THE LONG WAY ROUND #2
In that moment, Isobel was not Queen of Micrea, or a bitch, or an obstacle.
She was a mother. She had been backed into a corner by people who were stronger and older and crueler than her, and she needed to prove how strong and old and cruel she could be.
Mak’kon was wrong: Isobel and Esme might never be friends, but in some ways they were equals.
Mak’kon was silent, and then Esme heard another kiss. “You’re the best mother I could ever beg for my child.”
Esme smoothed a hand over her aching chest. If her heart warmed any more to Isobel or even Mak’kon, it would hurt too much to bear.
She hadn’t realized how many of her actions hinged upon her hatred of them.
Now, faced with two parents trying to protect their little girl, the guilt speared into her.
Would Esme have been just the same as a mother?
No, she couldn’t think of that. The role of motherhood was one Esme would never have for herself—not the way Isobel had it, at least. As much as she could joke about getting to have all the sex she wanted, she knew it wasn’t about sex or even children.
It was about the choice. The choice to run circles thorough the city’s pleasure houses, the choice to abstain, the choice to forget a morning tea and find her stays oddly tight three weeks later.
The choice to load her home up with cats and spoil them rotten, or to tear down her art room for a nursery.
Isobel might consider having a daughter with her first husband—the man who divorced her the second he’d noticed her baby bump sitting too low to be a boy—a mistake.
Esme knew it as a freedom she’d never taste.
“Yes, I know,” Isobel said. Another kiss. “Besides, I have everything I need from the city. Shutting it down now just means no one else can have anything left.”
“Evil woman,” Mak’kon said with a chuckle.
“You like evil women.”
“I suppose I do, don’t I?” Mak’kon was silent for a moment. Maybe he was staring longingly into her eyes. “She’ll be here soon.”
“Curtains up for you and I, then?” Isobel whispered almost too low for Esme to hear.
“Curtains up,” Mak’kon agreed.
Esme tried to swallow down the emotions clawing up her throat. Mak’kon didn’t hate them, while Isobel kind of did hate Esme, at least, but not completely. And no matter how much Esme hated Isobel, she loved Hallel with a fierceness no mangy eagle or vicious rat could touch.
Isobel and Mak’kon loved each other. Why was that what Esme’s heart refused to get over?
She slid out of her shadow, smoothed her dress, fixed her eyebrows to look angrier than she really was—Song’s balls, they were all fixing their masks—then knocked on the door.
After a few seconds, Mak’kon, face sour and angry, swept it open to Isobel.
She sat in a simple wooden chair, her ginormous night frock nearly swallowing her whole.
“You called for me, Your Highness?” Esme asked, giving her voice an annoyed twang.
“Yes. Magic. In the city. It’s…” Isobel waved a hand in the air. “Fucked. Fix it before the last trial.”
The Bond stung on Esme’s throat, and it made her realize that Mak’kon never choked. Isobel could control the Bond, but she kept it out of their conversations.
“I would need to plan,” Esme said, itching to look at Mak’kon.
She hadn’t seen him smile genuinely in fifteen years, and something told her that if she turned fast enough, she might catch him in the act.
She couldn’t decide if she was upset at herself for never seeing through his charade or upset at him for never telling her about whatever was so important that he hid it from her for fifteen years.
Maybe she wasn’t upset at all. Maybe she just wanted him back, and now that it was so close that the anxiety made it hard to look Isobel in the eye.
The queen hitched her lip. “You only have tonight to do it, so I suggest you plan now. You’re good at cooking up schemes, though.”
Esme coughed at the scratching in her throat. She did the math. “I would need about two hundred Valosians and fifty carts.”
Isobel thought it over before shrugging. “Fine. Two hundred men and a few carts. Now go be a pain in someone else’s ass.”
Esme dipped into a bow before back stepping to leave the room.
“Oh, and I just wanted to remind you not to get too close to your little general,” Isobel said. “Next trial, you won’t be able to save him.”
Esme’s stomach dropped. This threat was genuine, not just Isobel keeping up a mask. She was still planning to come out on top at the end of this. Esme couldn’t forget that. She could heartache all she wanted when Bal was safely on the throne.
“Close to him? I don’t think I am,” Esme drawled, turning a bit. “Him and I just have a plan. He plays his part, and I play mine.”
The color drained from Isobel’s face. Then she fixed her expression and lifted her chin.
“I’ll be ready in three hours,” Esme continued. “Have the men on the lawn by then.”
“Don’t make demands,” Isobel spat. “They’ll be there.”
Esme turned her back so Isobel wouldn’t see her smile. “Thank you for your kindness, Your Highness.”
* * *
Twenty minutes before Esme was supposed to meet her soldiers on the lawn, she slipped into the bowels of the arena.
The men from the Valosia were kept in a small room. Lights out was nine, but it was already half past that, and the merry sounds of revelry could be heard from down the hall.
She knocked thrice on the door and the happy sounds paused.
A scarlet-cheeked man opened the door just enough to stick his face out. “Ah, hello. We, uh, were just going to… sleep.” Behind him, it was obvious no one would be sleeping anytime soon.
“Don’t worry, I’m not here to ruin the fun. I simply request to see one of your competitors.”
The red-faced man stepped aside to let her in.
On the left, a collection of candles burned low, one for each man who’d been killed in the Valosia.
Scraps of their clothes or keepsakes were huddled around the fires.
A list of names was scrawled in the dirt around the shrine, each in the language of its owner.
It was more than what Micrea would do for them.
On the right, the Valosia’s survivors happily huddled together, candles clustered to light their celebration.
Esme smelled tangy Jingim ale and Uhmerian faj sweetbread—someone had snuck them food and drink.
The men threw her sweet smiles as they sat in blitzed bliss.
One of them winked as she stepped over him.
In the far corner was her magical friend, sitting against the wall, mug half full of alcohol as men prodded him to finish telling a story.
When he saw her, he grinned. Pleasant heat radiated off him, even across the cold dirt floor.
Esme had to fight leaning into it. She stopped at the edge of his group of admirers.
“We’ve yet to be introduced. My name is Esme. What is yours?” To stand close to him like this was to stand at the edge of the sun with all its heat roaring at her. It danced across her cheeks like a kiss.
The man’s full lips pressed together like that was a joke. “I do not have one.” His voice was a lick of heat up her spine, bringing pleasant tingles she almost flinched at. Still, she couldn’t place his accent. Maybe someone would think he was from Jingim, but that wasn’t right.
She tilted her head and he tilted his back at her. “Well, that won’t do,” she said. “Choose a name for me to call you by.”
The man stared at her lips as she spoke, looking just as entranced by her accent as she was by his. “I do not know enough names in this language,” he said. “Choose one for me.”
Esme’ cheeks heated. Choose one for me. The words picked at her as if she’d heard them in his voice before.
“Quite a heavy task, naming a person,” she said, then heard a distant shriek. Oh yes, the rotting city. “How about we decide over a little walk? Are you free?”
“For you? Of course,” he purred. It set a flame loose in her stomach that threatened to scald right through her. Was she not over a hundred years old? Had she not refused a thousand suitors? Had she not seduced three million talons’ worth of gold off the neck of a king once?
She had to pull it together.
The man grinned, flashing his glamoured canines. With honey thick in her throat, Esme nodded her head and turned to leave, knowing he would follow. Someone whistled at them as they went, and the nameless man shushed them, only to receive a hail of cackles.
“So, what shall we do on our walk, Ms. Wraith?” the nameless man drawled in that enrapturing accent.
Esme smiled at him over her shoulder. “We’re going to pick you a name.” she said. “And then you’re going to help me un-fuck a city.”