Realm of Light - Deborah Chester [119]
“Nonsense! That humiliation—”
“He saved Pier from the darkness.”
Iaris gestured this away, plainly not believing anything Elandra said. “This Caelan is no one, an upstart with ambitions who has bewitched you. Oh, I am sure it is his excellent body which attracts you. He is handsome, in a brutish way. But why do you make yourself a spectacle by consorting openly with this barbarian? Can you not play with him in private and stop trying to proclaim him the next emperor?”
Elandra’s hand tightened on her knife hilt. “I have not seen you since I was four. Prior to the day you cast me out, you were a stranger who came but occasionally to look at me and see if I thrived. You did not even suckle me at your breast, and I understand that at my birth you cried in relief that I was finally gone from your womb. Based on this, I do not accept advice from you. I do not hear your words. I grant you no right to offer them.”
Iaris rose to her feet. “Stop playing the wounded heroine,” she said scathingly. “You were not hurt. You grew up to become empress of the land. You have fulfilled your destiny. You have prospered. There are no complaints you can offer.”
“I am not complaining,” Elandra said through her teeth. “I know that your affair with my father came against your will, that the Penestricans forced your union so I could be born.”
With widened eyes, Iaris stared at her.
“Yes,” Elandra said, her tone flat and unyielding. “I also know that Albain loved you—”
“Men are such fools,” Iaris said with a dismissive gesture. “He mistook a spell for his own emotions.”
Anger crawled through Elandra’s veins, but she concealed it. More than anything she would have liked to shout at her mother, to accuse her and shame her into even a slight amount of contrition or regret, but she restrained herself. She could not judge her mother. She had not stood in her mother’s exact circumstances, but she had been married against her will to a man old enough to be her father, a man who was a stranger, a man who never loved her. To that extent, at least, she knew what it must be like to have others meddle with your emotions, meddle with your life. She could understand her mother’s resentment and coldness. What humiliation had her mother faced in explaining her pregnancy to her returning husband?
Lord Pier, the man who had picked a fight with Caelan today, and lost.
Elandra gazed up at her mother, saw the tight clamp of her lips, saw old battles still raging in her eyes.
“Albain still loves you,” Elandra said. “He will love you to the grave.”
Iaris was pacing back and forth behind her chair. She thumped the back of it with her fist. “That won’t be long.”
Elandra shot to her feet. “You are wrong. He recovers.”
“Impossible.”
“When he calls this court to heel, you will see it is not impossible.”
Iaris frowned at her. “Albain is finished. Everyone but you accepts that.”
“My father will live. Already he—”
“Don’t delude yourself! Gialta looks to new leadership even as the empire prepares to accept a new emperor. Albain has held back this province long enough, but that is over.”
“My father will not support Tirhin on the throne,” Elandra said furiously. “Nor do I.”
Iaris laughed scornfully. “Do you expect the warlords to support your claim? They will not do it. Nor do you have Albain to make them do it.”
Frustration filled Elandra. “Tirhin betrayed the empire. Can your husband not see that’? Or doesn’t he care?”
“Pier cares about avoiding a bloodbath,” Iaris said through her teeth. “He plans to give his oath of fealty to the new emperor.”
“Tirhin is a traitor!”
“Turn red in the face and make fists at me like a spoiled child if you wish,” Iaris said scornfully. “Your throne and your privileges have been swept away. That is what you cannot forgive. But your time is over, daughter. Whatever the Penestricans meant to accomplish with you did not come to pass. We face a new age, and a new emperor who is bold enough to take what he wants. Pier respects that, as do I. As do others. Don’t start a civil war, Elandra. You and your pet gladiator