The massive oak doors wedged home with a thunderous, definitive bang behind him, instantly closing off the King and the Queen from the rest of the frantic whispering of the palace.And they would whisper indeed of today.

The guards who usually stood like iron statues outside the chambers had already been dismissed with a sharp, sweeping glare from the king. They were utterly alone now, with no one to listen to the storm that was about to break.

Alpheo’s hand slowly drifted up to his reddened, stinging cheek. He traced the warmth of the bloom with his fingers, a wry, nostalgic thought crossing his mind. The last time this woman had slapped him across the face had been during their very first meeting, nearly fifteen winters ago.

It still stung.

It had been right after her prideful father tried to use her as a delicate piece of leverage to buy the loyalty of Alpheo’s mercenary company. Alpheo, young and dripping with arrogance, had bluntly dubbed her a high-born whore, and she had immediately honored his cheek with a magnificent, ringing slap.

How terrifyingly fast time flew... and how deeply amusing it was that some things, no matter how many crowns you forged, seemed to never truly change.

He almost let out a genuine chuckle at the memory before the freezing reality of their current situation rushed back to sober him.

Jasmine was pacing frantically ahead of him, her expensive silk skirts hissing against the polished stone floor. Her shoulders and arms were trembling at her sides, her movements fluid, erratic, looking for all the world like a sleek southern leopard snarling and pounding against the iron bars of a cage.

At long last, she deigned to halt her pacing and snapped around to face him. In her dark eyes, Alpheo saw the full, unbridled fury that she had so heroically kept chained beneath her queenly mask at the dinner table.

"You would truly stand there and force my own sister to give birth to a line of bastards?" she demanded, her voice a sharp, vibrating whisper that cut through the room. "You would do her such a dishonor?"

Would, Alpheo thought, exerting a monumental amount of self-control to keep from letting a smirk slip onto his face. She speaks as if I haven’t already decided it is going to happen.

"I believe you are blowing the entire matter out of all sensible proportions, Jasmine," he said smoothly, taking a slow step toward the hearth. "You speak as though I have just ordered the execution of her unborn babes."

"You are not taking this seriously!" she spat, marching directly into his space, her fingers curling into tight fists. "Why do you always do this? Why are you not taking this, why are you not taking me, seriously?"

The king’s highbrow furrowed. "I have never taken a single matter concerning this house lightly," Alpheo countered, his deep voice remaining steady, anchoring the room. "Neither have I ever failed to give the proper weight to your counsels and your opinions.The moment one disregard the other , is the moment where we mistrust and betray our foundations.I will not have any of that.

I am simply pointing out that you are frantically hunting for slights and tragedies that do not exist. Their children will grow up to be lords. Incredibly rich, remarkably powerful lords. Their daughters will marry into the most influential families in the south if they wish it, or they will rule their own estates if they don’t. I believe that is a magnificent, golden fate that most people in this world would gladly kill to possess."

"You would brand them bastards from the hour of their birth!"

"And what in all the five hells is wrong with that?" Alpheo snapped, finally turning to face her fully. "Look around Jasmine! Half of the finest, most ruthlessly loyal men who serve my crown are bastards and low-borns. My right hand? Jarza? The man who commands my armies is a fucking bastard who sprouted out of the shifting sands for all he knows, does that make him less of a man of honour? Torghan? He may not have been born out of wedlock, but the man is a branded heretic, and yet many a time his warriors delivered fine service to you and me. Do you truly believe a priest’s lack of blessing will deny those children a worthy or a glorious living in our reign?"

"She is my sister!" Jasmine screamed "She is a princess of the blood, Alpheo! Jarza is a soldier; he was born to the dirt and fought his way into the light. But Lysandra... you would strip her of her dignity, throw her to the gossiping crows of the old nobility, and for what?"

"For our son and for our daughter."

Now, Alpheo did not regard himself as a good man, nor a noble one. However, he did consider himself an exceptional statist. He knew the fundamental nature of the creatures he ruled; he knew men lied, they cheated, and they plotted in the dark. What he was doing now was not born of some sick, sadistic pleasure. It was, purely and simply, cold politics.

He would do absolutely everything within his power to protect his own children from danger, both present and possible. In the grand calculations of statecraft, that meant ruthlessly cutting down a problem before it ever had the chance to grow roots. And children born from Jasmine’s sister?They could very easily become a mortal danger to his own heirs on the morrow.

For a brief moment, the Queen had the grace to look utterly confused, her brow furrowing as she searched his face. But Alpheo knew the bewilderment would not last long; after all, the King and the Queen shared a remarkably similar mind when it came to the survival of their house.The rotting bodies of her cousins, proved just that.

Yet, when her sharp intellect finally leaped across the gap and reached his grim conclusion, she recoiled as violently as if he had struck her across the face.

"She is my sister!" she breathed, horrified.

"And her children will be Basil and Rosalind’s first cousins. Once I am dead and gone, Basil will find himself as the sole heir to Yarzat, Herculia, and half of the Oizenian lands." Alpheo raised his eyes, locking his gaze with hers to impress upon her that he bore her sister no personal ill will. "All it would take is one ambitious lordling, one disgruntled general, to raise a banner in the name of Basil’s cousins, and a catastrophic civil war it will be. We both know our hold on these conquered territories is tenuous at best, Jasmine. Almost ten winters have passed, and still the smallfolk and proud lords in Herculia whisper that we are nothing but bloody usurpers.We give them peace, deliverance from bandits, light taxes, and we will still be userpers."

"They are family," she whispered, her voice trembling. "They wouldn’t."

"And so were your uncle Ormund and his sons," Alpheo countered, his voice flat, devoid of any warmth. "And yet, that did not stop us from slaughtering them to the last man or better yet to the last babe...."

Jasmine winced, turning her face away from the heat of the hearth. "That was different.It was. Ormund laid an active claim to my birthright. He was a traitor to the crown, and as such, we put him down like a rabid dog.Like we should have."

His sons were no traitors, though, Alpheo thought cynically, keeping the brutal truth to himself. They were merely boys who carried the wrong name, and so they had to bleed.

"I am simply making sure our future nephews and nieces won’t ever possess the political possibility of treason," Alpheo said aloud, his tone softening just a fraction. "I am doing this so Basil, Rosalind, and the both of us will be completely free to love them without a secondary thought lurking in the shadows of our minds. I promise you, they will never be wanting for anything."

He stepped across the stone floor, closing the distance between them. Slowly he reached out and began patting her back in a gentle, circular motion to calm the rhythmic heaving of her chest. He felt a quiet wave of relief wash through him when he realized she was actually allowing the touch, her rigid posture starting to yield.

"I recognize the profound ill I am doing to Lysandra. I do," he murmured soothingly into her hair. "And I will personally ensure I make it right by her. You and I both know that most people in this backward world believe a woman’s singular duty in life begins and ends with marriage, to get fucked in the bed and pop out brats like a mare. We both know how much I despise that notion. I would have your sister be far more than a breeder of lords. I would have her possess grand duties that extend far beyond the cage expected of her sex."

Jasmine let out a long, shuddering sigh, leaning her forehead against his chest. ’’Why must you do this?’’

Despite the storms that frequently broke between them, this was one of the traits she loved most fiercely about her husband. Alpheo was a tyrant, yes, but there were certain things were a tyrant had no place in.

He had made it a point to employ women, usually the illiterate, desperate widows of his fallen war-veterans, giving them a seat in their wool house. Even out in the state-run olivery and the sprawling merchant wineries, he had aggressively mandated a strict percentage of the laborers to be women.

But the most monumental reform of all, and the one currently facing a wall of venomous opposition from the high priesthood, was his push for legal civil divorce. One that yet he had not managed to pass, from opposition from both nobles and priesthoods.

Jasmine knew she was exceptionally lucky in that regard.

She pulled back slightly, her dark eyes looking up at him with a complex, deeply uncertain expression. "And what exactly do you mean to do with my sister then? If she is to have no holy wedding, what fate do you intend for her?"

Alpheo smiled down at her, a genuine, reassuring warmth illuminating his rugged features. He leaned down and pressed a slow, tender kiss directly against her forehead.

"I mean to give her a proper, formidable position of state with real honor," the King whispered against her skin. "An administrative office so wealthy, powerful, and secure that a great many men will violently envy her for it until the day they die.That I promise you."

Jasmine stared at him for a long, quiet moment, the anger completely draining from her face, leaving only the heavy, pragmatical weariness of a queen who had long since learned to bargain with the devil and had come to like his wares.

"Then you had best make it a magnificent office" she murmured, her voice steady as she reached up to smooth the fabric of his lapel. "Because if my sister sheds a single tear tomorrow or anytime over the loss of her veil, I will ensure your kingly bed remains freezing cold until the spring thaws arrive."