Swords and Scimitars by Cate Rowan

Author:Cate Rowan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cate Rowan
Published: 2012-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

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AND A GOOD BARGAIN it was.

Kismet took his wives into the palace on the river, and there, slowly, he got to know each as a friend, and then as a lover. Soon came a gift he had never allowed himself to want: love.

It floored him, this emotion he had cut himself off from for so long. And the fact that he loved two women blew all his expectations of life to splinters. He didn’t know how to navigate it, but Samira and Harini, from cultures where such a thing was more common, helped him find the way.

And then, most blessed of all to him, the three of them built a family.

No one could replace Taso in his thoughts, or his parents and the peers he’d left behind years ago. But when his first-born son took his earliest, wobbling steps toward him in the courtyard of the palace, he felt his heart enlarge as if he’d lived his whole life to experience that moment. Samira, with a knowing smile, wiped away the tear he would have denied existed, and Harini hugged him tight.

Soon more children settled into the nursery, found their way to the playground he built for them, learned to ride and hunt and fight and dance. He did his best to teach them well of right and wrong, and of the responsibility to protect, because despite all that was good in his life, his brother’s stony fate still clawed at him in the quiet of the night.

His children grew, and then grew up; at last they forged their own way in the world. They found worthy husbands and wives, settled down, and made love and new life. Kismet’s grandchildren’s steps pattered through the palace hallways, and it was a joy to his heart. And then great-grandchildren joined them.

As Kismet’s descendants lived and spread, peopling the stark and beautiful land and wresting a living from the sands, their fierceness multiplied. Over generations their shining swords curved into scimitars. Like him, they eschewed the magic that was their bloodright and came instead to rely on might and wits.

Through it all, he did not age, nor did his wives. As an immortal, he knew his mortal wives couldn’t live as long as he would, and the possibility that they’d been blessed for his sake was a secret that made him shake with hope, for he could no longer imagine a life without them.

But that was not to be.

Harini died of a fever she caught at the bedside of an ailing great-great-granddaughter. The child recovered, yet Kismet and Samira could not. They comforted each other and grew even closer in Harini’s absence, but a great joy had left their lives, and a key piece of their daily happiness leaked out with it.

Four years later, Samira was walking in the gardens when she was bitten by a cobra. Kismet was the first to hear her cries, but too late. He held her in his arms as she died, and once again he knew, so deep in his heart he could never excise it, the pain of mortal life.

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