Page 35 of Untouched Queen by Royal Command

‘No. Sera, you’re not taking it anywhere.’

Her eyes turned stormy. ‘You haven’t heard me out.’

‘Red or white?’

‘White.’

He poured some into a wine glass and took it to her and their fingers touched.

Her gaze met his and the outside world as he knew it skidded to a halt as a kaleidoscope of memories flashed through his brain. Sera on her knees in front of him, swallowing him down. Sera rising naked from the bathing pool and wringing water from her hair. Sera pushing back the hood of her travelling cloak. Sera, all too tempting, no matter what she said or did.

Perfect posture, regal bearing. He wondered if it came naturally to her or whether it had been drummed into her by her elders, the way Moriana’s had been ground into her. The way cool analysis and never letting anyone get close enough to truly know him had been drummed into him.

‘Is there a reason you don’t trust me to do a good job with this?’ she asked. ‘Have I not been pitch-perfect in my presentation of the courtesans of old so far?’

‘You have.’ He had to give her that. ‘Different audience.’

‘You mean you’d rather not put me in front of an audience that might actually benefit from their profession being acknowledged and treated with respect?’

‘You can reach them without prioritising them. You already are.’

‘But I want to prioritise them.’

‘Why?’

‘You’ve never lived at the edge of poverty and violence and hopelessness, have you?’ She waved a careless hand in his direction. ‘No need to answer; I know you haven’t. But I have. And every day I thank my looks and my luck and the training someone saw fit to grace me with that I’m not still there.’

‘I can’t imagine you there.’ He just couldn’t.

‘My mother was once a courtesan to a high-born man. She loved him, and in many ways that precipitated her downfall because I don’t believe he ever loved her at all. He just wanted her at his beck and call. He certainly didn’t want me to ever draw breath. My mother fled, but his reach was long. She tried to start over, but he always found her. She hid, and once I was born she hid us both, over and over again, always moving, always one step ahead. The houses got smaller. The cupboards got barer. Her sponsors meaner.’

He didn’t like this history she was telling him, but he listened while she paced.

‘I don’t remember all that much of the very early years but, by the time I was seven, my mother was lost in the bottle and dying of cancer and I was so skinny and malnourished that I couldn’t even sit at a table and eat the first meal Lianthe ever put in front of me. I ate a quarter of it, and even that was too much for me. To this day I still prefer to snack rather than sit down to a three-course meal.’ She spared a glance for the dinner table. ‘I trust it’s simply an eating preference by now but it was born of necessity.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ About the food. Her mother and the bottle.

‘You ask me why I proposed the costume tour of the brothels and this is part of it. It’s personal for me. This lavish, glittering history of the Kings’ courtesans is their history too, and you have no idea what simple acknowledgement can mean to those who are outcast. Those who live on the fringes of society and who are so often overlooked. I’m already reaching out and talking to your noble art curators and librarians about the history of courtesans—at your request. Why not reach out to the people who identify with that history the most?’

She was warming to her theme and he couldn’t take his eyes off the glittering, shimmering dragon which writhed on her back.

‘Education and learning. Physical and mental health. Those are causes the Arunian royal family has supported for centuries.’ Irony tinged her voice. ‘Causes you continue to endorse and pour money and resources into. My costume tour proposal should have made sense to you. I designed it to fit within your broader mission statements.’

Too smart by half. Too bold with her plans. And defiantly, unapologetically idealistic. He wondered if he’d ever been like that when it came to what causes to support. He rather thought not. ‘It fits to a point,’ he said carefully. ‘I applaud your…passion for outreach.’

‘No, you don’t. You’d rather bury it. Turn me into a perfect puppet who performs whatever tasks you deem suitable for someone like me.’

‘What I’d rather do is protect you,’ he argued. ‘Keep the press off your back and your reputation spotless by only giving you certain roles to play. If I send you to brothels the press will draw comparisons to what you do here, for me. They’ll dig up your history, make front page news out of you.’

‘So? I’m not ashamed of my pathway through life. I am who I am. You think you’re protecting me—you’re not. You think that by carving away at the unsavoury parts of me you’re reshaping me into something better. You’re not. All you’re doing is carving me up.’

Sera’s hands trembled as she cupped her wine glass and brought it to her lips. She made a good show of wetting those lips but he’d bet his kingdom on the fact that she didn’t swallow so much as a drop. He strode to the sideboard, poured her a glass of water and exchanged it for the wine before she could protest.

‘Why say yes to wine when you don’t even drink?’ he snapped.

She took the water and drank it down, not stopping until she’d finished, and then set the glass on the table. ‘Is that a no to taking the costumes on tour throughout your city brothels?’

‘Yes, it’s a no. You’re not doing it. It’s a bad idea.’

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