“It would surprise me if you failed to understand that I would resort to any means necessary to make sure she won’t be shipped off against her will.”
With those words, much to Nehelon’s surprise, Brax Brenheran had shed that mask of arrogance, and instead of the spoiled child, a man looked back at him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Addie was ready. Clean and dressed was the better way to put it. Nothing could ready her for Armand’s bright face as he strolled in the door, still in the clothes he’d worn that morning, and darted past her with an excuse and a laugh.
Her hands were sweaty—not the exhaustion-from-work type of sweaty but a nervous type of moisture that directly correlated with the minutes she had been counting until his return. Addie liked to tell herself that it had been so she could tell him she had safely hidden away the crown and they wouldn’t need to waste a thought on it tonight. But when he returned from the bathing room just a moment later, hair unbound and wet where it framed his face as if he hadn’t bothered when he washed his face, and below—
Addie’s throat bobbed as she took in his bare, tan chest. He had to have been doing his workout outdoors lately … she shook her head. What did she know about his training routines? Even if she spent most of her hours with him these days, there was still a whole life she didn’t know about.
She forced her gaze away from the muscle that corded his chest and shoulders, back up to his elegant features where joy and anticipation were shining in a breathtaking combination.
“How did it go?” she asked, still struggling to keep her eyes on his face.
He beamed. “After initial hesitation from Lord Tyrem, it seems things are set. We will have the Lord’s full support to prepare both our courts for the future.”
That was wonderful news. Even if Joshua wouldn’t ascend to his throne until after his father’s death, east and west of Sives would be finally working together to unite the shattered lands between.
“Did you tell him?” Addie couldn’t help but glance at the fireplace.
“About what?” Armand bent down to pull a shirt from the trunk and froze as he opened the lid. “Where is it?” he asked over his shoulder, those muscles in his back shifting as he reached into the empty trunk as if its contents had become invisible and he could still grab them if he only wanted it enough.
“I unpacked,” Addie said and nodded at the carved dresser.
Armand darted there without another look at her and pulled open drawer after drawer, lifting the fabrics inside with quick fingers as he searched, searched for the crown.
“Where is it?” he repeated, voice resembling a growl.
Addie’s heart pounded in her throat as she got to her feet and cleared her throat.
Armand whirled around, his gaze devastated. “Did someone steal it? Did you leave the room?”
Point made. Addie pointed at the fireplace where she had safely stowed away the relic of the Dragon King’s triumph over Joshua’s predecessors. “Well, now I don’t need to explain why it was necessary to hide it.” She had considered the words she would speak carefully, all afternoon, since the moment the pain in her shoulder had subsided. Yes, it was bold to speak to a lord like that. But to a friend. That was what he had said she was. So she thought it was time to behave like one. To no longer commit herself to the servant she used to be. She wanted to be that friend he saw—and more, but that remained for another life. Her chest ached at the thought and as she watched his powerful stride across the room.
But she got there first and reached behind the mantel to pull out the crown of Sives, watching his smile return—slowly, tentatively—along with a different sort of emotion. Relief.
“Thank the gods.” He held open his hands, and Addie dropped the bundle before she retreated to the dresser where she pulled out Armand’s best tunic—Denderlain blue threaded with gold—which she carried back to the young, bare-chested lord.
“I hid it before anyone could get the idea of snooping around this place.” She surveilled him as he tore his gaze from the clunky item in his hands and looked at her with astonishment. Outside, the birds were slowly quieting their eager chirping as the sunlight turned orange on the panorama before the windows.
Addie just shrugged. “I spent enough time in a castle full of mysteries to know a thing or two about hiding places.”
“You most certainly do, don’t you?” He returned the crown into the cool darkness of the fireplace and took his tunic from Addie’s waiting hands. “Thanks.” His gaze lingered on her hands then wandered up her arms to the neckline of the slate-gray gown she was wearing. The simple cut covered her scar in full, but Armand’s eyes lingered there as if they could see through the satin. “Smart”—his gaze scraped to her face and held hers—“and beautiful.”
Addie struggled hard to keep her face neutral. He didn’t mean it like that. It was obvious in the way his eyes had noted the place of her scar, but not the way the dress hugged her curves—which had filled out since she had at least one proper meal every day. Now, she looked like a woman.
Armand, however, didn’t seem to notice.
“Does he know you brought it?” Addie pinned his focus back on the crown and walked back to the dresser where she turned and leaned against the carved drawers.
Armand shook his head. “I will tell him tomorrow. Joshua is too busy with the foreign delegations to deal with the full weight of his crown.”
Literally. “Did you see them?” Addie asked and wondered where the delegates had come from, if she would see the same fashion she had seen on Lady Isylte Aphapia of Ilaton, the white chiffon, the leather bands, the heavy, gold jewelry. Or if she would get to see Phornians, whose dark-skinned beauty was a legend in Sives as was that in Khila, the capital in the south where every child learned how to read and write, no matter their family’s status in society. Unlike here in Sives where most families didn’t bother to teach their daughters even those basics. Addie had been so lucky that her father had cared enough to teach her the alphabet and that her mother had encouraged her to read. Writing was hard for her though.
Armand closed the buttons on his tunic as he strode over to sit on one of the wooden chairs near the windows. “I spotted some carriages … Sivesian nobles mostly, but I have learned that each house in Neredyn will be represented somehow.” He stopped and frowned at the button on his sleeve, which seemed resistant to his attempts at closing it. “Well, at least every house of significance.”
As he kept fingering on that one button, without success, Addie sighed through her nose and crossed the distance between them in a few strides. “Let me.” He held out his arm at her request, and Addie stuffed the round, golden button, which was adorned with the Denderlain sigil, through the hole.
He smiled up at her. “It will be a colorful party if what I have heard about the Lapidonian houses is to be believed.” He snickered at her expression of caution. “Don’t worry, Addie,” he said and got to his feet. “I’m not going to leave you alone for a minute.” Then, he ran his fingers through his drying hair, making a face. “Open or bound?”
In whatever way he wanted. It looked like molten honey to her, tempting her to run a finger over the strands to see if they were sticky and sweet. Addie bit back a grimace of awkwardness and shrugged again.
He looked down his tunic then mimicked her gesture. “Open it is.”
When they left the room minutes later, Armand grinning in anticipation as they descended the dark stone stairs following the music and the voices, Addie was not nearly ready.
As Gandrett left her chambers after an hour of worrying over whether she had made the right decision, her dress—not her dress but a midnight blue gown, which Mckenzie had sent with a note saying that tonight was Nyssa’s celebration, and she needed something worthy of the goddess of love. Gandrett frowned as she lifted her hand to the rail along the stairs, and the fabric shifted half an inch in the front where, despite its long sleeves and high collar, the dress left a sliver of bare sk
in shining through a gap reaching all the way down to her navel. The only comfort was that the embroidery that wound all around the gap and around the neck had stiffened the fabric so she could trust it wouldn’t expose too much. Still, she felt naked.
From the windows along the narrow staircase, she could see the guests arriving, some emerging from the palace, some arriving in carriages of ornate carvings and adorned with gold and silver. She didn’t care who they belonged to, who the people climbing out of them in finery were. She had returned with Nehelon to help Joshua Brenheran, not to attend parties. Especially when her plan had been to remain in a corner and mourn her lost childhood on the day she turned of age. Nobody knew what day it was, what it meant to her. She had let that knowledge die with that first, lonely birthday at the Order.
A flock of young women crossed the yard and filed through the gate leading into the gardens, their skirts billowing behind them on the summer breeze. Gandrett turned into the hallway on the ground floor, wondering if Brax would be upset she hadn’t waited for him. It just felt less formal to her if she met him downstairs in the gardens. He’d find her, she was sure of that. He had found her before. And as for her travel companion…
Gandrett followed the illuminated hall until she stepped out into the evening sun. Behind her, the palace seemed aglow with hues of pink and orange light. Gandrett couldn’t help but marvel for a moment before she followed the sound of laughter and light-hearted conversations into the gardens.
“The chancellor informed me you returned with him.”
Gandrett turned and looked into the emerald eyes of Joshua Brenheran. Did he now?
“Good to have you back here at court,” he said with a half-smile.
Gandrett inclined her head instead of a curtsey. “Prince—”
He looked her up and down, his features so different from the way he’d looked at her in Eedwood in the dungeons. A shudder ran through her at the memory of pain and darkness.
“You look … better, Your Highness,” she said, not knowing how to better phrase it.
Joshua offered his hand, and she took it, allowing him to lead her through the gate and into the garden, which was a vision in white, flowing gossamer, flowers in all shades of red to white, and music … beautiful music, strings and flutes, and a pianoforte.
“This is quite impressive,” she commented as she took in the long table set under the largest of the gossamer tents.
Joshua led her right to the entrance where a cluster of courtiers was conversing, glancing at the prince with a nervousness that Gandrett hadn’t noticed the last time she was here.
“I would prefer you called me by my name,” he muttered as they passed by the girls she had spotted entering the garden earlier. They gave her various shades of murderous looks just for walking beside the prince.
She nodded at them with one of the smiles Mckenzie had taught her and shoved her hand into her pocket, which sat, mercifully, embroidered with the same blue pearls as on her neckline. “How have you been, Joshua?”
The grass was soft beneath her silk slippers as they turned off the gravel path. Gandrett marked all the faces as they kept walking. The layout of the festivities she had memorized on her way back to the palace this afternoon and from the windows, creating a map in her mind. A beautiful map of flowery decorations and pretty people who seemed to be there for the enjoyment of life alone. No hint of animated political discussions.
“Adjusting.” He glanced at the girls and frowned. “Things have been … different … since my return.” A group of courtiers bowed in passing as they made their way to one of the smaller tents, some of them carrying elegant glasses of sparkling wine. “The nightmares still return every now and then.”
The look on his face informed her that he wasn’t sleeping much at all.
“But it’s better to not be able to sleep and be the master of my own mind than—” He stopped and eyed two women who were conversing in the shade of a tree. One of them she had seen before.
“Is that—”
“Isylte Aphapia,” he finished her sentence.
Gandrett remembered the lovely face, the dark curls that were pinned up to the top of her head. The same hairdo she had worn to the dance in Demea’s honor at Eedwood Castle. The other woman was a younger copy. The same features, same body just more supple than Lady Isylte’s.
“Her daughter?” Gandrett asked, and Joshua nodded, eyes still on the two women.
“Selue Grenta, youngest daughter of the House Grenta of Ilbroit.” Gandrett studied them for another moment and marked every detail she could make out from the distance.
“Isylte was my mother’s friend,” he said lowly, an emotion crossing his features as Gandrett faced him.
She didn’t care if it was difficult for him to be reminded of his mother with everything she had done to him. Glad to have a knife hidden at her thigh, just in case, Gandrett followed Joshua toward the tent where they passed the courtiers, who stepped aside, shaping a passage for the prince and the woman beside him. Gandrett smiled at each of them, marking their faces, too. She had a job to do. Protect the Prince of Sives. Even if Nehelon hadn’t given her any task, any assignment yet, she felt that it was the right thing to do. The only thing she could do.
“And there I was, thinking you’d behave like a lady for once and let me pick you up at the door.” Brax fell into step beside her. She had noticed someone jogging up from behind them, and her free hand was indeed ready to flip to the side and punch him in the throat. It was reflex as much as it was trained behavior, and it took her a good second to make her fingers relax.
“I thought I’d save you the trouble of climbing the stairs all the way up to my rooms,” she casually said and smiled at him from the side. “Where is your sister?”
A frown had stolen its way onto Brax’s features by the time Gandrett finished speaking, and he shot a glance at Joshua, who slid his arm from Gandrett’s and lifted his hands. “I was just making sure our guest didn’t get lost while she was wandering down here alone.”
As if she’d ever get lost. But she read the subtext in his words the same moment one of the courtiers at the other end of the tent gave her a lazy grin after a long look between the embroidered edges on her neckline.
Gandrett turned to Josh—“Thank you.”—and hooked her hand into Brax’s with a killing glare at the guy whose eyes had tried to undress her. Had she been in her uniform, had she cared what the Order of Vala demanded of her, she might as well have crossed the space in a quick leap across the gold-framed china on the table and landed that punch she’d had in store for Brax as he had snuck up on her. But something in her had shifted.
Brax led her to the center of the long side of the table where he pulled out a chair for her, and Gandrett allowed him to guide her into the cushioned seat. He sat next to her, Joshua sitting down further toward the head of the table, leaving one chair empty between him and Brax, explaining that Mckenzie was to sit there.
It didn’t take long before the latter floated in on billowing, burgundy tulle skirts that put every other gown in the room to shame. “So you found her,” she said to her twin before she winked at Gandrett, leaning forward in her chair.
Brax just huffed and gave Gandrett an apologetic look.
Their clothes matched, Gandrett noticed with amusement, Mckenzie’s velvet bodice the ornate version of the jacket Brax was wearing.
“You do know that all of those male heirs will want to court you no matter how incompetent you behave,” Gandrett whispered at Mckenzie, who laughed like a bell.
Indeed, the attention of the men in the room had fallen upon Mckenzie as if they were bees and she was a particularly sweet type of honey. Mckenzie just murmured, “I have no intention of hiding my curves just because some of those heirs may not be able to think straight.” She leaned closer toward Gandrett, making Brax retreat toward the backrest of his chair. “You might not have noticed, but men have trouble making decisions when sidetracked by a neckline.” As if in an
swer, both Gandrett and Mckenzie glanced down at the bare skin between Gandrett’s breasts. Gandrett swallowed, and Mckenzie giggled.
“I heard that,” Brax announced with fake annoyance.
“You don’t count,” she shot at him with a smile. “You’re my brother.”
When Mckenzie straightened and focused on the glass of sparkling wine before her, Brax shot Gandrett a glance that lingered on her face for only a second before it wandered south, and Gandrett’s face heated.
“Where do I get one of those?” she asked Mckenzie, who held her hand up and snapped her fingers.
Instantly, a servant bustled toward the young woman and, at Mckenzie’s pointer, stepped over to fill Gandrett’s glass from the bottle in his white-gloved hands.
The liquid bubbled in the crystal flute, a light shade of rose, as were the napkins and the flowers winding in garlands along the long, slowly-filling table.
Lord and Lady Brenheran had joined them at the head of the table, right next to where Joshua was conversing with a middle-aged man who seemed to bring news of interest. Lady Crystal’s eyes were on their conversation rather than her husband, who was greeting arriving guests, among them a young, dark-skinned man so beautiful that Gandrett forgot to breathe for a heartbeat.
Beside her, Brax made a noise of dismay.
“You know him?” Gandrett asked, and Brax raised an eyebrow.
“Saying I knew him would be too much.”
Mckenzie leaned past Brax’s back to inform Gandrett that that was Taghi, the Prince of Phornes. Gandrett surveilled how Taghi drifted past Joshua and the man still in conversation and approached Mckenzie, who rolled her eyes at Gandrett before she pinned on a smile and turned to face the handsome prince.
Gandrett wanted to pay attention to what they were saying, but in the line of guests, a familiar, elegant face appeared, making her leap out of her chair.
He saw her the moment she was on her feet, his smile so familiar even when she had only studied it for a month or less. Her enemy. Her friend.
Wicked Crown (Shattered Kingdom Book 2) Page 19