by Rosette Lex
That was how she found herself crouched between a bench and a shimmering, metallic shrub towards the maze’s far west corner. She could hear Mellia drawing closer, but the princess paused a stone’s throw away, just out of sight around a maze wall.
Instead, she began speaking with someone. Shamelessly, Crystal settled in a bit more comfortably to listen.
“Gerralt!” Mellia exclaimed in excitement, and Crystal could just imagine her bouncing on her feet.
The king sounded far less pleased, though. “Mellia,” he greeted placidly. “Your gloves were found in your dressing room.”
Startled, Crystal thought back to that morning, and it only then occurred to her that Mellia hadn’t been wearing gloves when she grabbed Crystal’s hand, and Crystal had to wonder what kinds of emotions the princess had been trying to find.
Mellia sighed slowly. “I left them off willingly, you massive worrier,” she replied. “I’m not going to have some sort of massive break down the minute I take them off.”
Gerralt huffed out a breath. “But what if—“
“What if the castle walls come crashing down?” Mellia interrupted.
“What if I get kidnapped by pirates? Or what if a flock of carriers decide to turn me into a meal for their hatchlings?” She laughed. “Relax. I’m fine. I can handle myself and you know it.”
Gerralt grumbled for a moment and then his footsteps began tromping away. Mellia’s more delicate steps began approaching again, and Crystal ducked further back into the shrub. Alas, the branches parted a moment later and Mellia beamed down at her.
“Found you,” she announced cheerfully. “Come on, let’s go track down Kelso again.”
At the hottest part of the day, the entire castle seemed to just…stop. Court was not in session. The king wasn’t meeting with anyone. The chefs left out a few light snacks for those wandering past, but other than that they took off their aprons. The maids and servants and stable hands all left their chores. Everyone simply found a comfortable spot and relaxed until the heat got a little less oppressive.
Crystal sat in one of the courtyard gardens, a pond and a waterfall to her left and some sort of fan contraption set up to spray mist out of the waterfall. A tent with heavy, dark red cloth for a roof and intricate lattices of dark metal for the sides was set up, shading her from the sun, and the mist carried with it all the scents of the garden.
Her eyes were closed, and her arms were folded under her head as she relaxed on a padded bench. Mellia was inside—she had said something about a sewing circle with her handmaids—but Crystal could just hear the rustling of Kelso turning pages to her left.
She heard footsteps approach, but she didn’t think much of it. There were a few people, with hats and shades and parasols, strolling the gardens. But then she heard Gerralt’s voice.
“You’re supposed to be avoiding this sort of heat,” he pointed out.
Kelso sounded disinterested as he replied. “That is what the tent is for. And the mist.” There was a beat of silence. “Well, technically they are for her, but I can reap the benefits as well.”
Gerralt sighed in exasperation. “Very clever loophole. I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to listen to your doctors more than I do.”
“What for?” Kelso asked, as perfectly innocently as he could manage. “You remember all of the details, I pick out the important parts.”
There was the sound of a hand meeting skin, and when Gerralt next spoke, his voice was slightly muffled. Crystal had to hold back the urge to start laughing at the mental image of him covering his face with one hand.
“Kelso,” Gerralt groaned.
Kelso sighed and there was the quiet ‘thwap’ of him putting his book on his lap. “I am your bodyguard,” he pointed out.
“When you are outside Castle Trevelyan’s walls, it is my job to protect you. That does not mean it is your job to protect me within the walls.”
Gerralt groaned again, and his footsteps began to retreat. “Fine, fine. Have it your way. Don’t blame me if you keel over from heatstroke out here.” His steps tromped away.
Crystal was silent for a time, but eventually her curiosity got the better of her.
“What was all that about?” she asked, cracking one eye open at last to look at Kelso and his platinum blond hair.
Kelso glanced up from his book again, but his gaze dropped back to the page after a couple seconds. “When Gerralt and I met, I did not instantly become his bodyguard; I was rather ill at the time. The only reason I had a chance to recover was because he paid for treatment.”
Crystal blinked at him. The concern over Mellia and her gift, the concern over Kelso and his health, neither of those seemed like the stoic asshole who had told Crystal that she would be his mate and she had no choice.
Complicated. Life was too damned complicated sometimes.
At dinner, Crystal sat to Gerralt’s left, across the table from Mellia. She picked at her food and ate in silence, doing her best to ignore the stares that periodically wandered towards her.
She didn’t expect anything particularly interesting to happen during the meal, but eventually, as a conversation on a shipment of some sort of vehicle occupied the rest of the table, Gerralt turned to her. With his voice pitched so only Crystal could hear, he said, “Mellia mentioned you were…longing for something.”
Crystal gave a puzzled look for a moment, before she recalled Mellia’s bare fingers against hers, and realization dawned. But what was she supposed to say? Just saying ‘I want to go home’ wasn’t going to get her anywhere, and it could very well just annoy him.
“I miss the beach,” she replied, the words slipping out before she was even aware that she was saying them.
Gerralt contemplated those words for a moment, before he said, “Meet me by the great entrance after dinner,” and he turned back to his meal.
The great entrance was not called such because it was small, obviously. The great hall’s vaulted ceilings were over two stories high, and the great entrance filled most of that space.
The door was made of some sort of wood, thick and dark but deceptively lightweight, and it was stained so darkly it was nearly black. Bright, platinum-bright metal curled over and across the wood in swirls and curls, turning the entirety of both doors into an elegant maze of metal.
So distracted trying to follow one branch of metal from the beginning to its end was Crystal, she didn’t notice Gerralt approaching until he laid a hand on her shoulder. She jumped, her shoulders jerking, and she turned quickly, winding up nose-to-neck with him. She blinked, cleared her throat, and stepped back.
“What have you got planned?” she asked.
He simply gestured with one hand for her to follow, and he hit the button to open the massive doors. Crystal followed him outside, glancing over her shoulder briefly to see Kelso following them at enough of a distance to give them some semblance of privacy.
Crystal followed Gerralt to the stable, where two beasts were already saddled. They were both tall and broad, like the largest draft horses back on Earth, but their long faces were a strange mix of equine, canine, and cervidae aspects, and their tails were long and thin with tufts of flowing hair on the end. Short, bristly manes trailed down their long necks, and each one had a single two-foot horn protruding from their faces, gently curving to point towards the sky.
As Kelso mounted the black one, Gerralt boosted Crystal up into the gray and black speckled one’s saddle and then climbed on in front of her. They spent only a moment adjusting themselves in the saddles, and then they were off, riding out of the stable.
‘I’m on an alien planet, riding a unicorn,’ Crystal reflected, as the steed veered sharply off of the path and angled towards the west.
It was almost enough to make her burst out laughing. Her good humor was tempered, however, by the knowledge that she still had no idea where they were going as the two steeds galloped along, Kelso riding a healthy distance behind them.
Well, at first she had no
idea where they were going. Until she heard a very familiar noise. The distant rumbling, rushing sound of waves rolling towards the beach and retreating once more, and before she could stop herself, she lifted herself up in the saddle, her hands on Gerralt’s shoulders to hold herself up, so she could peer over the next hill. She drew in a sharp, startled gasp when she could just make out the white, foaming tops of the waves over the grass.
The unicorn crested the hill and paused at the sight of the water, but then continued onwards at Gerralt’s urging. It snorted as its cloven hooves sank into the sand that the grass steadily bled into, but it continued forward, stopping only when it was up to its stomach in the ocean, water rushing around its legs.
Crystal stared in wonder at the ocean spreading out endlessly before them, and she leaned down carefully, running her fingers through the water as it rose into her reach in its rush to the shore.
“It’s warm,” she breathed, more to herself than to anyone else.
She straightened back up quickly as the unicorn began to move once again, her hands flying to Gerralt’s shoulders as the steed began backing out of the surf. Not far, though. It was still up to its knees in water when it stopped, craning its head back to look at its passengers.
“You’ll want to hold on,” Gerralt advised.
Crystal wrapped her arms around his chest, and the unicorn burst into a gallop, like a rocket ship taking off. Water sprayed up around them in all directions as the unicorn crashed through it, barreling along the shore like a four-legged freight train.
Finally, Crystal laughed, throwing her head back and tossing her arms out to either side to bask in the moment as much as she could.
Eventually, as the steed slowed until it was simply trotting through the under toe, Crystal leaned closer to Gerralt’s back, for just long enough to whisper, “Thank you,” in his ear.
Chapter Five
Maybe things would be okay. Or at least maybe they wouldn’t be so bad. Crystal could make friends with Mellia and Kelso. She was catching glimpses of the good man that they apparently saw when they looked at Gerralt. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. Crystal could get used to the walls of Castle Trevelyan, and perhaps even come to think of them as home.
Or at least, that was what she thought at first. Just as she was beginning to feel cautiously optimistic about living amongst the populi (or at least less openly pessimistic), things changed.
She supposed Gerralt got impatient. A royal brat like him, he must have been used to getting everything he asked for the moment he asked for it.
“Why don’t you sleep here tonight?” he suggested, settling one hand on the edge of the mattress.
Crystal’s gaze darted from the chaise to the bed a few times, before she sighed out a slow breath and moved over to the bed. It was, after all, enormous. She could sleep in comfort and still have plenty of space between them.
She knelt on the edge of the bed, preparing to crawl to the other side, before Gerralt abruptly knocked her flat onto the mattress.
Crystal yelped in surprise and barked out, “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I am the king. A king needs an heir, preferably sooner rather than later,” Gerralt explained, in the slow words of someone trying to explain something to someone incredibly dim. “You are my mate.” He let her connect the dots.
Crystal’s eyes widened in alarm, and she instantly began to thrash as he straddled her, his weight landing on her hips.
“I told you no, goddammit!” Crystal shouted as she tried to fight her way out from under him.
Unbothered by her thrashing, as if he hadn’t even noticed, Gerralt calmly replied, “And I listened, until it went on for too long.”
Crystal’s fighting stilled as, abruptly, arousal began to course through her, heat building and spreading through her, regardless of how she actually felt. She stared up at him, baffled, until she remembered what his gift was.
Before he could go too far, before he could make her want it, Crystal shrieked out, “I will never love you!”
The feeling fled quickly, and Gerralt stared down at her, startled.
“Kelso explained what mating means to me,” she bit out. “You’ll be stuck with a mate who would rather burn the ground you walk on, and it will be your own fucking fault.”
Gerralt gaped down at her. “You don’t get it-” he started, but he didn’t get a chance to finish before Crystal’s hand connected with his cheek with as much force as she could muster.
He jerked back, and Crystal used the opportunity to drag herself along the bed, painstakingly pulling herself out from under him. Legs freed, she rolled over the end of the bed, landing on her feet and bolting towards the door.
“Crystal—!”
Whatever he planned on saying was cut off as the door slammed shut in Crystal’s wake. Heedless of the fact that she was barefoot and dressed in pajamas, she sprinted through the corridors and down the numerous stairs, until she came to the servants’ door, and she burst outside. Legs burning and lungs heaving, she kept going, until she stumbled into the stable.
Three stalls were before her. Kelso’s massive beast of a unicorn, Gerralt’s dinosaur-sized behemoth of a steed, and beside his, a smaller, daintier looking one that had to be Mellia’s.
Crystal seized the halter hanging by the stall and stumbled into the stall. She haltered Mellia’s unicorn and led it out of the stall, where she scrambled inelegantly onto its back. The unicorn snorted uneasily and tossed her head, her shifting unbalancing Crystal. She caught herself around the mare’s neck and held on.
Thoroughly alarmed, the unicorn tossed her head once more and bolted, galloping through the open stable doors with Crystal clinging to her like a terrified limpet.
Crystal wasn’t sure how long she was on the unicorn’s back or how long the mare galloped before gradually calming and slowing to a canter, a trot, a walk, before she stopped entirely.
One cloven hoof dug at the sand and the mare looked over her shoulder. She nudged at Crystal’s arm and snorted, and she tossed her pale head once again, her black mane shaking.
Slowly, Crystal straightened up on the unicorn’s back and looked out over the ocean. She wasn’t sure how far down the coast she was, but she was glad that the mare had decided to go towards the water, regardless.
She looked up at the sky, at the countless unfamiliar constellations and the slightly too large moon, and she awkwardly slid down from the mare’s back. Her legs shook with fatigue when she landed, but she caught herself against the unicorn’s shoulder and steadied herself.
Crystal sighed quietly and dropped down to sit in the sand, the water rushing up around her bare feet. She brought her hands up and buried her face in them, hiding herself away from the world as best she could as she mumbled, “What now?”
She didn’t have an answer. She tried to think of something, but her mind felt fuzzy, and everything felt a bit like it had happened to an entirely different person.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, Mellia’s unicorn milling around her, but she wasn’t surprised when she heard another of the steeds approaching. She lifted her head to look up at Kelso as his unicorn came to a halt beside her.
“Here to bring me back?” she asked, her voice numb even to her own ears.
Kelso shifted uncomfortably in the saddle and wouldn’t look at her as he confirmed, “Yes.”
Crystal snorted bitterly and levered herself back up to her feet. She stared out over the water as Kelso dismounted so he could tie Mellia’s steed to his own mount’s saddle, and then he boosted Crystal up into the saddle and climbed back up in front of her.
They rode back to Castle Trevelyan in silence, and that night Crystal didn’t get anymore sleep.
Crystal hadn’t actually been in the throne room until that day, when she followed Kelso through the doors. She didn’t want to be alone that day, but Mellia was nowhere to be found, so that left her trailing after Kelso like a lost dog.
“Why are we going in her
e?” she asked, as the panel on the wall beeped and the doors began to close behind them.
“There was an…incident yesterday,” Kelso answered. “I am to remain close at hand, should another incident occur.”
And so that day, Crystal learned something new about the populi. They were at war. Not some massive, interstellar war that spanned planets, but amongst themselves.
Crystal leaned closer to Kelso, her voice pitched low as she asked, “Who are the medii?” as Gerralt and his advisors discussed the most recent territory agreement.
“The…neutral faction, I suppose,” Kelso replied quietly. “We grant them land and leave them be, and they do not get involved.”
“And the malumi?” she asked.
“They were simply the cities to the west, until they decided to come eastward,” Kelso answered, “regardless of who or what was in their way. They thought it might be easier to move us out of the way.” He sighed. “They were part of the Trevelyan kingdom, at one point, but that did not work out.”
So not just a war, but a civil war. An idea suddenly struck Crystal.
“Kelso?” she started slowly. “That, uh…incident. Was there an attempt on his life?”
Kelso cleared his throat. “I am not supposed to talk about it.”
So that was a yes. Suddenly, the words ‘a king needs an heir’ made a lot more sense, though Crystal was loathed to admit it.
She was quiet for most of the rest of the meeting. She didn’t know enough of the world’s or the people’s history to learn much from what they were saying, but it offered her plenty of time to try to figure out how her next conversation with Gerralt would go. There were a lot of variables to try to think of, though. She just hoped he wouldn’t be angry.