The Heir and the Spare

by Kate Stradling

  From that point onward she had no rest. She danced with Caprians and Wessettans alike, young and old, noble and common, determined that no one should accuse her of disdaining the assembly or its celebratory cause. Her feet ached and the music threaded a painful throbbing into her brain, but she danced on.

  And if, from the corners of her eyes, she frequently glimpsed a figure in Caprian blue, she prided herself on never looking directly at him.

  As the evening waxed on, she slipped away, out of the increasingly stuffy ballroom to the terrace and the garden that sprawled beyond it in the darkness. Points of light along the paths marked members of the royal guard stationed among the hedgerows, an assurance of security—and a deterrent—for any revelers who might venture into the shadowed walks. Iona turned and strolled along the castle wall instead, allowing the gravel path to lead her.

  In two days it would be over. She breathed against an onslaught of emotions and trained her attention on putting one foot in front of the other.

  Her wandering brought her to the back corner, where the windows of her studio opened outward into the night. She paused, observing them, allowing her grief to thrum in time with her pulse. She had not been back inside since that fateful morning, could not even stomach the destruction that lay within that once-inviting room. The monumental task of cleaning it all up—years upon years of art and supplies—kept her from starting.

  Perhaps when Lisenn had gone she would find the resolve.

  She walked on. In the shadows where the path angled ninety degrees, she nearly collided with another body. Strong hands steadied her, and she looked up into the face of Jaoven of Capria.

  Of course. The one person she least wanted to meet.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Her heart flip-flopped. She shrugged out of his grasp. “Yes. I was only startled.” Rather than continue on the gravel, she took off through the grass, toward the lake that glittered beneath a sky full of stars.

  When footsteps followed, her heartbeat and her hackles both rose. “You shouldn’t be out here. You should be inside with Lisenn.”

  Jaoven caught up and matched her pace, his hands in his pockets and a negligent atmosphere about him. “She’s dancing with a string of nobility, one right after the other. I only stepped out for a breath of air.”

  “Then take your breath of air and step back in again.”

  “I hoped you would abandon your grudge against me, Iona.”

  Her name on his lips caused another flip-flop within her ribcage. She paused and surveyed him with the coolest expression she could manage. “Whether I hold a grudge is no bearing on your conduct tonight. You can’t just abandon the woman you’re about to marry, even if she is occupied with a string of nobility, and even if it’s only for a breath of air. Someone will mark your absence.”

  “This late in the evening? Everyone’s slinking out of the ballroom for a minute or two, prime example right in front of me.”

  She bristled. “No one cares whether I’m there or not.”

  “Not even your cousin?”

  “What’s Aedan got to do with it?”

  The prince ticked off items on one hand. “He keeps you company most days, he rescues you from dastardly foreigners, and he takes an extremely high interest in your welfare.”

  “And right now he’s wooing his lady love in one of the few events they can attend together,” Iona replied.

  He cocked his head. “So it’s jealousy that’s driven you outside?”

  She took an involuntary step back, stunned that he could pinpoint the very emotion she had fought all evening but completely misidentify its source. “I don’t recall how things are done in Capria, but here in Wessett, first cousins don’t have the type of relationship you’re implying. Aedan is like a brother to me.”

  Jaoven shifted, defensive. “We don’t marry our first cousins either, as a general rule, but it’s not unheard of.”

  “Gross,” Iona muttered. “I have no quarrel with Aedan and Besseta. She happens to be the daughter of a merchant, though, so they’re not always allowed to move in the same circles. Trust me when I say he’s not at all concerned with my whereabouts at the moment.”

  She continued her trek across the grass, to where the land sloped downward.

  To her consternation, so did Jaoven.

  “Stop following me.”

  Hands in his pockets again, he strolled along beside her at an easy gait. “Forgive me, but I get nervous when I see you heading toward a body of water.”

  Iona halted and favored him with a dour glare.

  He only flashed her a grin. Why were those dimples so attractive? And why couldn’t he save them for her sister instead of flaunting them here, to her inner turmoil?

  With a huff, she walked on to the bottom of the hill. The lake spread before them, the trees on the far side a collection of silhouettes against the night sky. Iona dropped to a stone bench, grateful to be off her feet.

  “Someone is going to miss you if you stay away too long,” she said when Jaoven paused beside her.

  “This late in the night, they can attribute it to a thousand excuses. Or are you worried someone might see us together and draw incorrect conclusions?”

  She looked up, studying his face in profile to her. If she had never gone to Capria, if she had never known the old Jaoven, would things have turned out this way between them?

  No. In truth, he never would have spared the younger princess of Wessett a second glance in his pursuit of the elder, and she never would have been the wiser for missing it.

  “I don’t hold a grudge against you,” she said.

  He slid her a sidelong glance. “You have a funny way of showing it.”

  She opened her mouth, shut it again, and looked to the lake. After a breath, she admitted, “I am worried someone might draw the wrong conclusions if they see us together.”

  “Why? I’m practically your brother-in-law.”

  “But you’re not,” Iona said, grateful for the deep shadows that hid her rising blush.

  “But I will be in two days.”

  He crossed around her to settle in the other open space on the bench. Elbows resting on his knees, he turned his head to meet her gaze.

  Iona maintained that stare, resentment growing. Did he suspect her internal weakness? Perhaps he was trying to catch her unawares, get her to confess as one last stroke to his ego before he committed fully to another woman. “I thought this treaty was important to you—important enough that you dropped to your hands and knees as soon as you arrived, begging me not to interfere with it.”

  “It is important,” he said.

  “Then why would you jeopardize it at the eleventh hour?”

  “Am I jeopardizing it?”

  The lowness of his voice, the intimacy implied in that question, the heightened awareness of how near he sat: all combined against her. She fought against their effects, clinging to every last shred of self-control. “To an onlooker? Yes. Lisenn won’t appreciate reports of her betrothed lingering in the garden with another woman, and especially not with her younger sister.”

  “There’s nothing between us,” Jaoven said, shifting his attention to the lake.

  The flippancy bruised her fluttering emotions; she latched onto it like a lifeline. “You know that, and I know that. Everyone else can only speculate.”

  He breathed a short sigh, interlacing his fingers and then pulling them apart again. “I was worried about you, all right?”

  If he had spoken an outright declaration of love she could not be more surprised. In her stunned silence, he babbled on.

  “You’ve been so distant since we parted ways in Straithmill. You were always distant before the river, and for good reason, but I thought we at least had found some common ground. Instead, the gap between us seems wider, somehow. It feels strange. In the past, shared calamities have brought me closer to people.”

  “Like Neven?”

  The prince spared her a rueful glance. �
��He saved my life, you know. Skinny, scrawny Neven of Combran, who had every reason to despise me. We were ambushed by a troop of Tuzhani mercenaries, and I was injured and couldn’t run. Just when I thought I’d met my final end, he stabbed my would-be executioner in the back and then dragged me underneath a supply wagon, out of sight. No one would’ve blamed him if he’d left me for dead.”

  “He would’ve blamed himself,” Iona said, understanding that much about her former classmate, at least.

  Jaoven chuckled. “I suppose so. You artists have a shocking degree of compassion, even toward those who don’t deserve it.”

  Although she could feel his eyes upon her, she carefully maintained a neutral forward gaze. Perhaps that was her problem, a shocking degree of compassion, and he, without the burden of an artist’s soul, could form and dissolve attachments as he pleased.

  The prince shifted on the stone bench, redirecting his focus to the water that spread before them. “Right now, Capria needs hope more than anything else. Their crown prince making a strong alliance, the hope of a future generation, the security against the wolves that prowl our borders: this treaty with your kingdom represents a promise to rebuild everything we lost and more. And certainly we have to give up some sovereignty in the bargain, but that’s a small price to pay.”

  The knot that had occupied her gut for several days intensified. She reached instinctively for her left wrist, but caught herself in the act and settled her hands in her lap instead. The glimmering stars overhead drew her focus and she fixed her gaze upon them, as though she might ignore that gnawing guilt if only she distracted herself well enough. “Is it very altered, Capria, from what it was four years ago?”

  He didn’t immediately answer, instead studying the ripples of the water. “On the surface, probably not. The buildings still stand, for the most part. It’s the people themselves that have changed. Houses divided: brother fighting against brother, father against son. Trust was lost among those with whom it should have burned the brightest. But I can change that now. My father was never supposed to inherit the crown, so there’s been uncertainty and unrest since his ascension. An alliance with Wessett supplies that missing piece of legitimacy. It enables us to work for our people instead of pouring effort into shoring up our right to rule.”

  He tipped his head skyward then as well, sharing her view of the stars. “We have so many plans, Iona, plans to introduce greater equality among our people, to banish the class divide that drove our conflict against one another, to right the wrongs we ourselves once committed. And in two days’ time, we can finally begin in earnest.”

  Every word he spoke struck like an axe against her resolve, until it toppled. Her eyes slid shut on a despairing realization: she couldn’t destroy this, not for her own comfort, nor for Wessett’s. She couldn’t sacrifice the hopes of an entire kingdom. If Aedan was telling the truth, her people at least understood that Lisenn was a villain. Jaoven and his people, far from entering into an alliance that would strengthen them, would instead fall victims to the elder princess’s whims, with a threat of retribution from Wessett if they dared oppose her.

  Aedan planned a bloodless coup, but Wessett itself was on the verge of a bloodless invasion into a neighboring kingdom at its weakest point.

  And even a month ago, she would have let it happen without an ounce of remorse.

  A deep breath steeled her nerves against the betrayal she was about to commit. But how could she live with herself if she took any other path?

  “You shouldn’t marry my sister.”

  Jaoven stilled. In the moonlight he seemed almost like one of the garden statues, his gaze fixed on the glittering lake. “Why not?”

  “Because she’s the last person on earth who would support you in your goals.”

  He shifted an incredulous look upon her.

  Iona swallowed, pressing ahead. “She’s a monster, Jaoven, worse than you could ever imagine.”

  Before she could follow this accusation with proof, before she could utter another word, the prince of Capria said, “I can’t believe, at this late in the negotiations, you are seriously trying to sabotage things.”

  Her mouth snapped shut and a blush flooded her cheeks.

  He pointed back up the hill, to where faint strains of music still wafted upon the air. “Your sister is perhaps the most harmless creature I’ve ever encountered.”

  “She’s not—”

  “The two of you don’t get along, I’ve figured out that much, but if you’re going to make up excuses for me not to marry her, at least come up with something plausible. I deserve that much consideration, if nothing else.”

  The scorn in his voice tossed her back four years in time. Her temper flared. “Fine. You know what? Marry her. Marry her, and get your precious alliance, and live your happy, hopeful, storybook life.” She flung herself from the bench, gathered her skirts, and started hiking up the hill.

  “I will!” Jaoven called to her retreating back.

  “Good,” she yelled over her shoulder. “And don’t come crying to me when the truth hits you square in the face.”

  Of all the conceited—! Why would she make up something like that? And why would he assume that she was making it up? She had told him from the start that the treaty had nothing to do with her!

  She paused at the top of the hill, briefly glancing toward the silhouette near the water’s edge. He stood, arms akimbo, staring out across the lake.

  Despite her avowal, the treaty had everything to do with her. It was her chance for safety and her kingdom’s chance to escape a future tyrant.

  And she had almost destroyed that with an ill-conceived warning to a man she cared too much about. Let him have Lisenn. If he wanted true penance for deeds performed in his earlier years, a marriage to her would surely balance the scale.

  Chapter 19

  “The people call her their ‘bird with a broken wing,’” Clervie said.

  Jaoven, nursing a mug of hot tea, looked up at the youngest member of his entourage. She stood above him, one arm propped on her hip. She still wore her dark blue gown from the ball, even though it was past dawn and everyone else had gone to bed.

  He blew at the steam from his mug and engaged with her announcement. “Who?”

  “Iona. The people of Wessett refer to her as their ‘bird with a broken wing.’”

  He didn’t want to think about Iona right now, still annoyed by their conversation at the lake even though hours had passed since then. But if Clervie thought it worth mentioning, there was probably some significance, and the epithet itself called up memory of that folksong in Straithmill, the one Iona had so painstakingly learned from her young audience while he listened through the window. A fragment of the melody floated through his mind: O help, help the bird among thorns…

  “Why do they call her that?”

  “I only overheard the name, not an explanation for it.”

  His annoyance surged, to be thus baited into a conversation he didn’t want about a subject he was actively trying to avoid. “Do they think she’s weak or vulnerable? She’s not.”

  “Broken wings can heal, Jove,” said Clervie. “A bird is meant to fly, and a broken wing grounds them, but with proper care in a safe environment, the wing can heal, and the bird can fly again.”

  His skin prickled, the folksong’s chorus pressing upon him. “I thought you didn’t know the explanation.”

  “I’ve extrapolated that much myself. I don’t know why they apply the analogy to her. Maybe the whole kingdom knows she came home from Capria with a broken arm. But if that’s the case, they should despise you, because she is universally loved.”

  He winced. “Just because they know about the arm doesn’t mean they know how it happened.”

  A laugh escaped the usually somber girl. She plopped down on the couch beside him and slapped his leg. “Better for you that they don’t. I meant a more general despising, though. You represent Capria to these people, so any sins our country bears in their
eyes fall upon your head.”

  Exactly what he needed: one more nebulous burden. “So she’s universally loved?” he asked. “Does she know that? Because from the way she talks about herself, she seems to think most of the kingdom barely knows she exists.”

  “I think that’s just her being oblivious,” said Clervie. “She’s traveled Wessett much more extensively than Lisenn. Your blushing bride-to-be has barely ever ventured beyond the capital, it seems, and when she does, she stays in royal residences, rarely seen by the commoners. Iona travels among them, attends local events, paints their landscapes and learns their folksongs.”

  “That matches what I saw in Straithmill,” he murmured, and he took another sip of his tea. Emell’s quiet reverence toward Iona confirmed how deeply the commoners regarded the second princess. The impromptu concert, as well—such a small village would never play host to royalty under normal circumstances, so they had claimed what favors they could without revealing their recognition of her outright. “So why doesn’t Lisenn travel?”

  “Too busy learning the ways of kings. I haven’t been able to get many stories about her. Whenever her name comes up, people remark on how beautiful she is and how lucky you are, and that’s about all they’ll say. I suppose she’s universally loved as well, just not in that personal way that everyone loves Iona.”

  Something about that explanation didn’t sit well with him, particularly after his conversation hours earlier. “Iona told me her sister’s a monster.”

  Clervie, in the process of settling back into her seat, sat up straight again. “What? When?”

  “Last night. She told me not to marry her, that she was a monster worse than I could imagine.”

  “And it wasn’t just a fit of jealousy?”

  He scowled, having nursed that assumption—having all but voiced it to Iona herself—ever since the accusation left her lips. He wanted it to be jealousy. In that moment when she first spoke against his marriage, he had expected—hoped—a confession of her feelings would follow. When it didn’t, he was left with his own feelings laid bare: a deep and unrequited attachment for the younger princess of Wessett burned bright within him.