by Anna Holmes
He laughs again. "Well, if he gets you to see that, then I suppose I must applaud him. And…bring him out of the dungeon."
"Riley!"
"He went voluntarily. Until you could validate the pardon."
"Damn it, Alain…well." I pause for a moment and decide this is not a time for tact. It’s been a while, but I make the change in my head from speaking to Riley my advisor to Riley my oldest friend. "What of Alora?"
Riley sits back in the chair for a moment, then stands. He takes a few paces around the room, and then sits again. "She's nothing like I thought," he says at last.
"You were told, then." I cringe. "Are you…?"
"No," he answers, rubbing at his neck. "No, but it’s new yet. I’ll…figure it out."
"I mean, Kelvin was in her head. There might be…"
He shakes his head. "In her head or not, she tried to kill you. I don’t think there’s any coming back from that."
I nod slowly, trying to think past the throb in my shoulder to find the right words. "Whatever you decide," I settle on at last, "I’ll be there."
"Thank you." He straightens. "For the meantime, she's been locked in her chamber. Not exactly bread and water, but we leave her to your judgment."
I nod, rubbing at my forehead. "And Kelvin?"
His back tightens, and he glowers at the corner of the room. It’s an expression he’s worn while discussing his stepfather in the past, but this is a new intensity for him. "In the dungeon, awaiting trial. Your advisors have been quick to distance himself from him."
"Amusing, given their eagerness to fall all over each other to lick his boots just a fortnight ago."
"Precisely," Riley says, jaw set. "I’d weigh their words carefully."
I understand. I'm also wondering what else we don't know. "We have much work to do still."
"We nothing. Your duty to Elyssia is to get the last of that poison out of you." He stands, sliding the chair back to my desk. "I'll go free your prince."
"Thank you," I say, catching his arm before he can leave.
"Don't say that," Riley answers, a little tug at his grayish lips. "It makes me wonder what else you have planned."
"Lieutenant Bannon," I reply tiredly, "Believe me when I say that I won't be going anywhere for a long time."
Chapter Forty-One
Alain
Bannon says little to me on the way up from the dungeon, and from the looks I receive in the hall, I feel as though I'm still under arrest. It would help if the guards would stop flanking me. It takes two flights of steps for him to acknowledge me—and climbing two flights takes me longer than most. "The princess has asked that you be placed in the tower on the third floor unless your…condition dictates something less strenuous."
I could snap at him, but I know his look. He's wary of me, as I am of him. Instead, I say, "My condition is not so limiting, but thank you for your concern."
Not that I'd admit otherwise. He just nods and waits for me to meet him at the top of the last flight. "Betray her and I will personally see to it that your next arrangements will be for a funeral," he informs me.
Ever so cuddly, Lieutenant Bannon. I laugh. "You’d need to beat her to it."
His lips twitch. He pushes open a door and indicates that I am to enter the room I almost lingered in the day before. I can fully take it in now.
The walls are lined with books. Books on every topic, books in other languages, books from before the birth of Elyssia. There's a desk and a workbench, a box of tools, boxes of pens and paper and notebooks waiting to be filled up. On the desk sits my pardon, tucked next to a tiny model of a ship. Against the window, it looks almost like it's sailing on the sea just visible between the mountains. If I could have chosen quarters for myself, these would be them. I turn to Bannon again, who doesn't seem to register my incredulity. "I was instructed to ask whether you require anything else."
"Her," I find myself blurting. "I need to see her."
Bannon shakes his head. "She's resting."
"Please." I turn to him. "A half a moment."
He sighs. "If I don't give in, you'll change my mind for me, won't you?"
"Not magically, if that's what you're after."
He pauses, looks me over, and sighs. "If only to keep her from trying to come down here herself when she tires of sleeping."
We climb one more flight. He motions the guards away, and places a key in the lock. They’re keeping her under key? My eyebrows furrow of their own accord, and he assures me, "It’s only locked from the outside. In light of everything, we thought it best. Surely you can appreciate that."
I don't know that she would, but I can. The massive door swings open, and I don't wait to be invited in. She is in fact asleep, but this doesn't dismay me as it did the last two times. Before, she was perfectly still in the same position in which she was left, like a statue, barely breathing. Now the covers are mussed up and her hair flies every which way, her mouth open indelicately and her unbandaged hand flung over her head. Bannon shakes his head. "She's always been such a lady."
"No, this is good," I tell him, my voice quiet. I find her fingers and they curl around mine. Her eyes are still closed, but her hand is warm, and she mutters something in her sleep. This is very good.
I am not ordered to keep to my room, but it’s strange to wander the halls completely visible. The guards’ eyes still follow me anytime I move from my quarters. Conversations stop abruptly when I pass. I'm used to that, at least. This afternoon, I limp down to the stables. A guard looks moderately alarmed as I approach Maribelle. "Just saying hello," I assure him, reaching out to touch her face.
He settles back down and I let go of a breath. Everyone seems convinced that I'm about to run back to the Legion with everything I've learned about the princess. I suppose a truly cunning devil of a prince would let as many opportunities to do so as I've had pass, let everyone believe I've changed. I’m not that cunning.
A rider approaches from the main road, and I instinctively lean over so that my face is hidden behind the stall. I needn't have bothered. Tressa plucks me up by my shirt collar, which is as close to an affectionate greeting as I've come to expect. "Where'd you get off to?" I ask. "Sergeant things," she says vaguely. She tilts her head and observes me a moment. "And how are you?"
"She's resting."
"You, Alain."
"Restless," I answer, more harshly than I mean to. "Jori is still running free."
"For now," she agrees. "Catching Legion fugitives happens to be where the bulk of my experience lies."
Something uneasy passes through my stomach. "Tressa, she's dangerous. Unhinged, I think. I…can't really tell. Maybe she's always been dangerous, and I was just too busy looking at the rest of her to see it."
She folds her arms and smiles. "His Highness is worried about me. Never thought I'd see the day."
"I'm no one’s Highness, and you're damned right I'm worried!" I now realize that I'm gripping the stall's post very tightly, and that Tressa is looking at me. "I'm sorry."
"She'll be found."
"Only if she wants to be, and that's what has me worried." Kelvin hasn't left my mind, either. I passed his cell briefly. He didn’t speak, but he looked too content for his position.
Tressa tilts her head to the side to scan me one last time. "Do you think she's a threat?"
"Unreservedly."
"Then she will be pursued, and she will be caught. Your princess will make sure of that."
And that's what I am most afraid of. She must sense it, because she interrupts herself. "But not for now. For now, we rest. For now, we've won."
"Forgive me," I say with the smallest of laughs, "but that is a feeling with which I am wholly unfamiliar."
I consider the staircase. My bedroom is on the third floor. Caelin's is on the fourth. This is well established territory. There's something about knowing that there's a locked door at the top that makes the distance between my floor and hers seem that much longer.
The
lock would likely pose little difficulty for me, unless they've made it out of something that prevents a magical intervention. The fact of the matter is, I'm done magically intervening in her space. Unless there's some danger, I have to respect the sanctity of a locked door.
But it isn't Caelin who locked it, is it? Would she keep me out?
I arrive at the third floor and look up. I could just knock.
No, she's likely asleep. Or she should be, if she isn't.
It's strange, to go from spending your every waking moment with someone to having them locked away from you.
I want to knock.
Shuffling and clanking break into the noise of my thoughts. A guard approaches. I turn, and the woman fixes me with a look, slightly out of breath. "There you bloody are. I've been all over this blasted castle looking for you. The princess would like to see you."
"She would?" I blurt. Her look sharpens, and I clear my throat and amend, "Ah. Yes. Thank you. Should I…?"
"She asked me to give you this."
In my hand now sits a key, and the stairs don't seem so insurmountable.
I pause at the top to catch my breath. The guard has followed me up, but stands not as though to follow me, but instead facing out, watching for intruders. People who haven't been given a key. I move to fit mine into the lock, but the door is already open a crack. There are voices from inside. I hesitate, and the guard looks at me. "Go on."
I swing the door open. Caelin sits up in bed. "Is this what winning feels like?" I ask, pulling my hand through my hair and letting go of a breath. "Locked doors and guards? Because it feels very much like the other thing."
"Sometimes," she says, patting the bed next to her. "For a while, anyway." Slowly, I find my way over to her and sit. Her fingers run over mine as though she's verifying that they're here, they're real. She was not awake when I got back to the cathedral, and she needs the moment I took when Bannon let me in yesterday. At last, she does something I've never heard her do. She giggles. "You," she says, prodding my chest, "made it rain."
I rub at the back of my neck. "I did do that, yeah."
"No, Alain. You made it rain. You made rain. That is unspeakably amazing."
"It's…certainly unusual."
"Unusual? Alain, that is incredible. You were incredible." She looks at me. "Now tell me that doesn't feel like winning."
I can't hold back a tiny burgeoning smile. "This from the princess who was bent on naming me oaf."
"In some ways, you still are," she agrees.
I can't dispute that. But she closes my hand around the key and presses my knuckles to her lips, and I think I know the difference now.
We have won after all.
Chapter Forty-Two
Caelin
Same dress, same nerves, same ceremony, different day.
I stare myself down in the mirror, long since replaced after Alain shattered it that first evening I ran off with him. I look gaunt, ashy, anxious. I've dueled some of the Rosalian Legion's worst, fought off a vicious poison, squared off with a man nearly triple my size, and I still can't face down this day.
I grip the edges of the vanity and breathe in and out in short little bursts. What I wouldn't give for my sword right now. It was probably wise of Riley to take that from me. I take one more look in the mirror. The dress scoops low to my shoulders, and the scar at the base of my neck on my left shoulder is clearly visible. It's still ringed with a faint tinge of blue, but the alchemists say that may linger even though the poison is long since gone.
I feel the smooth edge of the scar and squint. Will anyone notice it? Will they care? Feel proud of the princess who could withstand something like that for the sake of those without a voice, or ashamed of the rebel leader who allowed herself to nearly die for those in the Legion? Or satisfied that my skin has once again been marked by my enemies?
I wish my mother were here. In the chaos of the wedding, she slipped away from her handlers and hasn't been heard from since. I want to ask her about so many things. Like whether Father would approve of what I’ve done and what’s being done today.
I turn to pace a bit more, having run out of more productive things to do with my nerves, but something brushes against my fingertips, and I pause. There on the vanity is a clumsily braided ring of flowers. It wasn't here two seconds ago. I whirl. The door is open just enough for a rail-thin boy to pass through. "You are so lucky," I growl to the room at large as I shut it, "That I don't have my sword."
"Quiet, will you?" Alain laughs from somewhere in the room, voice hushed. "Your friend on the other side of the door still has hers."
I hold my hands out in front of me and move towards his voice. He’d said he’d sneak up to visit me before the ceremony, but I hadn’t thought it would be like this. I don’t know why; his sneaking always seems to involve vanishing. "Why don't you show yourself and we'll settle this fairly?"
"You'll laugh at this ridiculous uniform."
"Ridiculous? You used to wear that green Legion monstrosity."
"And I looked stupid in that, too. I can't stay long, anyway. Bannon will flay me once he realizes he's lost track of me."
I try to listen for his footsteps—inaudible over mine. "You could have just asked the guard."
"I don't think you realize just how much they don't want anyone to get to you before the ceremony. Just in case."
I let go of an agitated breath, the little bit of hair that always seems to fall loose from from any braid flying into my eye. I suppose I should take it as a good sign that the casualness with which Kelvin conducted my security has gone, but I am beginning to tire of being accompanied everywhere and then shut into the tower alone. I am assured that once this evening's festivities have faded into memory that I can be in charge of my own movement again.
I've lost track now of Alain's general direction until the wreath of flowers is slipped onto my head. I catch his hand and smile, pulling him closer. "You did well."
"You've never been one to spare me my failings."
"It's an honorable attempt."
"My father is on his way to see me," he says quietly. "I wanted you to have something of yours."
I thought I'd long been used to the idea that my father wouldn't be here for this day, but now my lip trembles. At the last second, I remember to turn from him. "Don't look. You're invisible and I'm not."
He grasps my elbows and pulls me back gently. I let him. "I'm going to have to see sometime. Everyone cries."
I give his shoulder a halfhearted punch. "Queens definitely do not cry."
"It would be fine if they wanted to. They're the blasted queens, for gods' sake."
"Not yet," I remind him.
"Why don't we fix that?"
My cheek finds the cold medals on his chest. These bits of gold and ribbon were the source of some argument, particularly the Honor of the Rosalian Legion. Alain never planned to wear it again. My advisors never wanted to place it alongside the Elyssian Medal of Nobility. Some never wanted him to receive an honor reserved for those who fought against the Legion. He has now, and every other dignitary there will be wearing his past on his chest. I won't erase Alain's. I trace the concentric circles with my fingers. "Sometime soon," I murmur.
The clock sounds across the courtyard, and he squeezes my upper arms. "I need to go before Bannon tries to put me back in prison," he tells me, the nervous twinge to his laugh suggesting that it's not much of a joke. "Now. Here's what'll happen. I am going to kiss you, if you'll have it. Then you'll open your door and ask your guard a question long enough for me to slip past so I don't have to climb down the tower. Then I will see you in the cathedral, where you will look lovely and radiant and very regal, and I'll make you laugh because I look an idiot, and we'll get through the thing together."
"Yeah?" I mumble.
"You fought Kelvin and Rye at the same time—while poisoned. You can outlast a little ceremony. Now. Shall I kiss you?"
I stare at the floor a moment. On the one hand, he's in
visible, and I've had just about enough fumbling about with invisible people. On the other…a smile cracks its way out of my nerves, and I nod. He leans down and kisses me—hard at first, but softening toward the end.
When we part, I fold my arms. "You know what would help?"
"Mm?"
"If you'd tell me what you're going to say in there."
"I can't do that."
"For an outlaw, it's all rules with you."
Another kiss, this time to the forehead as he leads me to the door. "Worst criminal ever. I know. Now help me get past your guard."
"You're right. You are pretty terrible." I swing the door open wide and edge up close to the guard, giving him plenty of room to pass by me.
He does so with a hand to my lower back. I turn to blurt out some inane question, but the guard beats me to it. "What is on your head?"
"Oh. Just…practicing. " I yank it off. "Never mind it, if you're going to be flip with me."
She grins at me. "What is it?"
Alain laughs in my head. I'm away.
"I've forgotten now," I stew. "How long from now is this damned thing, anyway?"
"Right about now," Riley calls from the bottom of the stairs. "Ready?"
I take a breath, fold my hands in front of me, and nod solemnly. "I'm going to pass out," I tell him.
"You are not."
I shift the heavy skirts out of the way as we start the long walk to the carriage. "I am definitely going to trip."
"Best not."
"What am I going to do, then?"
"Rise," he says. "Like you've always wanted to."
The ride seems an eternity. Riley sits across from me, his ceremonial sword in his lap. I make a face at him. "They gave you one of those?"
He widens his eyes for my benefit. "I know! Didn't you tell them I'm rubbish with these?"
I doubt it would make a difference if I did. Elyssia is nothing if not rooted in its traditions, even if no one can remember from whence they came. I peer out the window. For now, I am invisible to the throngs of people waiting, watching, hidden behind enchanted glass. I can see them, though, and I am uncertain. There are the folk from all corners of Elyssia, just as with the wedding that never happened. This time, though, some have come attired in those green monstrosities, some with those Legion medals pinned to their best clothes. The advisors looked at me as though I was mad when I ordered the ban on wearing of Legion regalia lifted. This silent protest makes me wonder if they were right.