Rowena's Key

by A. J. Nuest

  He placed the lute on the chair and ran a finger inside the edge of his ruffled collar, stretching his neck. “Since our last encounter.” He blew a puff of air from his bottom lip and the offending feather jumped before wafting back near the brim of his hat. An impatient tousle with the cape, and he tossed the sides over his shoulders.

  She narrowed her eyes at his obvious agitation. “Can I ask you something?”

  “As you wish.” He clicked his heels together and bowed slightly at the waist.

  “Are you comfortable wearing that get-up?”

  “Goddesses’ tits, no!” He threw his shoulders back, as if realizing he’d just cursed in her presence, and then slumped when she chuckled. “This foppish attire has never suited me. The sword has always been my instrument of choice.”

  “Then why go to all the trouble?”

  “Women are emotional creatures, easily swayed by pretty words and a bit of clever verse.”

  She scowled. His explanation could only mean one thing: all this dandy-footing about was meant to impress her. But why? His actions just didn’t make sense.

  Suspending disbelief for a moment, according to the legend of Rowena, Caedmon risked falling in love with her by using the “mirror.” Check. And based on the sickly pallor of his face after he’d been named Rescinder, he wasn’t very pleased with the outcome. Double-check.

  Not that she blamed him. Based on that same myth, she was an evil temptress who got her rocks off seducing kings and poisoning their sons. She swallowed the sour distaste crawling up her throat. With a reputation like that, courting her meant nothing but trouble. Winning her heart was a lose-lose situation.

  Unless…unless he was after something. Something important. Something he would willingly gamble for with his life. Like a fabled, solid gold, two hundred thousand dollar key, perhaps?

  Well, son of a bitch! She’d just located the exact reason behind this entire scam. How could she have been so stupid? Of course he was after the key. Of course he was.

  But, wait a second. If he had access to the armoire in order to plant the mirror inside, why not just take the key when it was within reach? Someone had to stash it inside the hidden compartment. Why assume the risk of setting up a fake kingdom just so he could turn around and try to romance the key away from her? That made absolutely no sense.

  There were only two possible explanations. Either this was the most bass-ackward con she’d ever witnessed, or the entire thing was real…every single event from the first moment Prince Caedmon appeared.

  Her jaw clenched until pain mushroomed along her back molars. Only one way to find out.

  She had to test him. Wear him down. Learn as much about him as possible. Then, and only then, would she decide. He wanted a time of Gleaning? Three suns to gather information bit by bit? Well, bring it on, sucker! Two could play that game.

  She crossed her arms. “Go change, Caedmon. You and I have some serious business to discuss.”

  Chapter Four

  “Lencten, Sumor, Wintir, Automne,” Caedmon snapped. By the great path of Helios, why did she insist on reiterating the same vein of inquiry? If he’d spoken them once, he must have named the seasons seventeen times this eve.

  All light had faded from the sky while she’d kept him interred, drilling him with questions any child still wet behind the ears could satisfy. He’d expected riddles as part of the Gleaning. Mayhap a challenge of wits to ascertain his loyalty. But not this senseless interrogation which frustrated him to no end. Only two suns remained. He had much to accomplish, and this pursuit was fruitless beyond all measure.

  “Name the days.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Sunna, Mona, Tiw, Woden, Thunor, Frige and Saturn. We’ve been through this repeatedly, Sorceress. I’m quite certain you can name them yourself by now.”

  “How do you track the hours of the day?”

  He raked a hand through his hair. She should have eagerly embraced this opportunity. As Rescinder, he was obliged to respond truthfully without fail. Had the key not proven her position as a sorceress, he would have surmised she understood less about these proceedings than he. “At Daybreak, the horologist rings the grand bell once, twice at Apex, and once again at Setting.”

  “What happens if you get sick?”

  The woman was determined to propel him to the brink of madness. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I summon the medicant and Wizard Fandorn.”

  “Who records history?”

  “The House of Chroniclers.”

  “What year is it?”

  His hand dropped to his desktop with a lifeless thud. “The forty-third year of his majesty’s reign, King Aldrych Wesleigh Eastaughffe Austiere, the third.”

  “How many women live in the castle?”

  “I neither know, nor do I care.” Although, despite ten years of wedded matrimony, Braedric assuredly retained the answer.

  “What’s the first thing you ever stole?”

  He jerked his chin up. This query was new, but lingering mistrust still floated in her emerald gaze…the same cold uncertainty which appeared whence he ended his song.

  Like Helios breaking from behind an ominous bank of dark clouds, his confusion parted and understanding filtered through his reckoning. Fandorn’s warnings rang true. This sorceress was cunning, resourceful and quick. She’d purposely misled him, simplified the Gleaning in hopes he would drop his guard. She’d bided her time, whittling away his resolve, presuming his irritation would test the legitimacy of his answers.

  This…this was where the true tribulation commenced. Where he must set aside foolish pride and lay bare his soul, whilst at the same time protecting his heart at all costs.

  He shoved up from the desk and turned his back to the mirror. He should have known a sorceress such as she would latch onto the one memory which most haunted him. “I filched my mother’s ring.”

  “How old were you?”

  He closed his eyes and his mother’s lovely visage swam into focus. She was joyous and hale with life, her eyes alight with laughter, her cheeks awash with rosy blooms. Before the wicked pall stole her beauty, before the lung sickness claimed her life. “I’d seen ten full cycles of the seasons by then.”

  “Why did you steal it?”

  Why, indeed. To speak of that day caused a hard knot to bunch between his shoulder blades. Yet, in the deep gloaming which followed, he’d vowed never again to speak untrue, no matter what the cost. “To retain a part of her memory, I suspect.”

  Thick silence emanated through the veil.

  “Oh,” she whispered. “I see.”

  He faced the vision in the glass, her golden tresses bound in a tight band at the nape of her neck. The gentle sweep of her shoulder nestled like a white dove beneath the collar of her dressing gown.

  Everything in his world had irrevocably changed with the stilling of his mother’s heart, and though he was loathe to recant such an agonizing tale, he could not let sorrowful memories detour the path fixed before him. Regardless of his oath or the great risk he took in securing the sorceress’ derision, she—above all—merited his honesty. Due the dire circumstances surrounding her appearance, he could offer no less.

  “We went out to the fields to gather wild flowers. My mother liked those best, you see. She said they held their scent longer than the ones in the market. When the rain began, she rushed us back to the estate, but her concern was for my wellbeing, and she remained in her dampened garb much too long.”

  He strode toward his wardrobe, the Sorceress’ bewitching green eyes following him from where she hung framed on the back of the door, and depressed the secret release along the top scrollwork. “My mother took ill, and though my father bade the medicant at her beck and call, she never truly regained her strength.”

  He pushed back the small rosette and reached inside the hidden compartment. “For months she suffered, sometimes abed several days on end, coughing up blood or thrashing through a bout of fever.”

  As the red
jewel sparkled in his palm, he paused. He’d not spoken of this moment to anyone. Not even during the inquest. How strange that, in the telling, a small part of his heartbreak eased. He hooked his mother’s ruby ring on the end of his index finger, stepped back from the armoire and held the sparkling gem in the candlelight. The surrounding diamonds danced a rainbow of fairy fire along the back of his hand.

  “The day she died, I slipped this ring from her finger, ran to my room and buried it inside the feathers of my pillow. And when asked, I lied and said she sold it and hid the money for safekeeping, so I would be well tended after her death.”

  When he met the Sorceress’ gaze, disbelief shot like an arrow through his chest. Miraculous. Tears glistened in her eyes.

  Somehow, this exquisite creature understood his pain.

  To learn she could display such compassion caused a great tide of reverence to sweep over him. “I’ve witnessed several kinds of death, Your Radiance, but the most wicked assuredly begins with innocence. Like a drop of rain rippling in a stream. Perchance the victim would build a dam if they were privy to the impending flood.”

  A tear spilled over the bottom of her lashes and trickled down to her chin. Caedmon suppressed the urge to reach out and clear the shimmering dew from her cheek. If such a thing were allowed, her tears would no doubt turn to stardust on his fingers.

  He dropped his hand to his side. “After my mother’s burial, my father held an inquest to search out the man who purchased the ring. He coveted the memory as much as I because, of all the jewelry he bequeathed her, this ring was the one true symbol of their love. When no one stepped forth and the scouts returned empty-handed, he abandoned his quest and clasped me to his breast instead. I came to reside at the castle, under Braedric’s shadow, while he consistently reminds me I am the bastard son of a gypsy whore.”

  The Sorceress clenched her jaw and unparalleled anger hardened her gaze. “You are also the son of a king.” Her cheeks pinked and she quickly glanced away as if she’d misspoken…or mayhap she meant to hide her disproval.

  Disappointment bore down upon him, yet he wasn’t surprised. She was fully within her right to deem him invalid. In discovering his true heritage, she regretted naming him Rescinder. She would break from the Gleaning and disappear, eliminating any chance at saving his kingdom. “Nevertheless, my blood is impure, a consequence which haunts me now more than ever.”

  She lowered her gaze and nodded. Another shimmering droplet tumbled past her thick lashes. But surely her sorrow was not meant for him. “Why do you weep, Sorceress?”

  Her shoulders lifted with a deep intake of breath. “My mom. She was sick for a long time before she died, too. Even though the doctors tried everything they could to save her, nothing they did ever helped. It was horrible, watching her waste away like that.”

  Astonishment lifted his brows and he shook his head, bemused. Yet he could not state for certain which surprised him most. That she would deign to impart a memory so intensely personal, how their lives shared a common misery, or that a sorceress of her distinction could ever harbor the wounds of a mortal soul.

  Prophecy had prepared him for the enigmatic temperament of a radiant white goddess, the candra-scinlæce whom the nine had blessed. She would be quick to anger, much like Helios, with a temper both fiery and fierce. Yet she’d just extended him a great kindness, offering this glimpse inside her sorrow. That the goddesses had instilled in her such divine influence whilst besieging her with the frailties of a human heart seemed an inexcusable cruelty. “Did your mother suffer the wet lung sickness?”

  “Hers was more of a black lung sickness. A disease called cancer.”

  “And your father? What of him?”

  She drew her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down, turning slightly away as if the memory caused her profound anguish. Caedmon’s hand twitched at his side and he stepped closer to the glass. The urge to comfort her far outweighed his father’s counsel to retain a watchful distance. “I’ve caused you pain. You needn’t answer.”

  A rueful laugh spilled from her lips and she swept her fingertips across her damp cheek. “It’s not your fault. My father and I had differences over my mom’s course of treatment. He spared no expense, carted her to every specialist he could find, but in the end everything the doctors did only prolonged her suffering. She was dying and my father simply couldn’t accept it. So, we argued, sometimes for days on end, saying horrible things to each other. I just didn’t want her last moments to be so desperate, you know? We should have taken her on a trip, or shopping, or even on a stupid picnic, but he refused to listen. Her illness tore us apart and, afterward, seeing each other only brought back bitter memories.”

  She closed her eyes. “When I received the news of his suicide, the hard truth is, I really wasn’t all that surprised. Because, without her, his life had no meaning…and without me, he lost all hope.”

  Caedmon fisted his hands, clenching the ring until the setting bit into his palm. His error had been monumental, harkening her back to a time when everyone she’d loved had been torn from her side. If he did not more carefully bide his words, she was liable to dismiss him out of hand. “To see you endure such sorrow causes me great distress. Please do not weep.”

  “It’s just like you said, isn’t it?” Her eyes sparkled in the candlelight and she smiled softly. “Except, instead of a drop of rain, my warning came in form of gale force hurricane and I ignored it.”

  A sigh heavy with remorse heaved her chest, but he held his tongue. How often had he yearned for someone…anyone to help shoulder a portion of his grief? If laying her despair at his feet brought her a measure of solace, he would bear the honor with respect.

  “Truth is, I should have tried a lot harder to repair the damage between us. But when he refused to return my calls, I assumed my father had moved on with his life, and I should try to move on with mine.

  “It wasn’t until after his death, it became clear why I’d never heard from him. He was too busy getting rid of everything, setting up accounts in my name. And while a big part of me was angry he’d sold all my mother’s possessions, I also understood why he did it. In his own way, my father was trying to tell me he wanted me to start over. Let go of the past and finish all those things I’d put on hold during my mother’s illness.”

  She met his eyes in the glass. “So that’s what I did. I suppose at the time I was hoping to honor his memory as well as heal and forgive the hurt. A year later, I finished school, bought the shop and now…here I am.” She tipped her head to the side, her grief-stricken gaze softening near the edges. “Thank you for listening, Caedmon. I haven’t told anyone that story in a very long time. Even if this is all just pretend, it’s nice to have a kind ear.”

  He withdrew a step, a scowl tightening his brow. She believed these proceedings a mockery? And him a schemer with an adulterous cause? “You judge me to be false?”

  A gentle laugh whispered past her lips. “Well, let’s face it. Your sincerity is a little far-fetched, don’t you think? All due respect, magic mirrors only exist in make believe.”

  His hands fisted and he grew increasingly incensed. To find she doubted him dealt a huge blow to his self-worth, more harrowing than her beautiful tears. But for once, his failure had nothing to do with Braedric or striving to prove himself useful to the Council. This time, his frustration stemmed from a place much deeper.

  Above all else, he’d always been forthright and honest, true in his intent. This was his one quality none had been able to disavow. And yet the admiration of the court was like mire under his boots in comparison to her approval.

  A tentative bond had formed between them. She’d shared with him a glimpse inside her troubled past. The possibility their progress could be so easily whisked away ignited an agitation that sparked along his nerve endings. “How can I prove to you my integrity? Name your desire and I will strive to fulfill your demands.”

  She stared hard into his eyes, her gaze fraught with a despairing
need for the truth. Her lips compressed into a hard unyielding line and she crossed her arms. “Okay, fine. Take me on a tour of the castle.”

  He slumped. Already she’d petitioned for something outside his control. “I cannot. During the Gleaning, I am sequestered in my rooms. As such, a guard has been posted outside the chamber.”

  She dropped her gaze, shaking her head. “I could have guessed as much.”

  He wracked his brain for something to attest his character. Then an idea struck like a thunderbolt. “But the window is yours, my lady, the stars and the sky.”

  He seized the grand mirror off the armoire door, carried her to the window and tossed open the latch. A frigid gust of air blew the hair back from his brow, but he climbed onto the ledge and stood within full view of his father’s kingdom, balancing the heavy frame against his hip.

  The full glow of Selene’s pearlescent face cast a wide, blue swath of light over the countryside. “See the forest? The swirling snow and torches from the village? Surely you believe me now?”

  She was silent so long, Caedmon finally turned the mirror so she faced him, holding the frame in both hands.

  The softness of her sigh wafted between them like the down of a feather. “You’ve gotta understand, Caedmon. Where I’m from, things like this happen all the time. And wiser folks than me have been fooled into believing the impossible. I appreciate the gesture, but this outside view could’ve easily been set up to trick me.”

  Of course. She was a sorceress. The world she inhabited assuredly held wonders far beyond his reckoning. The tension eased from his shoulders and, with it, hope was lost. He had exhausted all his resources to no avail. “Then I have failed,” he whispered.

  “I’m sorry. Truly, I am.”

  “The fault lies not with you, Sorceress. As I had feared, I was not the one best chosen for this task.” He tucked the mirror under his arm, hopped down from the window ledge and secured the latch. Turning away, he slowly crossed his chamber, intent on replacing the mirror inside his armoire.