"Have you, um...?" I trailed off.
"Never," he stated.
It was my turn to blink. "Never?"
"Never...recently," he amended.
There it was.
"Mm-hmm," I mumbled.
He drew me nearer, gentled his voice and explained.
"There are Heads of Houses who do these things. I am not one of them. I was married, my wife my one and only. After that-but I learned it before I was married, my dove-I found it uncomfortable to be around maids who knew me in this manner."
"In other words, they all fell for you," I deduced.
He nodded. "It"s difficult to sit at dinner when the woman serving it is giving you longing eyes and you have had your fill and don"t intend to drink more from that cup."
I looked away, murmuring, "I bet."
When I didn"t turn back, Apollo"s hand at my jaw brought me back. "Is there something else on your mind?"
I peered into his eyes, trying to decide whether or not to bring it up.
Then I brought it up.
"There was this woman who visited the house the night after you left me in Fleuridia."
His brows shot together and not in a confused way but in an annoyed one.
"Celise came to the house while you were there?"
"Well...yeah."
"She was not invited," he stated.
"She seemed to..." I hesitated, "well, it appeared she..."
"I have had her," he shared straight up. "Repeatedly. She visits me when I"m in Fleuridia."
Oh boy.
He kept going. "She has great beauty and she"s very expensive because of it, that as well as her talent with her mouth."
Okay. There was my answer. Too late.
I shouldn"t have brought it up.
"Uh, maybe we should stop talking about this," I suggested.
"You do not have wh.o.r.es in your world?" he asked.
"Well, yeah, but it isn"t exactly bragged about, going to one."
"Why not?"
I stared at him.
"It"s an honorable profession," he declared.
I kept staring at him.
"And only the best practice it. There are those who offer their services for a tumble, of course, but they cost little coin. However, they make much more than," he paused for emphasis, "a barmaid."
Eek!
He kept talking. "But there are those who cater to those of us who can afford the more skilled of their set, and they are quite talented. Some are even famous. Celise is one of them."
"That"s crazy," I whispered.
"How so?" he asked.
"How not?" I asked back.
"This is not an answer to my question, poppy. Are wh.o.r.es not celebrated in your world?" he asked.
I shook my head. "No."
"Strange," he muttered then focused on me. "There are men, and women, who holiday in Fleuridia just to visit Fleuridian wh.o.r.es. They are the best in the Northlands."
"That"s...well, I guess I find that kind of shocking," I told him.
"As I find it equally shocking providing such a service and being celebrated for your talent in doing it would be looked down upon in your world, as your reaction clearly states they are."
He looked like he was disappointed in me.
"We"re not as free s.e.xually as you are here, I"m getting," I explained.
His eyes grew dark and I would know why when he inquired, "Do you feel guilt for what you do with me?"
"No," I told him quickly.
"If our coupling would be looked down upon in your world, why not?"
"Because I enjoy it and I like you and I like spending time with you and being close to you. So much, if we were in my world, I wouldn"t care what people think."
His eyes shot straight to tender and he said softly, "This is a good answer, my poppy."
I felt the tenderness in his eyes sliding through my insides, however, I did feel it necessary to point out, "Just to say, the men who pay for it in my world, and the women who get paid, are what"s looked down on, Apollo. There"s more s.e.xual freedom for those who are free to be...uh, s.e.xually free."
"Very odd," he murmured and again focused more closely on me to say, "If Celise made you uncomfortable, my poppy, I apologize. She was not scheduled to meet me that night. However, she has favorite clients and I am one, so I"m not surprised."
And I wasn"t surprised he was a favorite of the famous Celise whoever-she-was.
But I did wonder if he"d ever spanked her, drank adela tea with her or "explored" other things with her and I knew, for some reason, if he had, that would upset me.
A lot.
"Now, are we done with this topic?" he asked.
"Yes," I answered, not about to get into how much he explored the beautiful Celise.
His hands moved over my nightgown and he urged, "Then let"s move on to the other ones so I can get this charming but entirely in the way nightgown off you."
I was suddenly not all that fired up about the other ones since they were harder but also because I wanted him to get my nightgown off of me.
Nevertheless, I persevered by stating, "What happened to bring us back to Karsvall, you"ve not mentioned it again."
"No," he confirmed readily. "This is because naught is happening. We"re waiting for men and missives to arrive but I don"t expect any of either until tomorrow."
I loved it that he explained that to me but that wasn"t where I was going.
"Thank you for sharing that with me, baby," I whispered and his hands stopped roaming so his arms could wrap around me again. "But that wasn"t why I mentioned it. I had a question."
"And that question would be?"
"Well, the boys said frequently during dinner that night that we"re kind of at war."
"Yes," he stated.
"I"ve been thinking on it and that seems weird."
"All of it is strange," he agreed.
"No, I mean the part about being at war and that happening because someone attacked you and your family. I mean, a king somewhere, I would get. But why were you a target?"
His body went still.
Uh-oh.
"Apollo?" I called, even though he was right there. But his eyes had grown distant and I didn"t like that all that much.
He focused on me and I held my breath as he did this for a good long time without speaking.
I let out my breath when he broke his silence.
"There are two possible reasons for this," he said.
"Okay," I replied when he said no more.
"One is that I"m Queen Aurora"s strategist. I also served under King Atticus in this same position. This mostly included negotiations but there were skirmishes. Baldur was always conniving, he"d made some plays to wrest land from Lunwyn when he was the ruler of the now-gone Middleland. Most in Lunwyn don"t know about them because my men and I stopped them before they took hold."
"Oh," I whispered, unsure about where this was going, though still thinking it was pretty cool bada.s.s Apollo and his bada.s.s boys nipped that s.h.i.t in the bud.
"Frey is a raider," Apollo continued. "He is not a soldier. Lahn is a warrior but his country in the Southlands is much different than those in the Northlands. His army is highly trained, highly skilled, large in number and thus unbeatable."
"Right," I mumbled, thinking this was good news.
"What I"m saying is, although Lahn is very intelligent, and strategy would factor into what he does, his warriors are so trained, they need little direction, and so mighty, they always best a challenge. They"re known for it. This leaves Tor, who is also a warrior and a strategist. However, against our foes, we must put all our best minds together and Queen Aurora called upon me to be involved from the beginning. This could have made me a target, as any ruler or high-ranking general would be."
This made sense. It sucked, but it made sense.
"And the other possible reason?" I prompted He held my eyes, hesitated, but still, he gave it to me. "It could be that you were the target."
What?
And why?
I picked one question and breathed it out.
"What?"
"Baldur has reason to be angry with all the couples who were brought together over the worlds. And Minerva herself connived to keep Tor and Cora apart by splitting Tor"s soul and putting the other half in a woman from your world. This, we feel, is not a coincidence."
Oh boy.
"And you and I are now a couple brought together over the worlds," he concluded.
It felt good him saying we were a couple. We hadn"t been together long but the time we had been together was intense. So yes, definitely good.
It didn"t feel good me being a possible target of angry ex-rulers and she-G.o.ds, though.
"This doesn"t make me feel warm and fuzzy, Apollo," I told him.
"It doesn"t me, either, poppy. But we can"t know why they do what they do. We can only guess. And the coincidence is not something we can ignore."
"Does Baldur have reason to be angry with you?"
"Except for fighting in the war against the traitors who killed Atticus and imprisoned Aurora and Finnie, a war where his son was slain, not especially."
Well at least that was good.
"And...um, does he have a reason to be angry with the other me?" I asked hesitantly and his arms gave me a squeeze.
"No. Although I have met him at a variety of state affairs, and at some of them Ilsa was on my arm. But their meetings would be brief and insignificant to a man like Baldur."
I nodded.