“It’s really a depressing story.” With a wave of her hand, she tries to dismiss it.
“Make me cry, I dare you.”
Valentina watches me over the rim of her glass for a minute before she inhales and sets the drink down. “Well, I’d gone to the academy to study to be a healer, that much you know. The village I’d lived in didn’t have anyone for miles that could help the sick, and when I expressed my interest in helping, several of them pooled together the funds to send me. My plan was to go back when I graduated.
“I was nearly finished with my schooling, too, when King Melic came for a visit to honor those of us who had passed. He was also looking for a new healer for his family at the time.” Her gaze falls to the table. “I remember the exact moment he laid his eyes on me. It was as if the entire world stopped. The way he looked at me...”
“Like you were something he could take and keep as his prize?” I venture.
“Yes.” She pulls her braid over her shoulder, playing with the end of it. “He stopped his speech to ask me my name. I was so terrified, I could hardly answer him. Then everyone was looking at me. Looking through me, as if they could see a future that I could not. That night, guardsmen came knocking.”
“I had hardly an hour to pack before they were yanking me into a waiting carriage. I begged for them to let me go home, to say goodbye to my mother... to my fiancé.” Valentina drops her braid, only to twirl the ring on her finger in circles. “They didn’t let me.”
“What was his name?”
“Jeremiah.” A whisper filled with affection.
“And did you love him?”
“I did.”
“Do you love him now?”
Her shoulders pull back, chin rising, attention finally returning to mine. “A part of me will always love him. But I received news last year that he passed due to an aggressive illness.”
One that she could not stop because she hadn’t returned to her home as a healer.
Reaching around our selection of food, I curl my fingers around hers and stroke my thumb over her silky skin. “Valentina, I’m so sorry.”
“Yes.” She wiggles in her seat. “Well, there isn’t anything that can be done now, and I’m so very blessed.” Her shoulders lift in a shrug. Her tone lightens as she reflects on her positives. “Every need is met eagerly and enthusiastically.”
“Every need?” My fingers still. Unfortunately for me, I’m thinking about what her and my father’s sex life might entail. She isn’t the current favored queen. No, Lairis somehow schemed herself back into that position.
Crimson stains her cheeks again. “Most needs.”
One heartbeat of silence passes. Then another.
The liquor must be going straight to my head because I break first, saying something that is not a phrase a prince should ever say to a queen. “Do you touch yourself?”
Her mouth forms a perfect O. Gaze shifting for eyes and ears that may be watching, though we are perfectly and utterly alone. “What?” she breathes.
“When you’re alone, when theneedarises, and there is no man to warm your bed. Do you satisfy your own needs?”
Audibly, she swallows. “I—” She sets her jaw, looking exactly as she was trained to for her title of queen. “Yes.”
My eyes flutter closed. There’s something wrong with me. Something deep down in me is messy and sinful because I can’t help but imagine how she’d look with her skirt bunched at her hips and her hand slipping between her legs.
“I often think about you when I do.”
I snap my eyes back open.
“When I met you, you were the first person to offer me kindness in the castle other than the servants. Do you know that? Next was your mother.”
I straighten, trying to pull my mind from the deepest pits of the gutter. “I offered you a drink and congratulated you on the marriage. You were still in your wedding gown, and it was the first time we’d been allowed to see you. You looked...” I smile softly. “You were so beautiful that I forgot to introduce myself, which is why my mother did that for me.”
“You were the first people in the royal family to even speak to me. Queen Lairis didn’t talk to me for months after the wedding. I was heartbroken and alone, until you.”
“You know I think of you often too... at night.”
