“Oh, can we?” Allara looked at him with shining eyes. “That’s wonderful, husband!”
Brand grinned at her.
“I’m glad that makes you happy but I have another surprise that I hope will make you even happier.”
“You do? What is it?” Allara asked eagerly.
Brand laughed.
“Now, it wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you about it, right? It’s something I set up before we went to Darden Three and I’m hoping it will happen soon.” He glanced at the chronometer on his wrist. “It should be any minute now…”
“What should be any minute?” Allara exclaimed. “What is it, husband? I cannot wait!”
At that moment, the viewscreen beeped and Brand held up a hand to quiet her.
“Hang on, baby—I’m hoping this is it right now.”
He pressed a button which made the viewscreen come to life and Allara gasped in surprise and alarm.
There, filling the viewscreen with their angry faces, were her father and her aunt…and both of them were glaring at her.
Thirty-Two
“Oh, there you are—thank you for calling me back. Hello, I’m Brand, Allara’s new husband,” Brand said, introducing himself cordially as though this was any other social meeting.
He has no idea he’s talking to the people who raised me to kill him, Allara thought numbly. Oh, Gods of All Creation…
“Allara and I are just returning from a diplomatic mission to Darden Three so we’re close enough to come visit you, if you’d like to hug your daughter,” Brand continued, talking to Allara’s father.
Allara bit her lip. Her father had never hugged her once in her life. He was not the type to show affection—only condemnation and censure.
True to form, he shook his head, his face set in a mask of rigid disapproval.
“You may not come here. We have only one space port and only merchants may land there.”
“Oh, well,” Brand began uncertainly. “I’m truly sorry—I meant no offense. I just thought you’d like to know that your daughter is being well taken care of and we’re very happy together.”
“Yes, so we see,” Allara’s aunt said coldly, speaking for the first time.
“I just thought—” Brand began but Allara’s father cut him off.
“I would speak with my daughter alone,” he snapped. “In complete privacy.”
“Okay, well…” Brand looked taken aback but willing to comply. “Let me just put the ship on autopilot and I’ll go in the back,” he said to Allara, who nodded miserably at him.
He manipulated the controls for a moment, then stood and, with another nod at the viewscreen where Allara’s aunt and father were waiting, stone-faced, he left.
The minute the door to the cockpit was closed, Allara’s father thundered,
“What is the meaning of this…this farce?”
“You sent the signal!” her aunt exclaimed shrilly. “You led us all to believe that your mission was complete!”
“I pressed the transmitter button by accident!” Allara protested, trying to defend herself.
“You must complete the mission!” her father shouted at her, his face contorting with rage. “I have already been elevated to the position of Head of the Seven Great Houses! If you fail and your failure is made known, I will lose my new status and your aunt and I will be cast down, our names stricken from the roles of the Great forever!”
“I could not complete it!” Allara exclaimed. “My husband has not…done what you said he must, Aunt,” she said, appealing to her aunt, who—while still stone-faced and disapproving—was at least not shouting at her. “He has not…” She could feel her cheeks getting red. “He has not, er, consummated our marriage,” she finished at last.
“That is your fault,” her aunt said coldly. “You should have made yourself more appealing to him—more available.”
“I tried!” Allara cried. “But he would not. And it is not my fault. The Kindred have a custom called the Claiming Period. They—”
“Never mind that, now,” her aunt cut her off curtly. “Forget about consummating the marriage before you kill him—that was only to grant us higher status, anyway.”
“What?” Allara asked, giving her aunt a disbelieving look. “But you said it would be painful—that I would bleed. And you said it was essential to fulfilling the mission.”
“It would have been nice if you had been able to satisfy the Blood Feud in such a way, for the sake of our family pride,” her aunt said dismissively. “But what’s important is that you finish the job—even if the union has not been consummated.”
“Complete the mission you were born and raised for,” her father added, scowling.
“But…but I don’t want to,” Allara protested. “Brand is a kind, sweet, gentle man. And the Kindred are not evil, as you led me to believe. They revere women and treat them as equals to men. They even let women play instruments and I have played many of them. They encourage a woman to let her Song flow free, and not just in the Song House but anywhere.”
She stopped because her aunt and father were looking at her in horrified disbelief.