Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 162269 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 811(@200wpm)___ 649(@250wpm)___ 541(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162269 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 811(@200wpm)___ 649(@250wpm)___ 541(@300wpm)
“True, it was glorious!” I called.
His return smile was oddly tight as Mars reined in Hephaestus close to True.
“This makes me happy for you,” he replied.
Then his gaze went direct to Mars.
Oh no.
“What is it?” Mars clipped, noting what I had noted.
True was not greeting us upon our return from my first swim as a mermaid, keen to know how it went.
Something was amiss.
His jaw hardened, his gaze bore into Mars’s, then it came to me and it softened.
“Silence,” he said like he was trying not to talk through his teeth, “your mother is here.”
I shot straight in my husband’s arms.
“Fuck,” I heard Jorie mutter.
“Where is she?” Mars bit off.
“I demanded she remain behind in the red room so that she did not surprise Silence with her appearance as she did me,” True told him.
“Thank you,” I said, cutting into their conversation. “Now, if I could ask you to have the servants delay for fifteen minutes so I can see to my state and make my way to the throne room. After that time, they can escort her there, and I will grant her an audience.”
True’s brows rose at my words and my tone in saying them
My husband’s arm tightened about me, and he called, “Silence.”
I looked up to Mars.
“I am not her queen, but I am a queen, and when you wish to speak to a queen, and that wish is granted, she provides you an audience, which shortly, I will do,” I stated. “Now, will you let me down, husband?”
He gazed at my face and murmured, “My love, a queen can also refuse an audience.”
“Why would I do that?” I asked. “For I wish to hear what she has to say.”
Mars did not, at once, acquiesce to my earlier request.
But then, he hefted me down into True’s waiting hands before he dismounted behind me.
Jorie was at our side in a flash.
“I would attend this audience,” he stated.
I looked up at my brother.
“I would have it no other way than have both my kings,” I glanced at True, “all my kings with me, should that be their wish.”
“I shall be there,” True said, before turning stiffly on his boot and sauntering away.
I headed toward the door.
Mars was at my side, querying, “Would you like me to call for Tril?”
“No, for I will hold my patience, and she might not,” I answered.
“Silence,” he called as we entered the doors.
“I will be all right,” I said to the spray of coral and purple gladiolus on the table in the center of the entryway.
“Piccolina.”
I stopped and looked up at my husband, who stopped with me, as did my brother who was right there.
Always right there, Jorie.
Making up for time lost.
Making up for nearly twenty-four years of having a sister.
And not having her.
Because of my mother.
“My love,” I said to Mars. “I will be fine.”
He didn’t seem convinced.
I didn’t have the energy to convince him.
And what energy I did have, I had to conserve.
I divested myself of gloves and cloak, tossing them over a chair before I found the small antechamber off the Great Hall that had a privy and a basin with a faucet that looked like the face of an angry god blowing wind from his mouth and out of that wind came (hot and cold, depending on the dial you turned) water.
During the return sail into Twilight Harbor, Finnie had helped Ha-Lah and I wash the salt from our skin and rinse it from our hair and I had donned a lovely gown.
But for this meeting, I would have wished something a might grander and perhaps my hair arranged, not simply pulled back at the nape.
I wanted this meeting done.
Therefore, I would not get this wish.
I splashed water on my face, toweled it off, looked in the mirror before me and whispered, “I shall have to do.”
I left the antechamber to find my husband and brother loitering outside it.
And in the seeing, it struck me.
These tall, handsome, powerful men were my tall, handsome, powerful men.
I had earned one through love and the other through blood.
But now they were mine.
And neither had anything to do with him.
Or her.
My life no longer had anything to do with him.
Or her.
And this bolstered me.
They said nothing as we made our way to the stairs to seek the throne room.
Cassius had had a wedding gift made for his bride, of which we had witnessed the giving, something that made Elena trill with laughter and kiss him deeply, even if she finished the kiss by saying, “You didn’t have to and I mean that truly. I’ll lose my vantage, but I suppose I’ll be more comfortable.”
And thus, a room that had had very little furniture—a throne on the dais at the front, two sofas set before it—now had one added piece.
An almost identical throne set next to Cassius’s.