Chapter Eight
Had there everbeen another phrase to strike such terror in a man’s heart? I could’ve wished to be more clear headed, free of the dregs of the healing magic, but I’d brought this on myself and I’d withstand the storm.
“All right,” I said, helping myself to more food, acting as calm as possible. “You know I always enjoy conversing with you.”
She slammed her palms on the table,jolting the dishes and destabilizing the wine pitcher. I caught it before it toppled, setting it back carefully and eyeing her. “Stop managing me,” she ground out. The measured words might as well have been shouted.
I put down my food and rubbed my palms on thighs. “I’m not managing you. I’m doing my best to keep this conversation calm and reasonable.”
“Oh, is that so?” Her eyebrows climbedalong with her tone. “You mean, calm and reasonable like when you attacked Kral?”
Setting my teeth, but keeping my jaw relaxed so she wouldn’t read that tic of mine, one she knew well, I picked up a fresh slice of bread and began to meticulously coat it with an even film of butter. Witness my manful control. “I apologize for that lapse. He goaded me in exactly the way he knew how to get to me.”
“Then it had to do with Jenna.”
Three times. Jenna’s name spoken aloud for the third time in one day.
Though I’d thought I’d left Dasnarian superstitions behind, I reflexively scanned the room, half expecting her ghost to appear, summoned by the incautious incantation. Would she rail at me? Weep, perhaps, and rightfully accuse me of having been too weak and stupid to save her?
The butter tastedsour now, the fresh-baked bread like ash. I set it aside and scrubbed my hands over my face. “Yes,” I replied. “It had to do with her.”
Ursula sat back in her chair, angling it so she could extend her long legs, crossing them at her booted ankles. “You once told me that old pains fester like unhealed wounds, that we think they’ve healed, but they’ve only scabbed over, with the pus growing inthe dark. Until something happens to break them open.”
I eyed her. “There are few blows that sting more than having one’s own words flung back in one’s face.”
She smiled slightly, more a grimace of sympathy. “I know that well, as you do it to me all the time.”
I laughed a little, dry and without humor.
“That was a lot of pus I saw today,” she said.
I gazed back at her, and she refilled mywine cup, which I’d already emptied. Another bad sign. “Is this what you wanted to talk about—or is it whatever news Jepp and Kral brought?”
“Both, actually.” She had unhappy lines around her mouth. “They are… intertwined.”
I nodded, not understanding, but wondering. Kral needling me about Jenna after all this time hadn’t been a coincidence. In my experience, very little in life is a coincidence.I blame hlyti.
“I did cancel court this afternoon,” Ursula continued, “so you and I can sort all of this out. I can’t… I need to lock this part of my life down before I can deal with anything else.”
A profound failure on my part, a failure to theElskastholrrthat I caused her difficulty instead of being a solid foundation. “Which first, then—yours or mine?”
She regarded me calmly. “I’m sorryto force you into this, so your choice.”
Time to clean up my own mess, then we’d see if we had anything left in us to address whatever news Kral had brought that was dire enough for Ursula to cancel court.
“I was fourteen years old,” I told her, “and the youngest of my siblings.”
As I spoke, it seemed the formal chill of the Imperial Palace settled around us. The opulent carpets that muffledthe bootsteps of the men and silenced the barefoot tread of the elegant women. The scent of jasmine and the delicate chime of jewelry as they drifted past, wreathed in colorful silk, gazes demurely averted. Mysterious and enticing.
“Six brothers,” Ursula prompted, bringing me out of the reverie.
“Yes, and three sisters. All of us born in four years to three wives.”
“Your father was a busy man—andhis wives hard-worked.”
“Yes.” I splayed my hands on the table, so like my father’s. Big and blunt. The hands of a warrior, not a statesman. The hands of a brutally cruel and domineering man. “He became emperor later than he wished—having spent many years in various wars, adding to the empire for his father—and set to making heirs with due diligence.”
I lifted my gaze to hers, and raised a brow.“In Dasnaria, the emperor is not only divine, but expected to demonstrate his manly virility by producing as many children by as many women as possible.”
