30 Imogen #3
She climbed her towering dais slowly, the deep-purple train of her gown trailing behind her. She waited until she was perched upon her glittering throne to answer. “I wanted you to see it.”
The back of my neck nettled. My breaths came tight, as if something sat upon my chest. “Why?”
“I placed you rather quickly as Ligea’s daughter,” she said.
“I’d only met her once, but she was rather striking, with those mean yellow eyes.
” She smoothed the skirts over her legs.
“Your eyes. Embarrassingly, it took me a moment longer to realize that he was your father. Perhaps I didn’t want to believe it…
” She paused, gaze darkening with an obvious look of resentment.
“But when I saw that spinel on your finger and learned your name, I forced myself to accept it as fact.”
A slick sweat had broken out across my entire body. My heart beat so terribly that I could feel it in my fingertips. “And why would my parentage matter to you?”
Her laugh was angry and booming. “Do not waste my time, child. By now I can’t imagine there are any secrets between us.”
I expected there were, and I guessed hers were many. “And does Halla know? That we’re sisters?”
The empress twitched with held anger. “I told her last night.”
I nodded as an uneasiness filled me. She sat there quiet and glaring, twisting a single ring around her finger with her thumb. It only added to the ache in my head, the awful feeling in my stomach.
“I’ve already seen this room,” I finally said, wanting desperately to leave.
Her white brows shot up. “Yes, but you’ve not seen my throne.” She extended her hands over the florid chair she sat in. “Come.”
“I’d rather go.”
“I said, come.” At her barked command, Lachlan and the guards came up beside me. “Oh, your sailors,” she jeered. “You all may come too. Come, please, and look.”
As far as I knew, the fort was empty, as I’d not seen a single Obelian maid or servant or guard as we’d walked. I had every right to leave here now and I’d likely remain safe, but there was a frightfully mad look in the empress’s eye that made me want to appease, that made me curious.
I whispered to Lachlan. “Stay here.”
“No.” He started walking with me.
Then, slowly, together, we came to the first step of the dais.
“There,” she said, then clamped her red-painted mouth. When I stopped, those frantic eyes of hers fixed to mine. She spoke in a tight-lipped whisper. “There is not a trace of him in you.”
Of Nemea.
“There is,” I said, just as softly, with a touch of resentment. “Where you cannot see.”
Something in her regard changed then. It was not approval or jealousy, but something close. “Not in Halla. Not in her look or her heart is there a shred of the man. He had such cunning, such stoutheartedness.”
Stouthearted. To hear him spoken of with such longing and veneration hit me like the blow of a fist. It took me a moment to gather myself. “Perhaps you do not know either Nemea or Halla as well as you thought you did.”
She scowled at that, then dropped her attention to the gold scrolling arms of her throne.
There were short, thin spikes at the very end, where one’s wrist would fall.
Beneath, in what looked like a gaudy embellishment, was a funnel-shaped shell with a hole underneath.
I’d not noticed any of those details from afar.
“It is not just a throne,” she said reverently. “It is where I pray. It is where I make my offerings. Where I plan my conquests. It is the very seat of my power, the embodiment of my might, an emblem of what I am willing to give to maintain it.”
Those barbs drew the blood from her wrists.
I leaned into Lachlan’s armored side. My stomach rolled and heated with a swell of nausea.
My pain was growing, spreading. My muscles were near spasm.
When she met my eye again, my vision split.
With barbaric glee, she watched me sway before Lachlan helped me firm my stance.
“You are not as formidable as you think you are, Queen Imogen.” She spoke once more like a mother would to her young child, in a whisper that was honest and sweet. “You are but a skin, filled to bursting with the finest wine. And Eusia is very, very thirsty.”
My hand flew to my sick stomach, when the fall of quick feet echoed down the hall behind my guards.
“There you are,” Aleka said to us in reprimand.
“I went all the way to our corridor searching for Queen Imogen.” My guards bade her enter the throne room and she stopped just inside, her keen, kind eyes moving between the empress and myself.
She took a deep breath before lowering herself into a bow.
“Your Majesty. Your Imperial Majesty.” She straightened.
“Queen Imogen, the carriages are here to take us down to the palace for the ball. I thought we might ride together.”
“Yes,” I said quickly.
Before I turned to leave, assisted by Lachlan, the empress rose, her face inscrutable. “Enjoy your evening, Your Majesty.”
And with a deep chill, I gratefully left the empress’s throne room, Fort Vuoria, and its Godsdamned mountains for the palace by the sea.