His world has become so entangled, so complex, and it is his own bleeding heart that is to blame. Varajakshi, he now knows, is his Soul - the embodiment of it. As good as soul-sewn to him because he has none for himself and she takes up that entire space in him. She is the brilliant light of his innermost self. She is kind, she is gentle, she is demure, she is utterly without guile. She is also tempered by loss, by being without her home, her faith, and it makes him identify with her to his very innermost core.

Then there is Dhaniya. His Heart-Sewn. The woman who had been impossible to redeem for himself, come again under her own power, buying away from him his heart as Varajakshi had implanted within him his soul. It had been infuriating to smell her on Aldebaran - almost as infuriating as his red brother invading Varajakshi’s privacy (though the boy had not discovered the secret). Dhaniya’s wondrous perfection in the Maghrib ways settled him in ways a wilder woman could not.

Then Shahrazad. The spark of his mind, the ache for knowledge perfectly mirrored in her as it was seen in himself. She loved to know, to seek and it was a heady thing to compete with her for knowledge in the stars and the histories of their peoples. The Akhal Teke upbringing had not sown in her any seeds of madness - only a yearning for the familiar -- and this also was perfectly matched in her to-be Husband.

Three women, unmarried and yet destined to be. It made him full to bursting as it was, but then Naz had come. He had smelled on her the trauma, but he had brought her to bathe in the Dunes innermost sanctum, a cave oasis that hid his most cherished secret, while she told him of her horrors. She had gone from him unawares of his Varajakshi, had met with her friends, had spent the days amongst the others -- until her first inkling that her trauma had bred in her a child. Then she had returned to him, found him entwined with a woman she knew now from her time with his family was not properly wed for such closeness. Secrets spilled between them - of Rigel and his living-soul’s undying love and the child that would spring from their embrace, of Naz’s rape and her knowledge now that it would bear fruit she could not bear to kill but also could not bear to claim.

Their talks went long, across the week after her return to the cave. Varajakshi’s fear of rejection and the angering of her new home’s gods, Naz’s fear of bringing life to and raising the product of what she felt was her shame, Rigel’s yearning for all to be within the laws that he had been bound to since his childhood and the need to protect the two women who came to him with their fears. The night of the seventh day in their talks, having gleaned an idea and praying for the support of her friend, she crept to the oasis of her greatest friend and begged their Mira to only say “yes”. Without knowing why, without asking the purpose-- only say “yes” and trust that all that would come after was necessary.

In that way, the Sadim welcomed it’s first High Priestess. The agreement of the Mira was all that was required to name the position and to grant the marriage powers to the High Priestess herself -- though the vow of a scholar to teach her the ways of her new position was what bound her to them for life. Naz, as High Priestess, chosen of Neith, then took it upon herself to marry the pregnant Varajakshi to her should-have-been Husband, giving breath to a family into which her own child might be born in secret - before anyone else might suspect her of it’s origin.

The mothers bonded, befriended, and birthed together in the room that had once been only Varajakshis. Hidden there, Rigel begged Sanctuary for Naz and watching of Shahrazad from his Sheik, of careful watch over his Heart-Sewn by his youngest brother in payment for his intrusion earlier. His family was parted for only the Winter months until spring. Spring when his own twin had given birth to his own set of twins and set the stage for amazing irony that the other twin had also done the same.

He continued the scheme that Naz had instigated, that he had nursed, until a month after his children were born - gave time enough that it would seem right to anyone outside their trinity that both children were his by his secret-marriage wife.

He stands before his brothers and Mira, staring at their disbelief outside the mouth of his cave, revealing his secret purpose as Naz had told him and rehearsed with him for almost two seasons. "I hid her because she was so afraid I could taste it just like a bite of bitter herbs. She did not want to know me, let alone us, but was in need of aid and so I hid her. Over the months, I grew to know her for what she was to me -- the soul that would replace the one Atair laid claim to at birth. In the moment we realized, we came together as you did with our Mira, Sheik," he uses the term in deference, knowing that he and his new wife could be cast out for the act. "Then Naz came to us, found us, and told us that she yearned for purpose, for a home, for protection, for family. I told her of our love, of our hopes, of our fear that we had broken a divine law and would have to pay the price."

He looked behind him to Naz, standing there like a sentinel in the doorway to the cave, "She went in secrecy to her dearest friend, keeping my secret, pleading for my sake on and on her own behalf, that the Mira say yes to her unspoken desires. In her wisdom, Sayyida knew her friends earnestness to be honest and granted the boon asked, as was her right as Mira and the Voice of Mut." He says this because he knew that the brothers rarely paid heavy attention to the laws that gave women power - never having needed to before. "Naz wed us in the privacy of our home, befriending and aiding my Wife as she grew large and pregnant - offering care and companionship and solace until the birth of my children." He speaks no lies, tells no falsehoods, but it is reliant on the misunderstanding inherently and intrinsically placed in his words. His children, who were born of two mothers, and one not even his own, and now claimed for Varajakshi herself alone.

"I have now a son and daughter, a wife, that our High Priestess says must be brought to you - so that your judgement can be placed on me for my secrecy and my taking of a woman that was not my own." He looks to Sayyida with yearning, pleading eyes. "You felt the rightness of my brother in mere moments-- I could not, if only for the terror my Wife felt after the treatment of her homeland since her infancy. It happened slower, took more time, but that was because she had not opened herself up to me. I could not know what she was to me until it was too late, until everything came crashing down around my ears and I had put her in jeopardy of her new gods, old ones already upset with her for escaping the sacrifice she had been raised to be for them."

He looks to Aldebaran, "You almost found her, broke my vow to her that no one would know of her until she knew confidently she was safe of any wrath or danger. Forgive me the pains I inflicted. Thank you for watching over Dhaniya in spite of my… just, thank you." He looked to Antares at last, "I would pay whatever debt you think is owed, Sheik, but I want to speak to you as a brother first -- Please, do not fault her or the children for my being so much less a scholar in this. I had thought that Atair’s claim of Eness meant that such a bond was parted from me forever. I had thought I could not be caught up in the magics and fate-weaving that gave you Sayyida. I should have known that Fate could be especially tricksy with those who think they know so much…."

He stands at their mercy.