She was surprised to see him again.
To be entirely frank, Katherine had forgotten that Freyza was not just the product of a particularly lewd fever dream she had the last time she had left Massouron, but instead was a man of flesh and blood that lived in Souchon Palace, and that she would be running into again. Though she had pined to relive that night ever since it passed, she had not given their future much thought.
Now, towards the end of a balmy night spent dancing in stocked feet underneath the full moon, the thought of him was forced upon her, since she noticed him in the crowd. Had he talked himself up to Henri’s inner circle?
‘Your Majesty,’ he said, bowing as he smiled, forcing his way through the crowd to greet her. He smelled strongly of amber and wood, as if he had been conjured up through a pagan ritual. ‘I was hoping to run into you tonight.’
Katherine, who was feeling the ill effects of the wine, was shocked to find herself charmed again. It had not just been her desperation: Freyza was, if over a decade her senior, handsome in an exotic way that she had not found in anyone else since their separation. His eyes were a rich, warm green that shimmered kindly towards her.
‘Ah, Master Freyza! Out of anyone who I know lives in Souchon Palace, I hadn’t been expecting you,’ she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. ‘Who invited you?’
He leaned in shyly. ‘A number of gold pieces did, Lady Katherine. I don’t associate much with this sort of crowd.’
She had to keep herself from grimacing. It had been a few days since she arrived, and ever since she did, this sort of crowd had been a welcome respite from her dull days at Norbury court. Her trysts and adventures had been multiplied each passing day, as all of Henri’s nearest courtiers and favourites demanded their own little piece of Henri’s beloved huntress. Recognising Freyza’s distance from the crowd made him less appealing to her, especially since winning Henri’s favour was on top of her mind. Making friends outside of his camarilla was a dangerous game that could demote her from the most desired young woman in Massouron to an old matron dallying with diplomats.
‘Oh, why not?’ she asked, grinning faithlessly. ‘I’ve been having a blast ever since I returned.’
Freyza pressed his lips together briefly and raised his brows. ‘I’m glad,’ he said. ‘I just care very little for these types of festivities. You must admit that they are far duller when less wine is involved. I often start my work day early. I needn’t have the curse of poison in my blood by the morning.’
‘Awfully wise,’ she agreed. ‘If a little dull, might I add. I’ve never been a woman of wisdom. Certainly I did not build my life around that trait. The more I live, the more I recognise that I can indeed build a legacy and a reign around things I happen to be quite talented at.’
‘For a woman who calls herself unwise, I would consider that quite the wisdom,’ he said, clasping his hands together behind his back. ‘Lady Katherine, I was meaning to have a word with you?’
Katherine’s face was dewy from the moonlit air that had grown foggy with the dark, and her eyes shone brighter still. Despite her intoxication, she understood clearly that Freyza’s intent was to begin again where they left off all that time ago.
‘Aren’t you already having a word with me?’ she wondered.
He chuckled darkly. ‘How much more explicit must I be?’
Katherine looked around and leaned in when she noticed nobody paid her any attention. ‘Frankly, no matter how explicit, I’m not quite looking to have words.’
He felt himself begin to go red. ‘Your Majesty…’
‘Have you missed me?’ she asked. ‘I feel as though you must have missed me.’
‘Each and every day,’ he admitted.
She kept her face straight, but she felt as though she would grimace. At least she made a strong impression. She was not one to let a perfectly good opportunity for debauchery go to waste, however.
Through her teeth she lied, ‘And I you.’
----------------------------------------
Katherine beckoned him from the main entrance of the palace, where she awaited him with her hands clasped behind her back, looking over her shoulder. Just before he caught up with her, she slipped into the hall and ducked into one of the smaller hallways that it mouthed into.
‘Have I told you how marvelous you look?’ he asked when the chatter of the party died down, unable to penetrate the thick walls.
Katherine looked over her shoulder. ‘He says, three steps behind me. How flattering.’
‘Is something the matter, my lady?’ asked Freyza.
‘How have you fared in my absence?’ she asked instead. ‘Have any Ginefort-looking redheads caught your eye?’
‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘Have any Sbaians caught yours?’
Katherine turned and wrapped her arms over his shoulders. ‘Who’s to say, perhaps I’ve replaced you? Do you still have any use in my roster of favourites, you think?’
Now Freyza grimaced. He let his hands find the sides of her ribcage, even let one of his thumbs softly trail the side seam of her dress, but he shook his head. ‘What’s this?’ he asked. ‘I had expected my positive performance review to buy me more time than a couple of months. Was I wrong to assume?’
Happily, Katherine stepped up to her tiptoes and innocently kissed him on his mouth. ‘Desperation can pass in an instant, my dear. No offence meant. Despite having cooled in my demeanour, that doesn’t mean I’d rather lose you than have you tonight. Whatever I said, barring the sentimental nonsense, still stands.’
‘Sentimental nonsense…’ he mumbled.
‘Do you really wish to spoil a night with sentimental nonsense?’ she echoed, her brows raised and a grin baring her charmingly misaligned teeth lighting up her face. ‘I’ve come to Souchon a free woman. My path lies clear before me and I will walk it — I will not just be a queen, or the queen, but I’ll be the queen of this place. Let’s rejoice. We are both home today. My greatness falls over everything like snow.’
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‘I’ve reached the great orator, then?’ he asked. ‘A great drunk orator, that’s for certain.’
‘A great sober one too, it’s just that it’s far less fun being a great sober orator,’ she explained. ‘Freyza… I’ve a great place we can go. I’ll show you around — this all is mine now too, you know?’
He nodded, stuck between excitement and concern. He had heard about what had happened to Walter, though he had never understood that Katherine and him had been lovers, and he had always considered Walter to be somewhat of a benevolent animal that the retinue kept for his cuteness. A slave the way he sold them back in the day — a companion animal to a powerful person.
‘Is it on the roof?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Katherine said slyly, her eyes darting up and down his form. ‘That’s low, even for me. Or… high. It’s not on the roof. Do you trust me?’
‘I do, actually. These are the things men come to regret, I suppose.’ Freyza scratched his beard, which had recently transformed from a frizzy mass of thorns into a short, glossy version of itself. ‘Good thing I don’t let this happen to me often.’
She chuckled and wriggled herself out of his now one-armed grasp. ‘What?’ she wondered. ‘I thought we’d put down this time each day. Well, well. I’ll be disappointed if you’re disappointed, so I’d begin practising your impressed face now.’
As they began to walk again, Freyza could not help but feel amused at her insistence. There was no way that she did not know that all she had ever seen on him was his impressed face. Whatever gregariousness she felt towards him, whatever charity, was towards his impressed face. Was Katherine happy? He found it hard to decide. Her skin and words felt prickly and sparkly, a torch lightly dusted with gunpowder, that not only shimmered excitedly, but made worrying pangs and hisses all the while.
They entered the Ilworthian wing that had been reinstated since her return, though it still carried the remnants of being uninhabited, and Katherine beat her body against a door that opened with a heavy groan.
What bared itself to them was only a blackness that led down a flight of stairs they could not discern with a light. Katherine took a torch from the wall and waved it around until she found a candle that lay on a notch’s surface, and lit it.
It was far colder in the door frame than it was a step or two out from it, and the smell coming from the abyss could only be described as a combination of cork and must.
‘Is this where you’ll have me killed?’ he asked, his voice resounding threefold into the staircase below, that Katherine began to walk down. She looked up with great amusement.
‘Only if you insist,’ she said. ‘Don’t be such a coward, Frey. Come right along. You know, and I’ll never forgive them for changing this, this used to be behind a false wall.’
Hesitantly, he followed her, with only the long flame of the candle in its holder to illuminate their path. Another notch in the wall, only briefly on show, revealed a wooden sculpture of two lovers copulating.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Be careful, Katherine, these steps are quite tricky…’
Katherine reached the bottom and used the candle to light another couple of candles that sat on a ridge, as well as a torch of which the fire slowly bloomed as she waited for him to descend. ‘Don’t worry, old man.’
It was still largely dark, dimly lit at best, but Freyza could make out where they had gone. Bottles lined the wall, all amber and green glass reflecting. The smell was far more intense, and mingled with a faint rot. As he took it all in, his eye fell on a skull that stood between a pair of bottles, as well as an alcove where hangers hung gemstone necklaces.
‘Katherine, I am unsure of why you’ve brought me here, but—‘
Katherine reached for him and lay a hand on his jaw. ‘I wanted to show you the cellar,’ she said innocently, ‘Why else?’
Freyza’s eyes slid across Katherine’s reddened face. Behind the pastel veneer of her translucent skin, a berry-red blush lit up her cheeks. ‘I’ve meant to write you often,’ he began, leaning into her, ‘You have managed to make quite the impression.’
Whatever words she had spoken to him that fateful night, were now erased by the knowledge her pursuits all this time were not futile after all.
‘I’ve got something even more impressive to share with you,’ she cooed, beginning to feel her intention rot in her chest. If he was as infatuated with her as she assumed from the way he spoke to her, she recognised humouring him would perhaps do more harm than good.
She slid out from his grasp again, and passed a barrel that was so tall that it reached almost up to her shoulders, of which the surface so freezing cold that it almost appeared to carry ice. Some of the oaken planks were stained a cruddy brown red. Freyza lingered by it suspiciously while Katherine sought against the edge of the wall with the back of her hand.
Katherine looked over her shoulder. ‘What’s the matter? Feeling the urge to bathe in an oversized barrel?’
‘No…’ he said. ‘Wondering why it’s so cold.’
She snickered. ‘They say Henri drowned a man in it,’ she said. ‘Explains the stains as well. I’ll be curious to taste whatever wine is bottled from it.’
Freyza got chills and removed his hand from the surface. ‘You have an awfully cruel streak in you, Katherine. Are you aware of that?’
Katherine shrugged and pushed against the door at the very end of the room. Locked. The hinge she had found behind the dusty bottles of wine had been the one to lock it.
‘I’m the queen, Master Freyza, were I some fainting young maiden who did not understand the use and art of bloodshed, I’d have abdicated long ago.’
‘In my dreams, you abdicated,’ said Freyza.
‘What a coincidence,’ said Katherine. ‘In my dreams, I’ve also abdicated.’
They both laughed and took the opportunity to once again get closer.
‘I’d hoped to see you again,’ he said, ‘Upon your return. But to have been taken to a libertine’s den of human remains, some of which steeped in wine, and a significant amount of bone and wooden statuettes of obscene acts, I hadn’t expected.’
Katherine hummed softly. ‘I’d hoped to see you again as well. You had made my stay in Bourrac far sweeter. For a brief period of time, my judgement was genuinely veiled by adoration for you. Do you think you can conjure that up again?’
His broad shoulders cast a shadow over her as he turned away from the torchlight. ‘Katherine… you’re not being serious, are you?’ he asked, hesitant to reach his hands any lower than the small of her back. ‘I’ll be the first to say it. I’ve no need to conjure anything up. This morning, I was in the same depth of longing and adoration that I was when I saw you leave. I recall you saying you think you could have loved me.’
Katherine carelessly undid the lacing on her bodice and flew into his arms as the first eyelet was undone — the pressure of her body against the fabric would do the rest.
‘Shut up,’ she whispered. ‘Enough about what I have said.’
Freyza felt his blood rush out of his brain, and yet, it felt wrong to let himself fall into the warm embrace of whatever unfeeling lust stood before him.
‘But—‘
Katherine kissed him, and when she withdrew, she grinned happily. ‘You may stop pretending to be in love with me — let’s not kid ourselves and have a good evening despite it. I didn’t bring you to this depraved underground storage room in order to receive any grand gestures.’
Her grin quickly melted when her eye fell on Freyza’s expression, which was closer to irritation and horror than she had ever seen on him.
‘I thought you felt more for me than just the tactual,’ he admitted awkwardly. ‘I’m not sure we should go on anymore… I feel quite sick, actually.’
Months of waiting, a culminated longing of many lonely nights, evaporated in an instant.
Katherine’s mouth twitched. ‘Was this place not the right one?’ she wondered.
Freyza clicked his tongue. ‘No, well… I suppose, Lady Katherine, all of this would be far easier if you weren’t a head of state. I am sure you agree.’
‘What?’ she chuckled sardonically. ‘Freyza — you may as well be saying that it would be a far easier situation, if I were some Najan peasant girl kidnapped by your subordinate.’
‘Wouldn’t it?’ asked Freyza, a bit of anger in his tone. ‘You may not prefer it, but the truth of the matter is still the same.’
‘Now I feel rather sick too,’ said Katherine. ‘I suppose without conjured urgency, there is not much left of us.’
Freyza clenched his jaws. ‘I shall walk you back to the festivities, if you so desire.’
She nodded softly. ‘Courteous.’