Page 65 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

“Dealt with.”

“The way an Eldritch Commander deals with almost traitors?”

“Only this Eldritch Commander. I’m the nice one, remember?”

“What did you want to talk to me about?” she asked, pulling the domes from the food plates.

“That clown who keeps painting your villages with motivational quotes.”

Her glass of water stopped midway to her lips. “The White Veil? What about it?”

“It? So, you don't think it’s not someone playing dress up?”

“It has never interested me much.”

“Lying eyes and all.”

She raised those same lying eyes to me. “Eyes don’t lie, Malik.”

“Yours do. But why are they lying to me?” Leaning forward to pry a piece of bread from her fingers, I said, “People say it comes to you, it heeds to your call for help, bows to you, follows you. Why does this thing do all that, Thora?”

Her eyes dropped to the piece of bread that I plopped in my mouth. “What are you asking?”

“I’m asking, what did you do?” Had this been ten years ago, I would have known, I would have been the first to know. She would have whispered it in my ear like she whispered all other secrets of hers, she would have giggled, feeling coy. She would have looked up at me, so innocently, blinking those dark lashes until I’d agreed that what she’d done was fine, that it wasn’t wrong. I would have told her it was dangerous without her turning to give me the dismissive looks she now gave me when I showed any ounce of concern or care. She would have glared at me, argued with me, she would have pushed me until I would have broken apart and let it go. I would have broken and accepted it before she would have told me anything at all, but I loved seeing every flash of emotion across her face when she would have argued with me. There was nothing I liked more.

“You think I have somehow summoned it?” She sat back, crossing a leg over the other, the frilly cotton nightgown parting at the side to reveal one long lean leg. “You think I've grown myself some dark powers and called for the gods to send me a little helper? Seduced, perhaps?”

“Did you?” I asked, leaning forward and pulling the material of her nightgown over her bare leg.

Her eyes chased the motion and then rolled back to mine. “What if I did?”

“I’d be very impressed. The Dark God must be very impressed if he sent such a helpful divine weapon.”

“But there is no weapon, Malik. It is the Winter God’s doing. The wind, the snow, the people all say he is displeased. Reasonably so,” she said, the lies melting off her tongue like butter.

“That’s working oddly well in your favour.”

“What can I say? The odds treat me kindly.” She leaned over her knees and picked through her meal to dip her spoon straight into the pudding, ignoring the untouched main course. “Now I have two divine beings acting on a displeased god’s behalf. Condolences, husband,” she said, licking the spoon clean. “I promise your suffering will be for a good cause.”

“Why are you in such a good mood?”

“Why do you always assume I’ve done something?”

“Because you have.”

She threw her dessert spoon on the table a little ungently, letting the metal thud hard against the wood. “And if I have?”

“Stop spinning us in circles.”

“I’ll do whatever I wish.”

Ignoring the cold glare she had fixed on me, I picked up the spoon she dropped and her pudding bowl. “Owning up is more honourable than having to find out for myself that even the wind beats at your pace in this kingdom, yet every Isjordian seems to think you go against the wind, challenge the wind, lose against it, too. The Thora Krigborn I know doesn’t lose, she only gracefully pretends to.”

“Don’t pretend you know me.”

“There is one person who pretends well here, Thora. And it is not me.”

After a few moments of what seemed less like contemplation and more like spiteful seconds, she said what she’d told me many times before, “I will not become what I hate.”