The Heir and the Spare

by Kate Stradling

  When Iona joined her cousin in the parlor the following morning, she found him breakfasting from a tray of pastries.

  He offered her one. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall we spend the morning watching the highway?”

  She frowned at the open window and the stretch of road that cut through their view. “What for?”

  “For a pack of Caprians. I don’t want you arriving back at the castle before them. Lisenn needs to be on her best behavior when you show up. Let her sweat a little, worrying about whether you’re going to rat her out, but make sure she has to keep up her pleasant façade.”

  Iona had the distinct impression that they were playing with fire. Even so, she agreed with the premise. If the Caprians returned ahead of her, Lisenn would of necessity focus on them. Accordingly, the younger princess settled in with Aedan, tucked in the shadows of the room but with a full view of travelers along the road.

  The Caprians passed near noon, an unmistakable column that included four of her father’s royal guards. She picked out Jaoven in their midst, clean-shaven again and looking barely worse for wear, though his coat had certainly seen better days.

  “I knew they would tell your father about the message,” Aedan muttered.

  Iona looked sharply to him. “Is it wrong for my father to know?”

  He slid her a sidelong glance. “If he knows, Lisenn knows. And if she had known you were there, she might have slipped someone loyal to her in that group, and who knows what kind of accident would have befallen you on the way home.”

  “They probably had to tell him,” she reasoned. “As foreign diplomats, they can’t ride off into the countryside as they please. And of course he would send guards along to make certain the prince of Capria returns in safety.”

  Aedan plastered on a fake smile. “Would that he’d bothered to guard his own daughter as well.”

  She could say nothing to this. There had been guards with them at Sorrow’s Linn, of course, but they never interfered with Lisenn, and Iona might as well not exist in their eyes.

  The cousins waited for half an hour after the Caprians had vanished from sight before packing their own meager supplies and wandering down to the unmarked carriage. It belonged to the guesthouse, as it turned out, a vehicle Aedan had hired after riding breakneck from the capital. They tied his own horse, well-rested now, to the back of the coach and set off at a pace slow enough to avoid catching up with the foreign delegation.

  When the capital and the castle slid into view, it was late afternoon. Iona wanted nothing more than a hot bath and a long sleep in her own bed. She could only imagine Bina’s dismay at her disheveled appearance.

  They changed carriages in the city, to a sleek vehicle with Aedan’s family crest upon the door. He sent word ahead as well of Iona’s return, so that when they rolled into the courtyard, a crowd of servants and nobles alike had gathered upon the castle steps, fanning out into a crescent to observe her arrival. When Iona descended amid cheers for her safe return home, she glimpsed Jaoven among the Caprian delegates. Something akin to relief flashed across his face.

  Lisenn, hanging on his arm, looked like her eyes might burn a hole through Iona’s head. The younger princess instantly averted her gaze.

  Queen Marget started forward from the center of the crowd, but King Gawen waylaid her. “Decorum, my dear,” he said.

  Straight-backed, she resumed her proper place beside him. Her hands, clasped in front of her, squeezed so tight that her knuckles shone white.

  Iona, in all her tattered, wrinkled glory, with her face wan and her hair hanging lank to her waist, dropped into a curtsey before them.

  “Rise,” her father said. Awkwardly she obeyed, conscious of a hundred eyes and ears trained upon her. The king, seemingly heedless of their audience, continued. “Let’s not have such dramatics in the future, Iona. Your clumsiness placed a foreign ally in mortal peril, and you both were lucky to survive. Fate might not be so kind if there’s a next time.”

  “Yes, sire,” she meekly said.

  “And you,” he said to Aedan. “How is it you came to know the whereabouts of my missing child before I did?”

  The marquess adopted an artless smile. “Dumb luck, Your Majesty. I know I should have sent you word immediately, but I wanted to confirm the report of her whereabouts first instead of getting your hopes up.”

  King Gawen grunted. Without another word he spun and walked into the castle. Queen Marget, after a speaking look to her daughter, followed him.

  The instant the royal pair had vanished, before Lisenn or the Caprians could even consider approaching, Bina swept down upon her and led her away, fussing with every step. Aedan dogged their footsteps all the way to Iona’s room, determined to see her safe within her own quarters before he abandoned her.

  He dropped a kiss on her cheek before he left, and then Bina pulled her in and spent the evening correcting the damage a river and a hike through the woods had caused.

  The charcoal-colored dress and cloak she discarded for rags.

  As she tended to her mistress, she gave an account of how Prince Jaoven had ridden into the courtyard earlier that afternoon, and how Lisenn had fallen, weeping, on his neck. He had held her on the castle steps until she stopped crying, and the spectacle had set the castle and the city both abuzz with rumors of more than a merely political marriage.

  All the while, Iona fought a rising sense of nausea. She needed him to marry Lisenn, now more than ever. If the treaty fell through, there was no telling what new course Aedan and his fellow conspirators might enact. She suspected, from her cousin’s vehemence, that outright rebellion against the crown would follow, and Capria provided a stark example of the destruction that might emerge.

  Her kingdom was barreling headlong toward a war, but this treaty would at least forestall it. The marriage had to occur.

  Even if Jaoven entered into it deceived. Even if he deserved better.

  At long last she was washed, dried, and clothed, with her hair braided into a low knot. As though it were any other day.

  A knock on the door signaled the arrival of her evening meal—or so they assumed. When Bina opened the portal, a royal page stood in the hall.

  “Princess Iona’s presence is required in the dining hall. The king and queen await her with their other guests.”

  Iona’s stomach dropped into her knees. Why had she assumed they would leave her alone for the night? But of course her father would want to show the castle in its normal rhythms as quick as possible after the calamity of the past few days.

  Bina had dressed her in a dove-colored gown, the red embroidery on its sleeves and hem the only decoration that separated it from a mourning dress. She fingered the stitching at one wrist as she followed the page. Usually she avoided such a bright color, even in ornamentation and especially when she might cross paths with Lisenn. The gray of the dress itself could cause no complaint, but that red might earn her a few bruises.

  Or another attempt on her life. She didn’t know anymore.

  The company had already been seated, the Caprian delegates intermingled with a handful of Wessettan nobility and the royal family. The men stood as Iona arrived on the threshold to the dining hall. With a deepening blush, she crossed to the only open chair, exactly the same position she had occupied at her last state dinner. Across from her, Prince Jaoven regarded her with thinly veiled concern. She avoided his gaze and Lisenn’s as she dropped into her high-backed chair.

  The men of the company sat. Beneath the cover of the table, a hand grasped hers in her lap. She looked to her right, to her mother, who gazed upon the royal couple across the table, a tranquil expression fixed upon her face. The hand squeezed Iona’s and retracted, the movement hardly noticeable to any other guests, had they bothered to look.

  As the castle servants carried in the first course, King Gawen cleared his throat. “I think, given the events of the past few days, we should perhaps resolve the terms of our trea
ty sooner rather than later—providing that Capria is still willing to align with Wessett after the difficulties you’ve encountered here.”

  Jaoven sat up a fraction straighter. “My personal difficulties have no bearing on Capria’s intent. And, even if they did, the generosity of the people of Wessett in coming to my assistance has only heightened my esteem.”

  A smile touched the king’s face. “I’m glad to hear it. If you are amenable to working out the last details quickly, I propose to hold a royal ball in three days’ time, with an official announcement of the treaty and its more public provisions.” He punctuated this with a significant look at Jaoven and Lisenn.

  “I have no objections,” the raven-haired princess said, and she shifted an adoring gaze upon her prince.

  “Nor I,” he agreed, though with a far more neutral mien.

  Iona’s insides twisted. They meant to announce their engagement to the nation, and the wedding would no doubt follow shortly thereafter.

  And then she would be free—of Lisenn, if not this crippling guilt.

  Chapter 17

  Iona should have slept well in her own bed, but instead she tossed and turned, her thoughts filled with Aedan’s plot and the impending alliance between Capria and Wessett.

  Aedan expected her to become queen one day. She had no desire for the crown.

  Roughly an hour before dawn, she gave up on any further sleep. She left the warmth of her blankets for a chair by the low-burning fire, where she curled up with a sketchbook. In the dimness she mindlessly sketched, a habit born from her need to channel her inner turmoil into something productive. The practice had served her well in the past. This morning, however, when what she intended as a generic face stared back at her with the crown prince of Capria’s eyes, she tore the page from the book and tossed it into the flames.

  She could not warn him, and he seemed happy enough with her sister anyway. Lisenn was always on her best behavior for him.

  Another sketched face manifested the same results as the first. It met the same fate, too, and she switched to drawing hands instead.

  Bina trudged from her adjoining room with the first light of dawn, yawning broadly. She took one look at Iona curled in her chair and immediately went to the wardrobe.

  “You should have woken me,” she said, pulling a dress from the depths. “I thought you’d sleep later, after everything.”

  Iona simply shut her book. She left it on the chair and crossed to the vanity.

  “Is your cousin posing for his portrait this morning?” Bina asked as she brushed the princess’s hair from its long braid.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say.” Iona hadn’t thought of the portrait in days. Was it Aedan’s excuse to have more access to the castle and to her? But his father had commissioned it. Did that mean the Duke of Gleddistane was involved in the conspiracy against the immediate line of succession as well? Or had Aedan somehow convinced his father to ask for the portrait?

  Perhaps it had nothing to do with the subversive plot at all.

  Bina dressed her in brown, a rich color that Iona didn’t object to until she moved into a patch of sunlight at her window.

  She stopped short and stared. “This dress is pink.”

  “It’s not,” said the maid, pretending to be absorbed in reorganizing a box full of hairpins.

  Iona moved the skirt, observing the shift of color as the sun hit it from different angles. “It is pink.”

  “Strictly speaking, it’s not. The tailor called the color rosewood, and it is most definitely a shade of brown. And as your sister wouldn’t be caught dead in any shade of brown or gray, I should think you would enjoy the full spectrum those colors can offer.”

  She opened her mouth to argue but then shut it again. Even if it had a hint more color than Iona was used to, Lisenn would never wear a dress of this hue. She probably wouldn’t see it as anything other than brown.

  And Iona liked the way the sun revealed that hidden shine in the fabric.

  “I’ll probably have paint all over it within the hour,” she said.

  Bina only shrugged. “A dress is meant to be worn, not to sit in a wardrobe waiting for moths to find it.”

  Iona wore the dress, but her heart jittered in her throat as she left her room. Lisenn didn’t usually get up until mid-morning, and they rarely saw one another anyway.

  Even so, the younger sister crept along the hallways, checking at every corner before she proceeded, all the way to her art studio. The door lay open at the end of its corridor, light from the windows spilling into the hall. Eager to be back in her most comfortable space, she quickened her gait.

  Two feet from the threshold, she halted. Through the opening, clutter met her gaze: brushes sprawled across the floor, scraps of canvas and splinters of wood…

  A few more steps brought Iona fully into the room.

  Everything was destroyed. Furniture overturned, books burned to embers, canvases slashed, paints poured out across the floor and left to dry. Nothing had escaped untouched. Her practice clavichord, already scarred, had been shattered into pieces, its keys and strings strewn like bleached, broken bones and sinews and the wooden case split apart. The lute, nearby, had a crushed body and a splintered neck.

  Her easel, too, lay on its side, one leg broken. The canvas it had once held sat in a bent frame, face-down on Aedan’s platform, amid a pair of toppled columns and torn drapery.

  Breath shallow in her throat, Iona approached. A knife had destroyed the canvas itself. She lifted it to view the other side but dropped it just as quickly.

  The slits crisscrossed the area that had once been Aedan’s face.

  A rustle sounded behind her. She whirled.

  King Gawen stood within the door, a solemn expression on his face. Iona locked gazes with him, the silence between them like a tightly strung bowstring.

  Tears spilled unbidden down her cheeks. She blinked and looked to the wall, swiping them away, mortified to reveal such deep emotion to a father who valued control above all. But once uncorked, her grief refused to remain contained. It expanded and swallowed her, the culmination of days—weeks, months, years—of anxiety and loss. With a deep, shuddering inhale she sank into a crouch, covering her face with one forearm and sobbing freely.

  She had kept to her own corner, had never encroached on Lisenn’s domain, and yet her sister crushed everything she loved, crushed and splintered and destroyed so that Iona could have nothing beautiful in this world.

  Movement in her periphery didn’t register until a hand rested on her head. She paused, frozen, waiting for the words of rebuke which her father would surely speak.

  Instead, “Most unfortunate,” he murmured. “I’m sorry you had to experience something this difficult, Iona.”

  Shock pierced through her. She raised her head, staring up at him through bleary eyes.

  He met her gaze and then surveyed the wreckage around them. “Your sister was distraught. Who can blame her? In one fell swoop, you and her intended were swept away with the current, presumably dead, all of her expectations ruined in an unfortunate accident. Or so it seemed.”

  She could not believe her ears. He was making excuses for Lisenn? Would he be so indifferent if she had burned down the whole castle, or was it merely acceptable because he didn’t care about the items lost in his eldest daughter’s tantrum?

  Something deep within Iona snapped. “She pushed me,” she whispered.

  Her father stilled. For a breath, he said nothing, and then, “What?”

  “She pushed me. Into the river. She wanted my sketchbook, and I didn’t want to give it to her, so I threw it into the current, and then she pushed me. She tried to kill me.”

  He stared as though uncomprehending. Iona started to rise, but he stopped her with an outstretched palm.

  “I should think,” he said, and a hard glint entered his eyes, “that a child of mine would know better than to sling false accusations in a fit of pique.”

  Her eyes bulged. “It
’s not false! She pushed me!”

  “You are distraught. Only, instead of a few paintings, you’re trying to destroy your sister’s life. We can get you new art supplies, Iona, if you want them. This reckless story you’re concocting, trying to exact revenge for something your sister did in the throes of her grief—”

  “I’m not concocting it. She tried to kill me!”

  “Enough!” he roared, his face purple. Iona flinched, falling back from him on trembling limbs. He breathed deep and ran a hand across his eyes. “I don’t want to hear any such ridiculous accusation again, and if I discover that you’ve spread it elsewhere, you will dearly regret it. Do you understand?”

  Instinctively she nodded, an odd numbness gripping her soul.

  His expression softened. “She should not have acted as she did, but this is why I have always warned you against making deep attachments, especially to objects that time or human hands may destroy. You can take comfort that, if all goes well, you have only a few days more of her to endure.”

  It was the closest he had ever come to admitting Lisenn’s personal failings. Iona sat back on her heels, her head dropped and her hands clenched into fists on her folded legs.

  Again her father rested his palm on her hair, the gesture a voiceless benediction she could not accept. When he withdrew, a measure of resentment filled the gap he left behind. Before he could exit, however, a new figure darkened the doorway.

  “What on earth—?” Aedan’s exclamation stuck in his throat, his eyes huge.

  The king, as though surveying the damage anew, glanced around. “It is unfortunate, isn’t it. I’m sorry about your portrait. I’m sure Iona will express her apologies to your father for the unfulfilled commission, and I shall do the same.”

  After a significant look to Iona—a warning in that pointed glance—he exited the studio, Aedan scooting out of his way to let him pass. As the king’s footsteps receded up the hall, the marquess picked his way across the destruction to kneel beside his cousin.