The perfect bow of her pink mouth quirked and she raised one brow. “Have you looked your fill?”
“You are very beautiful,” I said. There. A compliment to start the conversation. Sondra would be proud. Especially that I reined back the remark that I’d like to see her without the costume. I would—but not the way that it would come out sounding. What was the woman like, under her masks?
“Why did you want a private audience, Conrí?” she asked, as if she hadn’t heard my compliment at all. Probably she heard more lavish praise and so often, it had become like background noise to her.
Hearing my true name from her lips made me feel more stripped than losing my armor and weapons had, and I stared at her, unable to think clearly.
“That is your name.” She raised her brows in question, though she hadn’t posed it as one.
“Not a name anyone knows or uses,” I replied tersely.
“The Lady Sondra does.”
“Because she won’t stop,” I muttered. I’d forgotten Sondra spoke my name when warning me not to attack the queen. Not much got past this keen-eyed woman.
“Excuse me?” The queen’s perfect brows—and the glinting jewel beside one—went higher.
Better to go on the attack.
“What about you—do they call you Euthalia in conversation?”
“No.” She lowered her brows in an elegant frown. “No one but His Imperial Majesty is allowed to address Me by My given name. You will address Me as Your Highness.”
“Euthalia is a mouthful,” I commented, deliberately disobeying that edict. If she had me executed for it, at least I’d avoid whatever Anure had in mind. “And I don’t want to call you by what the imperial toad does. I bet they called you Lia when you were little.”
She gave me a long look. “I begin to see the self-destructive troublemaker in you that enabled you to defy His Imperial Majesty.”
“Why do you care what my name is?” I was genuinely curious.
“Because calling you the Slave King is an insult,” she bit out. “Surely you realize that, Conrí.”
I studied her. Her clear eyes held anger, but not for me, I thought. She might be insulted on my behalf, which was … extraordinary.
“I have no kingdom,” I explained slowly. “I have been a slave and the people who followed me first were all escaped slaves. There’s no shame in being king of people strong and greathearted enough to survive that.”
She considered that, lashes lowering so the crystals glittered. “I see. But I’ll still call you Conrí.”
“Call me Con,” I said, surprising myself, then grinned when she looked up. “And I’ll call you Lia.”
Narrowing her eyes, she huffed out a sigh. And suppressed that smile again. Could I truly be amusing her? “Say that around anyone else and you’ll find yourself lacking a head.”
“Better that than having Anure slowly carve me to pieces.”
“You call His Imperial Majesty by his given name, too. Do you not have reverence for anyone?”
“No,” I replied, my voice harder than I intended. “Not since my father died.” I added that to soften the denial, then regretted saying so much.
“I’m sorry.” She sounded sincere. “Who was he? That is, what realm did you come from?”
“Is that why you called me here, to ask about my personal history?” I returned the question. Not the right tack at all. Sondra and Ambrose would’ve had me answer. We could’ve bonded over our dead fathers, both kings of old. Absurdly, however, I found myself wanting her to like me without all that. And where that impulse came from, I had no idea.
“No. You’re right—your personal history is yours and changes nothing, regardless.” She tapped her nails together in her lap. They seemed to be crafted of metal, jeweled and coming to long points like the curved thorns of rose vines. She seemed to come to a decision. “I have a somewhat unorthodox proposal for you, Conrí.”
“Con.” She might not know that the rí was an honorific in Oriel, but better to save her the embarrassment if someone else did know and called it out.
She pursed her lips, growing impatient. “This is important.”
“What proposal?” I asked, keeping the hope—such a foreign sensation—out of my voice. Could Ambrose have worked more magic than getting me this audience and she’d save me the trouble of this ridiculous quest for her hand in marriage by proposing to me?
“Yes.” She studied me, her gaze frank and appraising. “I know the man you brought with you is a wizard. Don’t ask Me how I know. I won’t answer. But this wizard—”
“Anure says wizards don’t exist,” I pointed out, mildly disappointed that it wouldn’t be so easy. But then, nothing ever was. Why I enjoyed needling her I couldn’t say, except that she kept surprising me and I wanted some of my own back. Also, it was fun. I absorbed that with some astonishment.
She’d paused at my interruption, lips parted, and exhaled a quiet breath of irritation. “I want to keep this wizard—”
“Ambrose,” I supplied.
“Thank you.” She sounded both aggravated and amused, though her face revealed none of it. “I want to keep Ambrose on Calanthe.”
Not at all what I’d expected. “So keep him. You are the queen here and I’m your prisoner, as you’ve made abundantly clear. I can hardly stop you.”
She pursed her mouth over her first response, gave me a more considered one. “His Imperial Majesty’s emissary, Syr Leuthar, will no doubt wish to escort you to Yekpehr. While he wasn’t in court yesterday, people will inform him that there were three of you. I can hardly provide him with one prisoner when he expects three.”
“One?” I seized on that. Did that mean what I hoped?
“If I can keep Ambrose on Calanthe, I should be able to keep the Lady Sondra, too. Saving her life should be enough temptation for you.”
A tempting offer indeed. Ambrose could possibly take care of himself—vanish off the ship in a puff of smoke or some such—but if I could save Sondra, set her free … “Why would you do this?”
“Ambrose could be useful to Me. As they officially don’t exist, wizards are not so plentiful that I’d willingly lose such a treasure. I would give him sanctuary here. And he’d be free to leave, of course, once it’s safe for him to emerge from hiding, though I hope he’d stay.”
“And Sondra—what value does she have?”
Lia gave me a hard look. “Don’t pretend to Me that she means nothing to you. The relationship between you is obvious. And everyone has value, Con.”
She flinched at the harsh bark of my laughter. I couldn’t help myself. “That’s a pile of utter shit, Lia,” I said, kind of loving that she gaped at me, her painted lips parting in shock, the expression animating her face. How would she act if I kissed her? Would she call the guards or would she … I shook my head. No idea where that impulse came from. No idea why it suddenly seemed deeply appealing.
But I edged close as she recovered her poise, and she didn’t yell at me for my rudeness as I’d expected. “You can laugh all you wish, but I do believe in that. Everyone has value.”