Page 48 of His Realm

“Please,” I prodded her.

Sabira inhaled deeply before she began. “Leda was, and remains to this day, the most breathtaking woman I have ever laid eyes on.”

I nodded for her to go on.

“You have merely to look upon her only child to know she was a goddess.”

No argument there. Zev was a beautiful man.

“She was brought as a slave from Caledonia, if I remember correctly, and was to be a concubine. This was when all of them were slaves, you understand. Taken, as people were then, as spoils of war.”

Zev got up, and as I had moments before, went to stand by the stone balustrade, staring out at the sea, his hair moving gently in the breeze.

“It so happened that Isabella was at court at that time, and she secured custody of all the women and their children brought before the king.”

“She could do that?”

“She’s the queen, my dear. She may do as she pleases.”

“Okay.”

“So Leda became hers, and unlike the others, whom Isabella sent immediately to her island in Greece, Leda begged to remain at her side in the palace and so became Isabella’s first courtier. She was her constant companion and traveled everywhere with her. Leda was educated and became someone others sought out to learn from. She rose at court, becoming a teacher, and eventually took over the running of the library and the hypogeum. She and Isabella were great friends, and Leda, not the king, was the main reason the queen spent so much time here.”

“And then?”

“And then one day Leda went to swim in the sea and was gone.”

“How do you mean, gone?”

“Gone in a way that it was understood she either drowned or was attacked by some animal in the water.”

“But what really happened?”

She glanced at Zev, who was giving all his attention to the horizon.

“Is it okay if she tells me?” I asked him, checking again.

“You’re the prince’s consort,” he said flatly. “It’s not for me to give you my permission for anything.”

“But I want it,” I insisted.

He shrugged, still without looking at me. “It was centuries ago.”

“That doesn’t make it hurt any less,” Sabira reminded him gently.

“No,” he allowed, and finally turned to me. “But why I should care is a mystery.”

“She was your mother,” I said quietly.

An almost imperceptible shake of his head. “She bore me. She was no mother.”

That fast, I didn’t want to know any more. The fact of the matter was, things that happened in antiquity, I saw them through my modern sensibility, and it was always horrific. This wasn’t going to be any better.

“You know what, it’s⁠—”

“She was kidnapped by men on Decimus’s order and taken to Ophir,” Sabira told me. “There she became his unwilling courtesan.”

I nodded.