King of Devotion

by J A Armitage

  My voice was betraying my irritation. I tried to rein it back.

  “I would caution any responsible journalist from accepting claims from unofficial sources. If a case of blight on the palace grounds ever creates a threat to outside gardens and especially our food crops, I guarantee you’ll be told immediately both through the palace newsroom and the Horticulture Council. Good day. No questions, please.”

  The queen was nowhere to be seen. The king was busy entertaining the elder duke and duchess, and Lilian, according to palace gossip, was spending the day with Duke Remington on a tour of the Florian Academy of Dance. They were to tour the Academy’s facilities and meet its most promising students, then do lunch at the top of the Calendula Tower, and then return to the Academy to attend a preview of the new ballet that would premiere in conjunction with the Flower Festival. It sounded like a delightful way to spend a day, and no doubt, the duke would take every opportunity to kiss Lilian and shower her with jewelry and compliments.

  Which left me, alone, to deal with the press and the dying flowers and the staff that had gone rogue under my nose.

  The royal family couldn’t be unaware of what was happening in the gardens, not now that it had made the news. Why hadn’t one of them come to see me? Why didn’t they care?

  I paced along the rows of seedlings and starts in the greenhouse. At least, the blight hadn’t touched anything in here. These seedlings were half the reason the festival existed: they included all sorts of rare and beautiful flowers that could only be found in Floris, and people traveled from all over the world to collect plants to carefully take back home. This event made the palace a great deal of money, half of which was always donated to charity. Even if the palace grounds were afflicted by this blight or curse or whatever it was, the event absolutely had to go off as it always did.

  A wilted seedling caught my eye. Its leaves were yellow, bits of brown curling at the edges. I pulled the young plant up before I had time to think.

  It wasn’t blight. This was just the result of too much water, or too little light, or a seed that had never been destined to make it. My heart still pounded at the sight of the now-empty pot.

  The Spring Flower Festival had to go well. It had to.

  Hollis and Reed returned right before lunch. We grabbed a few sandwiches and apples and retreated to a quiet corner of the gardens where we could talk privately.

  “It’s not good,” Hollis said bluntly from where she sat cross-legged on the grass. She threw a piece of her crust toward a bird, which hopped and tilted its head and pecked at the crumbs. “It’s the same blight, no question.”

  “It’s only just appeared here,” I said. “No blight spreads that fast. Unless it started in the farms?”

  Reed shook his head. “It’s appearing at the same frequency there as it is here. Just a few plants at first, getting a little worse every day. A couple of the farmers we talked to said their crops started going gray the same day ours first did.”

  I chewed my apple. It tasted like wood pulp, and I had to fight not to spit it out.

  “Whatever this thing is, it’s regional.” Hollis sucked a smear of mustard from her finger, then wiped her hand on her stained work trousers. “Has to be spread via spores, or maybe there’s something in the water. The farmers say it’s moving about as fast as potato blight, though.”

  She didn’t need to elaborate. Potato blight could kill entire crops in a fortnight. If we didn’t manage to find and destroy every infected plant, the entire palace gardens could be gone in a month.

  I could forget about tending Lilian’s gardens and teaching her children how to plant tulips. At this rate, I’d be lucky if I still had a job by then.

  Stinging nettles, this garden was dying as fast as my dreams.

  Reed furrowed his eyebrows at me. “You okay?” he said. The slight tilt of his head told me he wasn’t asking about the garden.

  I pulled back my shoulders. The kingdom was facing a crisis, the likes of which I’d never seen. It didn’t need me going to pieces over a childhood sweetheart on top of it.

  “I want you guys to tell the rest of the staff what you learned,” I said. “And then, we’ve got to figure out a way to stop this thing.”

  It was the second staff meeting in a week, and this one was going even worse than the first.

  “Quiet down!” I shouted over the cacophony of voices.

  Nothing happened. My gardeners were angry and scared. Nothing I had said or done had broken through to them.

  Hollis whistled loudly enough to make my ears ring. The room lapsed into a shocked silence.

  “Thank you,” Hollis said, making it manage to sound like an insult.

  Linden, sitting at one of the more distant wrought-iron tables, muttered something under his breath. Chervil crossed his arms and glared at me. Nearby, Olive twisted a strand at the end of her braid.

  “So that’s the situation.” I felt like a rabbit in a den of wolves, with every one of them just as likely to tear into me as to listen. I cleared my throat and stood up straighter. “As of now, you know everything I do.”

  “More, I should think,” Mace said, not quite under his breath.

  I ignored him. “We need to work together. It’s going to take every last one of us to solve this.”

  Myrtle raised her hand, and I nodded at her. “With all due respect, sir, you’re the boss. If you want us to solve this problem you’re going to have to tell us how. A pep talk isn’t going to cut it.”

  I took a measured breath. “I don’t know how. And this isn’t a pep talk. It’s a warning. I’ve never seen a disease like this, and neither have any of you. Unless you do know, and you’re choosing not to come forward.”

  I glanced over the assembled crowd, searching their faces to see if I’d hit a nerve. No decent person would let an entire garden crumble around their ears just to prove a point, but I wasn’t about to risk the palace grounds on the hope that Jonquil or Chervil were decent people. But even they just looked disgruntled.

  Olive raised her hand. I gestured at her, grateful.

  “We all know this is a serious problem.” Her voice was quiet as if she wasn’t sure she really wanted to be talking. “But it doesn’t seem like any of us know how to fix it. Maybe we need to start thinking creatively.”

  “And what are we going to accomplish by thinking creatively?” Jonquil said in a mocking tone. “What does that mean, exactly? You want to do an interpretive dance about how our gardens are dying?”

  “Thank you, Olive,” I said loudly. She shrank back into her chair but gave me a slight nod. “As it happens, we’re pursuing some unusual possibilities. I spoke to Gardener Hedley about this issue a few days ago, and he’s exploring the idea that this blight might be magical in nature.”

  All through the room, expressions changed, some skeptical and others curious. On the other side of the room, Jonquil snorted.

  “Another thing,” I said, fixing him with a stare. “This is a sensitive issue. The next person I catch feeding rumors to the press will lose their job.”

  It was an empty threat. I couldn’t lose a tulip specialist with Jonquil’s skills, not now. But I held his gaze and tried to look like I meant what I said.

  “Censorship,” Chervil said loudly. “Yes, just what we need to save the gardens.”

  “It’s not censorship to ask that we show a little discretion,” Reed snapped.

  At the same time, Myrtle threw up her hands. “Well, isn’t our head gardener Mr. High and Mighty!”

  “This place is going to the dogs,” Jonquil said while Basil shook his head, and a few of the younger interns eyed the door like they were looking for an escape route.

  “I have the right to fire anyone who fails to reflect—”

  I was instantly drowned out by more complaints and accusations. I looked to Hollis for help, but she was now in an intense argument with Basil, and Reed was shouting across the room at Linden.

  This meeting, like my life, was a disaste
r.

  I walked out while they were still hollering at each other. The greenhouse door slammed behind me.

  An hour later, I sat at the edge of the small lake, the water lapping gently against my ankles. It was cold, and I was glad. The discomfort gave me something to focus on besides the roaring in my head.

  I dug my bare toes into the mud. Across the water, a pair of swans floated together, their white wings touched by the blush of early evening.

  The gardens were dying. The love of my life was about to marry another man. Everyone on my staff hated me, the queen refused to see me, and the first and last Flower Festival of my career was about to bring shame on the entire country.

  Everything was fine. Just fine.

  I watched as a duck waddled down to the water and hopped in, its body settling immediately against the surface of the lake. Overhead, thin clouds tinged with pink and purple floated past like streamers. Birds called their evening songs to one another, and the rowboats tied up on the far side of the lake bumped gently against the dock.

  I had to find a way to preserve this beauty. Perhaps the solution was to fight my way into Queen Rapunzel’s chambers, or tear up every plant in the gardens and start over, or contact a magician powerful enough to prevent the blight or curse or whatever it was from spreading. There were a million possible solutions, each wilder than the last.

  I rested my elbows on my knees. A tiny fish came to investigate my foot, and I held still so as not to startle it. I couldn’t think. Too many stupid thoughts jostled for space in my brain, like weeds that had overtaken a flowerbed and choked out everything that should have been growing there.

  “Deon?”

  I jumped. The fish darted away. A duck floating nearby snapped its head straight ahead to look at me with one of its beady black eyes. A hand settled on my shoulder.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Lilian said. She sat next to me.

  Too late, I reached out a hand to stop her. “It’s muddy. Your dress—”

  She shrugged. “I’ll rinse it out in the sink before my maids can get mad at me.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments. Lilian kicked off her slippers and plopped her feet into the water beside mine.

  “What are you doing out here?” she said. “The festival’s in eleven days. I’d have thought you’d still be working.”

  What was the use? I didn’t know what to do to counteract the blight or to get my staff to stop jumping down my throat every time I opened my mouth. I wanted to work. My body itched to be put to use, the more backbreaking, the better. But every task on my list felt pointless.

  “Did you see the papers?”

  She pursed her lips and looked sideways at me. “I did. It sounded like a whole lot of nothing, journalists trying to drum up an audience with some made-up scandal right before the festival.”

  Was that what the king and queen thought, too? Was that why neither of them had come to see me?

  “The blight’s real,” I said. “It’s worse than they realize.”

  She stared at me, her blue eyes darker than usual in the rosy light. “What do you mean, worse?”

  “I mean worse,” I said. “I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

  She whistled softly. “That’s a problem. Have you talked to Hedley? Or the Horticulture Council?”

  “Hedley, yes. Horticulture Council, not until I don’t have any other options.” I thought about mentioning that the queen had barred me from her chambers, but the king had asked that I not mention her illness. I laced my hands around my knees instead. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Me neither.” She stared out at the lake for a long moment. Then she clapped a gentle hand on my knee and turned to me. “Let’s walk,” she said briskly.

  It wasn’t like I had any better ideas. I scrambled to my feet and picked up my shoes, and she picked up hers. She laced her free arm through mine as she’d done a thousand times before, and my heart skipped a beat.

  Hers must have, too, because she blushed.

  “Lils, this is making it harder to stay away from you,” I said, but I didn’t pull away.

  We walked without talking for a while, the sun-warmed paving stones comfortable beneath our feet. After a while, we found ourselves standing outside my private garden, though I didn’t recall either of us choosing to go that way.

  Lilian took a deep breath as if she was about to say something, and then she clamped her lips shut.

  I didn’t ask. I couldn’t ask.

  Abruptly, she pulled away from me and strode for several paces, then whirled back around.

  “You gave him the flower, didn’t you?”

  She stared at me, and I stared back. Slowly, I nodded.

  “He asked for my help,” I said. “He said he felt like you were reserved around him. He wanted to get to know you better.”

  Her eyebrows furrowed together. “That was kind of him,” she said.

  I didn’t know what to say. It had been kind of the duke, but I couldn’t praise him to Lilian’s face. Not today.

  “Can we go into your garden?”

  “Lils.”

  I waited for the right words to rise to my lips, words that could explain how I couldn’t let her an inch closer, not without it ripping me apart.

  She just looked at me with those wide, beautiful eyes. I relented, the resistance inside me crumbling like mud in the rain. I unlocked the garden with shaking hands, and she followed me inside, her body close enough behind me that I could smell the magnolia scent of her perfume.

  She closed the door behind us. I turned.

  “Lilian, I can’t—”

  “I love you.”

  She looked up at me, her eyebrows drawn together, and her lower lip trembling.

  “I do,” she said. “I can’t help it. I’ve tried so hard to love the duke, or at least, convince myself that I could love him someday, but I don’t. I don’t, Deon. I love you.”

  Tingles ran up my arms, and a lump filled my throat. I blinked back sudden tears.

  “Lilian, we can’t.”

  “I know,” she said. “And it doesn’t change a thing.”

  She took a step toward me. I felt as immovably rooted as an ancient tree. She rested one of her small hands against my chest, and I knew she had to be able to feel the way my heart pounded at her touch.

  “Stars, Deon,” she whispered. “What are we going to do?”

  Carry on the adventure in Heir of Thorns

  After the Happily Ever After…

  There is more to these stories. You want to know what happens next right? Fast forward eighteen years…

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  PREQUEL

  SLEEPING BEAUTY

  1. Queen of Dragons

  2. Heiress of Embers

  3. Throne of Fury

  4. Goddess of Flames

  LITTLE MERMAID

  5. Queen of Mermaids

  6. Heiress of the Sea

  7. Throne of Change

  8. Goddess of Water

  RED RIDING HOOD

  9. King of Wolves

  10. Heir of the Curse

  11. Throne of Night

  12. God of Shifters

  RAPUNZEL

  13. King of Devotion

  14. Heir of Thorns

  15. Throne of Enchantment

  16. God of Loyalty

  RUMPELSTILTSKIN

  17. Queen of Unicorns

  18. Heiress of Gold

  19. Throne of Sacrifice

  20. Goddess of Loss

  BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

  21. King of Beasts

  22. Heir of Beauty

  23. Throne of Betrayal

  24. God of Illusion

  ALADDIN

  25. Queen of the Sun

  26. Heiress of Shadows

  27. Throne of the Phoenix

  28. Goddess of Fire

  CINDERELLA

  29. Queen of Song

  30. Heiress of
Melody

  31. Throne of Symphony

  32. Goddess of Harmony

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND

  33. Queen of Clockwork

  34. Heiress of Delusion

  35. Throne of Cards

  36. Goddess of Hearts

  WIZARD OF OZ

  37. King of Traitors

  38. Heir of Fugitives

  39. Throne of Emeralds

  40. God of Storms

  SNOW WHITE

  41. Queen of Reflections

  42. Heiress of Mirrors

  43. Throne of Wands

  44. Goddess of Magic

  PETER PAN

  45. Queen of Skies

  46. Heiress of Stars

  47. Throne of Feathers

  48. Goddess of Air

  URBIS - Coming soon

  49. Kingdom of Royalty

  50. Kingdom of Power

  51. Kingdom of Fairytales

  52. Kingdom of Ever After

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