Queensmen

Chapter 73

~A Tale Of Fate~

His hair?

His hair...

The first thing Oris had wanted to do was deny it. Say that she would never have written something so silly in a test that would dictate a major part of her future, blame it on a sickness that had affected her state of mind, but after some minutes of thinking back to that day, she remembered.

As mortifying as it was, it was true, and the evidence laid in the last three questions that she had answered when there had barely been any incense left for her to set down her stylus.

What else did I write?

She couldn't recall. So much had happened in the space between then and now, and she had not thought about the test until now.

She had not imagined that she would place first. Not in a hundred years would she have thought that the Emperor himself would read her tablet. Not when she had clearly heard that it straight from Magnus' mouth that it was his job to score the tests.

The kettle let out a soft whistle.

The sound startled Oris out of her thoughts.

She let her gaze drift to it, surprised. The water is already done boiling?

Just how long had she been thinking for?

Hermes didn't comment on her silence. Like before, it settled in the rift between while he steeped the tea leaves.

Instinctively, Oris turned to the stick of incense. Barely a quarter of it remained; the second hour was almost upon then.

How long does he plan to stay? Will he remain even if we have nothing to say to each other?

It seemed as though the Emperor would be content with her company so long as there was tea to be made. As more and more time passed, it seemed as though he was using her to evade his ministers and she didn't know how much tea could drink.

"Sire?" Warily, she stared at the teacup he placed in front of her. It was the same tea as before but it was much darker, more deeply brewed.

Hermes turned his teacup in his hand, breathing in the rising steam before taking a sip. "Have you thought out your answer?"

There was a subtle accusation behind the question and it made Oris wonder. Did he think she would lie? Or did he have a secret concerning his hair?

Maybe it was neither and he thought she wrote that answer so that she would stand out. He had already complained about women trying to warm up to him using either similarities or differences, her doing the same would not have been a surprise.

But Oris was not fickle enough to allow physical characteristics be the bridge that connected the two of them.

Where she was pale, he was dark. Where her hair dripped like blood spilled from a still-beating heart, his was tightly curled strands of lightning-stuck earth left out in the sun.

Wherever her skin was smooth and supple, his was scarred, rough and muscled.

Still, to her he was beautiful... because their eyes were the same. Filled with the same hardness, the same conviction, the same distrust, they found common ground.

No one could understand a newly crowned emperor better than another monarch that had gone through the same, because rulers were identical when it came to their bare bones, especially when they were good ones...

And Hermes was a good ruler.

She could see that in everything he did. He kept the court balanced using his mother's influence, stopped revolts before they could begin by acting lustful and brutish, and  maintained the loyalty of his vassal states by opening his palace up to their women.