Disclaimer: I don't own the Grisha Trilogy or Shadow and Bone.
Makhi Kir-Taban POV
The Darkling is the most powerful ruler in the world, his empire encompassing the lands once known as Ravka, Fjerda, Shu Han and Kerch, and his reach extending to Novyi Zem and the Wandering Isle even if they nominally rule themselves.
Two centuries he has reigned, and though many have attempted to overthrow him, none have succeeded in besting the Shadow Summoner Supreme Emperor.
He is regarded with awe and fear in equal measure, his very presence liable to make anyone tremble.
This is the man who is to be Makhi's husband.
It still irks, that she – a daughter of the ancient House of Taban that once ruled Shu Han – must now be only the wife of an Emperor with not a single drop of royal blood in his veins.
And not even his sole wife, or even his chief wife, but one of many with no regard given to her royal status, for the Emperor's current harem contains nearly fifty ladies from across the empire.
Still, she must think of this as an opportunity. He might be Grisha and the ruination of her once great and proud homeland, but if Makhi can be the one to deliver him an heir, then her power will increase.
After all, no wife has yet managed to birth a single child in the two hundred years since the Darkling's rule began. She has heard Grisha struggle to conceive, but it seems inconceivable that none of the hundreds of wives he's had over two centuries have fallen pregnant.
There must be something else at play. Perhaps the Darkling takes measures to avoid any child, not wishing to share his power.
Still, Makhi can be persuasive, especially when it benefits her.
"When will the wedding be?" she asks the stunning redhead who guides her through the Harem Palace, inconveniently situated all the way across the city from the Emperor's own residence.
"There is no need for one, Lady Makhi. The ceremony was completed by proxy two weeks ago."
"But the bedding –"
"The Darkling considers such things to be outdated. He will visit your personal chambers here when he wishes."
"Tonight?"
"No," the redhead says with a strange smile, "not tonight."
During the next week, Makhi keeps to her rooms as much as possible, perfumed and made up and wearing the elegant silk gowns from her trousseau, waiting for her new husband to visit.
He never comes.
Eventually, one of the others, a lady of House Grimjer, who once ruled Fjerda, takes her aside.
"Have you not been warned?"
Makhi frowns, "warned?"
"One of your aunts is here, isn't she? She came twenty years ago."
"Yes, although I have not seen her yet."
"She ought to have found you and explained."
"Explained what?" Makhi asks impatiently.
"The Emperor will not come to you. He never comes to any of us. We're more hostages than wives, helping to ensure our families behave. He has never consummated a marriage, not one."
"But heirs are –"
"He has no need when he is immortal."
"Surely he has urges, though?"
The other lady shrugs, "perhaps, but I have heard he prefers Grisha in his bed, not his otkazat'sya wives. Besides, he isn't like other men – I sometimes wonder if he even has such urges."
It makes Makhi furious, that she and her family have been so deceived, that she has been sold without any chance to advance or amass her own power.
"I shall write to my grandmother," Makhi mutters, "this insult will not stand."
The Grimjer lady just shakes her head sadly, "they screen our mail for treasonous, seditious, inflammatory or otherwise inappropriate messages. And they're excellent at cracking codes too. Plus, we're never allowed to leave the palace, supposedly for our own safety.
"Don't think of trying to get pregnant to somehow pass it off as his child either," Makhi is told as she fumes at the injustice of it all, "those ladies always vanish and we never see them again."
"It's not so bad," another lady comes over, younger than Makhi, sweet and smiling, "there's a wonderful library and beautiful grounds and –"
"I don't care about that," Makhi growls.
She wants a crown. She wants power.
Instead, she just has a pretty prison.
Two years pass.
Makhi never sees the Darkling, only glimpses his distinctive carriage at a distance when it travels through Os Alta every now and then.
She sends letters in every code she knows but realises they always leave the palace altered, since whenever her family write to her, they only say how pleased they are that she is content with her husband and that they pray she will soon be blessed with a child.
A man she has never laid eyes upon.
And then, one day, the capital city erupts in celebrations.
Their guards tell them nothing of the reason for the hours of cheering, but Makhi is sure it cannot bode well, at least not for her own status.
A week later, the bells ring to announce a new bride for the Darkling. Makhi has heard them once since her own arrival in Os Alta, when a pale red-head from the Wandering Isle had joined them at the palace.
But this time, no new lady comes.
There is a bride, but she is not housed in the Harem Palace.
Rumours run wild. That the bride fell ill and died. That she was a spy and executed for treason. That the bells were rung by accident.
Or, worst of all, that the Darkling has finally found a bride that he actually desires.
If the latter is true, then it is unjust in the extreme. Makhi knows her own worth and beauty – she could surely have ensnared the Darkling if only she'd been given the chance.
Except, as it turns out, this is no ordinary bride.
The Sun Summoner, they are finally told weeks later. The Sun Summoner has been found.
The Darkling's prophesied other half, the one he's waited centuries for, the only woman he would ever make his true Empress.
The Harem is no more, they are told by a sour-faced Heartrender, it is dissolved and so too are their marriages. From now on, their home will simply be the Southern Quarter Palace.
But they cannot go home, not now, not ever. Makhi reads between the lines – they are a threat to the Darkling's new bride. Any one of them might be jealous or bitter enough to try and harm the Sun Summoner and that cannot be allowed.
Considering what she has heard of the Darkling's ruthlessness, Makhi supposes she ought to be grateful that they aren't all being quietly disposed of.
And so here Makhi will remain, never feeling the touch of a man again, until she dies.
A cruel existence indeed.
Perhaps she might try to be happy, as some of the other ladies are, finding comfort in books or exercise or hobbies, discovering pleasure with each other.
But Makhi has no desire for romance. She has only ever wanted power and now she has none at all, living in a gilded cage at the whim of a man who is for all intents and purposes a god-emperor with none who might challenge him bar the wife he is said to adore and who apparently loves him in return.
Makhi has never met the Sun Summoner and probably never will, but she hates her with a burning passion, this woman who has stolen what ought to have been Makhi's.
A scion of the great Taban dynasty, she belongs on a throne, not with her wings clips, wasting away in a luxurious prison.
Makhi eventually sees the Emperor and his Empress.
Only once in her lifetime, during the celebrations for their diamond wedding anniversary.
The Harem ladies have dwindled, having no new arrivals for sixty years. They are old ladies, the youngest seventy-five and Makhi herself seventy-nine.
They are allowed out of the palace for a few hours to view the procession through Os Alta.
The Darkling and his beloved bride have thick dark hair with not a silver strand to be seen. They are young and vital and unwrinkled, frozen in time. Makhi has aged well, but she feels decrepit as she watches them.
She has heard that Grisha use hand gestures to control whatever strange power they possess, but these two barely flick their fingers to make tendrils of light dance above them.
They hold hands and exchange soft, passionate looks and frequent kisses. A perfect pair. He wears black with gold accents and she glows in gold embellished with black.
An equal partnership, immense power crackling in the air even as they simply smile and wave.
Looking at them, Makhi knows what she has always refused to accept before now.
For the Darkling, it was only ever going to be the Sun Summoner.
The Harem, which was in existence for the first two centuries of the Darkling's reign, was dissolved upon the joyful discovery of the Sun Summoner Alina Starkova.
A week after her arrival in Os Alta, the Darkling wed his Sun Summoner and had her proclaimed as Supreme Empress, a title never given to any of his previous wives.
Since that date, the Emperor and Empress have ruled as equals, justly and generously and wisely.
Those who remained in the former Harem were no longer entitled to call themselves wives of the Emperor, but were henceforth known as honoured ladies. The Emperor graciously allowed them to stay on in the palace that had been their home for the rest of their lives.
Makhi Kir-Taban of Shu Han was the last surviving member of the former Harem of the Darkling, Supreme Emperor.
Having outlived the second-last surviving honoured lady by three years, Lady Makhi died at the age of ninety-six.
She was in excellent health for her age, but sadly of declined mental faculties.
Having wandered from the safety of the Southern Quarter Palace, across Os Alta and into the Royal Palace, she was found in the Emperor and Empress' private suite, endangering herself and others with an ornate, jewelled dagger that had formed part of her dowry.
She was cared for and returned to the Southern Quarter Palace, but sadly the strain and excitement of the incident was too much for her and she died early the next morning in her sleep.
At the request of her family, Lady Makhi's body was returned to Shu Han for burial.
Excerpt from The Harem Wives by Irina Volkova
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