Hearts in Zenith (Four Husbands and a Lover)

64. A Letter to Burn

"So, you stormed out," Taffiz summed things up for me, hooding his eyes. The dancing flames of the fireplace imparted a healthier color onto his cheeks. With his eyes hiding in the black pits of shadow—giving credence to his earlier confession of riding non-stop after me—he looked... I wouldn't go so far as calling him attractive. Different from what I was used to.

"Out of Ashanti for a while?" I asked, since the characteristic violet glow was gone.

"What? Oh, that..."

"Yes?"

"I hoped you'd want to test the levels of my endurance once I had confessed my manly feats. You'd open your eyes, inky from sleep, stretch languidly and exclaim, Taffiz, sweetheart! Then throw me on the bed and ravish me till I'm in the Knowable World, River Vash and Nirvana all at the same time."

His words sounded peculiarly alluring, despite their mocking undertone. "I'm not in the mood for levity. If you don't want to tell the truth—" I murmured.

"Ah, but it is the truth. Every moment in your bed would have been worth remembering, so I cleared my mind as best as I could."

If solitude and despair could draw me to him, tonight came close. A pleasant weight churned below my navel as my imagination followed along and beyond his words.

"Oh, stop scowling." The irritable remark broke the spell he had conjured. "A blind cricket by the roadside could guess you were riding for Palmyr. I didn't need to waste my stash on tracking you. So, I abandoned my every other commitment to catch up before you did anything passionately and monumentally stupid."

"It must rankle that you've arrived one day too late." I sighed. "A single day... so sad."

"I beg you to differ." Taffiz pulled a roll of paper from a fold of his cape and shook it open. That's why he didn't notice the effect he had on me earlier. He was stewing like a bone in broth, waiting to unveil his treasure.

It was a letter. No, the letter. I recognized the wildly flying words and a slash of a signature. My mind went back to when I'd scrawled my name on it, my pen splattering ink, digging into paper so hard, I tore through it at the end of the long strike finishing the 'r' in Ismar. I had slapped it on the Captain-Commander's desk, even though my soul yearned for her to rip it to shreds and toss it into my face. I prayed for her to yell at me to fix the mess I'd made instead of throwing a tantrum.

This was that letter. And it made no sense for Taffiz to hold it.

"How did you convince Captain-Commander Nashila to give you my resignation letter?" I asked dumbfounded.

"She didn't."

The irrepressible shoot of hope withered before it could take root in my heart.

"You stole it," I accused. "It makes no difference."

"The Comissara Nashila is dead," he said and tossed the letter into the fireplace.

The paper turned yellow, then browned. I vaulted out of bed and snatched it just as the flame seized it. It curled up, burning my fingers, blackened. A heartbeat later, what was left of it was a smudge.

I hurtled the ashes at Taffiz. "You've killed her. You've killed the woman who was almost a mother to me!"

The ashes floated harmlessly between us. My hands shook, reaching for his throat.

He leaned as far back from me as the armchair would allow. I nearly ended up in his lap in my attempt to strangle him.

"I didn't kill Nashila. She was over seventy and had a heavy blow dealt to her pride, losing her most prized contract. Followed by a highly emotional conversation with a Commander who doesn't accept rebukes demurely—"