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Sleeping, Irene was less still than she was awake. The careful lines of her mask were smoothed away and her chest rose and fell in even swells under the sheets. They tended to roll away from each other in the night, too hot and too unaccustomed to sleeping with another to bear so much of someone else’s skin for long.
Her hair was spread like water over the pillow. Morning after morning, Eugenides had observed her endure with patience the clucking from her attendants over the tangled state of her hair. Now, she tried to remember to put it back into a loose braid before they fell asleep. It made him ache to watch from her pillow as her hands twisted the dark strands over each other. Last night, though, they had given into exhaustion too quickly and he supposed he would have to face Aglaia’s accusatory looks as she combed it out.
Irene opened her eyes to reproach him. “What are you thinking so terribly loudly about before the sun is risen?” she asked him. Her voice never rose above a whisper yet each word seemed clear and distinct, as if she had said it directly into his ear.
He kissed her fingertips, then her wrist. “Admiring you.” Eugenides pressed close and she obliged him, curling herself around him like a cloak. It took a few moments of crossed limbs and shifting for them to settle and then she was furled so close that he felt the rise and fall of her breathing as his own. Before they were married, a part of him had thought he would never relax around her. He was still afraid, sometimes, but it surprised him how quickly the feeling was vanishing, yielding to the rhythm of his new life and retreating to the more inconsequential realms of his nightmares and the dog hours of the night.
Irene did not attempt to go back to sleep. Her lips pressed against his hair and her skin was warm and her breasts soft against his back. Creeping under his nightshirt, almost like an afterthought, her hand smoothed over his stomach, causing the muscles there to jump under her palm. He squirmed, feeling her breath hot on his ear and wanting her hand. She moved haltingly, still hesitant, but he arched eager and wanton into her touch.
Low voices drifted in from outside the room. Eugenides hoped that it was nothing, but did not rely on it. They separated. The knock came a moment later and Irene was already in her nightshirt, pulling on her robe as she went to the door. It was her attendant Imenia, who spoke in low tones to Attolia and pretended she didn’t see him on the bed.
Attolia nodded at her attendant and swept out of the room without another glance. Eugenides laid back to consider courses of action. His own worthless attendants wouldn’t come for him in his own room for at least another hour. Irene’s bed smelled like her. Sleep came and he drifted into heated dreams for a while until the dawn.
He woke hungry and wanting, slipping back to his own room without satisfying his desires. Before he was married to Irene, he could hardly have guessed how idle thoughts of their nighttime assignations would occupy his waking hours. Eugenides remembered how often his mind had turned to Irene before and how he had thought her a fiend from hell for it. He could laugh now at his younger self. It had been only a few hours since he last made love to her and he found himself so distracted that he didn’t realize what crimes his attendants committed with his clothes until they were passing a series of recently-replaced windows in one of the upper corridors. He halted and looked down at himself, and his useless entourage went on for a moment in confused inertia. The sash was bad both in color and in style, making his waist look thick and his coat, gaudy. He could feel the attendants smirking at each other and resigned himself to going on.
The queen and her women were already in their places on the terrace for breakfast. He did not forget to scowl at Imenia when he caught her eye, but Attolia’s attendants were well trained and she only returned his gaze placidly. The queen looked him over, eyes lingering on the sash, and quirked an eyebrow. Eugenides returned the look as evenly as he could and joined her at the table.
His appreciation for breakfast, always a healthy one, had increased since becoming king. He shared it with the queen, so it had become the only meal that was assured to not have sand sprinkled over it. The pastries and fruits were easily managed with one hand and the presence of his queen was enough to cow most of the malintentions of his attendants. Each morning he watched with no small amount of pleasure as they squirmed, out of earshot of the conversation at the table, thinking of their crimes and if this was the day the queen would learn of them. It made his heart soar to watch them. Only Sejanus smirked still, sure, Gen supposed, of his new king’s impotency.
He finished his pastry and stole a grape off the queen’s plate so that she would look at him, which she did. She moved the platter of fruit closer to him, deliberately. He beamed at her, thrilling in the frisson of pleasure that he got from drawing her attention.
He felt the cool skin of her ankle bump against his under the table and his mouth went dry. Attolia went on speaking of plans for the harvest festival, but she must have known that his ability to listen had vanished, because her lips had gone very thin. The glint of amusement in her eyes gave her a rare air of smugness, he decided.
Too quickly, breakfast was over and a series of dull and unpleasant appointments awaited him.
He bent over Attolia to kiss her cheek and the delicate scent of her hair oil flooded his senses. She caught him with a hand and held him still and he felt all of his muscles turn to liquid.
Her eyes raked over him again. “No, I don’t like it,” she said, referring to his outfit. Her hand slipped around his waist to the knot of the sash and the press of her fingers neatly undid him.
His attendants were smirking, seeing the queen giving him a humiliating set-down, but the flush on his face had little to do with embarrassment. He concentrated his attention on not ordering the whole lot of them away so that he could touch her like he wanted to as Attolia removed the sash and handed it to one of her attendants.
She motioned to Philologos. “Bring the king a new sash. The porphura.” He bowed and scampered away, no doubt to do exactly as she commanded without tricks or sidesteps.
She was still very close and he fixed his eyes to the line of her hair falling across her cheek and ached to touch her. Perhaps this was the worst part of his own foolish plan to draw out the snakes of her court by affecting a distance between them. He had constructed for himself a trap where he could not do freely the only thing he longed for. As if she knew the self-pitying direction of his thoughts, the queen brushed very lightly over his hand as she turned away to speak to one of her attendants.
Philologos returned with the appropriate sash, out of breath. Attolia nodded at him and he tied it under her watchful gaze.
“Better,” the queen declared, but the lingering impression of her disapproval rippled through his assembled attendants. Eugenides suspected they would be well behaved in matters pertaining to his wardrobe for at least a few days, until their fear of the queen faded and Sejanus’s sly asides dug their hooks into them again. He had a hook he would certainly like to dig into them, he thought, temper pricking at him as he thought about the long day he would have to spend suffering their company.
Hilarion cleared his throat. “Your Majesty, your lessons,” he said, contriving delicately to make his king sound like a schoolboy.
Attolia nodded to them. He wished he had not already kissed her, so that he could bid her farewell again, but was obligated to turn away and trot after Hilarion and the other attendants like a well trained pony.
As he was led around the palace to various lessons, his thoughts were not on the Mede language, nor barley yields, nor port duties, much to his tutors' consternation. Irene would return to her rooms after her public audience and he considered how to best cut short his meeting with the tariff counselor so that he could join her.
Lunch was an unpleasant affair. Attolia usually took an informal but public meal, using it as an opportunity to carefully show favor to barons who supported her. It was Eugenides who had complained that he didn’t want to make nice with obsequious nobles while he was trying to eat, choosing to take his midday meals privately. Now, his retinue had realized that if they arranged for the meat to be sent uncut, Eugenides would refuse to eat it rather than ask them. His struggle over his food was a losing one and they all knew it cost him much more than it did any of them. He was still hungry when the food was cleared and he was prodded off to the next item on his schedule.
Next came what were ostensibly etiquette lessons with Ornon. Attolia had protested him using any of his covert methods to shepherd the Eddisian ambassador around her palace, so Ornon had had his apartments transferred to a suite with an empty room that could be converted into practice space. The Attolians, who left him to his ambassador’s tutelage, found it varying levels of amusing and humiliating that the king needed lectures on comportment from his own ambassador.
“Enough,” Ornon barked, lowering his sword. “It’s a practice session, not a duel.”
“If someone attacks me with a sword, they won’t be pausing to give me time to catch my breath.” Eugenides, breathing heavily, lunged again.
Ornon had been defending himself more conservatively and raised his sword in plenty of time to knock him back again. “And that’s why you’re acting like a new spear in his first fight, trying to prove himself?” There was sweat at his temple but his breathing was easy as he continued the lecture. “You waste energy when you have no need.”
Gen didn’t have a response to that. He kept his eyes on the muscles that he hoped would give away Ornon’s next move. “Baaaa,” he couldn’t resist taunting, after evading another hit. A muscle in Ornon’s jaw twitched.
It was a fleeting victory. The flat side of Ornon’s practice sword smacked into Eugenides’s ribs, his own weapon moving too slow to block it. He got another strike in, but Ornon laid a blow to his wrist, knocking the sword from his hand and ending the session.
By the time the king’s attendants came to retrieve him again, Ornon’s servants had gotten him rinsed off and dried and his hair oiled back to its previous state. Ion smelled of perfume, his face not quite set with his usual bored expression. He, evidently, had put the time Eugenides had spent with Ornon to good use.
“Enjoy the gardens, Ion?” the king asked sourly. Ion startled for a moment and his eyes flew over his own clothes, looking for incriminating signs of disarray, then back to the king, who returned his suspicious gaze without inflection.
Eugenides sulked all the way across the palace. Ion was meeting his sweetheart for trysts in some secluded hedgepath while the king was forced to sit through meetings and work off his tension with a sword. He wouldn’t see his wife until court and then they would have to sit next to each other like two mantel figurines and not speak. Being king was a wretched job.
When they arrived at the tariff counselor’s office, a surprised secretary told them that the counselor was out. Eugenides felt his heartbeat spike and something of his reaction must have shown on his face.
“Her Majesty said that the king would come next week instead,” the secretary protested, blinking rapidly at the group crowding his office. “The message came half an hour ago.” Sweat beaded on his temple and he looked as if he was worried that his new king might consider accidentally canceling a meeting to be a capital offense. Xikos and Xikander were smirking at each other, not bothering to conceal their sneers that their king might allow his wife to rule his schedule.
“No doubt Her Majesty’s message was simply waylaid,” Hilarion assured him silkily.
“No doubt.” Eugenides tried to appear uncaring and ordered his attendants back to his rooms. As usual, they brought him there circuitously, adding several minutes onto the journey, and he was in a particularly bad temper with them by the time he arrived. Ion was going to regret that last detour when he had no one to impress with his velvet hairties but the Eddisian garrison stationed in the hinterlands. Gen made malevolent vows to a number of gods, promising revenge on them all and satisfied himself more immediately by declaring his intention to take a nap and slamming the door to the guardroom in their faces. Free of them at last, he looked across the room and smiled.
The queen sat at his desk paging idly through a volume of Attolian history he had left there. She didn’t look up immediately, and Eugenides watched her for a moment, admiring the movement of her hands and the way her embroidered sleeve fell over the vellum. He suddenly wished her in his own room back in Eddis, where he had so often dreamed of her.
“You cancelled my meeting,” he told her, breathless with delight. He crouched to palm the heel of his boot with his hand and met her eyes as he slid each of them off.
Irene lowered her gaze innocently. “Do you mind?”
Eugenides rose, blood thrumming, moving to stand behind the chair and press his lips to the base of her throat. “Cancel anything you like,” he told her, murmuring as he wasted no time in seeking out her skin. “I am at your disposal.”
He was looking over her shoulder, so he saw the moment her breath changed, chest hitching under the silk of her gown as she inhaled unevenly. Irene turned her head towards him, so close that he felt the shift of the air as she moved to look at him with dark eyes. He shivered, feeling naked already under her gaze.
She reached to pull him around the chair and he fell into her. Irene kissed him fiercely as she drew him into her arms, stealing all of his breath and his capacity for thought along with it. His hand wandered along her spine until he reached her carefully pinned braids.
There was no trace of surprise on her face when her hair suddenly tumbled to her shoulders.
“I thought about you all day. At breakfast,” he murmured, “your hair, your hands.”
She looked faintly pleased. “Tell me what you thought about.”
Stealing her away. Taking her somewhere she never had to sit peaceably and offer wine to barons who had taken money from Sounis to undermine her throne and he never had to bite his tongue at some useless nobleman who found it amusing that a queen who had rejected him was forced to submit to a husband at last. But Irene without Attolia was unthinkable and she had sworn on their wedding night that she would not abandon her people. “You. This.” he told her, not a lie. He kissed her throat and was pleased to see the flush spreading across her skin.
“I missed you, too,” she murmured, and his mind went blank. She sought his mouth again so that she could kiss him until his lips were buzzing, until his mouth turned slick and swollen.
His cramped muscles alerted him to the awkwardness of his position, pressed between his wife and the desk, knee drawn up and half in her lap. From beyond the room, he could hear the sounds of the guards moving as they changed shifts. Eventually, someone would venture to knock.
Eugenides couldn’t be sure that his bed was fit for the use of any human, much less that of Irene. There had been a recent rash of sand and reptiles in his sheets. Just this week, Philologos had somehow acquired a snake, which Gen had found lying in the sun on the windowsill when he snuck back to his room in the morning. His queen would have heads on pikes if she found out, so he guided her instead to the couch, cursing his attendants in his head. The couch was meant for reclining and had one stiff shoulder piled with pillows there. Irene sank against them, pulling him along, and he went gladly.
She froze suddenly in his arms and he realized with a curse that his hook had settled in the small of her back.
Moving carefully, she laid a hand on the cuff and he looked away. “Off or on?” she asked him, curling her palm around the leather.
“I get a choice this time?” He spoke before his mind had thought to stop his tongue.
The deliberate stillness of her expression told him that his words had landed, but she only brushed his hair away from his forehead and waited.
“Off,” he said finally.
She had done this, too, on their wedding night, with the artificial hand that he had worn for the ceremony. It was excruciating, though it had little to do with pain. When it was off, he wanted to draw the stump behind his back, but Irene had taken his wrist and held it gently in her two hands.
“Eugenides.” Her voice was quiet. “I didn’t cancel your meeting with the tariff counselor so that we could feel sorry for ourselves,” she told him, very sternly.
He laughed, grateful, like releasing a breath, and leaned into her again.
“So,” he agreed, still chuckling, and kissed her. “I am at my queen’s service, of course.” He dragged his lips across her jaw and nipped at the underside of her chin. She shivered and ducked her head and he felt her arch against the whole of his body, wanting him closer.
It would take time that they didn’t have to remove her gown, he thought regretfully, running his hand over the silk. One day, he would like to cancel everything and lay her out on her golden bed and devote himself to her. He wanted to have her to himself, without duties or interruptions, to make her come undone over and over without the threat of morning hanging over them. They had so little time for themselves and so much to learn about each other. Together, they were unmaking their walls slowly.
Irene was holding him gently, fingers curled loose around his forearms. Her thumb swept lightly over his skin. He sat back, not quite putting all of his weight on her thighs as he carefully arranged the pillows all around and underneath her. Then Eugenides twisted so that he could slide his hand between their bodies. Rising and bracing himself on his knees to free her skirts, he gathered the silk in his hand and drew it up, uncovering her. Irene’s hand clasped his for a moment, warm and sure, taking the fabric from him and freeing his fingers to press between her thighs.
It gave him no less a thrill to feel her soft and slick and clenching for him now than it had the first time and each time after. He moved against her and luxuriated in the sound of the sigh she gave when his thumb brushed over her swollen nub.
He slid from her grip and pressed down her body so that he could add his mouth to the efforts his fingers were making. His own arousal heightened as he felt her shiver at the first touch of his tongue. He loved this, loved the warmth of her thighs and the taste of her pleasure, loved feeling her body respond to him so openly. Irene’s fingers wound through his hair and he let out a moan, unsteady and openmouthed against her. He bit at the insides of her thighs and then, impatient, licked again at her center, provoking her, moving too slow to drive her to her peak.
“You will end up unsatisfied if you don’t leave off your games,” his wife warned him, still far too possessed of her senses for his preference.
“I am king,” he told her obstinately, but moved his mouth to where he knew she wanted it. A part of him was still aware of the ways he felt clumsy with her, unsure what to do with his stump, chin bumping against his hand as he tried to match the rhythm of the two but Irene, Irene overwhelmed him and it was hard to feel uncertain. She was all around him, her touch and her taste, her smell and her sounds.
He knew that despite her assurances, she had not arranged this assignation simply because she missed him. Attolia could wait forever; a few hours was nothing. She worried that he was unhappy, that she had demanded too much from him and that he would resent their marriage because of it. He crooked his fingers and closed his mouth around her and she arched up under him.
He would gladly give her this a thousand and a hundred thousand times, he would give her his nights sneaking in and out of the dark, he would give her a king because it was what she had asked of him.
“Enough.”
She gave a sharp tug on his hair and he obediently wriggled up her body.
“You have had a trying day,” she said dryly. Her hands seemed to be everywhere, stripping him efficiently. “What on earth happened with your sash this morning.” Her palm slid down to rub over his arousal and his hips jerked against her.
He groaned and rested his head against her shoulder.
“Let’s not speak of the deficiencies of my attendants right now,” he pleaded, laughing, and to distract her, lowered his head to scrape his teeth along her collarbone. He kissed as low as her dress would allow as she fumbled for the buttons on his trousers.
Her hand closed around him and his hips jerked involuntarily as she drew him to her. She spread her legs and it was somehow that openness which made his face heat. He meant to tease, but found that he was not up to the challenge and sank into her in one long slide. Flushed and expectant, with her hair sticking to her skin, Irene looked impossibly radiant. She arched an eyebrow at him, as if she knew that rational thought had fled him as soon as he pushed into her body.
He drew back and tried to find the leverage he wanted to go beyond shallow thrusts. They shifted and he hiked her leg up over his hip to push deeper, finding an angle that made her gasp and dig her nails into his shoulder. He felt her other hand slip down between them and too soon she was clenching tight around him, warm and shuddering.
“Irene, I can’t —”
She cupped her hands to either side of his face and kissed him. He made a desperate sound against her mouth as his hips lost their careful rhythm and his thrusts became erratic. Reaching the edge, he spent inside of her, clutching at her as she held him close.
Irene stroked his hair as he caught his breath and then, when he had disentangled himself, went to get a cloth. They curled together amidst the pillows.
“Don’t tell Aglaia I ruined your hair,” he whispered. “She hates me enough.”
Irene arched her eyebrow at him. “I’ll tell her it was a strong wind that pulled out all my pins.”
Eugenides blew a breath out obstinately into her face. She lost the battle to keep a straight face and laughed at him. The grin he returned was delighted.
“My darling,” she said softly, kissing him. “I must leave enough time for Aglaia to return the pins to their place before court or I fear you will only sink lower in her estimation.”
Eugenides let out a gusty sigh. “I am near the pits of hell with her already.”
Attolia smoothed out her skirts and collected the last of the wayward hairpins from him. “Return her fibula pin and you may hope to dig yourself up to the surface of the earth by the time winter comes.” He walked her over to the seam between the wood panels that hid the passage between their rooms, ignoring her baseless accusation. Still, he was surprised when she ducked her head to give him a final breathless kiss.
Irene stepped away just as he was ready to drag her back to the couch, court or no court. Reluctantly, he released her and she moved away into the passage. When she was almost to her own room, she looked back to smile at him and lower her lashes, not a soft look but a promising one. “Until tonight, my king.”