Isahn chuckled as he licked his sticky fingers clean. “Wine, then?”
“Oh, please.” With a smile, George shifted to lean against the left arm of the sofa, her legs bunched up between them.
He topped up both of their glasses, and when he sat back, George snuck her toes up and over his thighs, trapping him comfortably beneath her legs.
She took a long sip of her drink, then pinched her goblet by the stem and swirled the liquid into a blood-red whirlpool that climbed the sides of the glass. George stared into the spiral, eyes unfocused, until it slowed to a soft whirl.
Isahn studied her, his beautiful, sad, overburdened princess. She really was something special, inside and out. Her wit, caring, and cunning set her apart from any other woman he’d ever known. Coupled with her supple curves and astonishingly good looks?Gods, Georgie Kastrumanos was a diamond of the first water.
“My mother was Queen of Domos for fourteen years,” George began abruptly, her voice wistful.
He blinked stupidly and retrieved himself from his thoughts.It’s story time, pay attention.
“My father married her when she was only eighteen. He was forty.”
“That’s quite a gap.”
“She was given to him, making her the perfect sort of wife, by his standards. She told me her story many times—as a warning. A warning I wish she had taken. I wish she’d run away.”
Isahn squeezed her leg, setting down his glass so he could give George his full attention.
“Her father arranged the marriage. He was a viceroy in Weyzithis, a shipping magnate. One year, he lost three largevessels in a winter storm. He could’ve taken the hit, according to Mamma. But he didn’t. Instead, he padded his coffers with the taxes collected from the island’s residents. It went unnoticed for seven moons, until the money was due to the Crown. My father arrested him.”
She paused to sip her wine, draining the glass. “Water?” Her request was a true question rather than a royal demand.
Isahn grabbed an empty cup from the table and filled it up, using his magic to transfer the liquid from pitcher to glass, icing it along the way. The outside of the cup collected condensation, leaving his fingerprints as he passed it off to George.
She smiled a thank-you with a quirk of her lip before taking a drink. “My grandfather ended up bargaining with my father, offering up my mother, who’d only just come of age, in lieu of tax repayment.”
“What was her name?”
“Effie. Lady Effimia,” she replied before continuing, “My father accepted Grandfather’s offer. Though, Mamma genuinely didn’t know if she was being accepted as a bride or an aide. She didn’t have a choice either way.”
“Gods, that’s awful.”
She nodded. “It was as a bride. Mamma said she sometimes wished she’d been brought to Hepikoru as an aide instead—that’s how bad things got.” George clasped her water glass in both hands, cradling it. “The day after the wedding, my father killed my grandfather. He said it was for treason, stealing from the Crown—never mind the agreement they’d come to.”
“Wow.” Though Isahn was unsure what to say, he felt like it was the appropriate time for a comment.
“It was never good for her. My father took out all of his rage on Mamma. She said the best and worst day of her life was the day I was born.”
“Why the worst?”
“Because she knew she could never fully protect me from him. I don’t blame her for the sentiment. It’s a fact.”
His heart clenched for both women, and he absentmindedly rubbed his chest.
“She took precautions, in secret, that’s why I have no siblings. But one month, her preventatives failed. And that’s how I came to be.” A shudder wracked George, and she sloshed a bit of water from her glass.
Isahn dried her spill, unnoticed, then took the cup from her extended hand so she could rearrange herself. When she bent her knees, withdrawing her legs from over his, he missed her immediately, excessively, and luckily only momentarily before she burrowed her bare toes beneath his thigh.
Leaning forward, George wrapped herself in a hug as she tended to do when feeling down. Her small chin perched on her knees and a frown weighed down the corners of her mouth. “I wanted to tell you the good bits too, but I’m not really in the mood.”
He reached over to rub her back, desperate for more contact and wanting to offer comfort.
“The bad bits it is,” she quipped sardonically. “If Mamma displeased my father in any way—by, say, wearing the wrongpallato dinner, or speaking with a ward for too long—he would beat her mercilessly. At first I thought he was only hurting her with his touch magic, because that’s all I ever saw through the peepholes. He used magic so he could say he never laid a hand on her and it wouldn’t be a lie. That restraint has long since gone out the window.”
Isahn growled unhappily at the memory of the king slapping Georgie across the face. He had to swallow past an uncomfortable lump in his throat at the thought of her, as a young girl, hiding in the secret corridors, watching as her mother was abused.
