricela said, and turned, her smile wide. “You have such a talent. If ever Rashmi overthrows us and we are forced to flee, you could make a living with your hands.”

“Do not speak of such treason,” Sakshi said, mock-outraged, but already laughing.

Maricela gestured. “Turn. I will return the favor, though I warn you that I am nowhere near as skilled.”

Sakshi turned, more to hide her face than anything else. The thought of Maricela’s hands on her was overwhelming – and then they were, and it was torture and paradise at once.

“You should teach me,” Maricela said, lifting the long tail of Sakshi’s hair and laying it over her shoulder, her breath lifting the short hairs on the back of Sakshi’s neck. “I will practice on you, and then I can be your partner in the business someday.”

“You are already my partner in the business,” Sakshi said. “You didn’t see me staying up to all hours reading about Rashmi’s secret investment ventures.”

Maricela laughed. Her fingers were warm, though unskilled and not the firmest of touches. “The fact that you know about the secret investment ventures means that you’ve read the dossiers before. Somewhat undermining your point.”

“But you have Guija diplomatic skills,” Sakshi parried. “I don’t.”

“You have plenty of diplomatic skills,” Maricela said. “I have watched you, these six months gone. You are a Queen to be proud of.”

Sakshi did not know whether it was the massage or the words that had done it, but her heart was overfull. “Thank you,” she said. “And you, my Consort, are a pearl above all others.”

“Pearls are overrated,” Maricela said. “I wish to be the dagger in your hair.”

At long last they had made it back to their room.

Maricela was laughing as she stumbled through their doorway, a little unsteady from the summer wine. There were flowers tumbled throughout her hair from the traditional lily ceremony, and her eyes were bright. She was as beautiful as Sakshi had ever seen her.

“I like your Midsummer traditions,” she said, and twirled in place. “In Guija we simply have a court dinner, without anything in particular to distinguish it from all the others.”

“Guija is a lowland,” Sakshi said, sinking into Maricela’s armchair. Her feet hurt from being stepped on; Zahari tended to be enthusiastic but unskilled dancers, and that was when they were trying not to step on your toes. Sakshi rather thought some of her partners had been tromping on purpose. “Your seasons are less varied. Ours feel their feelings dramatically, and our festivals reflect them.”

“We had seasons,” Maricela protested, but did not seem to be overly invested in the argument.

“Harvest celebrates the abundance of our land and the gift of Mother Earth. Midwinter is about family, about gathering by the fireside together and defying the dark cold of the mountain. The Blossom festival heralds the coming of the spring and the birth of another year.”

“And Midsummer?”

“Midsummer is my favorite,” Sakshi admitted. “The blossoms have gone, and you get the lily ceremony instead, with flowers everywhere. It is the year in full bloom, with the sun brighter, the air warmer, and the night longer than any other day. To me it has always meant joy.”

“They also call it the Festival of Truth,” Maricela said, perching on the edge of Sakshi’s side of the bed.

Sakshi leaned further back into the armchair. “Yes, we have a tradition that says you are allowed to ask one question of any person on Midsummer Night, and they must answer you truthfully. In practice, of course, they may not.”

“Do I get a question?” Maricela asked, playfully. Her eyes still shone as they had during the dancing, as dignitary after dignitary had begged the honor of her hand on the dance floor.

Sakshi nearly said that she would answer any question of Maricela’s, Midsummer Night or no, but perhaps that would betray her too far. She had come to fear pushing too hard. Not for any price would she disrupt the trust they had built together, or the easy intimacy with which Maricela took her arm these days. They were linked forever, whatever happened; she would not put Maricela in a position from which she could not escape, even if she found it intolerable. An unwanted love could be a shackle as galling as any other.

“Of course,” she said instead, trying to match Maricela’s playfulness. “You are Zahari now, and entitled to our customs.”

Maricela put a finger to the side of her lips and cocked her head, theatrically thinking.

They had only danced once at the Midsummer ball, in the traditional opener. She had led Maricela to the floor and performed her part competently. Maricela had not stepped on her toes. Yet there had been nothing of the carefree in it, despite the joy of Midsummer; Sakshi had been all too aware of the eyes of her court upon her, and not all those eyes friendly. Rashmi and her supporters had betrayed no animus in their Midsummer visit thus far, but she did not trust them.

She wished she had been able to dance a later dance with this Maricela, flushed with pleasure, her curls falling out of Malini’s updo.

“Do you like being Queen?” Maricela asked.

Sakshi rested her head against the wing of the chair. “Now that is a question that could take me until Midwinter to answer, my lady,” she said.

The day Priya had named her Heir, she had felt only victory, the fierce vindication of a woman who had claimed a prize long fought for. There were always so many worthy claimants, when a Queen came to choose her Heir, and Sakshi had not been considered the foremost. She had made herself a warrior and a diplomat, an unsheathed sword of a woman who could nonetheless find a scabbard and cloak herself in the necessary skills of leadership and compromise. It had been the work of a decade, and when she knelt before Priya and placed her hands between hers in the Heir’s Ceremony, Sakshi had never flown higher.

Twenty-five was so young.

“I am glad that I am Queen,” she settled for. “I love Zahar, and I believe that I was the right choice to lead her.”

She had not fully grasped then, young as she was, that power was not something that could be won. Power could be grasped, but it was fluid in your hand; it could never be won, in the past tense, but must be continually taken up anew and defended against all comers. Hers could never be a settled life or a safe one, not with the crown that rested invisible on her head.

“And I am glad,” she said, “that the crown brought you to me.”

It was farther than she had meant to go. Perhaps the Midsummer wine did not beat in Maricela’s veins alone.

“That is the not the same as liking being Queen,” Maricela said, softly. “It seems a great burden sometimes. Even at the ball, you never stopped watching Rashmi and her daughters.”

“I hope I did,” Sakshi said, laughing, “or else I will have been entirely too obvious, and caused offense.”

Maricela’s mouth curved. “Well. Perhaps I see more clearly than others do.”

“It is a burden,” Sakshi said. “I don’t deny it. But you make it lighter.”

The Midsummer air was warm, and Sakshi could smell the fragrant lilies in the air, from the vases on her desk to the blooms in Maricela’s hair.

“Your turn,” Maricela said. “Ask me a question, and I will answer.”

Sakshi would not ask the question that beat in her heart, however traditional a Midsummer question it might be. There was a reason that the week after Midsummer heralded the most engagements of any time of year, and that Harvest festival was also the time of weddings.

Yet neither could Sakshi let the moment fall entirely. Not with Maricela sitting there so beautiful, so free, so open and laughing and dear. Not with the music that beat in her own veins, irregular and intoxicating, or the Midsummer wine she could still taste on her lips.

“Why did you say yes?” she heard herself ask. “After all those years of no’s, why did you say yes?”

Maricela’s smile did not disappear, but it softened, turning inwards. “All those years, suitors asked my father for my hand. They asked for an alliance with my father’s kingdom, but I knew they asked for me first, and not my sisters, because they also asked for my body. I know it is hard to pity a woman who complains about being too beautiful, but this body has been my curse. I did not want to be sold, and to his credit my father would not sell me against my will, nor punish me for refusing. Thus the years passed.”

Sakshi hardly dared to breathe. She had not expected – she did not know what she had expected, but this raw openness had startled her.

Maricela had turned, looking out the balcony door. “And then one day,” she said, barely more than a whisper, “I found that I was lonely. My sisters were married, and their children played in the corridors. My father aged, and soon the change would come upon me, and the world would have passed me by entirely. There would be no person to share my joys and my sorrows, to fight alongside and join hands with. I would be alone to the end of my days.”

“Maricela,” Sakshi said, scarce aware that she had spoken.

Maricela did not take heed of her. “Yet I could not bear to yield,” she said, “for I looked at the marriages presented to me, and all were worse than being alone. I had never wanted to bear children, nor been able to think of the marriage bed without distaste. I did not want a man pawing at me, demanding to put a child in me, or to be forced to walk behind him for eternity.”

“What changed?” Sakshi asked, through dry lips.

Maricela turned back to her, and smiled. “Your Queen came,” she said, simply. “When she first presented her proposal to me, I was wary, for you were young, and I did not want to be a choice forced on you. And I worried that you would want children. But your Queen assured me that you did not – that Queens in Zahar and their Consorts did not as a rule bear children – and she told me something of you and who you were.”

“You were very brave, to trust your happiness to a foreign monarch,” Sakshi said.

“She was a special person,” Maricela said. “As are you. Yes, I risked something. But I took that risk with open eyes, and I have not regretted it. I am no longer lonely. I am fulfilled, and full of life and purpose. I have a present and a future, and it is because of that one yes.”

Nearly, so very nearly, Sakshi opened her mouth to say what was in her heart.

Yet Maricela had said she dreaded the marriage bed, and that she did not want to be pawed at. If their marriage was to stay at the level of this soft, sweet concord, that was enough. It had to be enough. It was more than many marriages had.

“I am so very glad that you did, my lady,” she said, her voice thick.

Maricela smiled. “As am I.”

Then she stood, and held out her hand. “Come,” she said peremptorily. “I refuse to go to bed having only danced with you once, and only that ceremonial tosh. It’s Midsummer. Dance with me in the moonlight, Sakshi.”

Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes bright. Her curls spilled out from underneath her Guijan mantilla, and her long gown clung to her curves in a way that inspired ageless ballads. There were lilies in her hair, and petals caught in her bodice. She was the most beautiful woman Sakshi knew, every night but most especially this night. And she was smiling at Sakshi: her consort, her bride, her wife.

Sakshi took her hand, her heart overflowing.

It was the last night of Midsummer, and Sakshi had been internally congratulating herself on a festival well-ran. The extended royal family had gathered in the palace from all over the kingdom, their foreign guests had been lavishly entertained, and Maricela had presided over her first Midsummer as Consort with grace and charm. Nobody had been mortally offended, no fisticuffs had started in the courtyard, and even Rashmi’s faction had been aloof but subdued. One final dinner to get through, one final speech to give during the toasts, and she could at last fall into bed and let the tension fall out of her shoulders.

When the knife pricked her skin, Sakshi knew she had celebrated too soon.

“We are in the middle of a banquet,” she said, keeping her voice light and conversational. “Do you think you can escape?”

“Escape is not my object,” Rashmi said, her own voice poisonously sweet. “I do not intend to need to escape.”

“How do you plan that?” Sakshi asked. If only Kumail was here – but she had assigned him to guard Maricela, presiding over the far end of the banquet table, and she had his deputy Kshipra instead. Kshipra was excellent too, but Kumail’s eyes for danger were unmatched. “You kill me, and walk out unharmed?”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Rashmi said. “You’re going to name Chetna your Heir. Right here, right now, the full ceremony. And then tonight you’re going to throw yourself off your balcony, in grand Zahari tradition.”

“Why would I do that?” Sakshi asked. “You’ve lost your senses. Put the knife away.”

Rashmi’s voice was as sharp as her blade. “Because if you don’t, Susmita will cut your Guija woman’s throat.”

Sakshi’s eyes flew down the table, to where Maricela sat, with Rashmi’s eldest daughter Susmita in the honored place at her left hand. Maricela had surprised Sakshi this morning, appearing dressed for the day in full Zahari dress, instead of the simpler Guija styles she generally favored. “Let them see that I am Zahari now,” she had said, smiling at Sakshi’s wide eyes. “I make no promises to always dress Zahari, but today is special. Close your mouth, a fly will land in it.”

Now the memory made Sakshi’s heart clench.

“Yes,” Rashmi said, when Sakshi did not answer. “You have given yourself away. Your love for her makes you weak. You were never the right choice for Zahar – I had been training for decades. Priya was foolish to choose you, misled by youth. Well, if Zahar wants youth they may have Chetna. I will not let you take this from my family.”

“It is your family too,” Sakshi said. “You are my cousin. Don’t do this, Rashmi.”

Rashmi twisted the knife. “It is already done.”

“They will know I was coerced,” Sakshi said. “Everyone will know what you have done.”

“Do you think I care, if Chetna sits upon the throne?”

The fury was rising in Sakshi’s veins. She tamped it down. “I could take you in a fight. If I yell for Kumail, he will protect Maricela. Susmita will fail. Are you sure you could kill me before I disarm you?”

“Are you sure your guard could protect your wife before Susmita could succeed? I know you would dice with your life, to protect your throne. But will you dice with hers?”

“So it ends with my wife dead by Susmita’s hand, Susmita dead by Kumail’s, and you dead at my hands, for I will defeat you. How does this help your family? They will be banished from the kingdom forever, and Chetna and any other co-conspirators executed.”

“I will take that risk,” Rashmi said. “I have watched you all this week. I know how you look at her. I will risk my life and my daughters’ lives. Will you risk hers?”

Sakshi’s head whirled. Could she signal to Kumail? It would take but an instant – there was a hand signal that meant “lockdown,” and he would spring into action. But he was three steps away from Maricela, and Susmita was at her left hand. If Susmita could really cut a woman’s throat in cold blood without a second of hesitation, he would not be in time.

“Here is what you buy with your cooperation,” Rashmi said. “You buy her life. Name Chetna Heir and jump from your balcony, and your grieving widow will live. No, more than that – I will marry her to Chetna, to ease the transition. She will keep her place and her honor, and live a long and comfortable life.”

Sakshi swallowed. Breathed. Decided. “Your proposal has been very persuasive,” she said. “How do you wish me to proceed?”

Her stiff words brought a gloating edge to Rashmi’s voice. “Get up. Propose a toast. Name Chetna Heir, call her to you and go through with the pledge ceremony. Then immediately withdraw to your room. If you deviate from this at all, Susmita will act.”

“How do you suggest I do this with you holding a knife to me?”

“I will withdraw the knife,” Rashmi said. “You could certainly kill me when I do. But your wife’s life will just as surely be forfeit.”

The knife left her side.

Sakshi got to her feet. The room hushed.

“A toast,” Sakshi said.

Against all odds, she felt very calm. Her hand did not shake holding her glass.

“My first year as Queen has been an eventful one. I am so grateful to my family for their support and love.” She gestured around the table, including an intent Rashmi in the motion. “And of course I am deeply grateful to my bride, the most beautiful pearl in Zahar.”

There was polite applause around the table. Maricela blushed and smiled, half-covering her mouth with a shy hand, her other hand nervously patting her hair.

Sakshi smiled back, as if diverted on a tangent. “You know what she told me once? I called her my pearl, and she said she had always longed to be the pearl in Zahar’s crown. Is she not beautiful in Zahar dress?”

Many things happened at once.

“Hai!” Rashmi called, strident and peremptory. She might not understand what Sakshi was doing, but she was no fool. She saw that Sakshi was making a move, and she would follow through with her threatened parry. Almost Sakshi could admire the ruthlessness. It was no lie that she had been a good candidate for Queen.

Chetna, halfway down the table, screamed. She had known, then, what her mother planned to do, and was not just an unwitting figurehead. So young, to agree to accept a crown bought for her with blood.

Susmita, at Maricela’s left hand, had a blade and went for her throat without a second’s pause.

Kumail roared and leapt for the table.

And Maricela blocked Susmita’s blade with her own.

“Arrest them,” Sakshi said, her voice terrible and bleak, her own knife in her hand to ward against any despairingly homicidal leap of Rashmi’s. “Arrest all of them.”

Rashmi sat stonefaced, her face giving nothing away, as Kshipra approached. Chetna wept into her arms, collapsed on the table, as a soldier put his hand on her shoulder. Susmita struggled like a lioness in Kumail’s grasp.

Maricela sat, unbloodied, her blade still in her hand.

Then she got up, put the blade back in her hair, and walked towards Sakshi.

They met halfway. All around them was chaos – the room had erupted in noise, as Rashmi’s family was hauled away, their supporters bundled out protesting after them to be questioned. The rest of the long table was shouting at each other, gesturing, arguing. A few looked sick, others red with outrage. This night would be written in all the history books.

Sakshi only had eyes for Maricela.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, taking Maricela’s hands in hers.

She could see no hurt, but she would hear it from Maricela. She had risked Maricela’s life, because she knew Maricela would rather die than live a life as a sold bride. She had risked the life of the woman she loved, hoping beyond all hope that Maricela would remember that conversation, and that her Zahari dress was accurate in all respects. She had risked her own happiness, now and forever, on the hope and belief that Maricela could defend herself and their future together.

“I am not hurt,” Maricela said. “Are you hurt?”

Sakshi shook her head, wordless, the adrenaline flooding her veins now that the danger was over.

“Sakshi,” Maricela said, and Sakshi looked up, and met her eyes.

Maricela put a hand in her hair, and slid the other to the back of her neck.

“Mari,” Sakshi said, her voice barely a rasp.

Maricela smiled. Her eyes glittered with tears, but her smile was the sun rising over the mountains, glorious and full. “My love,” she said, and bent her head.

Sakshi kissed her back with all the desperation, joy, and desire of six long months.

She did not know what had changed for Maricela, or when it had changed, but this was a question she could ask her later. For now, Maricela was in her arms, and kissing her with as much passion as she had ever hoped for, and she would hold her close and drown in it.

Maricela was laughing against her lips, and they at last drew apart, smiling.

“My love,” Maricela said again, in an almost wondering tone, tracing the curve of Sakshi’s cheek.

“My lady,” Sakshi said, her smile wide enough to split her face. “My heart.”

“Excuse me,” Malini said, from behind them. “No one else is brave enough to interrupt you, but if you two lovebirds can spare a second, we do have an attempted coup to deal with.”

“Later,” Sakshi said, waving a distracted hand in her direction.

“We have tonight, and every other night until the end of time,” Maricela said, running a finger along Sakshi’s lips, then following it with a quick kiss. “Come, my love. Let’s finish this, and then…”

She had trailed off. Sakshi asked, “And then?”

“And then,” Maricela said, looking bashful but determined, “I intend to take you to bed.”

As an incentive to deal with the fallout from attempted coups, Sakshi found it a very inspiring one.

It was well after third bell by the time they stumbled, weary and heartsick, into their room once more. The deepest hour of the night, yet not silent; far below the balcony window, the sound of weeping floated on the air. Sakshi went to the window, and pulled it shut.

“You were right all along,” Maricela said. “I was in danger.”

Sakshi leaned against the window. “I still don’t know if that was a poisoning attempt. Now I rather think it wasn’t – I think Rashmi always intended to use threats against you to force my hand, not to simply murder you for no reason. Or perhaps it was a poisoning intended to raise my fear for you, but not to kill. I wonder if we will ever know.”

“I will continue to use it to avoid eating mushrooms,” Maricela said, toeing off her shoes.

Sakshi crossed the rug to her and leaned against her back, resting her head on Maricela’s shoulder. “Let us leave it for tonight. Enough time in the morning to grieve and to find the depths of the conspiracy. Tonight I would learn when I became beloved, for I had near given up hope.”

“I don’t know when it started,” Maricela said, turning in her arms, yet not stepping out of them. “Not at first, not for a long while, though you quickly became a dear friend, more dear than any I had known in Guija. I trusted you before I loved you, and found your company joyful long before I ever thought of more.”

Sakshi tightened her grasp around Maricela’s waist, and reveled in the feeling of at last having her wife in her arms.

“I have never been in love before, you see,” Maricela continued, and that was a blush on her cheeks, not a feigned one this time like during the toast, but a real one. “All my friends had, but it never came for me. I thought for a time it was simply that I did not want a man, but no woman ever stirred my soul either. As I grew older, I simply accepted that I was made differently.”

“When did you realize you were wrong?” Sakshi asked, and heard the husk in her voice, like a caress.

“I had felt odd for some time around you, with the strangest thoughts,” Maricela said, the blush deepening. “And then I danced with you on Midsummer Night – last night, though it seems an age ago now! – and finally allowed myself to name it. I had fallen in love with my wife.”

“I have loved you for some months,” Sakshi said, “but I knew you did not, so I would not speak. But oh, how I longed to. You are so very dear to me, that the whole kingdom saw it.”

Maricela wound one of Sakshi’s curls around her finger. “I hoped you did,” she said, softly. “I thought you might, when I had allowed myself to name my own feelings. But I was not sure, and if I had been wrong, my heart would have been broken!”

“Be sure,” Sakshi said. “Be very sure, now and forever.”

“We are already married, and yet I feel as shy and nervous as a bride on her wedding night,” Maricela confessed. “I have never gone to bed with anyone before – I did not think I would like it with someone I did not love. But now – now I wish to, very much, but I am all at sea.”

“No,” Sakshi said, and drew her head down to rest on her shoulder. “You are on a mountain, and the mountain is not changeable like the sea. We have every night of our lives to discover everything about each other, so there is no rush and no pressure. We will simply do what brings us joy –”

“This brings me joy,” Maricela said, raising her head and kissing Sakshi with a fierceness that sent desire rapidly spiraling through Sakshi’s veins.

When they broke the kiss at last, there was a fire burning in Maricela’s eyes that sparked Sakshi’s own. “And this brings me joy,” Maricela said, shamelessly running her hands over Sakshi’s sturdy curves.

Sakshi laughed, tipping her head back.

“Take off your clothes,” Maricela said, blushing but not stumbling over the words. “And I will show you everything that brings me joy.”

Sakshi raised Maricela’s hand to her lips, her body alight with song. “As you wish, my lady.”

Much later, Sakshi propped up her chin on her hand and looked at her beautiful nude wife, reclining in the bedclothes with a sleepy, sated smile.

“You know,” she said, echoing the smile, “our six months passed last week.”

“And what does that mean in Zahar?” Maricela asked, with a yawn.

“At six months,” Sakshi said, “a new wife ceases to be a bride, and receives her own suite. Her wife can visit her new chambers, or she can visit her wife’s, but they don’t need to share the ceremonial tiny bed any longer. You don’t have to put up with me in your hair at all hours anymore.”

“Hmm,” Maricela said, but her smile gave her away.

“Or,” Sakshi said, emboldened, “we could tell tradition to go hang, and simply annex more rooms to this suite, and keep the bed.”

“I like waking up in your arms,” Maricela said, and traced a line down Sakshi’s cheek. “I think I shall like waking you up between your legs as well. We’ll keep the bed.”

Sakshi did not stop laughing for some minutes, her heart full of perfect joy.