Chapter Twenty-Nine #3
“It must be hard for you,” Hallus said. Then said nothing more.
Aoife tried to bite her lip. Tried not to take the bait. “What must be?” The words slipped out anyway.
“Being so outside it all. You’re not Halcin, you’re not anyone of consequence from any race, and yet you’re trying to be the first Halcin Emperor’s lover. Seems like a hard place to be.”
Aoife’s mouth felt as if cotton balls had sucked up all the moisture. “Thank you for your concern, but I’m doing just fine.”
Hallus looked at her with an almost sympathetic smile. “Glad to hear it.”
~*~
“They’re working out the details of the plan,” Hallus translated. He couldn’t have sounded more bored if he’d been watching grass grow.
Aoife sat at the back of a large room in the Shadow God’s temple at the centre of the compound.
Shadach, his mother, and a handful of others were speaking in rapid-fire Halcin.
Some people were standing, some were sitting, and some were constantly switching between the two.
Shadows slunk about the room, lazily twisting here and there, seeming to sniff shoes or play with a strand of someone’s hair on occasion.
From Shadach, however, they stayed well away.
Aoife wondered why that was. The room was sparsely decorated.
Simple. Plain. A large table in the middle with uninspired chairs sitting around it.
A map. A few metal candlesticks with burning candles. A stack of parchment paper and a quill.
There were echoes of the old ways, too. Faded murals depicting the Shadow God were carved into the stone walls.
He seemed to be dictating his decrees to his people.
Aoife wondered what the murals had looked like when they had been fresh.
New. She longed to get closer, to feel the grooves, to get lost in their stories.
But nothing would make her less popular than she already was.
“They’re trying to figure out how they’ll get Shadach into the city,” Hallus said.
And Aoife couldn’t help a stab of … some emotion.
Jealousy? Annoyance? Whatever it was, it was the feeling that Shadach should have been translating for her instead of Hallus.
Followed by the knowledge that no one should have needed to translate for her.
She should have been able to understand.
But Shadach was all the way over there commanding proverbial armies while she was over here sitting in the dark. Figuratively and literally.
Hallus casually raised his hand then put it back down. It took Aoife a minute to realise he was responding to something in the conversation.
“Apparently,” he said, leaning closer to Aoife, “I’m coming with you to the Emperor’s City.”
“Joy,” Aoife said.
Hallus laughed.
There was more talk, more plans made. When Hallus hadn’t translated for some time, Aoife said, “What’s happening now?”
“They’re trying to see if we can sneak Shadach in through one of the drug smuggling routes, but there’s some question as to whether Aristen already knows about most of them.
” Hallus glanced at Aoife. “He has to know about them so he can ignore them and let the drugs through. Under normal circumstances.”
The plans continued to be made. Without Aoife.
She had the fleeting thought that if she, too, was risking her life then perhaps she should have been included.
Up until now, it had always been her and Shadach.
Figuring things out. Surviving. Now, that had been taken away from her and she wasn’t sure what to make of it.
On the one hand, she was grateful. Between her and the Halcin, the Halcin knew more about stealthy plans for taking over a kingdom. On the other hand, she felt useless.
Aoife wondered if this was how it was going to be.
Forever. When she became Empress, would she be constantly cast aside, useless and unwanted?
Nobody seemed to think she should be the one sitting beside Shadach on the throne.
Not the Halcin, not the Xana priestesses, save for Tafana, and Aoife doubted the Selats would much support her considering she had no previous titles, wealth, or status.
The silly thing was they were probably right.
What did Aoife know about ruling a country?
She didn’t want to be an empress. She wasn’t trying to do or be anything extraordinary.
She was only trying to love Shadach. He was what she wanted.
He was all she wanted. Since when has what you wanted ever been the right thing?
The thought came to her. Vile. Cutting. Aoife swallowed the sick in her throat.
“Huh.” Hallus’ voice pulled Aoife from her terrible thoughts.
“‘Huh’ about what?” Aoife said. Hallus was slouching in his chair, arms crossed in front of him. His body language said he was bored but his eyes were fiercely alight.
“I guess Kesra is coming too.” Hallus’ tone was as suspect as everything else he did.
Aoife was about to ask “who is Kesra?” but then she looked to Shadach and no explanation was necessary.
The Kesra in question was talking to Shadach with an ease that was the tell-tale sign of an old acquaintance.
Of a shared history. Her tight black dress might as well have been painted onto her porn star body, her lips a deep and enticing shade of red.
She said something to Shadach’s mother over her shoulder, who smiled.
She was tall and beautiful and Halcin, her eyes equal parts ruthless and ravishing.
More than that, she looked perfectly at ease here. This was a woman who belonged here.
“I suppose it makes sense, she’s got some skin in the game,” Hallus continued as if Aoife had prompted him.
“Did you know her brother is in prison? Lovely lad. Terrible Halcin. He wanted to be an academic and got arrested for enrolling in university. Well, technically he got arrested for possession of drugs. But the boy hated the things, we all know it was because he enrolled.”
“That’s awful,” Aoife said. And it was. But her voice and her mind were a million lightyears away. Or rather, they were preoccupied with the way Kesra was sidling up to Shadach, laughing and flipping her long hair.
“Do they know each other? From before?” Aoife didn’t want to know the answer yet was quite certain she already knew.
“Of course.” Hallus gave Aoife a sidelong glance, his lips a thin, horrible smile. “She used to be his woman.”