Chapter 531: 531: Honey Debts part six
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She studied his face for a long, quiet moment, amusement fading into something older.
"So," she said softly, "you want to know who I am. Not the wandering troublemaker version. The one that makes generals listen when I clear my throat."
Kai held her gaze. "It would be useful," he said. "Before the universe throws the answer at my head in a worse way."
Her lips curved, but there was no real smile in it.
"On their maps," she said, "I am not a smudge in the corner. I am the center of the red. I am the seal on their decrees, the breath behind their banners. In their polite mouths I am 'Her Majesty.' In their less polite ones I am 'that stubborn woman who will not die when it would be convenient.'"
She let the next words fall like stones.
"I am the Scarlet Queen, Kai."
He sucked in a breath at the wrong angle and choked.
He coughed hard, eyes watering, honey-warm lungs indignantly proving that they worked very well. Ikea waited, expression unreadable, until he got enough air to speak.
"You… are the Scarlet Queen," he managed. "You are the mother of Mia and Thea."
His voice went a little hoarse on their names.
"I did not imagine that," he muttered. "At all."
Now she smiled, crooked and sharp. "No," she said. "You did not. It was more fun watching you treat me like a mysterious forest woman instead of a piece on a royal board."
He stared. "I slept with the mother of the two princesses currently living in my mountain," he said. "That is… a lot."
"Relax," she said. "You did not know. They do not know. And I would very much like to keep it that way."
Her tone tightened on the last sentence.
"Do not tell them I am outside," she went on. "Do not hint. Do not sigh dramatically in corridors. As far as Mia and Thea are concerned, their mother is exactly where she has always been — inside the court, inside the palace, inside too many layers of ceremony. If word reaches certain enemies that I walked out here while they are under your roof, they will start seeing hostage shapes everywhere."
Kai sobered quickly. "All right," he said. "Your secret stays in the trees. They will not hear it from me."
"Good," Ikea murmured. "There are enough blades pointed at their backs already. I would rather not sharpen more."
She drew in a breath and straightened a little, some of the queen weight sliding back onto her shoulders.
"There is another thing," she said. "Yavri."
"What about her?" Kai asked.
"You already have her loyalty," Ikea said. "Everyone with two working eyes can see that. She has been bending herself into the shape of your mountain since the day she arrived. But on paper, in the court's ledgers, she is still theoretically mine. One of my tools. One they might try to recall or reassign if they get clever."
Her gaze held him steady.
"So I am cutting that line," she said. "Yavri and her nine hundred watchers are yours, Kai. Fully. No recall orders. No hidden claims. If the Scarlet court ever sends a messenger to drag her back, you can tell them their queen already gave her away."
Kai thought of Yavri drilling on the ledges, of her sharp eyes and sharper tongue and the way she pretended not to care how he answered her reports.
"She is going to be impossible to live with when she realizes that," he said.
"She has earned impossible," Ikea said quietly. "She has also earned a Lord who will not spend her life like spare ink. Keep her alive. Let her grow into what she is trying to be."
She hesitated, then added, softer, "The same for my daughters. Mia, Thea. Keep them safe as long as you reasonably can. There are enemies in the court who want my bloodline broken or bent. I have a plan for them. A few, actually. None of them are safe. When the time is right, I will ask for your help. Until then, you hold my girls and Yavri's line on this mountain, and I will try not to let the palace eat itself."
Kai did not ask what "plan" meant coming from a woman like her.
"I will not dig," he said. "Whatever you are scheming will only give me new things to lose sleep over. When the time comes, if I am still standing, I will help."
Her shoulders eased a fraction. "That is all I needed," she said. "A promise from someone whose word is not printed on court paper."
Kai let that sit for a heartbeat, then exhaled.
"There is one more thing," he said. "The honey!!!"
Her brows rose. "Already asking for seconds?"
"Not for me," Kai said. "My ribs are fine. But I saw what that one drop did. I have over a thousand wounded drone ants stacked under my feet and more battles coming. I need a healer, Ikea. A real one. More than one. Where did you get honey that can fix a Lord like that? And can I make whoever made it very nervous with polite requests?"
Now she did smile, with a hint of nostalgia.
"Forest of Death," she said. "From the current queen bee. The real one, not the little border queens. She keeps the old stores — the death honey from the last Empress, the high-grade nectar, all the things you are not supposed to taste unless you have already died for the hive once."
Kai grimaced. "I am guessing she does not sell by the jar."
"She does not sell at all," Ikea replied. "She bargains. In favors. In pollen. In secret. Sometimes in protection. But the honey I gave you came from her, and from the body of a nine-star Empress before her. That is the kind of healer you are asking about."
He absorbed that in silence.
"If I go there," he said slowly, "what happens?"