Chapter 17 George goes to a banquet.
seventeen
George goes to a banquet.
With the banquet looming, George and her friends gathered in her apartment to prepare as they always did before palace events. It was a spot of light before diving into darkness.
Ean glamored Isahn into a nondescript Salskanan aide.
Better than a sight mage’s mirage, his elven glamors affected the look and feel of the hidden object—or being, in this case.
A mirage that effective would take two mindmages to pull off, one handling sight and another managing touch.
George could, hypothetically, accomplish it herself, but it would require her full focus and quickly drain her well of power.
Elves didn’t seem to have those—she’d asked, but had never gotten a clear answer.
They were more than entitled to their secrets though, so she never pushed.
Wynnie adjusted George’s diadem while Burke reviewed his guard position, earning Hildy’s grumbled complaints about too many questions.
Though her dear friends tried to keep things light, any time George put on her headpiece, the mood inevitably shifted. Dunstan had once joked that she should consider wearing it all the time to desensitize them to its oppressive presence. She considered it for all of three seconds, then declined.
One day, when she was queen, she’d melt her diadem down—her father’s crown too—and start anew.
The triclinium was warmly lit and smoky with incense.
Guards stood straight-backed and cold, like stone pillars against the walls.
Viceroys and palace residents filtered into the room.
Those who arrived with their aides on their arms, like George, went directly to their seats.
Those who needed an assistant had to line up to greet the king and receive their assignment.
This is how it was always done under Gasparo’s reign, where tradition, for the most part, had been tossed aside in favor of his bizarre, degenerate whims.
George took Isahn around the edge of the room, skirting behind the king to approach their seats on the lectus imus.
Lying down first, she propped herself up on her right arm with her back to her father, and gestured for Isahn to join her.
He stretched out beside her, all olive skin and dark hair, as Burke took up his guard directly behind them with his back against the wall.
It was the oddest thing, seeing Isahn like this.
He wore a white tunic with sleeves that ended just past his elbows and highlighted the corded muscles of his forearms. Over top, Dunstan had successfully wrapped Isahn’s gold toga.
The clothes were new, but his appearance was what she found most jolting.
George reached up with a finger to twirl one of his false, dark curls.
“This is making me jealous,” he whispered, voice gravelly.
“Oh, why’s that?” She kept her reply a hush.
“I know you’re looking at another man right now.”
George grinned just as a meaty finger tapped her on the shoulder, and Isahn’s eyes followed the smile slipping from her face.
“Georgetta, which pet should I give to your friend here?”
Suppressing a sneer, she rotated to face her father. His brunette aide lay between them, her eyes unfocused as she held up an olive between two fingers, waiting for Gasparo to want a bite.
George swallowed back bile, hating the moment, hating her father, and hating the way he abused and dehumanized every person around him.
Drawing herself back to the present, George took a steadying breath and looked to see which of her friends was waiting.
With her chest hollow and throbbing, she glanced between Dunstan and the three aides standing off to the side. All of the enslaved women were dressed in short golden togas that ended at mid-thigh.
The toga was worn by the two extremes of society: noblemen on one hand, and the enslaved on the other. The juxtaposition made her sick. When she was queen, there’d be no forced service, and those who chose employment in the palace could dress as they liked.
Shoving her tongue behind her top lip, she smoothed away the sneer that threatened to curl it.
Dwelling on her father’s insanity, that he was demanding she pair a captive with her friend, wasn’t helpful.
Instead, she forced herself to feign interest and study the poor aides.
One woman batted her lashes at a viceroy behind Dunstan and Wynnie.
George wouldn’t select her, as she likely wanted to be paired with the man she was ogling.
While that was practically unheard of, it was heard of—that’s how Elio and Greta met, after all.
The second woman looked timid and scared, shaking with nerves as she wrung her hands.
The third looked tough. That didn’t mean she was, or that being an aide in Hepikoru wasn’t the godsdamn worst thing that had ever happened to her, but she seemed stronger than the one in the middle.
That one, she needed to be paired with someone kind who wouldn’t make her life a waking nightmare, someone who would allow her to remember the night, should she wish.
“The little one,” George barked, pointing at the shaking woman. “State your name.”
“Helena.”
George’s heart stuttered, her throat tightened, and she hoped shame and her apology were evident in her eyes because she couldn’t do anything but say, “She’s perfect—looks fragile. Give her to Dunstan.”
Her father boomed with vicious laughter, and the other guests tittered accordingly. “So it will be. Go, sit.” He waved them off with a flap of his hand, annoyed at Dunstan and the nervous aide.
I’m sorry. George knew she’d made the best possible choice, though she had to mask it behind harsh words.
Isahn placed a palm reassuringly on her lower back, and she breathed a sigh of relief. He understood what she’d done.
Wynnie was next, and a selection of male aides in their short gold togas were paraded out before her. Luckily, the king didn’t ask George for input. He selected a tall, broad man with black hair cropped close to his head, a common punishment for newly enslaved mages.
George lay stiffly on the lectus imus, running her fingers up and down Isahn’s back, quietly counting the bumps in his spine as she attempted a show of casual enjoyment.
He didn’t seem to mind the attention, and it calmed her significantly.
Several other high-ranking viceroys and their aides filled in the rest of the long series of sofas that comprised the far left set of seats.
Something punched into George’s inner arm, and she jolted, before realizing what it was. It earned her a curious look from Isahn.
“Dunstan,” she whispered as she dipped her head at the guard in question. “He was saying thank you with a touch.”
George’s hatred for her father thudded in her chest, tempered by the reminder she was surrounded by friends and allies.
Across the large chamber, on the lectus summus, Dunstan said something to Helena, who lay at his side. She seemed calmer, and George hoped she’d made the right choice on her behalf.
Wynnie and her aide were positioned in the middle of the lectus medius that ran the length of the space between the left and right couches. Between Dunstan and Wynnie, and currently plucking a grape from the mouth of a disgruntled-looking woman, lay Peros Sarma.
Isahn grumbled something unkind about his traitorous uncle, and George shushed him with a gentle hand.
“Behave,” she whispered, pinching him on the bottom.
With a tinkle of elf magic, the first course appeared on the enormous table between the long lecti. And the terrible festivities began in earnest.
Unexpectedly, during the gustatio, Gasparo tinged the side of his wine glass and demanded the room’s attention.
Shooting a smile that was nothing short of a sneer in George’s direction, her father broke from his typical schedule of a vaguely normal meal followed by bizarre, forced dancing, and announced that entertainment would begin early.
Fuck. She never should’ve told him she intended to leave before the dancing.
The tyrant began calling up couples to perform. True to form, he started with a viceroy and aide on the far side of the room. He’d inevitably work his way around and end with George and her pet during the final course.
The first people called to the front were a young freedman and his assigned aide.
In one of Gasparo’s standard reversals, he made the man sink to his hands and knees, then instructed the aide to climb on his back.
Using him as a pedestal, she was forced to serenade the room while the freedman crawled about.
Several guests cheered, others looked uncomfortable despite their best efforts to hide an “unsavory reaction” from the king.
“This is bizarre,” Isahn whispered, tipping his head up to speak quietly into her hair.
George placed a small kiss on his adorably different mouth. It was still Isahn, though, despite his looks, and she was so grateful he was beside her. “I think we’ll be called up during dessert.”
He balked.
“I’m sorry, I should’ve warned you. I’d hoped we’d be gone before this began, so I didn’t dwell on it.
” She grabbed a few olives and popped one in her mouth before feeding another to Isahn, being sure to languidly trail her oil-coated fingertips over his lips before licking them clean with her tongue.
“What will he make us do?” Isahn gritted out, clearly reacting positively to George’s actions. It was only half an act, after all.
“Not much worse than this,” she whispered. “I hope.”
“You hope?” Isahn’s question was legitimate, though he added a flirtatious rasp to his tone to hide its true meaning when he asked.
George forced out a giggle before she leaned in close and whispered in his ear, “If he’s not pleased with the reaction of his guests, he’ll up the ante on what he asks the performers to do.”
“Oh.”
She murmured an, “Mhm,” while sucking on Isahn’s olive-toned earlobe—for the show.