“Helena!” I objected in true horror.
She let out a peal of laughter. “I jest. I’m happy for you, James. Envious you’ve found such a good man as a boyfriend, but happy for you regardless. I will tease Edwin later.”
I didn’t fully trust her. Edwin was quite the prize, after all. “I’ll introduce you to a good man later. Let’s get you free of Gillespie first.”
Helena groaned. “Yes, please and thank you.”
Thirty-two
Edwin
I sat on the sofa tucked up against James’s side, him with a glass of wine in hand, me with the notebook.
The notebook currently trying to break my brain.
The first few pages seemed innocuous at a glance—a bullet point list with a parenthesis next to each item with a date and no context. It seemed so innocent my brain wanted to la-di-da skip right over it.
Then my eyes caught certain keywords such asWrath disasterorepidemic,and all of a sudden, I found my attention locked in and ready for action.
I mean, granted, James had given me the bird’s-eye view of what happened in the previous life, but somehow seeing it in writing with an actual timeline made the fact even more soberingly real.
I flipped to the next page, then the one after, where he’d jotted down a more in-depth summary, but even the epidemic had only rated two pages of notes. I did not think this sufficed.
“James?”
“Yes, beloved?”
“How often in our past life did I reach out and try to strangle you for not writing down detailed notes?”
He cleared his throat, looked away as if the wall had suddenly taken up acting, and sipped his wine.
“That often. How about you start explaining to me, then. Whenever you give me satisfactory details, I’ll kiss you.”
The man perked up like a dog being offered a meaty bone. “I like bribes.”
“I’m sure you do.” Keeping the notebook and pen in hand so I could jot down notes, I turned to see his face easier, hooking my thighs over his. It was nice, cozying up with my lover like this.
“Now, let’s start with the beginning problem. You note here the Wrath hit first?”
“Right. I think I mentioned before how when I first came into the palace, I was given work to do, but it took about six months for us to figure out how to use me effectively. I was at leisure more often than not, until I got to know everyone, they knew me, and I figured out where the slack was. So I didn’t realize until after the Wrath hit that one of Victor’s many projects he’d failed to work on was the seawalls.”
James let out a pained sigh, eyes closing for a second. “It was horrific, Edwin. Truly, as bad as what happened to us, it was so much worse then. No one was down in the lower city to call on the mages, so their response was slow. It took nearly thirty minutes for them to get the alarm and rally, and even then, they weren’t a united force. The first responders were quickly overwhelmed, and then the support was slow to arrive. It was devastating. Thousands of lives lost, property damage in the millions, and it took almost a year before the lower city was rebuilt enough for people to move back in. Even then, businesses were very, very slow to restart down there. I actually paid fornew seawalls myself, out of pocket, just to avoid the whole issue with the council and get an immediate safety measure in place.”
“This is why you not only immediately took on the bill for the walls but made sure the mages knew how to deploy.” It all made sense now. “And after the seawall fiasco?”
“Victor lost all chance to be crown prince. It was firmly yanked out of his hands. There was a hot debate for months on who would get the title next. Even then, I didn’t want the throne. That wasn’t why I’d agreed to the adoption. Royce resisted, though, and fought the position tooth and nail.”
I followed the timeline with my finger and pointed to the next thing. “And that’s when the epidemic hit?”
“That’s when the epidemic hit.” James rubbed a hand over his face. “Really, it was directly caused by the Wrath, although we didn’t realize it at the time. Royce put the pieces together after the fact. Because so many people were displaced from their homes, they ended up in a sort of tent city all up and down the coastline. Sanitation was for shit, they were practically living on top of each other, and the disease sparked like a flame to dry tinder. It spread like wildfire. Whole towns were burned to the ground in a desperate attempt to halt the disease from spreading. It did and didn’t work. We learned the preventative measures three months in, but because the towns were walling themselves off from any outsiders, we had a hard time getting the information to anyone. It was too little, far too late.”
The heartbreak in his voice made my own heart pang. I leaned my head against his shoulder in a gesture of support and comfort. “It won’t happen again this time.”
“No, it won’t, I’ll make damn sure of it.”
“How devastating was it?”
“We lost nearly half the populace.”
