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“Please, no,” said Aurelius, holding a hand over his mouth. “And believe me, if I had been exposed to one of the five divine chrysalides and awoken as a demi-god, I’m pretty sure I would remember.”
His skin prickled. It wasn’t just the hangover that was throwing him off, this whole situation was wrong. They had not spoken for six fucking years. For more than a quarter of his life! He had expected some awkwardness in her interaction. Some combat? Some flare! But instead, his mother had greeted him with a warm embrace, chatting away and asking for little tidbits of gossip, just as she used to.
As if nothing had happened.
Aurelius did his best to recompose himself on the couch. If she thought he would simply forgive and forget, she was gravely mistaken.
But he could certainly play along until he got what he wanted.
And so, Aurelius spilled a respectable quantity of gossip. Oh, it was nothing too valuable, just a few of the more widely known affairs in the high society of Mestibes. The nobility might put on their public shows of wisdom and virtue, loving nothing more than posturing and posing their piety. But behind closed doors? In the privacy of their own impulses? There it was a medley of mischief. Each man and woman a creature of carnality.
At least I have the balls to conduct my affairs in the open.
“Well, well,” said the archon. “It seems the good patricians of Mestibes have taken the lessons of the birds and the bees to heart this spring. And after they have the gall to judge me and my actions.”
“And many people were keen to celebrate your sister’s death in a rather loose-lipped way at the feast.”
“Celebrate her life, my child.”
“I know what I said.”
Her show of happy families broke for the first time this morning. “We do not speak ill of the recently dead. Vakaris may still be listening and determining her final destination.”
“And why not?” he snapped. “She spoke ill of me plenty enough. She thought me nothing more than a deviant!”
“She never called you that, Aurelius.”
“No. She was like the rest of your high society, using their diplomatic speech instead. Wayward, I was. Unconventional. Far from Mesti. A confirmed bachelor. Or she’d accuse me of suffering from a divine illness—from wandering vigor.”
“And you don’t think she had a point?”
“Wandering vigor comes from the neglect of Mesti’s virtues? It supposedly makes you act impulsively and without reason? Well, I am sorry to tell you, Majesty, but all my deviant behavior has been out of deliberate choice, not impulse.”
The archon lowered her drink to the egg-shell-colored marble table between them. “She meant well, Aurelius. She loved you as much as her other nieces and nephews. But your actions were wont to undercut the power and prestige of all House Savair. As the second eldest child of a former archon, she was within her rights to preserve the family’s name.”
“Are we still talking about your bitch sister, Mummy?”
Aurelius took joy in her sudden shock. She had really thought he would come here sniveling, didn’t she? Like a dog at the table, begging for a few scraps of prestige? But he was the one who held the power now. He was the one who had the influence and leverage.
And it was time she fucking realized that!
The archon was silent for a long time. At last, she turned to the olive trees overhead, their white flowers made clean and bright through dappled sunlight. “My, my. How the seasons progress,” she said, quietly.
Aurelius glared. “Don’t they just.”
The archon sighed. “You know, my child, when I first came to power, I thought I knew exactly what my path would be. Your grandfather was a strong man. A decisive man. As a girl, it seemed to me that he woke each morning and bent the city to his will. And that was what I intended to do as archon, too. I thought that one person, one house, could make any decision they wanted. After all, that is what our laws say. Officially, the senate is just my advisory body. Officially, the plebeian class exists solely to be ruled.”
A bee buzzed through the crocus flowers that ringed the courtyard, eventually coming to settle on the edge of her mead-sticky glass.
“You can imagine my shock when I learned that every change your grandfather made, every law he declared, had first been negotiated through the senate, and carefully crafted to win favor with the masses. For he knew it was the senate who would elect his successor. And he knew it was the long knives of the people, ultimately, who decided how soon that successor would be required.”
The archon turned a ferocious look on Aurelius. Any defeat which had been there mere moments earlier was gone. Now her eyes glinted with calculated malice.
“That has been my greatest lesson as archon, Aurelius. That there is a terrible danger for those with power to presume to know the path ahead of them!”
Chills crawled over him. First of confusion. Then, and far worse, of hideous comprehension.
“No! No, you can’t possibly mean...”
