Virago | 2018 Wattys Shortlist

seven

The adults engaged in easy conversation for a while after the children had left, but the queen was awfully obsessed with dinner table arguments.

She always looked for opportunities to engage those around her in any type of debate, often playing devil's advocate in the name of winning. She was so competitive it was almost comical for Hadassah.

Hadassah usually put up a good argument and it was hard to distinguish who'd truly won. Both women were extremely articulate and persuasive, but that night, Hadassah was in no mood for her debates and merely chucked at her wife's attempts to rile her up into a passionate debate.

"I'm too tired for that tonight, prey on someone else for tonight," Hadassah said with a laid back smile.

"I reckon I could take you on," Mordecai said and Queen Nura smiled, "I like people who rise up to a challenge, unlike my lovely wife over here."

"Oh shut up."

Hadassah's tone was playful and the glint in her eye alluded to all the challenges she'd risen to and conquered both in the bedroom and out.

It was in the middle of that debate that Nura saw the raw talent her wife's guardian had. He was a natural persuader and although some of his points were iffy, she saw potential.

Mordecai had been living in the palace for as long as Nura and Hadassah had been married, Nura didn't see it fit to have her wife's only living relative in some far-off desert province when he could be there with her.

Mordecai had been given his own villa and private gardens, completed with servants who answered to his every beck and call. He'd even enrolled to The National University of Kediakin for a double major Political Sciences and Law and had his own lecturers who dropped by every few days to tutor him. Most of his degree would be done virtually.

Mordecai had never gotten a chance to further his education - as soon as he graduated from high school he'd looked for any employment he could find and settled for it, he and his cousin needed to eat. They'd lived in a harsher part of Susa at some point in their lives since the only job Mordecai could find was at a grocery store as a delivery truck driver.

He and Hadassah had stayed in an awfully dilapidated apartment until he'd gotten the bank teller job and had taken a short financial skills course that had come with the training for the job and then only had they moved into the apartment they'd stayed in before Hadassah went off to the palace.

He was overjoyed at the new opportunity to get a degree and to make something of himself. His possibilities were endless now. Mordecai was aiming for a job at the national parliament perhaps, or at an established law firm.

Long after Hadassah and Mordecai had headed to their separate chambers for bed, Nura had stayed in the dining room, intent to finish some work before she joined her wife.

"Memukan," she said.

The older man looked up from the tablet screen that was the centre of all of his attention for the current moment and fixated his eyes to the queen.

"Yes, dear?"

"What do you think about adding James as a member of the court?"

Memukan raised an eyebrow, unable to hide the surprise in his facial expression.

Nura was the only person within the palace walls who knew of her wife and her wife's guardian's real names and she was careful not to let that slip. It felt weird to not let Memukan know - as he knew every little thing in her life - but out of respect for both Hadassah and Mordecai and their past, she kept it to herself.