Betrothed

by Jill Myles

  “I can’t fit in yours,” Idalla protested, but she began to unlace the sides of her own plain gown.

  Seri wouldn’t listen to protest. It was her only chance—dressed as one of the myriad servants, she’d slip out without notice. “Do you have a husband?”

  Idalla clutched at the loose neckline of her dress. “Aye, but I don’t know what—”

  “Give me your dress and I’ll make you my maidservant,” she said, grasping the other girl’s hands. “The prince said I could have anyone I wanted, and I want you. You’ll never have to work in the kitchens again.” Desperation colored her voice. “Please. I just need to see my family.”

  “I have a daughter,” Idalla said softly, then let her gown slip to the floor.

  “We’ll train her to be a lady,” Seri agreed, hasty to agree to anything that would get her out the door.

  Minutes later, she was dressed in Idalla’s baggy garment, the other girl shoved into the layers of Seri’s clothing and stroking it with delight even though the back gaped open, revealing too much white undergarment underneath. “It makes me look like a sausage,” she said, then grinned.

  Seri winked at her and slipped out the door.

  Her breath locked in her throat as she crossed the courtyard, eyes down. Soldiers swarmed everywhere, looking for her, but to her surprise, no one stopped her. No one even looked at her twice as she kept her walk demure but purposeful, careful not to raise the long skirts of the gown and reveal her bare feet.

  The guards at the gates didn’t give her more than a cursory glance, and Seri tugged the cap closer around her head and nodded at them, pretending to shield her eyes from the sun and at the same time blocking her face from their gaze.

  When she was safely down the main road and a good half-length from the castle itself and the guards were no more than specks in the distance, she allowed herself to pick up her long, flapping skirts and run.

  She didn’t stop running.

  Her farm was on the far edge of the valley where the crops were poorer and the roads were farther away. Rilen’s farm was on the close side, just a few scant miles away, and it was there she ran, lungs heaving and tears streaming down her face.

  He was running out to meet her even as she turned down the road to his farm.

  “What’s wrong?” he shouted, grabbing her by the shoulders and forcing her to stop.

  Breath shuddered and sobbed out of Seri’s lungs, and she collapsed against him, burying her sweaty face into his shirt. It smelled of dirt and manure and sweat, but she loved it, clung to it. Prince Graeme would never smell like this.

  “I ran away,” Seri gasped, hands clawing at his shirt. “I slapped the prince and I ran away.”

  “What?” He grasped her by the arms and pulled her away from him, searching her face. “Seri, slow down. Tell me what happened.”

  Her breath came out in sobbing jerks, fright and the overwhelming reality of everything that had happened to her in the past few days coming to a head and erupting out of her system, unable to be held back any longer.

  Rilen let her cry for a minute, then put a calming hand on her cheek, the rough callus scraping against her skin. “Seri,” he said, soothing her. “Calm down or you’ll make yourself ill.”

  She nodded, knowing he was right, and forced her breath to slow and her lungs to suck in the right amount of air, and the tears to go away. Tears never got her anywhere. Tears didn’t help Josdi see again or give her another pair of hands to help around the farm. Tears certainly wouldn’t make that hateful, beautiful prince go away. “Rilen,” she said, once she could swallow and speak calmly again. “I can’t go back to the palace.”

  A dark frown crossed his face, and he pulled her to sit down on one of the nearby milking stools, kneeling by her. “Why? Did you tell them about me?” A desperate, angry look crossed his face. “What has happened? Tell me what you know.”

  The swift urgency in his voice made her pause in surprise, her tears drying. “What do you mean, do they know about you?” Fear surged through her. If Rilen and his rebellious friends were up to something, it would be bad news for the whole village. She’d heard stories of rebel peasant uprisings, always put down by the highly trained Athoni troops. Always punished with the burning of the village and imprisonment of the instigators. “Rilen, what are you up to?”

  He shook his head, stroking her hair and freeing it from the restrained knot at the base of her skull. He liked her hair long and loose. “If you’ve heard nothing, then we’re fine. It’s nothing you need to worry about,” Rilen said, dismissing her fears as he always did. He never shared what he did when he met with the other young men of the village, the ones the elders disapproved of with silent frowns. Rilen smiled encouragingly and touched her cheek again. “Now, speak.”

  Seri dreaded telling him the news, knowing he would get angry. He didn’t like it when other men in the village paid attention to her, and as a result, she tended to discourage suitors other than him. Rilen was the only one she could dance with at gatherings, the only one that came by to visit them. He would be terribly upset if he knew of the prince’s claim to her.

  “They’re terrible people,” Seri began slowly, feeling her way into the story. “I was with Lady Mila for three days, and she treated me like filth beneath her fine feet and forced me to dress up in a ridiculous costume. You could not imagine what they think we are like.” Her mouth quirked in memory.

  But he interrupted her story. “Tell me about the castle itself. How many men do they have guarding the doors? Is there a way around the moat? What times do they shift the guards?” His eyes burned brightly.

  Hurt spiraled through her that he didn’t care about how she’d been treated, just about the castle itself. But she told him what she remembered, which wasn’t much. She told him of the guards and how they dressed and how many she could recall at each door. “I escaped them through a door in the scullery. It’s behind one of the stables, and from what I could tell, if you’re dressed as a servant, nobody pays attention to you.”

  A faint smile touched his mouth, as if he were savoring her words. “That’s very good. Go on.”

  “At the ball,” Seri said, leading back to the important thing that she must tell him. “There was a religious ceremony—the prince had to choose a bride. They took each woman before the priests and who said a blessing, and if the gods gave a sign, that woman would become the prince’s betrothed.”

  Rilen laughed at that. “Athonites and their ridiculous ways,” he said, sneering at the ceremony. “The woman is likely six feet tall, has never seen the sunlight, and has ice in her blood. So did they pick a bride for their ugly, weak prince?”

  He’s not ugly, she thought absently. At least, not on the outside. But she forced herself to smile as if it were the funny tale Rilen assumed it was. “They did pick a bride for him.” A pause. “Me.”

  Rilen grinned as if expecting a joke, and then when she didn’t laugh, his frown changed to puzzlement. “What do you mean, you?”

  It all rushed out of her in one great burst. “I was there to hold Lady Mila’s train, all dressed up in the ridiculous costume they’d given me. And I told them that we didn’t dress like that, but no one listened. It was like I was no one the entire time that I was there. And when Lady Mila stepped in front of the prince and bowed, I did the same. Only there was this bright glow, and for a moment I thought it was her, but then she looked at me with such hate, and the prince came and took my arm and I didn’t realize but they meant that I was the prince’s chosen betrothed, that the gods had selected me.”

  Rilen said nothing, simply watched her as she spoke.

  “And now I can’t get away from the hateful place. They want me to take my meals with him, and have his vizier handle all the unimportant details like my family and my money and the things I need—the prince only wants to see me in front of the others.” A hard sob caught in her throat again, a sob of terror. “They want me to marry that horrible man in three days in a religio
us ceremony. And once we are married, they want me to become the princesse, all because their silly gods tell them to. All because I glow when I am near him, and he does too.” A hysterical little laugh erupted from her throat, and she leaned over, twining her fingers in Rilen’s rough linen shirt, a shirt that she’d spun for him with care, a shirt that he wore to plow in the fields. It should have hurt her feelings, but she pulled at it, the feel of it filling her mind with other memories than Prince Graeme’s cold, blue eyes. “The last time a prince had a chosen betrothed was three hundred years ago. They think I am some kind of strange person the gods have decreed should marry their prince, all because I can bear him daughters.” She choked a laugh. “Ridiculous. Daughters.”

  But Rilen wasn’t laughing. His hands clutched hers, his eyes serious. “Go on.”

  Go on? What more did he want to know? Didn’t he hate the prince? Didn’t he at least find this amusing? His hands were tight on her own, constricting bands that trapped her against his side as he held her in place. “I don’t know what else to say,” Seri said, hesitant. “They did not pay me—they say the vizier will see to my needs and I have no need for money.” She laughed at that, she who had always fought for even a pence, scraping to make it go as far as it could. “They put me in a room larger than my poor house, larger than yours. Their food is so wonderful, but the prince and the others do not eat, at least not in front of everyone else. His shirts cost more than my entire farm earns in three annums.” The ridiculousness of the situation started to settle, made her relax a little. “They make women wear these high collars, as if our necks were something to be frightened of, and they choke me.” She shook her head. “Guards follow me everywhere I go, and I may not see the prince unless explicitly given permission. It is truly, truly insane.” She paused, then squeezed Rilen’s hands. “He is not a good man, the prince. He is cold and full of hate. He does not want to marry me—thinks of me as animal. He said such awful things to me that I slapped him without thinking about it.”

  Her lips tightened in frightened memory, and she searched his face. “They will come after me now. They will kill me and my family because I have insulted him. We have to get away.” She pulled her hands from his, distress making her twitchy and nervous. “We can get away from here under cover of night. I’ll get Father and Josdi, and you—”

  “Wait.” Rilen got to his feet and took her hands in his again, pulling her to her feet as well.

  Her heart thudded in dismay, and Seri allowed Rilen to pull her up. “We cannot wait. The troops will be here soon—”

  An intense look crossed his face. “The prince wishes to marry you? In three days’ time?”

  Now he would get angry. Now he would clutch her close to him and declare her as his own. She’d have to stop him from going after the prince, for to attack him directly would be madness. “Rilen, I assure you—”

  He smiled. Not a hesitant smile, but a great, beaming burst of light. A laugh erupted from his throat and he grasped her by the waist and swung her about, the long gray skirts flapping around her legs. “Seri,” he cried, laughing as he twirled her. “You are a marvel!”

  She wrestled with his hands, even as they pinched her waist. “I don’t understand. Rilen. What’s gotten into you?”

  After one more giddy twirl, he put her down, then hugged her close to him. “You’ve given us the way out! The way to defeat the Athonites and get them to leave our lands.” His relieved laughter carried through the barn.

  It didn’t make sense to her. Seri shook her head at him, trying to make him understand. “Rilen, I can’t go back.”

  That got his attention. His smile faded and then he grasped her by the shoulders again, then smoothed her hair as if trying to calm a child. “Of course you can go back.”

  “I slapped the prince—”

  He interrupted. “You’re their magically sent betrothed of the prince. They won’t touch you.” A loud laugh erupted from him again. “This is too perfect!”

  She jerked away from him, stung. Why was he laughing about this? Happy? She was completely and utterly miserable. “I don’t understand you,” she said, hurt and betrayal in her voice. “What I need to do is leave, get away from here and never come back. The prince will marry his lovely Lady Aynee and they’ll forget all about me in a few months—nay, a few annums—and then I can come back.” She rambled, wringing her hands and pacing, ignoring how Rilen grinned at her like some sort of crazy fool. “We’ll have to sell the farm to buy a wagon,” she said, distracted. “Rilen, do you think—”

  But he grasped her by the shoulders and tilted her chin back up to view him, her brown eyes meeting his. “Seri,” he said, his voice patient and calm. “You have to go back.”

  “Why? Why do I have to?” Tears filled her eyes again. More than anything, she wanted to crawl into her own bed, her hard straw pallet, lumpy and musty, but hers. She wanted to hear Josdi’s soft breathing next to her, and Father’s snoring across the tiny cottage. She wanted to wake up and work from sunup to sundown just to put food on the table because that was real and tangible, not this nightmare world they wouldn’t let her escape, not even Rilen. “Why would you want me to go back, Rilen?” Perhaps he didn’t understand. “They call me his betrothed because they wish for me to marry him in three days’ time. It’s like our handfast. If I marry this man, I am tied to him forever, Rilen. Forever.”

  He leaned in and kissed her nose. “But you will not marry him for long.” He looked down at her, a fanatical light in his eyes.

  Fear washed through her. Rilen got that look in his eyes when he planned with the other men of the village, the discontented young men who sneered at everything the Athonites brought, who did their best to make the troops miserable with their midnight attacks and their suicidal runs. Oh no. Seri looked up at her once-to-be-mate with frightened eyes. “What do you mean?” Her voice was quiet, terrified.

  “Let them dress you up,” Rilen said, lifting her hand to kiss it fervently, as if he could convince her with a few frantic gestures. “Let them pretend that you are their chosen princesse. Let him try to woo you with pretty words and pretty clothing and their good food. Let them do their ceremony to bind you to their prince.”

  “But, Rilen—”

  “And when they have finished their ceremony, you will smile in that pretty, soft way of yours and let him lead you to bed, and you shall offer him a cup of wine. And you shall poison him.” Rilen’s smile was fearsome. “And he shall die in his own vomit before he touches you.”

  Chapter Five

  “Murder him?” Seri’s voice was a harsh whisper, fright modulating her voice and stealing the force out of it. “You want me to murder their prince before the eyes of all?” Oh, One Above, how could she possibly do it? How could she kill a man? Her own life would surely be forfeit.

  But Rilen only grinned and lifted a finger in the air, indicating she should wait. He dashed to the back of the barn and began to lift great tufts of hay out of the bottom of a nearby stall. Curious and full of dread, she followed him.

  Once the hay was pushed aside, a hidden door was revealed and in there, a tiny room full of swords, knives, and armor. Things that were outlawed to Vidari, outlawed long ago when they’d lost the war and the Athonites took over their lands. “Rilen!” She gasped in fear as he pulled forth a gleaming dagger. “They will kill you if they ever find out what you have,” she said, fear trembling in her voice, and anger. She was to marry this reckless fool, to bring Josdi and her father under his roof and have him care for them. He would put them all in danger. “Rilen, no.”

  But he only pulled out a small dagger and an even smaller leather pouch and handed both to her. “This is for you.” The bag he pressed into her hand was feather-light. “There are herbs in there that will cause his body to lock up with one taste and will destroy his lungs and innards as he waits in bed. Have him drink this on your wedding night, and you can escape as he waits for death, unable to call for help.”

  It sounded
horrible. “But how will I escape? There will be guards outside our door. There are always guards.” Her voice was desperate.

  He grinned, the fiery light in his eyes blazing. Even though she might be quaking with doubt, he loved this. Oh, he loved this. “Hang a red banner from your window when you get back to the palace. I will look for it in the morning, and in three days’ time, I will wait below the window that night to rescue you.” He dug around in the room and lifted a rope ladder, handing it to her. “Let me handle the rest of the details.”

  A rope, poison, and a dagger. Seri handled the last with unbridled dismay. “What am I to do with this?”

  He leaned in and kissed her forehead again. “That is for you, in case anything should happen.”

  She stared at him in shock. “I’m not going to kill myself.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “There are some fates that are worse than death, dear Seri. I’m merely giving you an out.”

  ~~* * * ~~

  An hour later, Seri’s tears were dried, her breath calm, and her fate decided. The ominous luggage bestowed on her by Rilen was tucked into a leather bag strapped to her back with the reassurance that “No one would bother to search the betrothed of the Prince.”

  She stood at the head of the path leading to the village. Down in the valley below she could see the twinkling lights in the houses as dusk grew into dark, and far far beyond the outskirts of the village, her own huddled farm, where Josdi and Father waited for her to come home. There was no welcoming light—Josdi was afraid of the fire. Guilt flashed through her that she had not made it to see them, that she had let Rilen distract her and send her back.

  She turned to him. “You promise that you will see to my father and Josdi? Tonight? You’ll let them know that I am well?”

  A light flash of a grin, and Rilen nodded. “Of course. And you yourself will see them in three days hence when I rescue you.”