Page 91 of Enchanted Shadows
“It’s a date, wife,” I told her as I spun to talk to Emric.
To my back she yelled, “It’s a damn interrogation!”
CHAPTER 28
Iput the container of fresh cookies on the table, deciding water, not whiskey, was needed for the evening. If I was going to learn more about an enemy of mine, I would rather be fully sober, not wanting my favored whiskey to dull a thing.
I had spoken telepathically to Jorah to ask for some fresh cookies earlier today, telling her that I was trying to get Kessara to open up about Calix.
Jorah had agreed and apparently stormed out of a parliament session to do so. I was a little stunned by the action, but I wasn’t sure why I was so surprised. Jorah was the queen now. I would always have her back and she would always have mine. Titles be damned.
We’d been through too much together to have it any other way. I needed help, wanted something to set Kessara at ease, and Jorah easily delivered it. Could she have made the castle staff make them for her? Yes. But she didn’t. Part of how Jorah loved people was through the things she baked them. She’d been a baker first and foremost, long before she ever wore a crown.
I opened the door to find Kessara there, right on time.
She looked at the table. Our dinner from the kitchen at the barracks was there, the cookies waiting for when we were done.
Two bites later, Kessara let out a sigh. “I’ll talk, you eat.”
“Is that what you want?” I stabbed a green bean with my fork.
“What I want is to not have to talk about this ever again. So, I will talk. I will be thorough. If you have questions, please ask them tonight. I don’t want to relive this multiple times.”
“Okay,” I nodded. “I can do that.”
“So, four years ago, I was one of the first people healed in Agria. By Prince Keiran.”
“You can call him your brother,” I offered.
“Not sure they’re ready for that,” she said through a deep inhale. I was beginning to see it was what she did through her nerves. A deep inhale. To make it appear she was calm. Even when she was not.
“They’ll get used to it,” I argued.
She pinned me with a glare.
“Sorry. Right. I’m eating. You’re speaking.”
She nodded and looked out the one window in my cabin as if it would help her. “I was one of the few healed. Reyes was healed with me. We were it, other than a spy who had been on the way home from Corsha and one more person in Wylan, when we were poisoned. By my real father.”
She paused and pushed around her potatoes with her fork. “I should say that most people in Agria know or suspect who my real father is, though none of them have the guts to say so around me. The palm magic is a rather dead giveaway, but my family never confirmed or denied a thing, opting for an air of mystery. Which only made the stories about who and what I was more wild. I was always the mysterious princess with dual Enchantments. A little of Wylan power hidden away in Agria.”
I took a bite of my steak, glad that if I was going to have to sitthrough a story which was clearly bothering Kessara, there was something good to do in the wait.
“So that was when my brother Damek recruited me to the team ofadvisorshe was building in preparation to be named the heir apparent. Artem was too young, I was not a pureblooded Agrian, so all of us had known for a while that Damek would rule. At that time, being one of the only ones with my powers back, I didn’t really have the option of saying no. He needed me. Agria needed me to train. And I had no reason to tell him no without causing a rift within our family.”
She shrugged as her eyes darted to mine. “My family is not confrontational. I have no idea how Theon and my mother even had this huge fight that supposedly happened, because in Agria’s royal family, we do not argue, we do not bicker. We very simply brush everything under the rug. So to keep my brother content, knowing I would never rule and simply had my power back before he did, I began training, Amos as well, while working for Damek. I figured it would be easiest to figure out what Damek was up to from inside his inner circle rather than out of it.”
I shot her a grin. “Youwere spying.”
“I was,” she agreed. “He thought I was spyingforhim, but truly I was spyingonhim. Though I knew Calix in passing, I got to know him my first few months into that. He had been through our military training with Damek and was one of the few people who I thought would stand up to him. I found that as attractive as his actual looks. Which honestly are not bad. Calix is...” she crunched up her nose, “pretty. In a clean sort of way. He is polished. Or portrays being far more polished than he truly is.”
I wasn’t a man to compare myself with others, but no part of me was polished. This man could not be more different from me.
“I am sorry to report that all it took for me to fall under his charm was for him to begin checking in on me randomly. In the beginning, Damek would send me out to hide in the shadows andgather information. But a lot of that was done late at night. Calix began checking in to make sure I got back to the castle. Began waiting up for me.” She pursed her lips like she was running her tongue over her teeth. “Now that I know everything, I wonder if he was just trying to get the information out of me before I could give it to Damek. But I was so smitten with him, with someone who would care to check in with me, that I fell for it.”
Another deep inhale. “One night I had to spy on someone for my brother who ended up getting handsy with his wife. I intervened, only to get reprimanded by my brother for it. His spy had outted herself and he was not happy about it. That night Calix came to my rooms and held me as I wept. Wept for my life which was unravelling.
“Eventually Damek saw the way Calix was looking at me, the way I searched for him first in every room I walked into. He began using us against one another, telling Calix that if he did certain favors, he would promise me to be married to him. Both of us blindly went along with this, trying to appease my brother and believing if we were together, life would be better.” She let out a derisive snort. “Calix was a beacon of hope in a dark time of my life. The missions for Damek became darker and darker, but Calix was there when I got home.”
