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“I’ve been getting whispers about your infidelity.”
Eugenides sprawled out on the couch beside her, spilling into her lap. He tilted his face towards her, eyes closed, content as a cat.
“Oh?” She scratched his head, and he unfurled like a flower.
It took him a few seconds to find his words, drowsy and peaceful. “It’s all very hush hush, you understand. You didn’t hear it from me.” He cracked an eye open. “You?”
“Just that you’re trying to undermine me, forming alliances behind closed doors, and waiting til the time is right to wrest power from my throne until I am queen in name only,” she replied easily.
“Oh, is that all?” His lips curled up into a smirk.
Attolia rolled her eyes.
Oh, he was trouble alright, just never in the ways people would have her believe.
“Sometimes I just want to plant something worse ,” he said. “Just all, oh, you didn’t know? And slowly back out of the room.” He was struggling not to grin now at the chaos he was imagining.
She pinched his ear. “You will not,” she ordered sternly.
Eugenides heaved a put upon sigh. “Oh, I suppose not,” he agreed glumly, angling his head into her hand for more scritches.
Attolia gave him this.
She could have left it there. She should have. But she only managed a few minutes before she asked, with something like morbid curiosity, “What would be worse?”
Eugenides’s eyes opened, bright and eager.
“Well…”