But as a little time passed, she regained control over her temper. Though she was still going to give him a lashing, it would be with her tongue and not a whip or a sword blade. And she had the first phrase ready on the tip of her tongue when he finally appeared.
She had thought that after such a monumental act of stupidity, Karath would have come to her contrite and looking for forgiveness. In fact, she could not imagine any other scenario.
Instead, he burst in through the door, slammed it behind him, and proceeded to shout at her, quite as if she were somehow to blame for all this, and as if this business of not being made her co-Ruler was somehow her fault, something she had concocted to keep him from his rightful place, and as if the debacle with Caryo had been something that she had planned to humiliate him.
And that made her furious all over again.
His ranting was like a spark in dry grass; she pounced on the first available pause for breath, and then she made her riposte.
“If you think I’m going to take your side in this, you are very much mistaken, Karath. I told you—and if I told you once about how things are here, I told you a dozen times!” Selenay shouted at the angry face of her husband. “The Council told you! Your own Ambassador told you! For the gods’ sake, Karath, it was in the marriage contract that you signed! In both languages! Just how stupid are you to have missed it that many times?”
She knew the moment that the words left her mouth that they were the wrong thing to say, but she couldn’t help it. Just how stupid was he? Or did he live in some fantasy world where because he wanted something, it would simply be given to him?
Well, maybe that was the way things had been back in Rethwellan, but that wasn’t the way it was in Valdemar.
“Stupid enough to have wedded you!” he shouted back, “Such a fine bargain I have made for myself! I have wedded no power, no responsibility, and no rank but that which I was born with! And for this, I have what? A wife with neither the face nor the form to stand out in a crowd—with common tastes and common, petty morals, a little girl who thinks more of her horse than of her husband! For this bargain, I take a cold, naive, ignorant virgin who grasps her little power as a miser does gold, who does not even know how to properly pleasure a man!” And before she could retort, he stormed out, and before the astonished eyes of her Guards, who had no doubt heard it all, he slammed the door behind him, leaving her feeling as if he had dealt her a blow.
She was left staring at the door he slammed behind him, torn between wanting to throw herself to the ground, weeping, and wanting to strangle him.
The latter won out, but not by much, and as she paced back and forth across her sitting room, there were tears streaking her cheeks as well as anger making her clench her jaw until it ached.
Her heart ached, too; ached bitterly, for every insult he had thrown at her felt like a blow.
She managed to get some control over herself in order to put herself into the hands of her maids; tonight she took extra care with her appearance, for surely he who was so conscious of the trappings of status would not absent himself from dinner where he sat at her right hand. Common, was she? She would show him. She would make him mad to take her in his arms again, and she would, by the gods, make him beg for the privilege. And apologize, not only to her, but to Caryo.
But the chair at her right remained empty all evening.
She put on a good face, of course, replying lightly to Talamir’s query that he was probably passing the time with the friends who had come up from Rethwellan, to whom she had given titles and property. “They are probably celebrating, now that it is official,” she said, with a false lightness. “And after all, Talamir, you can hardly expect a young man to hover over his wife every moment of the day! At some point every young man I have ever known, be he never so devoted, has longed for the company of his old friends!” Her laugh sounded hollow to her own ears, but Talamir made no sign that he had noticed her unhappiness. “Just because we are wedded, this does not mean that we are joined at the hip!”
“No, of course not,” Talamir agreed, and nothing more was said on the subject in her hearing.
But as the dinner wore on, she was able to think less and less clearly. By the time the sweetmeats were served, she would almost have been ready to ask forgiveness of him if it would put things back the way they had been yesterday. She kept listening, dreading that she would hear something about the debacle in Companion’s Field, but evidently no one was going to talk about it where she could overhear.
Maybe that was why he wasn’t here! He didn’t want to have to answer any questions about what he’d done; he didn’t want to have to explain himself. . . .
She felt a great surge of relief, then, and was able to talk normally, able to think of something besides wondering where he was. She was still angry at him, especially for the cruel things he had said to her, but she was ready to forgive him, so long as he asked for forgiveness.
Except that he did not appear in their quarters after dinner. Tonight she had retired to her suite as soon as dinner was over, letting her Court amuse itself for a change.
And he did not appear as the hour grew later and later; she filled the time with attending to her private correspondence, something she had neglected badly over the past fortnight or two. But her heart was not in it, and time after time, she had to throw out a letter that was ruined by tears falling on it.
He had not come when her maids arrived to help her prepare for bed, and he still had not arrived when they blew out the candles, leaving her alone in the dark in that great bed.
And when she realized that he wasn’t going to come, the anger ran out of her.
What was wrong? How could he not understand, at least by now, how she was powerless in the face of the law? How could he not realize by now the enormity of the insult he had given Caryo? Of course he had been angry, but how could he have flung those horrible insults at her? She thought he had understood her, as no one had ever understood her before. Hadn’t they shared all those long conversations about how miserable it was to be a child of royal birth? Hadn’t he commiserated with her about it as no one else had ever done before? Hadn’t he told her how he had dreamed of finding someone he could care for as well as merely marry for the sake of an alliance, and had given it up as an idle dream until he met her? How many times had he sworn that to her? How many times had he shared his dreams with her, and how many times had she discovered to her joy that they were the same as hers?
What had gone wrong? How could he have changed so? What had she done to make him turn away from her?
She had no answers for any of this, and she waited, fruitlessly, in her cold, lonely bed, until at last she cried herself to sleep.
***
Alberich contemplated the glass image of the Sunlord—defined at the moment by the lines of leading rather than the colors of the glass—and tried to think of all of the possible paths that the Prince might take after this afternoon.