✔ Mrs Mandray

25. Defence

Isabella

"Do not," Cassian said with a deadly quiet, "insult her." The guards shifted at his approach but the raw terror that had been clawing at Isabella's throat stumbled when her friend came to stand behind her. "Do not insult Isabella for doing your job, for protecting her family."

"And is it protection that you offer her in return for-"

"Enough." Isabella whispered, cutting off the queen and the room seemed to go still. "I am not sure what you hope to achieve by threatening a child but it has certainly shown your true character." If she had a fraction of hope that Rhys and her sister could persuade the queens it was long gone now. "The great Queens of the Human Realm... reduced to petty insults and veiled threats. If you cannot weather this meeting without your parlour tricks and distractions then you will not survive the war."

Isabella met the eldest queen's gaze, holding it as the queen looked at her with something akin to respect.

"War is coming, whether you like it or not. And you will not win. We will not win. Survivors will be slaves, and their children's children will be slaves too. You claim to have heard of the High Lord, so you cannot play naive to the Red Queen's atrocities." Rhys stiffened at her side. "She was a mere general, one in the line of many. Imagine what an army like her might do."

Feyre's throat bobbed in the corner of her eye but Isabella focused Cassian's solid weight at her back. She focused on the broad hand resting on the back of her chair, so close to her shoulder that she could feel the heat of it through her velvet dress.

"Give them the book." She commanded, chin raised as the Queens stared her down. "Or don't. I intend on fighting for my people, and my son. If you cannot say the same for you and yours then get out of our way."

With those parting words Isabella rose to her feet. The guards' hands dropped to the pommel of their swords but the wisest among them blanched at Cassian's low growl as he offered Isabella his arm.

The pair strode from the room and Isabella didn't dare let her tears show until they were alone.

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Azriel

He tried not to let his eyes flutter shut when Isabella strode past him. Her headying scent was maddening when all he wanted to do was get on his knees and beg for mercy after that damn speech.

She was a force to be reckoned with. No, actually, not a force or a storm. Isabella wasn't some poet's muse, some whimsical woman whose brief bouts of confidence were described as hurricanes and hell-fire by weak men. 

She wasn't some feeble creature to be admired.

Not some petty little thing who was pitied for her gender so every flash of personality and common sense was treated like a miracle.

No, Isabella wasn't a storm, or a hurricane. There were no wildfires, floods or hailstorms. She was just the raw honest truth. The Queens it would seem saw that truth too. For the eldest stared after Isabella even as Mor prattled on, talking about the mother, destiny and fate that brought Feyre and Rhys together.

Because at the heart of all this, even though the Queens had never intended on giving us the book they most certainly gave Isabella their respect. They admire each other. He had seen it in Isabella's eyes, in the Golden Queen's raised chin. The way the black and white queens, the mirror image of the other had grinned and frowned at her. At the reflection she offered them.

For it would take someone like them to understand someone like Isabella.

To see the masks and the false beauty. The parading of virtues for the sole purpose for beguiling men, courtiers and entire nations into doing their bidding.