Chapter 5
Cyra
The Lady of Polaris I’d met months ago in Callanus had been stately and poised, her hair always neatly coiffed, her clothes ornate and immaculate. She’d been every bit the wife of a Triumvirate lord.
The Glenora before me now sat barefoot and cross-legged on the floor of her prison cell in a high-waisted gown that stretched over her pregnant belly.
The skirt bunched around her legs, wrinkled and a bit torn in places, but at least clean.
Her hair was still done up in her usual style, but where previously there hadn’t been a lock out of place, strands had come loose all over so they formed a wispy halo around her head.
I stood in the doorway and waited for her to acknowledge our presence, but she didn’t look up as she pantomimed moving things around on the floor.
“Glenora,” I said, willing my voice to remain steady as I stepped in.
She didn’t give any indication she’d heard me, and I opened my mouth to try again, but Hettie held up a hand and stepped forward.
“My lady, you have visitors,” she said gently to Glenora.
I blinked and looked at Bressen, but he hadn’t yet taken his eyes off the former lady.
Glenora’s head popped up at Hettie’s voice.
“Very good, Hettie,” Glenora said. “They’re just in time for tea. Please show them in.”
She went back to pantomiming what I now realized was preparing a cup of tea. Indeed, she brought the imaginary cup to her lips for a sip.
“Lady Glenora takes tea every day at this time,” Hettie explained. “If you want to talk to her, you’ll have to sit down and pretend. Otherwise you’ll need to wait an hour until she’s done, or she won’t speak to you.”
“What?” I asked. “Can’t you make her speak to us? She’s a prisoner here, is she not?”
I was annoyed by Hettie’s careful treatment of Glenora, but it was Bressen who answered me.
“We’ve needed to be careful of how we treat Glenora until the baby comes. As you can see, her mental state is a bit precarious right now.”
“You’re sure she’s not feigning it?” I asked.
He nodded. “I checked her mind myself. She has only a tenuous grasp on reality that comes and goes.”
“The tea is getting cold,” Glenora said from the floor without looking up. She lifted a pretend spoon and stirred her tea before bringing the phantom cup to her lips.
I turned to Bressen, but he gave me a look that asked what I was waiting for. I frowned.
If I have to have tea with Glenora, then so do you, I said into his mind.
He gave me a mournful look, but I flashed one back that promised no reprieve. I read his response in his mind.
You’re a cruel woman, he said as we both crouched down to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of Glenora.
As soon as we were seated, Glenora raised her head, and a wide smile split her face. “Cyra, it’s good to see you again, my dear. I’m glad you could join me. You prefer the cinnamon tea if I remember correctly.”
She looked me straight in the eye, and her sudden rapt attention was unnerving. I leaned back away from her.
“Probably because it smells like your lord,” she added, winking.
I glanced at Bressen, but he only frowned and turned his head to give his shoulder a quick sniff.
“And what about you, my lord?” Glenora asked, turning her gaze on Bressen. “How do you take your tea? Light…or dark?”
“No tea for me,” Bressen said. “I’m just here for the cakes.”
He reached out and pretended to pluck a cake off a plate before popping the nonexistent dessert in his mouth.
Glenora gave him a small smile. “The Nemesis Incarnate has a sweet tooth,” she said, then cocked her head at him. “That is still what they call you, isn’t it?”
Her eyes returned to me as she held out an invisible cup, and something churned in my stomach. I took it but stopped before sipping.
“The tea isn’t drugged this time, is it?” I asked her coolly. I held her stare, but I felt Bressen’s attention snap to me.
I’d told him before how Glenora had lured me into drinking tea that had been drugged the day of the coup, but I had a feeling he’d forgotten.
Glenora chuckled, and my hackles rose.
“It’s perfectly safe to drink,” she said, taking another sip of her own tea. “I’d be more worried about what’s not in your tea than what’s in it.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What does that mean?”
She shrugged and gestured toward Bressen.
“This one looks eager to put a baby in your belly,” she said, patting her own rounded stomach. “It’s what men do. I’d check your morning tea from now on to be sure the contraceptive berries are still in it.”
I looked at Bressen in alarm, but he furrowed his brows and shook his head the barest amount. I saw in his expression he wanted me to read his mind, so I did.
Cyra, don’t listen to her. She’s trying to throw you off-balance. You know I’d never do anything of the kind. We need to regain control of this conversation, he said.
“Tell me, child,” Glenora went on, “how many times a day do you let him fuck that cunt of yours?”
My mouth dropped open, partially at her language and partially at the audacity of the question.
“I used to let Jerram fuck me at least once a day to keep him pliable,” she said before sipping delicately from her cup. She sighed. “Then at night I’d have Ursan grunting above me trying to make an heir. It’s a wonder I could close my legs properly between the two of them.”
Glenora shifted as if trying to find a more comfortable position. She had a chair and table in the cell, so I wasn’t sure why she’d chosen the floor for her tea party.
“It’s a lady’s job to make an heir, you know, so I wasn’t allowed a contraceptive,” she went on as she patted her belly.
“Or so Ursan said. But that means we don’t know whose spawn I’m carrying.
It’s probably Jerram’s, since two-hundred childless years of marriage with Ursan would suggest the man was impotent, but there’s always a slim chance one of his seeds finally bore fruit.
” She looked between me and Bressen and smiled.
“I hope that hasn’t caused any problems for the Triumvirate. ”
We didn’t answer.
Her eyes sought mine again, and I frowned at the gleam in them.
“Does your lord know you fucked the gargoyle as well?” she asked, and I started in surprise at her pivot.
“I realized it as soon as Samhail came out of that portal in Gendris,” she said. “That’s when I knew Jerram had been right about you taking the beast between your legs as well.”
The fiendish look in her eyes intensified as her gaze swung to Bressen. “Did you know, my lord, that your dearest love was fucking your best friend?” she asked as triumph dripped from her words.
Bressen looked bored, but then he gave an exaggerated jolt of indignation and turned to me.
“How dare you,” he said to me, and his blasé tone mimicked his bored expression. “You slut. You whore. You…” He rolled a hand in the air to indicate he was too lazy to think of other offensive names.
Glenora looked from Bressen to me, obviously disappointed her attempt to upset him hadn’t worked.
“You don’t believe me,” she concluded.
“I believe you. I just don’t care,” he assured her. His gaze swung to me as it turned sultry. “I happen to think Cyra looked beautiful taking Samhail’s giant cock inside her. I love watching her fall apart with pleasure when she’s being fucked well.”
Heat pooled between my legs at the look in his eyes, but my attention jumped back to Glenora as she barked a short, mirthless laugh. Her expression turned sour as she looked me over through new eyes.
“You’re more of a whore than I gave you credit for,” she said. “Just remember that’s all you are to them. A broodmare with a soft hole to warm their cocks.”
I decided not to point out her hypocrisy of calling me a whore after she’d cheated on Ursan with his fellow Triumvirate lord, but Bressen didn’t seem to have any such restraint. I caught the flash in his eyes and heard him inhale as he readied to lay into Glenora.
“Do you know a woman named Magdalene?” I asked, cutting him off.
Bressen froze, and Glenora stopped with her next sip of tea poised in the air.
“I can’t say I do,” she said as she finished miming the sip.
“You’re lying,” I said as her skin emitted a soft red glow almost immediately. “When was the last time you saw her?”
Glenora only sipped her tea.
“Answer me, or I’ll pry open your mind and find the answer myself,” I warned.
“Cyra,” Bressen cautioned me.
We’d discussed the possibility of just reading Glenora’s mind to find what we wanted to know, but Bressen had warned she was fragile right now.
He’d already been in her mind once, but multiple incursions, even without her shield up might be dangerous.
Had Glenora not been pregnant, we wouldn’t have thought twice about rooting around in her thoughts, but given her condition, we’d agreed that invading her mind would be a last resort if she wouldn’t give us what we wanted.
I shifted tactics.
“Answer our questions and we’ll grant you a favor,” I told Glenora.
Bressen looked at me sharply, and I knew he wanted me to read his mind again. I didn’t this time.
Glenora looked up, intrigued. “A favor?”
“Yes.”
“Anything I want?”
“So long as it’s within my power,” I qualified. “Or Bressen’s.”
I saw out of the corner of my eye Bressen was barely holding in his comment. He was still hoping I’d read his mind, but I knew what he wanted to say, and I didn’t care. I’d promise Glenora anything to get to Magdalene.
Glenora paused, not sure whether to believe me, but the fact Bressen was nearly vibrating next to me seemed to convince her.
“I want a Triumvirate seat,” she said.
I deflated. There was no way I could promise her that.
“Glenora, I…that’s not possible,” I said quietly. “You’re never leaving Revenmyer.”
Glenora shook her head. “Not for me,” she clarified as she put a hand on her belly to rub slow circles over it.
“For my child. Regardless of who its father is, this baby has a claim to a Triumvirate seat, either that of Polaris or Derridan. Promise me my child will one day rule as part of the Triumvirate, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know. ”