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“Jace has invited us to stay and have lunch with him,” Vera spoke up, glancing anxiously between Jace and their mother.
“I won’t hear of it,” their mother said. She gestured for the two girls to hurry up. “Leave these…men to their food.”
“She’s not helping Sai’s cause at all,” I commented to Peter, leaning closer to him as the two of us walked to the table of food. It seemed we would be serving ourselves as if at a banquet, since Jace’s mother had sent the servants away as well. Honestly, with everything else going on, that was probably best.
“No one from Hedeon has been helping Sai’s cause since we got here,” Peter said in return. He shook his head as he took a plate from a pile on one end of the table and started to load it with roasted chicken and vegetables. “I’m surprised Jace invited his sisters to have lunch with us to begin with,” he went on. “We need this time alone.”
I knew what he meant, but I grinned at him and pressed my body against his, purposely reaching for something on a platter that would require me to stretch across him, and said, “I knew you just wanted to get me alone.”
Peter laughed, heat coming to his eyes, and mimicked my action of reaching for something on the table so that he could tangle his arms with mine.
Things would have descended into hopeless flirting at that point if Magnus hadn’t said, “Now, now, darlings. You well know that I adore when the two of you are amorous, but have a care of your surroundings.”
The gentle admonishment was unusual, coming from Magnus, so I knew he was trying to tell us something. I untangled myself from Peter and glanced around at the garden while filling my plate.
Two servants from the palace were still there, but they were finishing up and already glancing to Jace’s mother for further orders. Jace stood with his mother and his sisters at the edge of the patio. The four of them stood close together, and by the expressions they wore, they were fighting in whispers. Gennadi stood a few yards away, in the grass by the corner of the dining table, looking miserable.
I felt sorry for all of them. Family disagreements were the worst, as I well knew. I was glad that my mother had been so adamant about staying in Gravlock instead of accompanying us, even though she might have been able to smooth things over with Lady Rozynov. My mother had made it abundantly clear that she had no intention of setting so much as a toenail outside of Gravlock’s walls for the rest of her life, and she would have rather died than return to the cities.
Lefric and Olympus had already helped themselves to food and sat at one of the tables, along with Ox, Katrina, and, to my surprise, Premila. Premila was pale, and even across a distance, I could see dark circles under her eyes. She sat with her back to the cottage Magnus, Peter, and I were staying in, which meant she was turned away from the spot where her husband had been killed. She held her baby in her arms—and much to my relief, the poor boy seemed to actually be asleep for a change—and it looked as though Katrina was cutting up the food on her plate.
Jorgen and Hati and their pups were at the food table with us, and all of us exchanged knowing looks and did our best not to look at where Jace’s argument with his mother was escalating.
“He isn’t going to win a battle of wills with that harpy,” Jorgen commented to Magnus in a quiet voice.
“No, he is not,” Magnus agreed, topping off his plate with a fragrant, herbed roll. He met Jorgen’s eyes sharply across the table. “But she is his mother, so he must try. Just as all of us, to a man, originated in one city or another. We must try to bring them into the fold, for the sake of the foundation they gave us, if nothing else.”
My brow went up, and I exchanged a glance with Peter. So we were beginning the meetings again, were we?
Jorgen must have had the same thought. He chuckled and shook his head as he and Magnus walked ahead of me and Peter to take seats at the table. “You are relentless, Magnus. You know it isn’t going to work, don’t you?” he asked. “Women like Lady Rozynov are never going to stoop to taking orders from their wayward sons.”
I took a seat at the table beside Lefric, Peter on my other side, Magnus and Jorgen sitting across from us, as Hati, Nikandr, and Kliment took the chairs on the other side of Jorgen and Peter. Interestingly, Peter ended up sitting next to Nikandr, and their posture was so similar it brought to mind Peter’s latent desire to be my and Magnus’s pup.
“Then the sons will need to lead their mothers in the right direction,” Magnus replied to Jorgen, though he looked at me and Peter as he spoke.
I wondered if he was making a reference to the Sons. I wondered what part he thought we could play to sway Sai and the rest of the Kostya Kingdom to do the sane thing and ally fully with the wolf kingdoms. At that point, I was beginning to think we’d all be better off if we either ignored the cities entirely or raised armies to invade them and reorganize everyone the way we saw fit, like I’d half mentioned earlier.
I noticed almost as an afterthought that instead of fetching food and taking a seat, Sebald went over to join Jace in speaking with Jace’s mother, leaving Avenel by Gennadi’s side as he did.
Lady Rozynov was in the middle of saying, “And I don’t know why your brother has even bothered showing you the slightest bit of hospitality if it is going to be ignored in such a demeaning fashion.”
“Lady Rozynov, no one is trying to demean anyone,” Sebald told her in an exhausted voice.
Both Peter and I paused our initial efforts to eat lunch so that we could watch them. So did Magnus and Jorgen, though they were much more subtle about their eavesdropping.
“You are not helping the situation one bit,” Jace’s mother snapped at Sebald. “You should know better. You have been living here in our city by my son’s leave and nothing more. Your purpose was to assist my son in his negotiations, not to be as savage and ungrateful as the rest of the wolves.”
“Lady Rozynov—” Sebald tried to speak to her, his hands raised placatingly.
“I have been through too much to be treated in such a manner,” Jace’s mother shouted, drawing everyone’s attention. The poor woman was deeply upset, to the point of hysterics. “I did not ask for any of this. I did not ask to have my life as I knew it ended, my husband murdered, and my son—” She waved at Jace, her face pinched with misery. “I did not ask for him to be twisted into this abomination that stands before me. It would have been better if you’d died with your father.”
Whatever sympathy I had for the woman disintegrated with those words. I reached for Peter’s hand and squeezed it, mostly because I could see the reflection of the hurt he’d felt last winter, during his final confrontation with his own mother. Damn Lady Royale and damn Lady Rozynov too. Why couldn’t all mothers be like mine? Peter and Jace did not deserve the treatment they had gotten.
“I think you need to leave now, Mother,” Jace said in a hollow voice, standing straighter. “I really think you should leave.”
“I will,” his mother said, lifting her skirts with one hand and turning away. “Vera, Taisiya, come,” she snapped.
The girls looked like they would argue to stay, but Jace sighed and gestured for them to go. They hung their heads and followed.
