Dark Lord's Wedding by A.E. Marling Page A

stroked his face, the starburst lines of his scars, the tautness and smoothness. Her fingers unfolded into hundreds of fibers that enwrapped his long arms. He was so quick and loving and loyal. She scratched down his chest and tickled his manhood until he cried out.
    “Wait!” Gasping, he pressed a hand against her chest. “Wait, can’t we share ourselves the other way?”
    “What?” She pinched his ear between her teeth, biting to the point of blood.
    “You know, how other men and women do.” He gripped the roots of her skirt and tugged. “Only, I can’t lift this.”
    Her roots dug deeper into the ground. Her creepers pulled back from him. “You want me to take off my dress.”
    “No, just enough to …”
    Her True Dress was the perfect fit. It cradled her. It massaged her. It protected her better than any man could, even Jerani. She turned from him.
    She had to wonder. Maybe he wasn’t so loyal. He had tried to kiss that cripple on the road today. If he could love something so ugly and weak, then what was his affection worth? He might betray Celaise for any toothless beggar. Coldness swelled out from her stomach.
    No, she wasn’t being fair. Her magic was poisoning her against him. Black wine beat through her as a stronger heartbeat. Still, that thing Jerani asked, it could never be. It would only make her remember. It would only bring pain.
    She needed to be away from him for a while. Descending to the village, she found the axe man slipping between huts. He was wrong to be out at night. He shouldn’t have killed their llama. She trod over him, constricting him with her roots. Only one of his ribs snapped. She Feasted on his screams, and they fermented within her into more black wine.
    Celaise let him live. Jerani didn’t like her to kill.
    She found something for Jerani. It fell from the axe man in his mad scramble. It was a bracer of brass emblazoned with three jaguars. One on the prowl, one with the body of a man and the face of a cat, and a third the other way around with a man’s head looking out from between fangs.
    How fitting that she should give Jerani this. A man had given her a bracer so many years ago. Now she would give one to a man, but this one was better. In every way.
    “You should wear this,” she said to Jerani. “Tell people you serve the Obsidian Jaguar and they won’t bother you.”
    He turned the bracer over. “But I don’t.”
    “In a way you do. Some people think of the lord father as the Obsidian Jaguar.”
    “Is he?”
    “Part of him, maybe. The god is many things together, like the gold and black of a jaguar’s coat. Strength, weakness, craftiness, courage. You could be his warrior.”
    “I don’t know.” His fear smelled minty.
    “The greatest warriors in this land are jaguar knights.” She wrapped an arm around his chest, and her gloved fingers stretched to hold all of him. “Not that I’d want you to change. Even if you would make a most handsome cat.”
    “The Angry Mother might not like it.”
    That was right. His people worshipped a volcano on the savanna. “You are a long way away. Guess it’s my fault for taking you so far.”
    “I’m still beneath the Sky Bull.” He looked to the stars. “No, I shouldn’t pretend to follow another god. Wouldn’t be right.”
    “It would. By pretending, by tricking people you’d be honoring the Obsidian Jaguar. He’s the god of lies,” she said, “and truth.”
    “You have some strange gods.”
    “So do you.” She pecked him on the cheek. “Will you wear the bracer?”
    He gazed from it to her. His fears had mellowed to the scent of vegetable broth. “Maybe.”
    They waited around the banyan tree. More than once Jerani started smelling as if he would ask her something awkward, but he didn’t. The lord father had told her not to expect the Lady of Gems until midnight. A strange time to meet someone who wasn’t a Feaster. Stranger to think the lord father would want to marry outside the