Retraction
In which Irene imagines being married to someone else, and Gen has the answer (as usual)
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The ink pot on the desk behind her moved. For a moment, Irene imagined being married to a large, jovial man, who would come and go by the main doors to her apartments, so their attendants would not wonder and whisper. A man who would ask her directly and cheerily what the matter was. A man of confidence, good humour, bonhomie. A man whom people liked at very first sight, even her troublesome barons. A man with two hands, who liked riding and hunting. A man with no private haunting devils of Medes and nightmares and homesickness.
It was an awful vision.
Her king literally hooked a cushion off the pile Chloe had carefully arranged on the couch and sat down amidst a wheeze of feathers beside her chair, with his most particularly petulant sigh.
"Something is troubling my queen."
Irene watched two pieces of down slowly settle on the embroidery of her sleeve. "We are in the middle of receiving a state visit," she pointed out. "As the host monarch, it leaves me a lot to think about."
"No."
Irene looked round at him before she could stop herself, and then jerked her vision back to the settling feathers. "No?" she echoed acidly.
"If that was the problem," the king yawned, "you'd have thrown a couple of ink pots and apostrophised Eddis to Medea and back."
"You exaggerate."
This was ignored. "Domestic concerns don't set your face into a marble imitation of the Goddess." He twisted round, reached up and ran one finger along her tightly smiling jaw.
A shiver ran down Irene's spine, followed by a most unqueenly desire to get out of her chair and sit on the cushion beside him. She set her jaw a little tighter against it. He was impossible!
And there was much less height difference between them, sitting side by side on the cushion.
"My queen?"
And no, he never gave up, either. Irene sighed herself at the soft whisper of the question into her hair. Only the truth would ever do, for him. "Your father doesn't like me."
Many, many people didn't like her. The Queen of Attolia didn't care about such things. But Gen's father – Irene's memory crept away from the cold stares and measured responses of the Eddisian Minister of War. She knew, of course. She lived with it, every day. The reason that it was Gen's only forefinger that traced her jaw, that it was his left arm that lay over her shoulder...
And Gen shook his head against hers. "No."
"No?!"
She sat up and pulled away from him – which was a mistake, because it meant she could see that he had one of his most infuriating grins on. "What do you mean, no?"
He pulled her back. "Quite a different reason. You never did take back the insinuation that he drank too much, you know."
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