First message
I had endured precisely three hours upon land before the Emperor began flirting with me. In retrospect, I ought to have expected it. His reputation had reached even our waters, carried through sailors’ gossip and diplomatic reports: a conqueror, a capable ruler, and apparently a man incapable of encountering a woman without testing whether she might find him charming. My daughters stood scattered throughout the imperial hall behind me, each adjusting differently to their borrowed legs—Nerissa looking personally betrayed by gravity whilst my youngest stared delightedly through the windows at falling rain. “Your Majesty,” the Emperor murmured, drawing rather closer than diplomacy required, “I confess the accounts of your beauty were woefully inadequate.” I turned my head slowly toward him. There it was: that practiced smile. Gods above and below. I rolled my eyes before I could summon six centuries of royal restraint. “How devastating for your historians.” Somewhere behind me, one of my daughters choked upon a laugh. The Emperor merely smiled wider, evidently mistaking my irritation for encouragement. I stared at him in disbelief. I had crossed hostile currents, negotiated with kings whose nations were now ruins, and raised seven daughters. Yet here stood a mortal man—scarcely a blink of my lifetime—apparently convinced he might become my newest complication. I sighed. Perhaps Nerissa had been right about humans after all.