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“Explain it to me again—how are you friends with that woman?”
Virginia raised her tea cup to her lips and sipped from it slowly, waiting for Stark to calm down. He was like this often, in motion more than he was still, moving as he thought and spoke and worked. She had been irritated by it at first, but now it was familiar and even comforting.
“She is not a queen—not our queen—I know I was gone for months, but it is ridiculous. She was not born here. She came while I was missing—I know because if I had been here she would never have married the king—and somehow a woman with no past and no ties to this country, a woman who kills her husband—that woman is our queen? How did that happen?”
“Perhaps you should ask Lord Hawkeye. He has allowed it.”
“Allowed it?” Stark demanded. “Has he lost his mind? Is he... bewitched by her?”
Virginia laughed. Stark stared at her. “Sorry. It is only that no one else would ask that. Whatever is between the queen and Lord Hawkeye is not a spell or enchantment. It is strange, yes, and varies between hatred and respect, perhaps more, but she is not a witch and has not cast any spell over him. If anyone is under and enchantment, it would be her.”
“You know this is not amusing, Pepper.”
“Nor is your habit of calling me by that name or putting it in my tea when I look away. Tea should have lemon, not pepper,” she said, not lowering her cup, refusing to let it get within his reach as he smiled like he would play that game again. “I did not miss either of those things.”
“You did miss me, though, right?”
She smiled over her cup and took another sip.
“At least a little. Admit it. You do not have to say you wept into your pillow every night, but you do have to tell the truth. You missed me when I was gone. It must have been boring around here—”
“With the king marrying and dying on the same night, with all of this intrigue between Hawkeye and the queen? No, I am afraid I was very entertained in your absence,” Virginia told him. She finished her tea and set down the cup. “I think the saddest part of all this is that you have not changed at all. You have a second chance at life and insist on being the same foolish boy you were when you disappeared, as though that sort of behavior was at all endearing.”
“Pepper,” Stark said, the teasing gone. “If you only knew how much I've changed, what I saw, everything that happened...”
“Tell me,” she said.
He did.