Title: Prelude to a Promise 2/2

Author: Kate

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: All standard disclaimers apply. They're not mine and I'm not making a profit.

Summary: Selected scenes of Kalasin and Kaddar's courtship, wedding day, wedding night, and the day after. Kalasin/Kaddar, or Kallydar

Chapter 2

When Kaddar woke up on the morning after his wedding, he reached out blindly, but touched nothing but sheets and pillows. He opened his eyes. The sun had just begun to twinkle in. The sheets were a mess of dried virgin blood and other traces of their lovemaking. He rolled out of bed, pulled a robe around him and walked out to the large entry room of the suite.

Kalasin was there, in her crumpled white silk, stretching. She turned when he came in. Her entire body blushed. He was beginning to find the trait endearing—and it marked her as a woman who surely could not lie well. "I was just finishing my morning exercises," She smiled. "I asked Varice to stock the larder here with some bread and cheese and tea, so we can just make our own breakfast. I thought it might be nicer than facing prying eyes. Our baths will arrive around ten—till then, the morning is ours."

Kaddar nodded. "I might have an extra robe in my closet, if you would prefer it to your gown."

"Thank you, I might just pull it on over this." She followed him and received the robe, which obviously belonged to a man. She was ridiculously pleased by the intimacy of the gesture. The robe even smelled a bit like Kaddar—like sandalwood and dirt and soap and clean rain. They went out to the table by the larder to enjoy the coarse bread and strong cheese.

Kalasin looked around the room speculatively. It was well appointed and generously sized, but she could picture adding a few touches here and there, to make it feel like a shared dwelling place.

The silence between them was comfortable enough. Kalasin thought she probably ought to be taking advantage of every second she had alone with Kaddar to talk to him without worrying who would overhear, but she didn't want to simply chatter. Finally, she asked, "When do you think my things will get here?"

"You mean your clothes for today? Varice will send them with the bath."

Kalasin frowned. "I mean my things. My correspondence desk and my trifles—the waving cat from my brother. And my jewelry and clothes…" She trailed off, because he looked baffled.

Kaddar inquired, "Why would they come here?"

"Well, they're not going to stay at the embassy, are they?" She asked, perhaps a bit peevishly.

"Your personal belongings were transferred to your suite last night." Kaddar informed her, politely.

"My suite?" Now Kalasin looked mystified.

"Yes. You didn't think we would—you did think." He stumbled.

"Married couples in Carthak don't sleep in the same bed?"

"Sleep? No. The wife visits the husband's bed when he commands it, but other than that…"

The verb "commands" was as disquieting as the news. "Because Carthaki men have many wives?"

"That's an ancient tradition—it's been dying out slowly over the course of many generations."

"Then why?" Kalasin pressed.

"Why are you so concerned?"

Kalasin gave another whole body blush. She had begun to cry a little, shortly after Kaddar's body released. He'd been very kind as he soothed her and fetched her a glass of wine. She was grateful for Onua's potion. Her body felt the pleasure, but even when she was frightened (right before the explosions), no part of her clenched or tensed or froze. It made the whole experience quite a bit easier, and Kalasin recognized that. "Did I do it badly?" She asked, ashamed.

"No." He told her, hastily. "No, it wasn't you at all." He refrained from mentioning that he'd expected a woman, not a barely-responsive doll. She'd been fine through the petting, but after that, she'd become almost passive. "You didn't move much, after the kissing. I thought I hurt you."

"No. You were very kind. It was only that I was terrified." And she was following Great-aunt Naxen's advice 'Lie still and think of Tortall,' but her husband didn't need to know that she was vividly reliving the Immortals War and the consequences of a broken alliance as he made love to her.

"Terrified of me?" Kaddar seemed almost offended by that.

Too embarrassed to look at him, Kalasin slowly responded: "No. I'm not used to my body…doing things I haven't told it to do and last night I found out there's a whole range of things that bodies do that I know nothing about."

"Ah." Kaddar seemed pleased, and embarrassed. "I guess it would be new for a warrior maiden. And maiden you certainly were."

Kalasin felt her face flaming, and considered the merits of inventing an invisibility spell without a counterspell to return her to visibility.

"For a healer, I thought you would know more about this." Kaddar called her on her modesty.

"I usually hear women cursing the fifteen minutes of pleasure that brought them so much pain nine months later," Kalasin answered. "Backstairs gossip and delivering babies haven't made me an expert. I understand the mechanics of it, but I didn't know…how it felt. Like, at home, I read about the taste of mangoes and other Southern delicacies. But until I was here, I didn't understand, oh, that's the taste. Imagination can invent a lot, but it's not perfect."

Kaddar laughed a little. "I think, Empress, that you will never cease to surprise me."

"I certainly hope not." She responded. "Especially not after only eighteen hours of marriage."

He laughed. "So, we'll spend the rest of the week putting things in order here. Finalizing paperwork and your staff and all of that. Your Numair Salmalin can finish up the temperature specifications in your suite. Then we'll do a tour along the coast, as our wedding trip."

Kalasin brightened a little. "Are there places to swim?" She asked eagerly.

Kaddar thought about it. "It would have to be a very secluded cove." He told her. "And just to be safe, you might have to wear your veil while you're in the water."

She stared at him. "Why?"

"I don't make all of the rules."

"You don't break them, either?" She asked.

"Not the ones that don't matter." He said. "Makes it easier to get away with bending the really big ones."

Kalasin sniffed a little. "So is having a separate suite a large rule or a small rule?"

He thought about it. "You really want to share a suite with me? My roommates from University swear that I snore."

"I didn't notice." She said.

"That's because you slept like a dead thing. What was in that wine?"

"A fertility charm, I think," She answered.

"You mean you accepted an unknown powder?" Kaddar could not have looked more horrified if his bride had announced her intention to wrestle a rabid bear. "You could have been poisoned!"

"It came from my surrogate aunt. Her gift to the wedding night." Kalasin said. "If it had been poisoned, I would have known." She rubbed her ring.

"Don't scare me like that." Kaddar said. "That's the real reason we should sleep apart. It would be too easy for an assassin to wipe out the Imperial family. If we sleep separately, there's a much lower chance that they can coordinate a double attack."

Kalasin said. "You don't believe that any more than I do."

"We'll see how the wedding trip goes. For this week, at least, we'll try the separate suites."

Kalasin had to be content with that, because the conversation yielded nothing more. Which brings us back to the beginning, with the Empress facedown on "her" bed, crying on the second night of her marriage. She isn't crying because Kaddar has been unkind (he hasn't), and she isn't crying because her backside hurts (even though she aches because Onua's numbing potion wore off), and she isn't really crying because she's homesick (though she is).

She weeps because she's totally overwhelmed. She's in pain and she's lonely and it's the first time she has been alone in at least seventy-two hours. She is beginning to realize that the door is closed and the key has turned on the gilded cage that she "chose."

She weeps because she's tired and she has no idea what to do next, and because she knows she has lost the freedom to decide.

She cries because she can't swear that she'll feel any better tomorrow and the fear of it overwhelms her.

She exhausts herself and falls into a deep sleep, without realizing that Kaddar has been watching her shaking shoulders and stifled little sobs since twenty minutes after dinner.

Author's note: I wrote this story almost eight months ago. It's part of a trilogy, of sorts that are loosely in the same universe as my long story, Lonely at the Top. It is NOT necessary to read that first, or even at all. I'll post the other two stories later this week, if people are still interested. Thanks for reading!