Page 102 of The Mad King and the False Queen

He pursed his lips, thinking of a question, before he finally spoke. “What is your favorite color?”

A smile almost immediately crested her lips. “Starting off difficult, I see.”

“It is important to know if I can trust you,” he mused.

She shook her head. “Turquoise. You?”

“Orange.”

“Orange?” she echoed.

“Are you judging me?”

“No, not at all,” she recovered.

His eyebrow raised slightly, a bemused smile crossing his face. “Best season?”

“Fall. What’s your favorite book?”

“The Chronicles of Time.”

“Oh, I’ve never read that one,” Dagmara admitted.

“You’re missing out then,” he replied. “Favorite dessert?”

“Rice pudding. Beverage of choice?”

“Sailonne wine. A pastime you enjoy?” Claude asked.

“Cards. Who is your closest friend?”

“Sabien. Who would you do absolutely anything for?”

“My brother.” The words slipped from Dagmara’s mouth before she remembered who she was. She was supposed to be Magda. What was she doing playing this game? She couldn’t be sharing information about herself and risking exposing who she truly was. She quickly reframed the answer, switching it from her brother Teos to Magda’s brother. “Well, it was Aleksy. Now…probably Odie, my dog.” She hoped her tone was believable.

Claude’s expression shifted slightly. “I’m sorry about Aleksy. Why didn’t you bring Odie with you?”

Dagmara bit her lip. It was time for this game to end. “It’s not your turn.”

A laugh escaped the king’s lips, thinking it was a jest. “I apologize. Go ahead.”

Then Dagmara asked the question she had been holding on to for too long, “Why haven’t you left the castle?”

The conversation stilled. Once more, a blanket of silence cascaded down on them. Claude’s expression fell, his smile vanishing. “I can’t control when a spiral begins. I am afraid my people will see me as a Mad King. You saw what happened tonight.”

The wall between them began to crack. For a brief moment, Dagmara felt sorry for him. Until his next question.

“Have you ever been in love?”

Dagmara didn’t have an answer right away. Everyone she had been with in the past had been for fun. The men thought she was pretty, but never anything deeper. In fact there was never depth to any of her relationships. Aleksy was different…but their relationship had only just begun. In another world, she could have fallen in love with him, but in this world, she never got the chance.

“No,” she replied. “You?”

“Young love, but not the real thing,” he replied. He leaned forward on the bed, the mattress sinking under his weight. “Is there someone in Azurem?”

“Why would you ask me that?”

“I don’t want you to despise me for taking you from your true love,” he said. “And, I don’t like sharing.”

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