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“All right. I was teasing you. And I apologize. I will make an attempt at this civility that you speak of.”
“If you really want to separate yourself from your father, it’s not enough that you have a good heart.”
He felt a strange, painful feeling squeezing around his chest. “I do not have a good heart. I don’t have one at all. I find that is the best way to make sure you remain uncorrupted.”
“You rescued me. You can’t be all bad.”
“I’m not,” he said. “As I said. If you have no heart at all, then you cannot love power either. You cannot love yourself quite so much that you would put your needs above those of your own people. That is what my father did, Livia. As you know.”
“Then what drives you? What makes you decide to do the right thing?”
“The knowledge that doing the wrong thing causes more damage than you could possibly imagine. The knowledge that the alternative is a wasteland of pain for all involved.”
“Then get very used to figuring out a way to convey what I know about you. Which is that you have integrity. Will you agree with that?”
He inclined his head. “I will agree.”
“It is not enough to simply act that way in private. You must actually show that you’re a good leader.”
“Are the people not fed? Are there not jobs? Have they not ceased disappearing from their beds for daring to disagree with me, or uttering a whisper of malcontentedness?”
“Of course they have. But people forget, their memories are short. The more comfortable you become, the smaller your complaints must be in order for you to feel badly. It does not take much to forget where you came from. To forget how truly bad things were. Take it from me. I used to sleep on the streets, and now sometimes I cannot sleep if I get tangled in the soft sheets on my bed.”
The vision of Livia, tangled in her sheets, created a strange sensation low in his stomach. His assistant was growing more and more beautiful, it was difficult to deny. She was much different than the usual women he preferred, it was true, but there was a sort of delicate, bookish charm to her that he found fresh and appealing.
But he could also never forget where she had come from and the way they had come to know each other. He could not forget the position that put the two of them in.
He was engaged to be married. Or rather, an arrangement existed. Violet King would be his bride someday, and it had nothing to do with his feelings toward her at all, but simply what she might add to the kingdom. When he had made the arrangement with her father, it had only been out of consideration for what was best for the kingdom.
And one thing he could never do to Livia was...
He would never touch her. Beautiful or not.
He was pleased, though, to see how she had grown with health. To see her confidence. He found her a compelling, intriguing creature. This, he could not deny.
“Teach me, then.”
“All right. Pick a topic that you’re not interested in at all.”
“There are so many,” he said.
“All right,” she said. “I will pick one for you. I have found that collecting hobbies is a wonderful side effect of having both free time, money and a lack of fear over your surroundings. I have begun doing needlepoint. I find something very soothing about it.”
He could feel his eyes beginning to glaze over. He could think of nothing that he cared less about. Though there was something striking about the way her eyes lit up when she talked about it. Something about her joy that made him feel... Well, he did feel.
“Don’t you think?”
That was when he realized he had not been listening.
“Of course,” he said.
“You think there is nothing quite so diverting as watching golden thread slide through the muslin on a sampler?”
“Well, I imagine for you,” he said.
“You weren’t listening.”
“No. But it’s very boring.”
