Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 137958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
I nodded again while containing a sigh.
“You spoke not of Mercy and Vanka,” he mentioned.
I looked int his eyes. “Vanka is quiet so I don’t know what to think of her as I get the sense she doesn’t know what to think of just about everything. I’m also uncertain what I feel for Mercy. She is watchful and seems…cold. Specifically to the Firenz. Most specifically to Farah.”
He bobbed his head once, decidedly.
“Your guard will remain. The Dellish king is weak and most of this is around the fact he is not very clever. So much not, for him to remain on his throne without a revolt, someone is pulling his strings. And I’m not certain his counsellor is his sole puppet master. I just have the sense that he does not listen to his son, which is the only Dellish I’ve met thus far he should lend his ear to.”
“You seem to have grown an affinity to that particular Dellish.”
“True is genuine. He’s intelligent. He’s frustrated with his father, which is unsurprising. He seems to have the good of all at heart. And he’s tactful. What I read from him, if any of this is false, I’d give up my fastest ship.”
“So True is true to his name.”
He grinned at me. “It would seem.”
I allowed his grin to wash through me.
My husband was handsome.
He looked fine in his clothes of Mar-el, the garments of a pirate.
He was also all the way across the room.
“I must go, Ha-Lah.”
“Of course,” I murmured.
He started to the door, hesitated, and stopped, turning back to me.
My heart skipped a beat.
“And what do you do today?” he asked.
At that, my heart dropped.
I, of course, liked it that he cared to ask. He had not cared before (though maybe he had, considering his remark about getting reports on my activities when he was away, he’d just never asked me).
So this was progress.
Good progress.
Just not the kind I was yearning for.
But my mouth answered.
“Silence has changed her mind about her wedding gown. She brought one. But she won’t wear it. They started sewing her new one yesterday. They finish the fittings today. I attend her.” I finished with a mumble, “We’ll probably go swimming in the afternoon. She’s going to borrow a body stocking from Jasmine. She’s excited to swim. She couldn’t yesterday.”
“This does not please you?” he asked.
“It’ll be fine,” I answered.
“I could ask Mars to open his library to you,” he suggested.
“I’d prefer Silence’s company. Farah often joins her. We will get to know each other better.”
“As I’m sending men to the ships, if you’d like to write letters to your aunt, your father, they will carry them to your family,” he offered.
That was lovely.
Though, writing a letter to my auntie and papa would likely take only half an hour, not fill up a day with delight
And he was still across the room.
“I shall do that,” I told him.
He continued to regard me for a moment (from across the room) before he again spoke.
“If you’ll be all right…” This statement seemed to end unfinished.
I sat on the bed.
He stood across the room from me.
Come to me and kiss me, I thought.
Kiss me.
Kissmekissmekissme.
“I hope to see you at dinner, or if we break for luncheon,” he stated.
He wasn’t going to kiss me.
“I hope that too, Aramus,” I replied.
“Until later, my queen.”
“But of course, my king.”
He left the room.
I stared at the door he closed.
I wondered which guard I’d have that day, not really much caring.
My wedding to my king had been a spectacle. A lavish gown. A lavish ceremony. A lavish parade. A lavish feast.
During all this, we probably said twenty words to each other and sadly, fifteen of them for me were, “I take this man as my husband and my king and his Will be done.”
We’d then had a colossal argument directly in front of our marital bed, which I slept in alone after he slammed out of the room to drink rum, get loud, and eventually sleep elsewhere.
We had, as prescribed, met only the day before. In the sanctuary of Leuthea, the sacred sea goddess of distressed sailors.
There we knelt at the altar, giving our thoughts to her and not saying a word to each other.
For two hours.
But I’d felt his eyes on me.
And I had found my times to study him.
It was the way of things, for the King of Mar-el to wed his queen in this manner.
And now, months later, I was getting the courtship I should have had back then.
But although often endearing…
It was seeming my husband was no bloody good at it.
I sighed, got off the bed, and moved to the bathing room.
It would hearten me to be in the water.
I would not transform, as it wasn’t seawater, but it would feel nice and restore me.
And then I would face my day without my husband, and my night with him but still without him.