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)
Indeed, in the three days I had been there, I had only seen King Mars four times (not including the throne room debacle).
That first dinner.
Once, when he had been standing down one of the long corridors of his palace, his head bent and listening to four men who looked much like him (but they were not as tall nor as handsome), Prince Cassius and some of Cassius’s men.
He had not even noticed I was there.
But the next time I saw him was the worst.
I was coming up after dinner, alone, leaving my mother with Farah, Sofia, my father, Queen Mercy, King Wilmer, and my future mother-in-law, who was no less remote, and thus I felt the need to escape all of them (most especially King Mars’s mother, who really did not like me).
Upon making the top of the stairs and before turning left to go to my rooms and Tril (who thankfully did like me), I had looked right.
Only to see King Mars striding down the corridor toward me in nothing but a pair of black silk pants that seemed to be made of flowing sheets wrapped around his legs and attached to his waistband…
And nothing else.
The colossal, defined wall of his chest was exposed. As were (obviously) his immensely broad shoulders. Equally obvious, his strapping arms and sinewy, veined forearms.
I could do nothing but stare.
It was true, I had seen men on our estate, workmen and farmers and Father’s guard sweaty and dirty after being done with a day of work, and they’d pull off their tunics or shirts to dump a barrel of water over their heads.
But I’d seen nothing the likes of that.
When I felt something start burning deeper into my skin, I lifted my gaze from his chest and caught his black eyes searing into me.
It was then I rushed quickly to my rooms (trying not to look like I was rushing).
I shut the door…
And I bolted it.
He had not (thankfully, or perhaps…not, though I wasn’t quite certain why I thought the latter) come after me.
The next day, I saw him again only for him to introduce the formidable and commanding King Aramus and his beautiful Queen, Ha-Lah. He did this in a way that indicated he was very annoyed with me when that could not be, for I hadn’t been around him to do anything annoying (maybe he’d noticed I was, indeed, rushing to be away from him and his…chest).
And that was the last I’d seen of him.
One could say things were not going well at Catrame Palace for me.
Farah was lovely. Her mother as well (although, it was worth repeating, she was sad, and I felt this sadness had many facets, and part of it had to do with Queen Elpis, which was, from what I knew about that sorry situation, understandable).
And I could forget all of this during the excursions my mother, Mercy and I took in the city, which had proved to be full of wonderful smells, lively, friendly people, and fantastical happenings, not to mention enthralling goods and wares for sale, homes, tents, gardens, awnings and everything. All of it I could not hide my utter fascination with.
But back at Catrame Palace, even with its beautiful, exotic opulence, things were dreary.
“Pardon?” I said to Farah.
“It is not you she is being cold to,” Farah said to me. “Her son has forgiven my mother and me. She is finding this more difficult.”
This was confusing.
“Forgiven you?” I asked.
Her head tipped to the side and her demeanor grew wary.
“You do not—?” she began.
I lifted a hand. “No need to speak of it. I know.”
And I did know.
Mother whispered it to me while we wandered a bazaar in the city the day after we arrived.
It was shocking, but I’d heard my father speak (and sometimes rant) often about the intrigues and violence of politics.
So it was shocking and it was sad, but it was not unusual for a plot to be hatched to assassinate a ruler (Mars himself (and I shuddered to think about it) had thwarted three such coup attempts during his short, five-year reign).
It was just unusual for it to come to fruition.
And obviously, I’d never met anyone even remotely involved in such goings-on.
Further, it was wretched when I met such persons, they were Farah and Sofia, who had not been involved, but they’d been swept up in the treachery all the same.
I dropped my hand and carried on speaking.
“But I hope it is not gauche, or offensive, for me to speak of it, fair Farah. I only do so to say I understand it, of a sort, for I do know my father would think the same, as would my king. This being that anything my father did was some extension of me, when it is not. He is his own being with his own thoughts and actions. But they do not reflect who I am and shouldn’t for they are not my own.”