Fantasy of Fire (The Tainted Accords #3)(37)
I scrunch my eyes closed. This news is so much worse than I expected. I can’t believe my brother is only telling me now. No wonder he’s so anxious to get back.
“Thank you. It cannot have been an easy tale to carry, or to share.” I kiss him on the cheek.
He doesn’t smile like I expect him to. He doesn’t quite meet my eyes. Dread pools in my chest.
“There’s more,” I say in a dull voice.
He sighs. I know that sound. It’s the weight of two worlds on his shoulders. Olandon looks at me. Grave beyond his seventeen years.
“On my travels, I came across a woman. I thought she was insane at first, but then…” His eyes flicker and he swallows hard. “Did you know Uncle Cassius has a wife?”
Chapter Eight
The aftershock of my conversation with Olandon echoes within me as I hurry to the meeting room. My people have been starving for revolutions while I pranced through their masses, completely unaware, thinking I was helping by delivering a box of apples once a week. What a fool.
And there was the small part about having an aunt I never knew about.
I’d spoken with my brother long into the night, soaking up any detail he imparted about Osolis and Uncle Cassius’s wife, Jain, who apparently looked after me as a baby. Cassius never did have an ‘O’ at the start of his name. I’d thought it was a way of telling the court he was married to my mother’s service. It didn’t happen often in our history, but it did happen. Usually, the ‘O’ was dropped to show you were taken. I was Olina. When I married, I’d be Lina. It was an easy way of telling who was still available. I suppose, looking back, it’s designed so emotionally embarrassing conversations can be avoided.
I throw open the door to the meeting room. The important men jump in their seats and stare as I take my seat opposite Jovan’s empty throne. Great. Now I’m slamming doors.
They jump again as the door behind the throne slams back. Jovan strides through, unaware—or uncaring—that he’s frightened them. The advisors fall back into their circling arguments and I sit, barely listening as I reflect on what I’ve learned about Uncle Cassius’s wife. About what she knew. Mother exiled her as soon as I was old enough to be left alone. Aunty Jain had known about my blue eyes. She became a dangerous liability to the Tatum.
I have no memories of her face, but then I doubt my veil was taken off much. I spent years with a woman who, from Olandon’s account, may have loved me. Someone may have loved me. That news rocked me as much as Olandon’s other startling revelations.
He said she’d asked him to tell me a story. One she’d told me as a toddler. I’d known the ending, though I couldn’t ever recall hearing it.
“What do you think, Tatuma?” Roscoe asks.
I sit up straight. “Sorry?” There’s a smattering of muffled laughter, not all of it nasty. I don’t think I’m alone in my inattention. A man several seats to my left looks to have fallen asleep on his hand.
“Perhaps the Tatuma had a late night?” A snide voice speaks. “Now I think of it, where has the Tatuma been these last few days?”
I turn to Blaine. “I’m sure if the king wanted you to know, he would tell you,” I say sweetly.
Drummond barks with amusement. “She’s got you there, Blainey boy.” This raises Drummond three pegs in my book, giving him a total of three pegs.
*
“What is the matter?” Jovan speaks into my ear. I barely refrain from jumping out of my skin. I nearly walked right past him on my way to our table. I search the immediate area in the food hall. No one is close enough to listen.
“Jovan,” I say. I breathe in his scent; it has a way of settling me.
I hear him inhale deeply. “I could listen to you say that all day,” he says casually.
His name? He likes the sound of it? If he doesn’t move away, I might be convinced to say it again. His smell is driving me insane.
“Are you worried about tomorrow?” he asks.
Tomorrow! Olandon’s news pushed my ‘unveiling’ from my mind. I shake my head, rattled by the extra stress. “I’m … preoccupied by my brother’s tidings of Osolis,” I say. Jovan gestures me to the wall. He stands like a shield, blocking me from the view of the food hall as I relate the most important aspects to him.
He abandons his protective role as I finish and leans on the wall beside me. My view is now unobstructed and I see we stand by Arla’s table. My jaw drops when I see Jacquiline next to her. Fiona was right! Jacquiline is hanging around Arla. But Jacky hates her! The whole situation is baffling. Arla looks my way, posture tight. It looks like I’m on her naughty list again. She’s always viewed Jovan as her property. As the highest-ranking Bruma female here, being Drummond’s daughter, she’s probably been groomed for the position of queen. The woman, a prior bed-partner of the king, had not so nicely warned me to stay away from him shortly after my arrival on Glacium. I’d heard someone call her a gold-digger before. The description fit. We’d had many run-ins, and I’d always found great humor in our exchanges. Which is why the white-hot anger in my stomach takes me completely by surprise. Apparently, I now care very much.
“How could your mother treat her people this way?”
I hear Jovan’s furious question and try to rein in my jealousy as well as I can. It’s an entirely new experience for me. I almost feel sick.