“And yet you’re here, seeking an alliance against the Montaignes,” Raisa said, grateful for her tutelage from her father and Amon Byrne.
Liam waved a heavily ringed hand. “I’m looking for a rich wife to pay my gambling debts,” he said. “We hear the queens of the Fells are very frugal, that they still have the first coins ever minted with their images.”
The music stopped, and he led her from the dance floor to a table in one of her mother’s temporary groves. Raisa signaled a server to bring them drinks, and then kicked off her shoes. Her dance card was finished—Prince Liam had been the last on the list. Although the orchestra still played (and would until the princess heir officially departed), Raisa was surprised to find that the room had nearly emptied. She hadn’t realized it was so late. Somehow she’d got through her name day party without really noticing. It was kind of a letdown, after the months of buildup.
She refocused. Prince Liam was raising his glass to her.
“You are the most beautiful princess in the Seven Realms.” He raised his other hand to stop her protest. “I’m a very good judge, Your Highness. I’ve seen more than my share.”
Raisa laughed. Prince Liam’s agenda might not entirely coincide with hers, but he was charming.
“You should come visit us,” the prince went on. “Tamron lacks the physical beauty of the Fells, but I think you would find the city of Tamron Court very . . . interesting.” He made a wry face. “Though summer is not our best season.”
“So I hear. Your father, King Markus, invited me to visit his cottage on Leewater.”
“The cottage is lovely in summer,” Liam said. “Though it can seem crowded when all three wives are in residence.”
Raisa couldn’t help wondering if he’d mentioned them on purpose.
“I prefer summers in the city, where we sleep during the heat of the day and stay up all night. Soon it will be autumn, when the nights grow cool and lovely, and the rains revive the flowers. We call it the wooing season.” He closed his hand over hers.
Tread carefully, Raisa said to herself. This is the princeling Missy Hakkam fell head over petticoats for. Raisa tended to use Missy Hakkam as a kind of trail marker to warn herself away from foolish behavior.
“Are you here on your father’s behalf, or do you represent yourself?” Raisa asked.
Liam laughed, but there was a bitter edge to it. “My father does not need my help in matchmaking,” he said. “I am here on my own.”
“Well, then, what’s your position on multiple wives? If you have two or three, can your wife have multiple husbands?”
Liam was taking a drink of wine as she asked that, and he very nearly splattered it all over the table. “P-Princess Raisa,” he spluttered. “I think any man who marries you will find he has more than enough to handle without complicating things.”
Raisa laughed also, but noted that he’d not really answered her question. He was looking at her, though, as if he found her absolutely fascinating. His gaze traveled from her mouth to her eyes and back again.
He leaned closer, resting his hands on her bare shoulders, raising gooseflesh there. “At this point, I would usually suggest a walk in the garden, but it’s still raining buckets, from the sound of it. Perhaps . . . there’s somewhere else we could go to talk, away from the ears of the court.”
It occurred to Raisa that maybe Liam was the danger she’d anticipated. But an interesting kind of danger, after all.
Just then Raisa heard a step behind her, and Liam looked up over her shoulder and frowned.
“Your Highness.” Raisa knew before she turned around who it was.
“Your Highness, the queen requests your attendance in her privy chamber,” Micah Bayar said. “She asked me to fetch you.”
Raisa eyed him with distrust. Why would her mother send Micah to fetch her, after all that had happened already? She looked around for Amon, but didn’t see him, nor any others of her guardsmen. She wondered if he’d already gone up to the garden.
Micah turned to Liam. “Sorry, Your Highness, but you will have to excuse Princess Raisa. It is growing late.”
“Yes. It is,” Liam said, without rancor. He smiled at Raisa. “Princess Raisa, I will be here for a few more days before I return to Tamron,” he said. “I’m staying in Kendall House. I hope to see you again before I leave.” He bowed and turned away.
Micah looked after him for a long moment, then took hold of Raisa’s arm to lead her from the ballroom.
She pulled free. “I know the way,” she said, and walked away, leaving him to follow. She would have liked to have spent more time with Liam Tomlin, and was tired of being dragged around by the Bayars.
“What does my mother want?” Raisa asked as they threaded their way between groups of people still talking in the corridor. “I haven’t seen her for hours. I thought by now she’d likely gone to bed.”
“Not yet,” Micah said, not answering her question. He seemed tense, and Raisa suspected he’d been drinking again.
Raisa herself had been careful not to drink anything but water and oversweet punch. It was her custom to try to learn from experience.
As they neared the queen’s apartments, the corridors emptied out. Automatically, Raisa turned off the public corridors into the narrower, private ones used by the royal family. As they passed the small library established by her father, Micah said, “Raisa, before we go in, give me a minute. Please.”
She turned to face him. He nodded toward the library.
“Just hear me out. I promise it won’t take long.” He fussed with his sleeves, seeming uncharacteristically awkward.
Against all common sense, she believed him. After a long moment, she preceded him into the library, putting a table between them.
“I’ve been trying to get in to see you, ever since the party,” he said. “I wanted to tell you that I did not know about the ring and the necklace. I didn’t realize they were enchanted.”
He was admitting they were jinxpieces, then, that Lord Bayar had lied to the queen. Raisa folded her arms. “Why should I believe you?”
He shrugged. “Because, as you’ll see, I have no reason to lie to you.”
She tilted her head. “What do you mean,‘as you’ll see’?”
He ignored the question. “And because I’d like to think that I’m able to attract a girl on my own.”
“Depends on the girl,” Raisa said acerbically. “I hear you have had some success in the past.”
He half smiled, shrugging his shoulders, reminding her of why she’d always found him so attractive.
“When you . . . when you seemed receptive, I assumed you’d finally succumbed to my personal charm,” Micah said. “Imagine my disappointment when I learned that you had been bewitched, not by me, but by an amulet.”
“And several glasses of wine,” Raisa couldn’t resist saying.
Micah dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “No. Wine doesn’t work on you. I tried that already.”
Well! Raisa thought. You are being uncommonly frank.
“Why can’t you be satisfied with having every other girl at court falling at your feet?” she asked. “Why do you always want what you can’t have?”
“Why aren’t you asking me who was responsible for the seduction amulet, if not me?” he countered.
“Because I don’t have to,” she said. “Tell me this—why would your father want you to seduce me? Was he trying to cause a scandal, to prevent my marrying a southerner?”
“Well,” Micah said, rolling his eyes. “That would be a side benefit. The last thing we need is to have you marrying a southerner.”
“I don’t understand this. Your father is magically bound to the Line of Queens. Why is he able to act contrary to their interests?”
“How do you know he is? Acting contrary to their interests, I mean,” Micah said. He scanned the volumes on the nearest bookshelf. Running his hand along the dusty spines, he examined his palm, then wiped it on his trousers. Somehow it made h
im seem very young.
“Blood of the demon, Micah. Spelling the princess heir against her will? That is treason. What did he hope to accomplish?”
“My father expects we will be at war before long,” Micah said. “As soon as the civil war in Arden has ended.”
That was just what Amon had said. “So? What does that have to do with me?”
“We have to win against the southerners at all costs. That might mean discarding some of the archaic rules that have made us weak.”
“Me, I like some of the old rules,” Raisa said. “Such as rules against treason.”
“You know the Church of Malthus sees wizardry as heresy, right?” Micah said. “They burn wizards in the south.”
The Church of Malthus had the reputation of being humorless, stern, and conservative. Raisa knew that much. But she’d not known their position on wizardry.
“We’ll need all of our weapons if Arden attacks us,” Micah said. “We have to win. The clan must be made to see reason. We need unfettered access to the tools of magic.”
“You had that,” Raisa said, weariness trumping diplomacy. “And you made a mess of things.”
Why did they have to talk about this now? She felt tired and irritable, confused by this conversation, under siege by everyone. “Look, can we just go see what my mother wants so we can all go to bed?”
Micah raked back his dark hair. “I just wanted you to know that none of this is my idea. I’m hoping that you can . . . that you’ll keep that in mind.”
Her intuition pricked her again. Why was Micah Bayar giving this speech, taking her to see the queen in the middle of the night? What if she didn’t want to go?
In fact, she wouldn’t go. She’d go back to her room, where Amon was waiting. Sort of.
She circled around the table, meaning to slip past Micah and into the hallway. He must have seen something in her face, because he moved to block her path. “Come on, now,” he said. “We’d better hurry;we’re expected.”
She shook her head. “Actually, I’m exhausted, and I’m not feeling well,” she said. “Please give my apologies to the queen, but I think I’d better go on to bed.”
Micah sighed. “Raisa, I’m sorry, but I have to bring you. If it makes you feel any better, neither one of us has a choice, all right?”
Raisa looked into his face and saw that he meant it, so she walked past him and turned toward the privy chamber. All the while, her mind raced, struggling to make sense of it.
Neither one of us has a choice.
Who was giving the orders, then? Her mother or Gavan Bayar?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Unholy Ceremony
Four guardsmen flanked the doors of the queen’s apartments. Holding her head high, Raisa swept past them, with Micah following behind. Raisa heard voices within, but as soon as she pushed the door open, the conversation stopped and several people turned toward them.
Queen Marianna smiled, her cheeks flushed with excitement and wine, still wearing the stunning green dress she’d had on at dinner. Beside her, Gavan Bayar, also in his formal garb, and Micah’s sister, Fiona, her pale face alight with— what? Triumph? Satisfaction?
And there, like a plump, giddy turkey among the foxes, was Speaker Horas Redfern, chief cleric of the cathedral temple. Raisa had never cared for Redfern, who, in her opinion, spent too little time tending to his flock and too much time cozying up to the aristocracy.
Redfern, too, looked as if he’d had a little too much to drink. He seemed rather frenetically cheerful.
“And here they are now,” Queen Marianna said. She swept forward and kissed Raisa and Micah in turn.
Raisa scanned the room. It had been transformed from the last time she’d seen it. There were flowers everywhere—two extravagant arrangements of lilies and roses on either side of an altar, bowls of blooms on all the tables, tucked in with thousands of flickering candles. An altar cloth was embroidered with entwined roses and falcons. A peculiar design. To one side was a serving table with wine buckets and glasses. Why, it looked almost like a . . .
“How do you like it, sweetheart?” Queen Marianna took Raisa’s hands and gazed into her face as if eager for her approval. “We had very little time to put it together, but I think you can appreciate the importance of discretion. I know it may not be exactly what you pictured, but . . .”
Raisa’s mouth was so dry she could scarcely spit out any words. “What . . . what is this?” she whispered. “Isn’t it late to be having a party?”
“Your Majesty,” Lord Bayar said, his blue eyes glittering in the candlelight. “Perhaps you should explain.”
“Raisa,” Queen Marianna said. “You know we’ve been talking—well, strategizing—about the best match for you now that you are eligible for marriage.”
Raisa glanced at her mother, then at Gavan Bayar. “Who’s been talking—you and I, or you and them?”
“All of us, of course. Remember, we agreed that a southerner is not the best choice just now with all the upheaval in Arden and Tamron.”
“We never agreed on that,” Raisa said. “The war has to be over before long, and then we’ll have more options,” she said, thinking of Prince Liam. “An alliance between Tamron and the Fells might be enough to prevent invasion from Arden, if we time it right.”
Marianna stared at Raisa as if her daughter had grown another head with an inconveniently talkative mouth.
“It’s not necessarily in our interest to prevent a war between Arden and Tamron, Your Highness,” Lord Bayar said, verbally patting her on the head. “Such a war would deplete Arden’s resources and distract them from consideration of an attack on us.”
“If Arden wins, it will be more of a threat than ever,” Raisa said, recalling her conversation with Prince Gerard.
“And there’s no one among the clan royalty who would be a suitable match,” Marianna rushed on. “Averill is your father, and the Matriarch of Marisa Pines is unmarried with a bastard son.”
“There are cousins at Demonai Camp who might be suitable,” Raisa said, thinking of Reid. “When Father returns, we can see what he says.”
“Your father’s opinion might be . . . interesting, but not especially important,” Queen Marianna said, looking put out that Raisa was being so uncooperative. “We also need to think about the role wizards may play in any upcoming conflict, and what we might need to do to cement our interests more closely together.”
“The High Wizard is magically bound to the queen of the Fells,” Raisa said. “Therefore, our interests already coincide. Besides, what does our relationship with wizards have to do with my marriage?”
If she hadn’t been so tired, she would have seen it coming. Looking back, she concluded that she was being extraordinarily thick.
Queen Marianna drew herself up the way she always did when she expected Raisa to be obstinate. “Raisa, we have chosen a match for you for the good of the realm and the Line of Queens. You will marry Micah sul’Bayar.”
For a moment, Raisa was convinced she’d misheard. That her mother was joking, somehow, despite the scowl on her face. That it was some kind of test of her knowledge of the covenant known as the Naéming.
That it couldn’t possibly be true.
Then she looked over at Micah and saw the truth in his face. This was what he’d meant in the library when he’d said, Neither one of us has a choice.
“But ...but that’s impossible,” Raisa whispered. “I cannot marry a wizard. It’s forbidden.”
“Forbidden by whom?” the queen said. “I am the queen of the Fells. I am sovereign over this realm.”
“Forbidden by the Naéming for a thousand years,” Raisa said. “You know that. No wizard has married a queen of the Fells since Hanalea. And you know what happened then.”
“My dear girl, think of the lost opportunities, the richness of possibility,” Lord Bayar said. “The union of royal blood and wizardry will make us once again the most powerful kingdom in the Seven Realms. Why should the actio
ns of one rogue wizard close that door forever?”
Kingdom, she thought. Over my dead body.
“I am not your dear girl,” Raisa said, breathing hard and fast. “I am the princess heir to the queendom of the Fells, and I’ll thank you to remember it. And it wasn’t the actions of one madman that resulted in the Naéming. It was the abuse of power by a dynasty of wizards who invaded and conquered the Fells and enslaved its blooded rulers.”
“That’s one perspective,” Lord Bayar said, smooth as any serpent. “Others call it a golden age, when all of the Seven Realms paid tribute to the Fells. When riches flowed to us from all seven. When the fertile fields of Arden filled our granaries and supplied the funds to build this legendary city.”
“The city was built before wizards ever came here,” Raisa said.
“Who’s been feeding you this misinformation?” Lord Bayar asked. “Your father? Elena Demonai? The days of the clans are over.”
Raisa turned away from Lord Bayar and faced the queen. “Mother, you know this isn’t right. You know you can’t marry me to a wizard. The clan will go to war over it, you know they will. Do you want a civil war here as well as in Arden? How vulnerable will that make us?”
“Bows and arrows cannot protect us against the war machines of Arden,” Marianna said. “We need sorcery on our side.”
“We already have it, or we should have,” Raisa said, glaring at Lord Bayar. “The High Wizard is supposed to be bound to you, and subject to your will. What’s happened? Is the link damaged, or broken, or . . . ?”
“Micah,” Lord Bayar said pointedly, “please calm your bride so we can get on with this. It’s growing late, wedding jitters or not, and we need to ride back to Gray Lady before morning.”
Micah moved toward Raisa, hands extended, as one might approach a cornered fellscat. “Come on, Raisa,” he coaxed, almost pleading. “Let’s just get this over with.”
I almost feel sorry for Micah, Raisa thought. She looked around the room for a way out. Her gaze lit on Redfern, who seemed woefully out of place, and it all finally registered. “Hold on. You’re planning to marry us tonight?”
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