Unlike now.
Instead of pushing further, he waited and wrapped the blankets around them both as his arms encircled her waist. She gave in to her emotions, and Leon bit the inside of his cheek. In ten years as his mistress, he hadn’t once seen her lose her composure, much less cry, and her weakness left knots in his gut.
“’Twas a mistake to return to Sadai,” she whispered.
“I sent a woman I trust into that country, a tenacious spy who feared nothing, and she’s returned to me broken. I was going to wait until the sun rose before asking for your report, but considering your tears, I have to ask. What happened? What brought you back early and afraid?”
Ida rose from the bed, her bare feet picking their way across clothing strewn haphazardly on the floor from a few hours before when she’d returned. Near midnight, she’d crept into his chambers, her return from Sadai just shy of a week early.
The look on her face had led him to ask no questions, but as she stood in the sprinkling of sunlight the morning brought, dread seeped into Leon’s bones. Her fifty years did little to mar her body, but a decade of leading battles had left scars aplenty across her frame, and Leon frowned to see a fresh mark across her thigh, its scab already sloughing off and healing.
“I’ve failed ya, Your Majesty.” Her shoulders slumped forward before she faced him.
“Were you not successful then in finding the location of the Order of Amaska?”
Her lips trembled. “I—I was successful, Your Majesty.”
King Leon sucked air through clenched teeth much too fast, and the ever-present congestion in his lungs leapt forth. Another coughing spasm whipped through him.
Stars danced before his eyes, and Ida’s footsteps sounded nearby. Shortly after, she pressed the mug into his waiting hands. Some of the medicine sloshed out of the cup before it found his lips, and several swallows later, the spasm passed, leaving hope in its wake. “Where is the Order located?”
“Sire, there’s more—”
“Where are they?”
“They’re near the coast, near the town of Haif—”
He was two feet out of bed and halfway to the door before he remembered the need for clothing, and despite his bruised lungs, he quickly dug through his clothes chest. Leon seized the first clothes his fingers touched: an old pair of breeches a touch too loose at the waist, and an undershirt that bore a hole from a moth.
He didn’t care what he looked like. After thirteen years, he had finally found the men who had massacred his family. His giddy footsteps carried him across the room where he rang for a page. When the boy appeared, his face flushed at the sight of Ida’s nudity as she stood near the window. Leon grabbed the boy’s sleeve, pulling his attention into line. “I need Captain Fenton brought to my sitting room immediately.”
When the door shut behind the young page, Ida wrapped a robe around her and knelt before Leon, who gestured for her to rise. He haphazardly dug through a box of letters. “Once Michael arrives, you’ll tell us both about their location. We have plans to make.”
“There’s more, and ya must hear it alone.”
When he faced her again, she still knelt on the stone floor, and her shoulder length hair spilled limply across her face. “What more is there? After thirteen years, I finally have the location of the bastards. Today is a good day, Ida. Today I will have my revenge.”
“Will ya march across Sadai’s borders to take it?”
“If necessary.”
“You’d bring the wrath of the Boahim Senate down upon us? Would ya rip this land apart again for ’nother pointless war?”
King Leon took her hands into his own as he knelt down beside her. “I thought you would understand this. Those bastards killed my wife. My daughter. What else would you have me do? The Boahim Senate has done nothing to stop the Amaskans. If they won’t seek justice, then I will.”
The knock at the door interrupted them and as Leon rose from his knees, Ida seized the edge of his shirt. “Ya think you’ve the whole of it, but ya must hear me out. Please. Send the good captain away ’til you’ve heard the truth.”
King Leon sighed, and when the page knocked on the door a second time, he opened it a crack. “Tell Captain Fenton I’ll be with him shortly.”
“Speak. Tell me what has kept you tossing in your sleep.”
At first, she didn’t make a sound, choosing instead to stare at the carved pieces of wood inlaid in stone across his bedchamber floor, and he ground his teeth at the silence. When his lips smacked open, she said, “I never intended to hurt ya. Know that I’d no idea what they planned, I swear to ya, but I found—in Sadai—your daughter’s alive. Iliana’s alive.”
This time when the air left him, he worried it would not return as his lungs froze in place. He sputtered twice before his vocal cords worked again. “You speak madness. She died by Amaskan hands.”
“I believed it, too, Your Majesty, but I swear to ya that I saw your daughter alive… and well. You sent me home to find those responsible for her death, but she’s alive and traipsin’ through the capital city of Aruna. It’s her; I’d swear my life on it.”
Leon gripped the handle on the door as he squeezed his eyes shut. “I sent her away for protection, and the Amaskans killed her outside the city walls. That’s what Goefrin told me.”
“Bastard’s a traitor.”
King Leon heaved her to her feet by her bare shoulders. Rough hands tilted her face to look at his, but even then, her eyes veered sideways as she refused to meet his gaze. “You speak in riddles. You tell me my daughter’s alive, you tell me you have the location of my enemies, and that my most trusted advisor’s a traitor. You will explain yourself and how you know this to be true.”
“G-Goefrin’s my uncle. Was sent here to get close to your father, to gain the royal family’s trust, and then to give evidence to interested parties of your family’s coup to overthrow the Boahim Senate.” As the words spilled from her mouth, he could feel the wrinkles in his brow multiply.
Don’t do that, Papa. The wrinkle monster wil get you. Hearing Iliana’s five-year-old voice in his mind left him weak, and he stepped sideways as his balance wavered. Three steps found him alongside the bed he’d shared with Ida minutes before, and he reached out to one of the four bedposts. His aim was true, but he stubbed his big toe on the chest at the foot of the bed. Leon cursed under his breath.
Ida massaged her throat as she spoke. “I grew up in a family that told me… things, things that’d make it easy for me to believe that my own actions were just and true. When the Little War of Three began, it—it was the perfect opportunity. Uncle Goefrin and my brother sent three of us here to Alesta.”
King Leon dropped the letter in his hand.
“—Our task was simple. While the King was busy with the enemy at his border, we’d take the child Uncle Goefrin arranged for us to ‘protect.’”
“No.”
The single word sent her blue eyes to drown in unshed tears. “I swear to ya, Leon, I didn’t know what they planned. No one said they were to kill ’er. I thought—”
“You thought what, exactly? You would kidnap my children and wife? My family? To do what exactly? Go for a walk in the woods? Who the hell are you to take part in such a—” This time when he shook her, the tears fled their prison and leapt across her cheeks. “That’s what you are—you’re Amaskan,” he whispered. She winced when his fingers squeezed what little flesh clung to her bones, but she didn’t look away. The quiet anger within left him breathless, yet he lifted her off her feet before he flung her to the floor with a snarl. “Who are you? What are you to crawl into my bed, into my heart. For ten years—”