~Whirlwind~

Thankfully, Oris hadn't been drinking tea lest she would have choked on it. She cleared her throat as discreetly as she could, overly aware of Hermes gaze following her every move.

"My assistance, sire?"

She wondered if Hermes had noticed her little hiccup and folded her hands in front of her, trying her best to appear demure though she doubted it would change the opinion he already had of her, whatever it was. "I don't have the power to assist anyone."

It was the honest truth, though saying she didn't already have a vague idea of how to rescue the queen would be a lie. Since she had given the queen her word, she intended to keep it.

"You will," Hermes said, the surety in his tone startling her once again.

"Is that a prophecy, Your Majesty?"

She wasn't able to hold back her reply and she didn't dare to. For surely, if she had kept it in, she would have burst out laughing.

When did the emperor suddenly gain confidence in her abilities? It was almost as though a different person stood in his place, requesting assistance instead of simply commanding it.

It was amusing.

Hermes narrowed his eyes at her, and for a moment she wondered if he had been able to guess her thoughts.

"It is a promise," he answered, and immediately the mirth she felt vanished.

The implications wrapped around those four words parched her throat. How had things come to this already? Her mind couldn't wrap itself around it. "That would be partial of you. . . sire."

"My mother has—" He paused to correct himself. For whose sake? She knew not. "The Empress Dowager has her favorites in this Selection, why can I not?"

"You do not know me."

"I know enough."

Oris just managed to stop herself from asking exactly what he knew. Having his attention fixed on her web of lies was the last thing she needed at the moment. "You do not trust me."

Hermes crossed his arms but didn't deny it. "I do not."

"I do not know you motive, or your purpose," he continued. "For all I know you could be here to kill me, couldn't you?"

The truth of his words stung more than she expected, but his admission made her smile grow for reasons even she could not explain. "Still you left your entourage of guards and are here with me, alone, sire."

Nothing about her wish had specified that they needed to be alone together. Of course, this scenario would lead to better rumors—if there was such a thing—but until they both stepped into this room she had assumed that he would fulfil her wish in the midst of servants, maids and guards.

An Emperor spending time with a woman without his retinue observing her every move was unheard of, and she was glad that he had brought it up on his own.

Because she was curious, and more than curious, she wanted to know just how his mind worked.

"Yes," his eyes left hers as he looked around the room, "You must have wondered why I brought you here. Do you have an answer now?"

His unusually interactive approach to answering her unspoken question had Oris' gaze drifting across the furniture and skimming along the walls until it landed on the slab of stone they had used as a door.

Of course, she had thought about it, but her thoughts were scattered.

Earlier, all her focus had been on not losing to the emperor in a game of words, now that that pressure was gone, her theory spilled out of her mouth almost without warning. "The location is only important to spark this specific conversation. The tunnels however. . ."

She looked back at him, wanting to catch his expression as she said her next words. "You wish to keep your actions hidden from the court. To them, you and I could be anywhere in the palace. They would not think to search this room but search everywhere else, they will. They must be thinking at this very moment: Does the emperor now have a favorite? And panicking: Did we doom ourselves with our own plot? And worried: What has happened to the emperor? Does he suspect us?"

"Is my answer correct, sire?"

Hermes smiled, and for the first time the emotion reached his eyes. "I did not choose wrong."

"I do not understand why you chose me at all." Oris shook her head. "Out of all the women here, I am the most problematic."

"That is the reason."

She considered his reply for a long moment before deciding that she would not indulge him. "It is not the way of an Emperor to speak in riddles."

"But it is the way of women to talk in circles," he said with a small laugh.

She might have laughed too, if they had been different people. "Perhaps," she said instead.

"You have fate with my mothers, maybe because you three have such in common."

"I did not wish for any of this."

"Neither did I, but here we are."

"Here we are," she repeated the words to herself, her eyes following Hermes as he walked out of the enclosure of chairs and cushions into the expanse of the room.

"Out of all the women here," he said, as a rejoinder, "you are the only one that has willingly opposed my mother time and time again. You may not know this, but you are not the only one she has made things difficult for. This is a competition, after all, for the position of Empress. Not just anyone can have that seat."

"Is sire implying that the Empress Dowager is testing me?"

"The others? Yes. You? No." He raised a finger to emphasize his objection. "You two may very well be irreconcilable, and the reason why is yet to be known by me."

"And you, Your Majesty? Are you wary of your mother?" She asked, her voice soft and teasing. She was reaching now, overstepping, but she was not afraid because he was yet to show her what to fear.

"I wish to have her dethroned," Hermes answered seriously.

His honesty made Oris pause her thoughts. Once again, he had surprised her and proven himself to be a good man in the sense that he saw no need to resort to deception in order to forge an alliance.

She thought back to what Aella had told her. "Does sire fear for his throne?"

She worded the question as delicately as she could, but it was hard to be delicate when being so direct.

She needed an answer and with him being so strangely receptive, how could she not take advantage of it?

"No," he said. "My position is endangered by my ministers, not my mother."

Another surprise. Another unmasked opinion.

"I do not understand," Oris said. It was her turn to be honest. "Do you not wish to free Nian Fey for the sake of crowning a new Empress Dowager?"

"Better the evil of your ancestors than the evil of a faraway land."

Oris didn't know what to focus on, the fact that Hermes was quoting a saying she was not meant to be familiar with or the fact that he referred to his mothers as evils.

"You trust the Empress Dowager but wish to have her deposed." She had never once spoken such a conflicting sentence.

"I wish for her to support me," Hermes replied, "as my mother, not the Empress Dowager."

Oris did not understand, and she did not attempt to. She would dissect the the Emperor's reasoning at a later date.

"I suppose it is my fault," he continued, maybe having notice her  curiosity and wishing to sate it. "While I was out conquering lands, I left the organization of the court to my mother. When there were no more battles to fight, I came home to discover that my ministers' loyalty lied elsewhere, though that is no fault of hers."

"You left the Empress Dowager to rule?" Oris tried to act shocked. She was already, but not enough for someone who claimed to be raised under the rule of men.

As a citizen of Orse, she had been exposed to matriarchy from the moment she had taken her first breath.

Still, it was surprising that Hermes had let Wei Wei take over his administrative duties in his stead. It was a controversial move and it certainly wouldn't have won him any favors.

For the second time in the day, she felt a shift in her opinion of him.

"My mother," he continued. He no longer bothered correcting himself since it was obvious who he was referring to. "She was the youngest daughter of a duke, who followed a princess to the palace as a lady-in-waiting during my grandfather's reign. She had a close relationship with my father while he was still a prince, and when he became Emperor he gave her the rank of consort."

Hermes let his fingers trail along the wall behind him as he walked. "Despite not being of considerably high birth, as one of his favorite women, she was with child soon enough. At fifteen, at the hand of poison, she miscarried her first son. He would have been my father's eldest prince. At seventeen, she gave birth to a second prince. . .and they were both pushed into a river when he was just a couple months old. They survived the ordeal, but he died a few weeks later."

Oris had to turn when he walked to a spot behind her, having had her eyes on him the entire time.

He stopped in front of the incense, his back to her.

"At this point, my father had grown tired and disloyal. More women were gifted to him, more women filled the harem. Slowly, my mother faded away, demoted time and time again due to the schemes of the women she had once called sisters. One year later, after a chance encounter with the king, she had a daughter.

"This daughter survived but was adopted by a high-ranked consort who had been childless. My mother's rank was elevated to Honorable Lady, and it was around this time that Nian Fey arrived at the palace."

Now, Hermes turned to face her. "I do not yet know what happened between my mothers but I am well aware of who abandoned her own son to keep him safe, and who raised me."

Something about how he said that last sentence made her doubt which mother he was referring to, Aella or Wei Wei.

"Nian Fey is my mother regardless of the circumstances of my childhood. It is my duty to honour her, so I must. Why do you want to free her?"

There were so many ways to answer that question, so many ways that worked in her favor, but taking into consideration the fact that Hermes had given her pieces to a puzzle she didn't know she needed to solve, she decided to spare them both the trouble.

"Life will be easier with a mother-in-law who doesn't hate me," she said, and suddenly the conversation took on a lighter tone. "Do you suppose Nian Fey will be kinder than the Empress Dowager?"

Kinder here, meant easier to handle.

"Nian Fey," Hermes thought on it. "At the age of four she was already being tutored by her father's war generals. At ten, she snuck off to battlefield and returned just in time for her maidenhood ceremony where her father named her Aella—whirlwind. Even though she was his favorite child, she was sent to Inae by her father because it was rumored that the people wished for her to claim the throne."

"She was called queen when still a princess and warrior in her own right, what scheme do you suppose could best her?" Hermes asked. He seemed to be talking to her, but he was really talking to himself. "Who on this earth has the power to trap a whirlwind? My mother?"

That question itself was answer enough.

Oris had read these all as stories years ago, but hearing it again from the horse's mouth gave her a rude awakening.

Trust no one in the palace, she reminded herself, not even the friends you make in your darkest place.

~

A long ass chapter for my favorite peeps. Are they done talking though? Naaah. They aren't. *facepalms* This can't go any faster, I promise you.

Okay, who enjoyed Hermes' little narration of past events? Having seen things from his POV before, how do you think he feels about all this?

Aella has said it herself that she is not kind :)

And we have already seen Wei Wei scheming... but Aella is a badass on her own so....? And surviving as a favorite in a harem full of competing women isn't an easy feat.

I'll leave you guys with that.

I hope you enjoyed this apology chapter. I'm sorry for posting the last one late <3