“Well, clearly, it was someone who was not nobility, and not an omega,” Ryu snapped, frustrated with Oris’s patient reasoning. “Like I said, every time we had a ball, she’d try to send me off to dance with all the noble omegas.”
“Did she actually say that to you?Ryu, go and dance with a noble omega?”
“Yes!” Why was he being so difficult about this?
“Those were her exact words?”
Ryu thought back to the Festival of the Goddess. It was the most recent example, though there had been plenty over the years. And he tried to remember what exactly it was his mother had said to him. As if that would make any difference…
“She said… Okay, her exact words were ‘Go and see if there’s anyone interesting to dance with’. But in the past, she’s definitely told me to dance specifically withnice, young nobles.”
“So, nobles, yes. But not specifically omegas?”
“What are you getting at?”
“From what you’ve been saying, it sounds like you haven’t realised it, Ryu, but your mother was an extremely progressive woman. As well as an extremely intelligent one. She had an uncanny knack for politics.”
“Politics?” Ryu scoffed. “My mother had nothing to do with politics. She left all the hard decisions to Dad while she ran around holding parties.”
Again, Oris laughed. “Sometimes, when you’re standing so close to the scenery, you can only see the trees. And that means you miss out on seeing the whole of the forest. Thosepartieswere anything but. Let me tell you a little story. And I only know this because I’ve been hanging around the palace for such a very, very long time.
“Your mother married your father when they were both very young. And then Sou became king quite unexpectedly, and suddenly Elise found herself in a position of immense importance and significant influence in the palace. But as you would well know, Sou is very much a traditionalist.Wasa traditionalist,” he corrected himself, then frowned and shook his head. “Sorry.” It was strangely reassuring to realise that Oris was having the same difficulties in referring to his parents as Ryu was.
After a slight pause, he continued. “In the early years of their marriage, Elise found herself locked in a deeply frustrating situation. She longed tosupport her husband, but at the same time, she felt she had a responsibility to use her position to better the people of Galandeen. For a while there, there was speculation that they were actually going to divorce, since they could never seem to see eye to eye.
“But then, one day, Elise announced she was pregnant – with you – and I suppose that in her mind, she suddenly had to make some tough decisions. Now, you must realise that I’m making a few assumptions here, but at the same time, reality, over the last eighteen years, has played out very much according to these ideas. She wanted you, as the royal heir, to grow up with all the privileges of that position, but at the same time, she had to find a way to make peace with the restrictions in her own life. And so, over the next few years after you were born, she mastered the art of supporting her husband in public, and then… shall we saymassagingpublic opinion about various issues behind his back.
“Take omega rights, for example. She’d organise a party with just the right mix of traditional and progressive nobles. She’d tell a few stories of some notable omega who’d done something admirable, and then swiftly change the topic to compliment the colour of someone’s dress or admire some arrogant noble’s new boat. It was pure art, Ryu. She’d drop a hint here, sow the seed of an idea there, then she’d flutter off, all smiles and laughter, and by the end of the night, the nobles would be trying to convinceherthat omegas should have more rights, not the other way around. She was a masterful negotiator, so good at it that half the time, you wouldn’t even realise she was twisting your arm.”
A part of Ryu desperately wanted to tell Oris that he was well and truly out of line. He’d lived with his mother for his entire life. He’d seen her at every dinner, stroking his father’s ego, meek as a church mouse as she refused to contradict him, except in the mildest of terms.
But even as he opened his mouth to protest, he remembered those odd few instances in the weeks before the Festival. She’d suddenly started talking about the Arctesian Revolution after his attempted kidnapping. She’d debated democracy with the Iderhean princess. And she’d apparently been negotiating secret deals with Maro regarding pro-democracy demonstrators and omegas applying to join the Royal Guard. He felt a sudden urge to cry – the first time he’d felt that way since he’d been told of his parents’ death – as he realised that he’d now never have the opportunity to delve into Oris’s theories and find out what his mother truly thought about life. How much more had been going on behind the scenes that he knew nothing about?
“But we’ve well and truly wandered from the point,” Oris went on. “We were originally discussing your soulmate. Queen Elise’s personal politics were very left-wing. She was in favour of omega rights, of democratic progression, of giving soulmates the right to divorce. She’d even set up afund to support Biermargian refugees, though that particular project was still in its infancy when… Well. Yes. It’s still in its beginning stages,” Oris corrected himself, as he avoided tactlessly pointing out the queen’s death. “So I can put no stock whatsoever in the idea that she would have found your soulmate unsuitable. What I can believe, however, is that she perceived thepublicwould find them unsuitable. Now, put yourself in her shoes, for a moment. Your father holds tightly to some very traditional views, and she hasn’t been able to contradict him publicly. So she’s very likely concerned that, despite her best efforts, her son has grown up with his own set of traditional views. And yet she knows that, while the rest of the world expects the crown prince to marry an entirely suitable noble omega woman, perhaps your actual soulmate was a… a male omegan commoner from Arctesia,” he said, grabbing onto the first and most ‘unsuitable’ description he could think of. Oddly, it was almost the same description Kentario had come up with when trying to think of the least likely soulmate for him. “Now, for the record, I have absolutely nothing against male omegas, but there persists in the nobility the idea that marrying one is somehow anunworthything to do.”
“And nobody likes Arctesians,” Ryu added, seeing where he was going with this.
“Well, actually, nobody likesArctesia,” Oris clarified. “Their political system is a mess, and their ‘President’ is currently trying to appoint himself as Emperor. But yes, the Arctesian emigrants to Galandeen tend to cop a lot of heat for our public perception of Arctesia.
“Now, back to Elise. Let’s assume the queen wants her son to honour the blessings of the Goddess and also wants him to find happiness with his intended partner. But since his soulmate doesn’t fit the prescribed description, what is a good queen and mother to do? She must spend the tail end of his teenage years using every subtle means available to try to open his mind to the idea that his soulmate is going to be somehowunusual. Perhaps, by trying to get you to think about what you want in a soulmate, she was trying to get you to consider new possibilities, rather than trying to fit you further into a box full of tradition and stuffy restrictions? And trying to do so in a way that wouldn’t be entirely inappropriate in your father’s eyes?”
Ryu felt like he’d just been hit over the head with a shovel. So many things his mother had been doing lately suddenly made sense. Even the couples getting married at the Festival, he realised, had been carefully orchestrated to be, as Oris had put it,unusual. A noble marrying a commoner. An alpha marrying a beta. No wonder she’d been so disappointed to have to host a wedding between the housekeeper and the gardener, he realised all of a sudden. They were both betas, and both of more or less equal social standing. It wasn’t the fact that they’d beencommoners that had upset her. It had been the fact that as a couple, the pair of them were too damnordinary. And suddenly, he found his curiosity piqued as to who this most unusual soulmate of his could be.
“So you think I should make the effort to meet my soulmate and see what happens?” he asked.
Oris eyed Ryu’s neck again. “I think that ship has well and truly sailed,” he said, in wry amusement. “And if your feelings for Kentario are as deep as you say they are, I see no reason to change that. But perhaps there are some things from the past that you may be able to reassess in a different light, as time goes on.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Yes, I use the service door to receive deliveries,” Liandra said, staring wide-eyed up at Kentario as she sat through her interview. “But only because Saki said it was okay. She’s in charge of the whole kitchen. How was I supposed to know things could go this wrong?”
“Palace protocol dictates that all deliveries come in via the main gate,” Maro said gruffly. “You didn’t think that was a problem?”
“I could have been a little more thorough,” Liandra admitted. “But there’s a vast difference between an honest mistake and an attempt attreason.”
Maro waved Kentario to the back of the room, sighing as he shook his head. “Not enough to arrest her, but we can certainly sack her for negligence,” he muttered. Kentario nodded.
“We need to get Saki back in here,” he said, feeling uncomfortable even as he said it. Saki had been a fixture in the palace since before he was born, and arresting one of their longest serving staff members would be difficult, no matter what mistakes she’d made.
