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"I see now why people call you the zion of wickedness."Tarabas looked up, which was fine, except that it also meant he'd stopped what he'd been previously doing, which was less fine. "Wickedness?" he asked. "What wickedness is there, in raising in your body a passion to equal my own, to burn brighter than the brightest sunlight?"
Whoa, boy. I had to ask, didn't I?
It was easy, sometimes, to forget Tarabas's upbringing. To forget that he had not, as Romualdo had, travelled far and wide to study not only the arts of war but also the customs and ideas of other people."Well?" Tarabas asked. His voice had gained an edge, a hint of the man whom people had called by far worse names than the one Romualdo had used in jest. (Or mostly in jest, at any rate.)Romualdo sighed. "It was a poor joke. Forget I said anything.""No." Tarabas shook his head slowly. He was smiling now, in a way that definitely made him look like someone worthy of being called 'wicked'. "I do not think I will. You may either tell me willingly, or else I will wrest the answer from your unwilling lips. The choice is yours."Romualdo's mouth felt a little dry. He wondered if this was what Tarabas had looked like when he had truly been Tarabas, the Prince of Darkness, the Servant of Evil and the Repository of Malice. If so, it was probably just as well Romualdo had been a statue when Tarabas had turned his attention to his modest kingdom.He liked to believe that he would have fought any evil threatening the freedom of his people. That he had been defeated by Fantaghiro not because of her beauty, but because of her skill, and that, true to his word, he had fought her with no holds barred."You do not speak," said Tarabas, his smile widening. His hands, Romualdo noted, were no less wicked than his mouth. "It is silence you have chosen, then."Romualdo licked his lips, noting Tarabas's gaze flicker to his mouth as he did so. There were many things he had taught Tarabas by now, but also, always, a few that Tarabas seemed to have learned by himself, or from simple observation."I will have you talking soon enough," Tarabas promised, eyes dark.Unless moans counted as talking though, Romualdo was fairly sure this was one promise Tarabas wasn't going to be able to keep, for all the effort he might put into it.