He knows in his soul that this creature so like himself was as the gods intended for mare and stallion. Two souls wrent apart to wander the earth until they found one another and became the First of their Hearts, the Only of their Souls. Love would be broad and ranging, but none so sacred, so full, as this. Where Sayyida still worries over duty, the lady he had left for freedom is renounced wholeheartedly. His people know that there is only one who could so enrapture the whole of the attention of another.

The Princess Sayyida could not have been intended for him if this mare now, here, was so utterly at one with his every breath, blink, heartbeat. This woman was his true First Wife in flesh and bone, promised to him only by her own desire and judgement being a match of his own - not by some law or duty - if she would but have him. It was, in truth, the one time that women had such undenied and unbridled power over a man. The refusal of affection. Suitor upon suitor could be denied and there would only be disappointment from their mothers and fathers to goad them against their own will.

Her demeanor beguiles him, draws him so near as to touch in a secret way he might have entertained with onlooking relatives to scorn or chastise them for anything more. Moreover he respected her as one of The People. She was clearly raised with nobility and respect, not some brothel minx accustomed to empty flirtation - nor was she so stained by the new world surrounding them that she could bring rise in his blood so that it was mistaken for lust in the heat of battle.

It is in her utterly pure self that he finds his belly twisted in flinching knots and flickering flanks. Her with nothing but her naked femininity would have bid him drink the sea and he would have tried until his body was bloated as the tick and drying to no better than a mummified corpse.

And Gods, her scent. It is such a dangerous thing, he thinks, to have freed himself of his control with the painted warrioress. Even with the time having come and gone, he had never wrested the control of himself entirely out of the clutches of his newfound masculinity. That single slip of his control in the heat of the storm had let Min drive the scepter of virility and wanton need well and deep into his belly. It was a trick of Set, laying low his resolve against the painted one so that he would find himself barely hanging onto his regality and self-control now. He is ashamed for himself, ashamed that he should not be better at keeping his mind off the slope of her haunches, the delicateness of her withers… and even then, he lets himself fall back just a moment to let hot air slide along it in a single exhale.

He cannot know that she has already chosen him, that she has made up her own mind for them both. He because there are only tendrils and threads keeping him so civil and tame while they walk so near one another. She because she had read in him the unwillingness to cross any lines that would have cheapened her body or her respect for the sake of slaking his body’s need for her. She decides and he stands bereft of the reassurance she gives herself.

Her muzzle brushes his and it is enough of a jolt against his control that his tail snaps twice, a guttural nicker offered with the harsh craning of his neck as he takes the full measure of advantage that he can in bristling their whiskers against one another. She grins then like for all the world, she has become a djinn who sought only to win that molecule of his control for herself, indeed. He shrills a surprised whinny, cut short as he grabbed his control full fisted and more roughly against his own desire than he had ever done before.

She pirouettes then to face him, blessing him with hiding those tender haunches that had been tempting him to coil his head so that he might eye them as they walked. His breathing is coarse, his prayers offered to the skies in a pleading, begging, tone. He betrays Princess Sayyida for the last time in that moment, bequeathing his Mother Tongue to another in a way only That One was meant to have heard it. He sells his bond to her and ties it instead into the soul of this woman, daring a move considering she had yet to Oath or Give herself to him. When he looks down again, eyes opening on his Soul-Sewn, he can see the mischief there and a boldness that terrifies him in his wavering control.

"What does your heart seek from the old gods that you do not already have?"
“You.”

His voice, usually deep and rich, is pained - lost to the drive of his soul, his body, his own beating heart… and hemmed in yet by that last ligament to his better self. To the self that tells him that she has made no promise, has given no oath, has yet to even voice to him that she would care to have him. “You call to my every cell, my every thought, my every want, my every need -” he tries to speak, to relay the depth of his longing to her, but finds his poetic tongue stilled in the sudden proximity of her beauty, her scent, her reckless boldness in coming but inches from him in such a state as he was. Had she no notion at all what it was that she had over him?

The world has focused utterly and completely onto her, the sands of the desert and the breath of Shu diminished to dust in his mind. This enchantment was why women were so coveted, so protected, so controlled. Their power to command the will of a man was absolute and unquestionable. Minds were rendered mad at their fiery whims, should they be allowed rampant abandon as was known in this new country. And he had never courted madness so sweet and cloying as what being nose-to-nose with this mare had wrought.

"What should I call you, but mine own heart?"

“Call me your own; king or slave or protector.” he responds, entire body seeming to tremble against the might of her own enchantments as his will frayed even to the last strand. “'Ant tajeal alalihat samitatan bihadurik.” his voice turns so low that it could rumble in both their chests as he encroaches on her further, fitting them like puzzles so that the flats of their cheeks are barely an inch apart and her mane tickles at the bridge of his nose. “'aqdam alduea' lak alan , 'iilhat , ruh ruhi.”

“'Ant nsf ruwhiun alty tama 'iibeaduha eaniya hataa hadhih alluhzati. 'Atawasal 'iilayk , daeuna nakun kamilayn maratan 'ukhraa.” He swallows down his own words after that, bidding the silence to sprout her own consent, bidding the empty space between his body and hers to be rendered null.