Page 76 of Never the Roses

No, Oneira longed to say.No, I want nothing to do with you and your wars.But she trapped the words behind smiling teeth. “I do not wish to see this realm overrun with war,” she replied honestly. “So, I am here.”

Yelena, face rigid, bent to whisper in the queen’s ear.

“A moment, Eminence Oneira,” the queen bade.

Tristan trotted down the steps to bow again to Oneira. “I hope you’re not frightfully angry with me,” he said with a merry smile, as if it were all a joke. “The queen is a stern mistress. If it helps you to forgive me, she punished me dreadfully.” A haunted expression crossed his features, fleetingly hinting at the man he’d once been, vanishing again into blithe nothingness. “I only did her bidding.”

“To convince me to accept her summons.” Of course that had been his goal. And she’d fallen for the gambit, after a fashion. Except that Stearanos had been the one to convince her. But surelyhehad been sincere in his reasons.

“I tried.” Tristan—no, Leskai—shrugged, back to his cheerful persona. “And apparently I didn’t fail, for here you are!” He leaned in closer, whispering. “If you could find it in your heart to mention to Her Majesty that it was my persuasion that brought you here, I’d be ever so grateful.”

“Is your horse truly named Galahad?” she asked inanely, not at all sure why that occurred to her first.

He grimaced, rolling his eyes dramatically. “No. He was named Lucky. Isn’t that a boring name? Galahad is ever so much better.”

“And the injuries?” she asked, thinking poor Lucky hadn’t been.

Leskai attempted a repentant moue that came off more sulky than anything. “Self-inflicted, I admit. Sorceress Yelena gave me a tool to mimic the attack. But all in the best of causes, serving Her Majesty!”

“And Lucky pulling up lame so conveniently? You did that. Harmed a horse and not yourself that time.”

A look of stubborn anger crossed Leskai’s face, hinting at that true self she hadn’t before perceived in him. “In service to thequeen,” he insisted. “For a powerful sorceress, Oneira, you focus on decidedly odd things. Living alone and not using magic. Eating like a peasant. He’s only a horse. It hardly matters what happens to a horse in the grand scheme.”

Oneira had no words, and Leskai wasn’t a whole human being anyway, so she clenched her teeth over them.

“How’s your friend, Em?” Leskai asked with glittering curiosity. “He’s a sorcerer, I’m sure. What’s his real name? You can tell me. I’ll keep your secrets. Promise.”

She opened her mouth to tell Leskai where he could shove his promises, but the queen waved Yelena away just then, and beckoned Oneira closer. Then, surprising Oneira tremendously, the queen rose and stepped down, holding out her hands to greet Oneira on level ground, as if they were equals.

“Whatever I possess or may command, Your Eminence,” the queen spoke fervently, “is yours for the asking. I am so appreciative that you chose to aid me in my hour of need.”

Oneira raised a brow, keeping her expression otherwise impassive lest she reveal her true feelings. “So much so that you sent Leskai to seduce me into seeing things your way, Your Majesty?”

The queen had the grace to assume a chagrined mien, giving a far more convincing performance than Leskai had, whether she felt that way or not. Oneira was betting on not. “I was desperate, Oneira,” the queen said in a lowered voice, squeezing her hands and looking earnestly into her eyes.

All around them, courtiers gazed upon them with naked envy—including Leskai and Yelena—and Oneira was excruciatingly aware of the multiple honors the queen bestowed upon her in this moment. Yes, it was all an attempt to further manipulate her and, yes, Oneira would trade any honor to be back inside her white walls at that very moment.

“Not for myself, but for my people. And Leskai is a harmless sweetmeat,” the queen added with a wicked smile. “I thought you would at least enjoy him in your lonely exile. I intended no malice, only… an enticement, to remind you of the pleasures of court. You have always been like a sister to me. So few women understand what it’s like to wield the power we do, the pressure and the responsibility.”

The queen would never understand how very different the two of them were, alike only on the surface. Leskai looked on anxiously, clearly concerned that he was the topic of their conversation. They all played their games, caught up in the dance of wealth and power.

Oneira didn’t believe for a moment that Zarja had acted on her people’s behalf rather than her own, but no one deserved what the threatening war would bring.

The queen went on, encouraged by Oneira’s silence, as people in power tended to be, thinking that they commanded the other person’s attention along with everything else. They would make plans, she said. The queen would share intelligence from her spies, which wasn’t complete, but was adequate to predict the coming invasion. They could wait until King Uhtric’s forces landed on their shores and perhaps Oneira could send them all to sleep to be slaughtered. Or would Oneira prefer to dispense with the invaders before they ever left their shores? In which case they’d have to move quickly.

Sickened by the thought, the foul odor of roasting meat clouded her brain with old memories. Then Oneira realized the odor was more likely the citadel kitchens preparing the evening meal; no less revolting for that, though. Oneira demurred, saying she’d review the intelligence first.Let the stalling tactics begin.

The queen was fine with that, saying with sincere happiness,“Simply having you here is likely deterrent enough. I’ll see to it that their spies ‘discover’ that information immediately. They’ll likely elect not to risk their ill-advised conquest and then we can choose how we’ll deal with them.”

Oneira only hoped that plan would work as Stearanos had seemed so confident that it would. She couldn’t seem to banish the persistent sense of dread that insisted this wouldn’t be so easy. She’d changed the balance of power by retiring, shifting the lines of what was possible. The exact parameters of the realignment remained obscure, but she sensed it, just as she intuitively understood the flow of the Dream, its waxing and waning, the endemic elements contributed by dreamers and the foreign intrusions that changed the warp and weft.

The queen had assured Oneira that her rooms had been held intact for her return—another demonstration of Her Majesty’s high regard for the sorceress, to keep empty such a generous space in the crowded citadel, and an additional irritant that the queen had been so certain of Oneira’s eventual return, which Oneira had proven correct after all. It rankled that, despite all her certainty and resolve, she’d ended up back in the same place. Stepping into her rooms seemed like pulling on an old skin, one she’d shed and left behind and now no longer fit. Nothing about her rooms had changed. She’d walked away and left so much behind, intact, and they’d been maintained in a pristine state, which only pointed up the ways in which she had and hadn’t changed.

Drifting about the space, she felt like a ghost inhabiting another person’s life. And she couldn’t help thinking of Stearanos. The queen had dangled a harmless sweetmeat of a young poet before her, a gift and a temptation, but it had been her enemy, the flinty and forbidding Stearanos, who had proved to be theone to penetrate her defenses, to pry her from the silence of her white walls.

She still didn’t know what to think of that.

Oneira endured the passage of days, hating every moment of being trapped in the citadel, the endless meetings planning their defense against conquest, attitudes ranging from despair to glee, everyone looking to her with calculating expectation. News continued to roll in from the queen’s spy network, though none of it was actually new information. If Oneira’s return to the queen’s court had created an impact, the effects had not yet rippled outward. Some of the generals and advisors hinted around asking Oneira to spy via the Dream, but no one dared ask outright and Oneira didn’t offer.

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