by Sarina Dorie
Prince Elric-Atherius’ eyes shifted from green to brown. “Steorra wouldn’t have done such a thing to a friend.”
Errol’s throat went tight at the mention of their friendship. If it hadn’t been for Princess Steorra, Errol would never have learned to control and suppress his muse magic. “She was . . . a decent person,” he managed to get out. “She asked for nothing in return for her friendship.” For helping him. She had been a true friend. Errol still wished he hadn’t brought her the evidence of Princess Quenylda’s murderous ways and asked for her advice. If he hadn’t, she might still be alive.
Errol thought he understood the nature of Prince Elric-Atherius’ inquiries now. The prince was attempting to make amends for leaving. Didn’t he know it had been Errol’s suggestion to King Viridios? Errol had known the prince wouldn’t survive at court, not with all the kindness in his heart. Not with all the grief after losing his sister, mistress, and daughter.
Errol bowed. “Your Highness, there’s no need to apologize.”
Prince Elric-Atherius didn’t meet his gaze. “No, there is. Steorra was a friend to you. I was not. I coerced you into allowing me to see Princess Perrusia—and my father caught you and punished you.”
No, Errol had allowed the prince to pass freely into the dungeon to see the enemy princess because he had given his word he wouldn’t kill her. It was Major Reid who had succumbed to bribery—and been cursed by the king. Major West had taken his place—a much better man to serve his king, and a far more dutiful and likeable officer as far as Errol was concerned.
“You didn’t coerce me, nor did the king punish me.” If anything, King Viridios had confided in Errol and commended him for his tenacity and resolve to do the right thing. Because of that, and the color of Errol’s hair, marking him as a descendant of nobility, the king had offered Errol a place in his court. He had offered to accept Errol as royalty—which Errol had politely declined.
Nothing could entice him to be a muse in the court of deception and lies where he was employed.
Prince Elric-Atherius stepped in closer, lowering his voice. “I heard what happened. He made you watch him cut off Princess Perrusia’s head. He made your sister prepare the body to be roasted for a feast.”
An avalanche of emotions piled on top of Errol as the memories came back to him unbidden. King Viridios hadn’t just made Errol hold the head and wait for the box to come, but he’d put him on duty in the room as he’d seduced the Raven Queen’s granddaughter, only to kill her afterward. That had been the day he’d lost faith in his king’s goodness.
Errol had been horrified when he’d learned Queen Anwynn had wanted to eat their enemy. He’d tried to warn his sister. He doubted the king had put him in such a position as punishment. More likely, royalty were simply indifferent to the feelings of their staff. Though Errol could understand why the prince might have concluded those events were meant to be a punishment.
“Your sister wouldn’t speak to you.” Prince Elric-Atherius whispered, as if fearing they might be overheard. “If I had stayed, I might have been able to help mend things between you.”
Anger swelled in Errol’s chest, though he didn’t know whom he was angry with. Prince Elric-Atherius? His sister? “It is kind of you to say, but nothing short of magic would have changed my sister’s mind. She was strong-willed and stubborn.” He had assumed time would heal her, but he had waited too long.
Alma had been prideful, but Errol could see he had been as well. He loathed the king and queen. He couldn’t believe he’d once been so foolish as to think them good and just rulers who cared about their subjects.
“I shouldn’t have left you.” Prince Elric-Atherius clasped Errol’s arm. “I’m here for you now.”
Guilt clouded Errol’s heart. He didn’t want to be the reason for the prince staying. That guilt gave way to bitterness as he considered the court’s lying and manipulative ways. He’d always thought Prince Elric-Atherius too flighty and daft to be cunning, but there had been times he’d thought he’d seen flashes of intelligence in him. The prince had been quick-thinking when Errol had intervened on Ivy’s behalf to save her life from Beorhtsige.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t above using Errol now.
“Your Highness, if you will forgive my boldness in asking, why did you return to court? You would have been happier if you’d stayed away.” Errol would have been happier to not worry for his welfare.
He was one more person Errol had to add to his mountain of responsibilities.
The shadows shifted in the bushes. Errol’s Fae sight was well adapted to seeing through glamours, though he had a harder time seeing into the shadows of King Viridios’ magic. He sensed the denseness of dark energy that signaled shadow goblins were afoot, though he couldn’t see them. If it wasn’t the king spying on the prince, it was someone else in the royal family.
Prince Elric-Atherius went on, seemingly unaware. “It’s true, I might have been happier away from court, but Father summoned me. He said my presence was required here.” His eyes shifted from orange to gray. “And I can see it is true. You need me, whether you know it or not.”
CHAPTER SIX
Fae Boons
Errol didn’t know what to make of the prince’s supposed confession. He seemed sincere—though his version of the past was far from accurate.
Errol imagined now that Prince Elric-Atherius had apologized for supposedly abandoning him, things would go back to the way they had been. He would ignore Errol and permit him to perform his duties without interruption, and Errol could focus on more important matters.
One of those matters concerned a solution regarding Ivy’s debt. Once he thought of one, Errol paid Ivy a visit in the kitchen. Kendra wasn’t in. He was half glad for that, but Ivy wasn’t there either. One of the cooks said Ivy was collecting herbs in the garden.
Errol ducked out the door to the garden outside, finding her a moment later. He hardly recognized her with her cap off. Her skin had turned mossy green, the strongest blush of emerald where the sun kissed her upturned face. He only knew it was Ivy from her vibrant shorn hair, though the shade of magenta was more brilliant in the sunlight. She stood on a bench, holding a basket, her eyes closed. She’d tucked herbs into her apron pockets. A handful of bay leaves were arranged next to piles of basil and parsley in her basket.
She radiated Amni Plandai magic, looking like a flower drinking in light. She smelled green, like the herbs she collected, a hint of ginger and honey mixed in. She was more striking than beautiful in the classical sense of what Fae considered aesthetically pleasing. Her features were less human than his own, her ears longer and more pointed, more noticeable without her cap.
Errol couldn’t tear his eyes from her face. He hadn’t ever seen her look so peaceful.
Then again, he’d always spoken with her indoors. He realized he had made a mistake in assuming kitchen work would be her preference.
“I could find you a position working in the garden if you prefer,” he said.
She opened her eyes and flinched. Her foot edged back, and she fell toward the herbaceous shrubs.
Errol’s battle-honed reflexes and skills at magic gave him speed most other Fae lacked. He shot forward and caught her before she could hit the ground. He registered her shaking limbs quaking against him as he released her.
He could have kicked himself for his thoughtlessness. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to startle you. I should have announced myself.” He trampled a rosemary bush and nearly tripped over thyme as he edged back to give her room.
She kept a bush between them as she picked up the herbs that had scattered from her basket.
“I have been thinking over what you could do to repay me.” He shifted from foot to foot uneasily. “I wondered if you could sew.” He tried to sound casual, as if people repaid life debts in the kingdom this way all the time.
She squinted at him, the confusion clear in her face. “I can.”
“I have a shirt with a button missing. I thought I would see if there was something you could do to fix it.” He felt awkward standing there. It was easier to gaze at the bay tree than the bewilderment in her face. “I realize most people can sew buttons on, and I should be able to do this myself, but they always fall off when I do it, so I don’t bother. I usually end up purchasing a new shirt. There was a time I used to ask my sister to help me with this, but . . . well, not anymore.” Even before Alma had died, he wouldn’t have taken a shirt to her—not after they’d been estranged. That was too long a story to share with Ivy when he hardly knew her.
“I thought that might be a fair exchange. You could do some sewing and occasional mending for me. I don’t have anyone else to do it. I mean if you’re agreeable.” Mending clothes was a miniscule task that hardly covered his loss. It wasn’t the revenge he desired. It wasn’t the salvation from debt she yearned for.
Sewing was paltry and insufficient, yet it was the most ethical and pragmatic solution to their problem.
“I can sew.” The stiffness of her posture relaxed.
A burden lifted from his heart when she said the words. He hadn’t thought of an alternative way for her to pay off her debt to him if she said she couldn’t sew. “I can bring it by tomorrow if you’d like.”
She nodded.
She removed her cap from her apron pocket and donned it before returning to the kitchen. He felt as though he’d won a small victory. He couldn’t change the evils of the world, claim the justice the Raven Queen owed him, or erase the trauma of Ivy’s past, but he could help her toward independence so that she felt as though she were free.
He just wished she understood she already was.
* * *
Errol brought Ivy his shirt the following day. Kendra glanced up from the recipe book she was reading, though she didn’t greet Errol. He avoided her gaze, as uncomfortable to be around her as he was being in the kitchen that had once been a second home to him. It was an empty place without Alma.
He approached Ivy where she stirred a pot over the fire. “This shirt is an old one. It has all the buttons but it has a stain, so I don’t wear it anymore. I thought you could steal a button from this one and sew it onto the new one.”
Ivy didn’t look up from stirring. “How soon do you need this done?”
“A week is fine. There’s no rush.” He wondered whether he should give her more time. She might have other duties on her day off. “Or you can take longer if you need to.”
She nodded to a stool pushed under the table. “You can set it there.”
With that out of the way, Errol forgot about the shirts until he found Ivy waiting outside his room a week later, after he’d had supper with the other officers.
“Good evening, Ivy.” He greeted her several doors away in the hope that he wouldn’t startle her as he had in the garden. “How nice of you to stop by. Are you done with the shirts already?”
Her expression was grim. “You said you wished for me to be done in a week.” She snuck a glance down the hall. It was empty.
He examined her guarded expression. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long for me.”
She shrugged. “It’s fine.”
“I trust no one bothered you while you waited.” He didn’t completely believe her to be honest about it if they had, but he wanted her to know this was a safe place for her. He wanted to believe it was safe.
“There was an officer who told me you were at supper. He said he could take me to your office to leave your clothes, but I didn’t want to go with him.” She smoothed her fingers over the crisp white fabric she held. “And I didn’t know if he would steal your shirts.”
The only officers she would have run into in this wing of the barracks at this time were junior officers, not invited to supper. He couldn’t imagine any of them would want to steal his shirt, but he couldn’t blame her for not trusting anyone.
He smiled in the hope of appearing friendly, but it didn’t feel natural on his face. “I can show you where my office is if you should ever have need of going there.”
She handed him the shirts.
She’d folded them neatly. They looked pressed and clean. He wasn’t certain he’d given them to her this clean. Nor had the fabric been such a crisp white.
“Are you certain these are my clothes?” he asked.
“Yes.” She tucked her hands into her apron pockets. The way she twisted the fabric broadcast her anxiety.
“These look very nice.”
The buttons on his newer shirt completely matched. He wondered whether she had used magic. It took him a moment of studying the shirts to realize what she’d done. She’d placed all the buttons from his old shirt on the new one.
“This must have taken you a while,” he said. “I didn’t mean for you to have to do so much work on my behalf.”
“It’s fine.” At last she met his eyes, the orange of her own imploring. “I can do more mending for you if you have any other work for me. I’m happy to do it to pay off my debt.”
He wanted to tell her there was no debt, but he understood the feeling of impending doom that owing someone else a life favor brought on. “I can check my room to see what else needs fixing if you don’t mind waiting.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I bet I have something in my trunk.” He kept the door open as he stepped into his room. “I have several pairs of socks that need darning. There’s a maid whom soldiers pay to repair socks. She usually comes by once a month, though she didn’t ask me for my socks last month.” He rambled, feeling out of place in his own room as he shuffled through the contents of his trunk.
Ivy stood in the doorway, her gaze raking over the meager contents of his room. His dresser was worn with age, as were the table and chair that doubled as an office when he didn’t wish to work in the administration wing. There was ample space between the bed, nightstand, and the few other furnishings.
This room was bigger than his old one. Errol had never managed to fill up the space. His shelves held a few books, and he was relieved he’d hidden the copy of The Kama Sutra that someone had left in his room after his first failed relationship in Caern. He hadn’t known which was more humiliating—that the entire castle had been gossiping about his lackluster love life or someone had thought it would be a hilarious joke to leave him a manual on how to be more creative in bed.
On the plus side, he had learned a few things.
Errol rummaged in his trunk, finding several items in need of repairs. When he turned to Ivy, he found her in the doorway still. Her gaze lingered on the painting above the table.
She didn’t ask, but he read the question in her eyes.
“That’s my sister and her late husband posing with me.” He’d commissioned another painting for Alma and Semmy as a wedding present, but he hadn’t thought to ask Kendra or anyone else for Alma’s things after she died. He didn’t know where the painting was now.
“It’s a very nice picture.” She squinted at it. “But the artist didn’t get your eye color right.”
He examined it now too. His eyes in the painting were closer to blue than violet, and the artist had made his hair resemble the graying blond of an aging man rather than shimmering silver, but Errol hadn’t minded those details. It made him look less like the Silver Court than he did in real life, and he took it as a compliment.
It was his expression he hadn’t liked, so grim and serious.
He rubbed at his current frown. “Alma said she thought it captured my grumpiness accurately.” She had laughed at him and teased him about it.
He supposed it was true.
Ivy edged inside the room, studying the painting. “You must miss her horribly.”
“I miss them both.” His chest was tight with suppressed sorrow.
He’d missed them both for two decades. Only in the last couple of years had he fooled himself into believing he was done mourning his loss. Alma’s recent death
had only rekindled his list of should-haves and regrets.
He cleared his throat and handed Ivy some socks, a pair of pants, and an old jacket coming apart at the seams. “I have these clothes in need of repair. I’d be grateful if you could take a look at them to see if you can fix anything. If you can’t, that’s fine.”
She took the clothes and retreated a few steps. As she gazed at the fabric, he noticed a spark of creativity drifting out of her. He supposed she might have a talent for sewing.
“You can leave them in my room if I’m not here.” He attempted to keep his expression amiable, trying not to look as he did in the painting. “I keep the door unlocked. No one will steal anything from me.”
Only after she’d left did he realize the older shirt that had been stained was completely white. It was crisp and clean. She’d placed the bone buttons from the newer shirt on the older one. On the bottom, which would be out of sight when he tucked the shirt into his breeches, she’d placed a shell button.
It shimmered when it caught the light. He would never have picked out a pretty button like this one for himself. He couldn’t even imagine where she had found a button like this with how plain her own attire was.
Clinging to the shirts was the fragrance of color and the music of stitches, attesting to her creativity. He hadn’t known he could sense leftover artistic energies until now.
A few days later he walked into his room, noticing the fragrance of ginger and herbs first, and the perfume of flowers second. Someone had placed a bouquet on the table, the fresh flowers in a vase on his nightstand that Alma had given him long ago. The wood of his table was dusted and polished, along with his dresser. He found his mended clothes folded on his bed.
A flash of anger spread through him. He hadn’t given her permission to clean his quarters. His room had been perfectly fine, and he liked it the way it was. He tried to remember this wasn’t an insult upon his tidiness or cleanliness. Ivy was simply trying to find a way to repay him for the debt she felt she owed him. The real problem wasn’t Ivy; it was that she felt obligated to him.