"The tree silk," King Gregor said suddenly, brows creasing in absurd concentration. Then the male snapped his fingers and called out, "Guards!"
Men entered at once. Perhaps the king intended to have her locked up. Locked up for being a wicked and naughty girl.
"Tristian, why are you doing this?" Rhenan asked, having stepped away powerlessly. "Is this not what you wanted?"
For eyes burning of gold, the glare he shot his brother was as chilling as a Lymerean's. "It is not."
The king was repositioning pieces on his diorama, having not looked up since the declaration of the union. Still he said, "Do as my son has bid. Escort this female to the waiting antechamber she came from."
Her heart sank as the clank of chain mail and official sentence shuffled forward.
The corners of Prince Tristian's mouth lifted ever so slightly, as did his head, his eyes narrowing in a gnarled and twisted satisfaction. "Wait for me, Princess Astrid," he said softly.
And somehow she knew this was but the beginning of the pain.
19
~ RHENAN ~
It was easier being in a room filled with others' dilemmas rather than left alone with his father and his own internal conflict. But, alas, there was little else to be done for the Misseldon girl. The king had given a direct order to his guards to heed Tristian's cruel command, and while Rhenan could have relieved all men who dared come in contact with his future sister in-law of their sword hands, he had his doubts on how well his father would take that.
His father who now sat in the silhouette of the early morning sun, fixating his model boats along the tabletop display coastline. A man enthralled with his toys.
Rhenan almost allowed himself to feel a pang of remorse, but crushed down on the hindrance before it poisoned his chest. There was no option beyond the realm of regicide, for there were no asylums suitable for a mentally departed king in a kingdom dependent on a monarch's health. It stood to argue, that in time, it would be Tristian sitting behind the immaculate desk, golden eyes alight with infatuation, mind incapable of comprehending beyond celebratory relics, and what then?
Would Rhenan still stand, so certainly with a blade to his kin's throat?
After the way he'd behaved with the Misseldon girl—pregnant Misseldon girl, he wondered whether he had chosen the proper Hanson to plot against.
No, Tristian was no threat to the kingdom's hard-fought stability. Diadara had saw to that with her mysterious remedy. If anything, he was a threat to Astrid alone, and just as soon as Rhenan found time in his day, he would confront that issue next.
For now, "Father."
The king couldn't afford to lift his eyes, but a slow smile spread within the thicket of his beard. "Why've we never sailed, son? We Thornstons live in a kingdom renown for its enticing festivity, it's colourful art forms—so why've we never sailed? A celebration on a boat for those richest amongst us."
Rhenan plopped into the chair Astrid had occupied, careful not to convey a face of anything other than remote seriousness, for anything less would result in his father's dismissal. "I'm here to talk."
"I'm here to listen."
"A perfect pair, eh?"
"Moon to the stars."
"Captured in jars," he said without thinking, and this time, the pang in his chest attacked without warning, for no matter how old he grew, it was near impossible to purge the childhood memory of his father assisting him in capturing the little black and white flying bugs who only emerged on full moons, whose wings lit up a bright blue when they took flight. Like the stars.
"Surprised you remember that," Gregor went on. "You forget everything else."
"I remember what's important." Most days. Other days it wasn't about remembering, but carrying out tasks across the whole of Redthorn. Namely inserting fear into the hearts of the riotous, and loyalty in the hearts of the sensible.
"And that's what you're here for. To speak on important things and try to convince me to cancel my overseas excursions?"
Shocked, Rhenan stared, not expecting such a lucid evaluation.
But then his father admitted, "Your brother was just doing the same before the pesky news of babies intervened."
He had? That didn't sound like Tristian, lending a hand to serious diplomatic issues. Unless Mama made him. But Rhenan had the suspicion Mama was unaware of her husband's sea implements.
"You should consider it," Rhenan said. He was here on one last attempt at restitution of his father's rationality. One last attempt before he opened Prince A'zur's letter. "The cancelling of those ships. The Westland Kingdom has already declared their hatred after what you've done to them. You're in luck they've not acted as rash as those Lymereans and sent their own vessels to our coasts."
The Westland Kingdom was of greater might and strength than many Thornstons wished to acknowledge. In fact, it was almost heresy to so much as hint at the extent of their otherworldly supremacy.
Hence why King Gregor came to his feet with a show of teeth and anger.
Anger Rhenan brushed aside, hands raised. "It's the truth."
"You will consider your words," his father returned, hands bunching at the lip of the table.
He blew an exasperated breath, which turned into a laugh. "I have been. Had I not, they'd have sounded something like you've lost your fucking mind, Papa."
Just as gold was passed down into the eyes of Hanson men for generations past, so, too, was that emblem of flashing fury. Pupils which took to deadly darkness, eating up the tawny disks of light calm, and throwing back something hellish. His father stalked around the table and Rhenan couldn't help but notice the man's trousers were pulled on backwards, his shirt sticking out like a childish tongue through the lips of his lace band.
Hard to fear a man in such a state. Then again, it would be ignorant not to. Crazy men did even crazier things.
"Do you have it in your head to run my kingdom?"
Rhenan tipped his head back and scratched at his neck in thought. Then he snorted, "God no. This purgatory is all yours and Tristian's. But it's my home. It's my sisters' home. It's my mother's home. I won't see it destroyed over tree silk."
King Gregor and his large frame gave a face of hurt, then eyes which pleaded. "Tree silk is the bane of luxury, Rhenan. You'll find nothing anywhere as soft as it."
His father reached forward and tugged the thick black hairs on Rhenan's head. "Not even this, son."
He sighed. "Father, you sent good, loyal men on that ship to the Westlands. All in a vie to repair a trade of merchandise. But those men will be promptly slaughtered, possibly before they even dock. And then what of their families?
There was a hesitancy in his father's eyes that said clearly the man remained capable of feeling remorse, but there was defiance that made it moot. "A few disgruntled families will not harm the many."
"If only that were all," he said, watching as Gregor took his seat once again. When he looked up for Rhenan to go on, he frowned. "Until recently, the crown has upheld a vigilant watch over the kingdom's expenses, a necessity with all of Redthorn's frivolous indulgences, but I've been to the bankers. They've reported the state of us."
"Joyful and fulfilled." Satisfaction shone through his gaze.
"Can't say the same for our chests. I'm not one for numbers, but I do know that when a banker relays a quarter drop in the crown's funds, it's really bad." He did hope they were speaking a similar language now.
"A blip of which tax revenue will remedy."
Not a similar language then. "You've been paying southern lands when they behave rebelliously, funding their hedonistic wants blindly, graciously, and you ignore the fact that the east coast cities have begun stealing from you. And when I move to put an end to it, you forbid it."
When all his father did was stare, Rhenan pinched the bridge of his nose and spelled out, "The cities with the largest taxes have been absolved. There is no revenue, merely thieves of whom you pay."
"But have you seen them?"
"Wh
o?"
"The people. Have you been to their city and have you seen the smiles upon their faces?"
His sight was selective, for he could only see smiles of deceit and ambition, while his father saw genuine smiles of joy and exuberance.
With a deep inhale, he reached into his pocket to retrieve the letter. Upon exhaling, his eyes slipped closed and he knew then by the peaceful calm on King Gregor's visage, his repeated insistence on turning a blind eye to nascent destruction, there was no salvation.
At least, none that could be dealt by his own hands.
After all, his were made for the hilts of his swords.
"What do you have there?"
What did he have indeed.
He trusted the Lymerean prince to have vague insinuations throughout the epistle, an obscurity extending beyond the male's own dialect, and had hopes that none other than his father would need to assist him in reading it—for the sole pair of eyes to have landed on the letter (save the prince's), would soon cease to exist.
But when Rhenan opened the letter, his eyes dropping to the umber, rough papyrus, he saw no need for assistance; Prince A'zur was true to nature, a master of vaguity, for written at its center in curvaceous ink, was simply:
?
*****
The paper was tossed into a glass burner, where the flames ate it, turning treachery to ash. Rhenan made his way through the parlour, which was alive and teeming with nobles and merchants, the tables having been exchanged for stands, venues, sales of items Rhenan couldn't possibly care about.
As he passed through, women and men alike peeled away from him with whispers and their usual panicked expressions, and there, towards the other end of the room, he spied his brother, a hand against the frame of one of the windows overlooking the courtyard. Head bowed, black curls shielding his image, but by the jagged lift and fall of the male's shoulders, he knew him to be on the verge of departing from his sanity.
Tough.
Through the parlour, out the rear, around the ground level corridor, second floor, third floor, and finally the fourth floor, where the silence could be either frightening or relaxing. Blue daylight filtered through the opened panel windows, the white and gold tiles stretching far to elaborate on the castle's sheer size. The royal apartments were...decorated.
Yes, decorated, the only word he could find to describe what his sisters had done to the place since Rhenan had long since moved away and Tristian had expressed his lack of concern for whether or not they placed lady vanities against the walls for their lady hens, lined them with green, bountiful vines and hung flowers above each ivory framed mirror.
When he made his way through the feminine horror and reached the white polished door, he knocked on the smooth surface and gave one warning, "Oh, Beeeth!", before barging inside to find his sister lounging upon her plush vessel of a bed. The lace curtains secured upon the posts cascaded slightly over her person with the breeze from the open balcony doors.
She looked up from the pattern book she lugged around like the Holy Texts and provided him with the laziest of smiles. "I could have been naked or plotting a murder."
Almost enough to kill his mood.
Murder. Kill. Who knew language could be so deadly. Or maybe it was those who wielded it.
"God spared me from the first, and I couldn't care less about the second." His eyes roamed her room. The walls were a simplistic and crisp white wash though they were decorated extremely liberally with art and trinkets. Masks from balls pasts lined one strip, while plans for future footwear designs were pinned above the writing desk, as though her room was more workshop than bedchamber. A small portrait of their parents hung beside her dresser, while a sketch taken by an artist of the two girls, himself, and even the oaf looked over the delicate seating area. When he found not what he was searching for, he tsked. "Where are your hooded sticks?"
Beth scoffed. "What do you want with them?"
"To frolic through the grass." He tipped his head forward and smiled. "Unless you want me to search myself."
"You'll only dirty them." She frowned so furiously her face appeared to melt into her neck. "Wait, what do you want with them?"
He walked to her closet and threw it open, finding the carousel of clothes quite blinding, and grinned when Beth shot up and hurried to his side. She tugged on his arm, though she was on the verge of bubbling with amusement. "This isn't because you're a... you know..."
At first, he didn't understand. Then he remembered she and Jocelyn had been seated at the table adjacent when Tristian revealed Rhenan's "condition", and considering his sisters had ears and noses the size of elephants...
He smacked a hand to his heart and clutched. "Are you rejecting my nature, Beth?"
Telling her the true reason of his want for her hooded stick would elicit more attention than he wanted. And, no doubt, a range of fury. Let her and Jocelyn find out from someone who wasn't him that the Misseldon girl was here, turning into a puddle.
"Oh never! Quite the opposite actually." She spoke as she began to weave through the carnage only she was capable of navigating. "I went to a party when you were away at Inara and Olivia Kother's place in the city, you know, the twins? There was one of those men there, you know, well perhaps you don't. He called everyone 'petal' and we called him Dame Geraldina. Naturally he had the most impressive dress and make-up one has ever seen and I even measured his feet so he may have the most splendid pair of shoes, for I was quite taken with his oh-so-sharp jokes."
Rhenan stood and endured the onslaught of the yammering, as was inescapable when in her company. He could deny any similarities between himself and this Geraldina, or he could ask for his contact. Both would encourage more yammering.
He rathered the previous fate. "The Misseldon girl is here."
She turned so sharply a scarf tumbled from its holder. "What?"
He cleared his throat. "I said, how about a hug and we talk things over calmly after you give me the hooded stick?"
"How about you explain what you meant by her being here?"
"She is here. In the castle. The sunroom antechamber. And she's turning into water as we speak. So a hooded stick, Beth, please?"
"Why is she here?"
"Thellemere sent her."
"Why?"
"To speak with Tristian."
"Why?"
"To see eye-to-eye."
"On?"
"Political matters."
"Like?"
"Alliances."
"Between?"
"Thellemere and Redthorn. Look, Beth, the hooded stick, please?"
She reached to grasp a sky blue beaded one in her arms and shook her head. Teasing him. Bribing him. "I want to know the details."
He sighed then and wrapped an arm around her svelte, small frame, lifting her. With his other hand, he pried the stick away and walked them both back to the bed.
"Stop it! Rhenan, just let me know something before anyone else. I'm fed up of Jocelyn being the one to spill the news of everything."
He paused momentarily. He knew that feeling all too well. Always coming second. But he didn't have time to deal with the doubtless proceeding questions should he reveal it. And he also didn't want her following him to Astrid, for already the winterborn girl had endured her share of hate for the day.
So he set his sister down on the bed and said, "Just as soon as I give this to her, I promise, I'll come back and you'll be the first soul I tell."
Her amber eyes widened to an impossible size. "It's something big, isn't it?"
And at this, he smiled hugely. "Bigger than our brother's idiocy."
~ TRISTIAN ~
Prince Tristian had departed his father's study without a second glance back. Not when walking the corridor of the library, the private chapel, the bowers, the galleries, open lower level vestibule, or even those vacant side chambers which served no purpose in the castle other than to fill structural space.
It was only upon entering the castle's parlour that he was for
ced to heel, for the room was cluttered with faces. The Royal Summer Exposition, an event that practically stretched from the start of summer until the first leaf turned. Nobles, lords, and their far removed cousins were all invited to attend. A relatively new method of sales and trades for the nouveau riche and facile, and those who merely longed to taste the inside of Thornhall's place of royal accommodations.
Their attire varied, though fell in perfect rhythm to the arabesque, champagne floors and their golden gilts. The many windows scaling the length of the room, transparent, mauve drapes tied back to shower in light and feed into the gleeful atmosphere.
The sheer number of attendants tethered him in place, their voices loud and many, though he knew the parlour had seen worse days, for the beginning of the summer was when one could hardly walk the hard, refractive floors.
He took a deep breath, prepared to shove through and ignore what notice he was sure to influence, but a suddenly wave of heat floored him.
His exhale was that of sultury denial.
Our baby.
A hand went to the nearest window's frame, a cold sweat rolling beneath his vesture, between his shoulder blades.
Marry her.
Tristian stared at the weeping hole attached to the glass, where the rock jambs had eroded, and took yet another calming inhale, only to feel the room tilt on the exhale.
Men tended not to acknowledge hypothetical travesties, but were rather wont of dictating the present. Pouring their efforts and thoughts into the now and the future.
His now, just moments prior, had been Constance Durendale and his marriage to the female. While he was guilty of allowing the aspect of their union to fall into secondary concerns in the past, as he'd neared their wedding date, the aspect had sidled into his prime focus.
He'd been abstinent: wine, women, meat. Discarded.
He'd been cleansed: scriptures, prayer, absolution. Inducted.
All for nothing. All to be haunted by his past actions. All to have a past action impose upon what had been planned for sixteen years. To take one loose thread at the end of a tapestry and unravel insouciantly.
Bonds: A Cursed Six novel (The Cursed Six Book 1) Page 29