She frowned. “Excuse me?”
“I would not have thought based on watching you serve at the palace that you were like this.”
“Because that was my job. Sometimes we would talk, don’t you remember?”
“Yes.”
He had thought that she was funny at times. Charming, even. But she was quite young, and he had been married, so he had never thought too deeply about it.
“And you came to work at the palace when you were seventeen. Your stepmother was taking your salary.”
He wanted to get her biography straight, if nothing else. He could ponder the mysteries of her, her personality and his attraction to her for the rest of forever.
But if they were going to do this thing where they got to know one another, then he needed to understand exactly what all she had done before life brought her here.
“Yes,” she said.
“And what made you think to apply for work at the palace?”
“What I had heard was that you were an extremely fair employer. And, I was already a maid in my own home. So I thought I might as well get paid for it. Even though, as we’ve discussed, I didn’t get paid for it.”
“And what made you decide to live with your stepfamily after your father’s death?” he asked.
“Nothing made me decide it. The way that my stepmother presented it just made the most sense. And I followed her lead. It was foolish, I admit. But I didn’t know better. I was very young. But it enmeshed me deeper and deeper into this family that I was never really a part of. Just a convenience. A convenience when she felt she could use me, and a burden when she decided she couldn’t.”
“And your stepsisters are…?”
“Influencers,” she said. “That’s what they do. They make videos and put them online, they get brand deals. My stepmother very much wanted one of them to marry you when Circe died.”
“The likelihood of that never existed.”
She laughed. “I know. And I also know that I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t gotten me pregnant.”
“How did your mother die?” he asked.
She looked down. “Cancer. That’s why for a while I thought I wanted to be a doctor. You know, until I woke up and realized that’s simply never going to happen for someone like me.”
“Is that still what you want?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. What I really wanted was to make a difference. I wanted to do something to fight against what took my mother away. But there are other ways to do that. In fact, as queen I… Am I allowed to ask for something?”
“Yes,” he said.
Her face softened just slightly. “That feels very almost generous.”
“I don’t know that it’s generous. It’s only that a queen does oversee special projects.”
“I think I would like to oversee funding for medical research.”
“All medical research, or cancer?”
“All of it. Especially thinking of what happened to Circe. It’s not just cancer that takes people.”
He was touched by her inclusion of his late wife. Touched that she felt affected by the loss. That she cared.
“And I would really like it if eventually, I could sponsor scholarships. For girls like me. Who really, really wanted to do something to make a difference, but didn’t have the money.”
“Yes. Of course. I will put you in touch with the appropriate channels, and we can make it happen. Though, of course, you might want to focus on that after you have the baby.”
