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“Why are you in such a foul mood this morning, Gen?” Helen asked him across the breakfast table. Eugenides had, so far, sniped at his wife, his cousin, twice at Sophos at morning sword training, and once at Eddis’s attendant Tyche. The latter was, at least, unremarkable. Eugenides had a long and tense feud with Tyche, which he swore had nothing to do with her repeatedly beating him at chess.
“He didn’t sleep,” Irene said serenely as she sipped the delicate mountain tea.
Gen glared at his wife. “I did sleep. I just hate that room.” As Attolis, Eugenides was no longer afforded the relative privacy and solitude of the Eddisian library where he’d slept for many years. Instead, he and Attolia were in the far more lavish guest apartment on the opposite side of the palace. It made Gen’s skin crawl.
“Oh, poor king,” Helen teased. “The apartments are too nice for him?”
He violently speared a piece of fruit onto his fork. “It’s poor hospitality to put your honored guests in the room where the sun shines as soon as it has risen.”
“Oh, am I a poor host? I am so sorry, your majesty. Why don’t you leave a detailed list of your grievances for our auspicious minister of protocol and perhaps we can better serve your whims on your next visit.”
“If I ever visit here again,” Gen said darkly.
Helen snorted, and with a slow, sly grin that would have chilled Gen to his core if he had been watching her, she motioned for Selene. With Eddis’s murmured instructions, Selene left the room.
The queens chattered while Eugenides sulked, and they were eventually joined by Sounis arriving late from sword training with hair still wet from a bath. He kissed his wife and dropped into his seat. Finally having someone he could take his frustration out on without concern, Gen's mood slowly brightened. By the time they had all finished eating, Eugenides was chatting with the rest of them as they made their way through more cups of tea.
Selene eventually returned, carrying a thin, leatherbound book—a rare find in the Eddisian library. Selene took her place among the other attendants, but Eddis motioned her over.
“What is that?” Gen asked, eyebrows knit in confusion.
“You don’t recognize it?” Helen said sweetly.
Comprehension dawning, Eugenides looked wary. “What are you doing with it?”
“I just thought Irene might like to see it.”
“Absolutely not,” he said, snatching across the table for it, but his cousin held it out of reach.
“Gen, is that any way to speak to your hosts?” she said, tone admonishing.
“No, but it is how you should speak to insolent subjects.” Eddis laughed high and clear, and Eugenides reached for the book again. “Give it to me.”
Helen smiled bright. “No, I’ve waited too long for this. Irene,” she said, turning to the other queen, “has Gen ever told you he wrote down his account of meeting you after he’d stolen Hamiathes’s gift?”
“What have I ever done to you?” Gen hissed. Helen laughed, but did not look away from Irene, who was eyeing the book cautiously. “Sophos, will you take that book from her?”
Sophos raised his eyebrows at Gen. “You seem to be expecting goodwill from someone you referred to nearly exclusively as Useless the Younger.”
“And look how true that has turned out to be,” he said harshly.
Ignoring him, Sounis continued. “And you call Helen ugly on three separate occasions.”
“Once again,” Gen said, waving his hand demonstratively toward his cousin’s face, barely managing to swat away a grape hurled in his direction by Sophos. Helen took advantage of the distraction to hand the book to Irene.
“I hope the gods strike you down with lightning,” Gen said to his cousin, because desperate as he was, he would not actually stop his wife from doing anything. Helen looked to him only for long enough to wiggle her fingers in the air and mouth “lava,” before looking back at Irene. Eugenides, thoroughly defeated, put his face in his hand.
Attolia hesitated, looking down at the manuscript in her hands. Guessing at the other queen’s thoughts, Eddis said, “His descriptions were not unkind, Irene. Not the ones about you, anyway.”
Smile wry, she raised an eyebrow at her husband. “Shall I read it, Gen?”
*
“Gods,” he said, face buried once more in his hand when they found themselves in the privacy of the library, where Attolia had taken the book to read it. Eugenides had paced, miserable, around the palace and across the roofs, before he could stand it no longer and had gone to find her. “I could have said anything else. I just panicked.”
“You were angry,” she said reasonably.
“I wasn’t particularly pleased to be in prison, being kept alive by a blessed rock, no.”
She smiled gently. “You were angry with yourself.” She did not elaborate, but she did not have to. He knew what she meant. The Attolian soldier had been the first man Gen had killed since he was a boy.
“I was.”
“And you were afraid you were becoming like me.” Irene had a way of getting to the root of the matter, able to deftly cut through the endless streams of excuses to get to the real point. This time, she did so delicately and with all the care she could muster.
Eugenides rubbed his face again. “I am sorry. I—”
She held up a hand. “I know.” She was quiet for a moment, and the silence between the stone walls and dusty scrolls felt absolute. “I think…I worried about the same, later. When I’d captured you.” When I cut off your hand, she did not say. “I found myself queen, but you chose your profession, and when you smiled at me…I did not want to be seen as your equal.” She stroked his hair. “I thought of it later, that smile…I thought you would never smile at me again.”
He looked up at her and smiled, and though it was bittersweet, she smiled in return. Searching for levity, she looked back at the manuscript before her. “The Great Goddess comparison was not particularly kind,” she said, “although I supposed it was not baseless.”
Eugenides smiled sheepishly, surrounded by the room where he had thought of her every day. “Irene I—” He blushed “I thought you were too good for the cruelty of a goddess.” He worried the edge of one of the heavy pages of the book. “When I wrote this, I thought it was quite a scathing account. When I reread it years later…”
Irene smiled delicately. “Some of it was very flattering.”
“Every word of it true,” he said, the engaging smile she loved so much spreading across his face.
“I thought you were quite handsome too, you know.”
“Oh?” He arched an eyebrow.
“Not then, when you were half-dead and looking like a sewer rat, don’t flatter yourself.” He laughed, the tension easing out of him beneath Irene’s hand, and she smiled. “When I came to Eddis for the ceremony for the destruction of Hamiathes’s gift. I noticed you then.”
Gen grinned, a little self-satisfied. He sat up. “I noticed you watching me.”
Irene flushed. “I didn’t know what I was feeling but…your hair was braided back and your tunic was beautiful and your smile…” She touched his face. “I love your smile.”
He grinned harder, the earnest look on his face enough to make her heart swell. “I am,” he said, grabbing her hand from his cheek and kissing her palm. “The luckiest.” He kissed it again. “Man.” He gently released her hand and pulled her face toward his, kissing her on the mouth. “In the world.”
Irene pulled back. “Did you really notice my teeth?”
Gen threw back his head, laugh loud and a little hollow. “I am going to kill Helen.”