by Jessica Daw
Upon returning to my room, I discovered a messenger had preceded me, as Dagmar was entirely cognizant of the whole plot. The Council must have sent the messenger before speaking to me. The thought made my stomach curdle.
I walked straight past Dagmar to sit in my window seat and look out at Edeleste. I could see the ocean from my window. I’d never been out to sea, never gone anywhere other than the palace and my estate, confined to the small area around those two places. Would I be more able to resign myself to my fate if I’d seen more of the world? If I wasn’t terrified of being trapped in a marriage with someone who would take advantage of my lack of practical magic knowledge?
After an interminable moment, Dagmar walked over to me, raising her scraggly eyebrows. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you speak less in your life. What are you thinking?”
I leaned my head against the wall, pulling my legs up and hugging my knees to my chest. “I don’t know. I don’t have much of a choice in the matter, do I?” Resignation was foremost in my mind, but if I moved it aside I didn’t doubt I’d be assaulted with a whole herd of other emotions.
“You have a choice—seven choices.”
“Seven options for my future husband,” I mused, rolling my head to look out the window. The ocean was right there and I had never been out on it. On a boat, of course, at parties or for little tours, but I had never been out on the open ocean. No reason. I was never meant to be anything but a tame palace curator for my husband. My stomach twisted as I remembered for the thousandth time that it was my own fault. Mother was not equal partners with Father, entirely submissive to him, but I’d heard that sometimes a king and queen worked together, that a queen didn’t always have to sit silently and do nothing more than organize parties and wear fine clothing.
But what chance did I have of equality without magic? I could know every country in Luspe and its capital as well as other prominent cities, I could sweep the most graceful curtsy in the court, I could memorize tariff law and tax code all I wanted. Rulers in Luspe were valued as protectors, war mages who could defend their people with years of intensive magic-training average citizens couldn’t afford. Making me no more than a stand-in until I married someone who could be a real king.
“At least you have the choice. The Council could choose someone for you without consulting you at all. Be grateful that Queen Ester stood up to those men and gave you a choice at all.”
I turned back to face Dagmar. “I understand they didn’t have to give me a choice. I know what I am. But why so soon after . . . his death? Can’t they wait, even just a few months? It’s been six days. And they gave me only two days’ warning? Am I to resign myself to marrying some power-hungry stranger so soon?”
“How do you know they’re all power-hungry?” Dagmar asked, her smiling showing off her toothless gums.
I raised my eyebrows at her. “Do you really think they aren’t?”
She shrugged. “I haven’t met them yet. But neither have you. Now you have some memorizing to do. The first is the Duke of Farjord.” I submitted—submit, submit, submit—and began memorizing.
There was no time for breathing, it seemed, in those two brief days. Once the truth was out about my arriving suitors, I lived in a hectic whirlwind of activity. The most fantastic dresses were made for me, of live flowers and radiant fabric that looked like it was cut from the sun and deep blue silk that very much seemed to be flowing as if I were clothed in a river. Dagmar stepped aside to let hairstylists turn my hair into something rather resembling a bouquet on the day itself. I was bombarded with enchantments, to make me smell like a rose, to make my cheeks glow softly, to protect me from unwanted advances, to make my voice seem softer and my eyes seem larger. I sat as still as I could through it all, trying with varying degrees of success to not think of Espen, my golden boy, my beautiful betrothed.
The morning of, as the hairstylists put the last finishing touches on my hair, someone knocked on my door.
Dagmar answered. “Good morning, August,” I heard her say. Dagmar adored August, always looking at him like a lost puppy, ever since he’d arrived at our palace at seven years old, an orphan with big sad eyes.
I heard August’s deep voice rumble out a reply but couldn’t catch the words.
“Of course you may speak with Princess Helena,” Dagmar said, making me scowl. August had not spoken to me unless absolutely necessary in the past eight days, and I had no desire to speak with him now, when my nerves were strung impossibly tight, too near breaking point.
Dagmar admitted August, signaled to the hairstylists, and they left. I sat stiff at my vanity, August stood stiff at the doorway. Watching him in the glass of the mirror, I was struck again how changed he was. The August I’d once known, but turned into stone, into ice.
Without turning to face him, I said, “What do you want, August?” My voice was as icy as he’d become.
Abruptly, though, he melted. In a rush, he was at my side, kneeling by me, taking my hands in his. I was frozen, staring at him. His eyes burned into mine.
“Lena, I love you,” he said without any preamble whatsoever. I watched him, transfixed and uncomprehending. “I’ve loved you forever, Lena, but I never knew when to say, and now I know it’s my last chance, but I’m asking you, I’m begging you, please, choose me instead of those suitors. Marry me. Stay with me. Don’t leave me.”
Before I spoke a single word, he was pulling me from my chair and, though I’d never been kissed before, I was fairly certain he was intending to change that.
I felt pressure in my chest, rushing to my wrists, stopping in my iron wristbands. Emotions that wanted to manifest themselves in magic, in wind or fire or heat, too strong to maintain. I recalled in a distant way that in the last two hectic days, Dagmar had forgotten to siphon away my excess magical energy. She had never done that before, within my memory.
Before August could realize his intention of kissing me, I pushed against his chest, stumbling way from him into the chair I’d so recently occupied.
The emotions I felt were confusion, and hurt, and, above all else, burning rage. “You love me?” I asked in disbelief.
He smiled, and the hope and happiness on his face, emotions I almost never saw from him, certainly not since his returned, almost stopped me. “Yes.”
“No you don’t,” I said, my heart beating faster. “You didn’t write me once, August. You were gone for two years, four months, and four days, and you did not write me once. And then you come back to tell me that my betrothed, my Espen, is dead and I needed a friend so bad in that moment, and you were like stone, like you didn’t care at all that I was dying inside. You are not even a friend, you do not love me.” My chest was heaving.
His was too, I noticed, belatedly. His nostrils were flared, his pale blue eyes fiery ice. Still kneeling on the floor, as I was, he spoke, sneering. “You betrayed me. You were like a stupid sheep, you would have followed that pampered rich boy Espen anywhere, you were blind to me the moment that idiot showed up. I, who was your only friend, who had given up so much to spend time with you. I who was loyal to you. You betrayed me. You left me. For a rich fool who wasn’t worth a moment of your time, he never deserved you. No, he got what he deserved, and I am not going to comfort you when you are mourning for such a stupid person as Espen Kjeldsen.” His words were fast and full of pain and anger, knives he threw at me with reckless abandon, considering how recently he’d wanted to kiss me.
Tears stung my eyes, and a stray, wild thought wondered if I would get in trouble for ruining the cosmetics that had been so carefully applied to my face that morning. “Don’t you dare talk about Espen that way!”
Suddenly August was on his feet, and he grabbed me by my shoulders, pulling me up. His hard hands made me cry out, crushing my arms. He ignored my cry. “If you had ever been my friend, if you had ever seen me, you would trust me when I say that Espen Kjeldsen,” he spat his name like poison, “is not worthy to lick the dust from your boots. He didn’t see you like
I do, didn’t see how your hair is silver in the moonlight, how you look like a wood nymph when you ride Rune, how your hands . . . are so soft . . .” His hands, loosening, trailed down my arms to take my hands.
I felt ill. Afraid to push him away and what his anger would do then. Afraid to let him touch me.
Then his face, which had been tender for a moment, turned hard again. Back to stone. Back to ice. “And you’re rejecting me, when I always saw you.” Suddenly he was crushing my hands, and I cried out again.
“You’re hurting me, August!”
“Good. You can begin to feel what I’m feeling,” he said ruthlessly, and for a moment of blinding terror his eyes met mine and I could have sworn he was going to murder me, right then and there. His dark hair was wild, falling into his hard, hard face, and his eyes seemed to be slicing into me.
“Please let me go,” I whimpered.
Surprise flitted across his face, and he released me so abruptly I stumbled, my thighs hitting my window seat, forcing me to sit with a thud.
“You . . . never loved me?” Somehow, he had become the August I’d grown up with, and my heart felt mangled in my chest. “All these years?”
“I’ve always loved you, as a brother,” I said quietly. “But you have not always loved me. You abandoned me, and I cannot forget that.”
His jaw pulsed, eyes trained on something above my head and far away. “You never saw me. Just his fancy clothes and his money. If I were rich . . .” His lip twitched in disgust. “I hope you enjoy marrying a stranger who will never love you like I do,” he said, the words oddly flat, and then he was striding across the room, his motion accelerated by magic, gone in an instant.
My breath released—I hadn’t realized I’d been holding it. I would have burst into tears if Dagmar hadn’t run into the room. “You’re late! The Council is going to have my head! Oh, and you’re all mussed!”
All my emotions had to be shoved forcefully back inside. It didn’t feel like there was room in my chest, but there certainly wasn’t room in my head to sort it through, and I did not have the luxury then of breaking down. My future was on the line, but I could only stand and stare blankly at the wall as Dagmar hurried around me, her whole squat form jiggling as she righted what August had wronged in my appearance. Didn’t she know it was my insides that were in a deplorable state? My heart that could not be seen in public?
But no. Not even Dagmar could see my heart, not then, too strained by the Council and her duties.
Duty held me upright as Dagmar finished, and as she escorted me down the hall, and before my heart could stop bleeding quite so freely, I was walking into the room where my seven suitors waited.
The room, which was beautifully appointed and large and light-filled, was outshone by the seven men standing in wait. This one wore swirling blue that made me dizzy the moment I saw it, that one was haloed in warm artificial golden light, the next was so tall and broad it could not be anything but an illusion. I blinked, feeling for a moment that I’d choke on the pompousness radiating from them.
Or on Espen, who burst into my mind like a sunrise. My golden future, gone.
Or perhaps August’s words would end me, repeating in my head. Your hair is silver in the moonlight . . .
“Go on, Helena,” Dagmar said softly, standing at my elbow as my escort. Mother was standing with the Council, already among the suitors, all cutting attractive figures, as well as a group of old men and a hypochondriac queen could—it was not only me that was on display for the suitors.
The suitors bowed, some more gracefully than others. One, a man older than my father with shrewd eyes, barely inclined his head, those shrewd eyes fixed on me with uncomfortable intensity. Though, to be fair to Shrewd Eyes, all eyes in the room were fixed on me with uncomfortable intensity.
I curtsied my most graceful curtsy. I’d practiced it a thousand times with Dagmar. Since my betrothal, I’d always practiced hoping to impress Espen.
Espen. Who should have been my future, and who was August to say he wasn’t worthy of me, and how could anyone ever in a hundred years measure up to divine Espen?
Stop it, I told myself strictly. My head pounded. Likely I could blame the creation perched on my head like a malevolent flower-strewn vulture. Doubtless very attractive, I thought dryly.
“I present to you my daughter, Princess Helena Nordskov of Vansland,” Mother said, managing to sound proud and not on the death’s doorstep.
Flemming, that horrid man, came to my side. “Allow me to acquaint you with each of these charming men, Princess Helena.” He took my arm and I swallowed the instinct to shove him away from me. I had to go through with this. It was too late to back out, no matter how unhappy I would be. I couldn’t keep thinking that. This was my fate, to wed one of these men and live the rest of my life in submission to him. Stop it, I told myself.
Flemming led me first to Shrewd Eyes—he probably had the highest title of the men. He was even older than I’d realized on first glance, the glamour on his face doing little to hide his wrinkles up close. Why did I have to talk to Shrewd Eyes first?
“You did not exaggerate her beauty, Flemming,” he said in a pinched voice. His breath hit me in a wave, garlic and putrid. My nostrils flared. I hoped he didn’t notice—that would not bode well for my time with the suitors. Shrewd Eyes stepped closer, looking down his crooked nose at me. Submit, submit, submit. He was studying my figure. My blood was boiling. I gripped Flemming’s arm, trying to swallow my disgust. Even Flemming was less repulsive than this man.
Shrewd Eyes carried on. “Healthy, young . . . the lack of magic could be overlooked . . . from excellent stock, couldn’t ask for better breeding . . .”
“Breeding,” I repeated, the word hardly making sound. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t submit. “Excellent stock.” My voice rose. I was failing again, falling short again, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t smile and ignore his words and pretend to be somewhere else and let the game play on. All my reasons for being good were mist, burning away into nothing, lost in the fire of anger at August’s stupid proposal and grief at Espen’s death and resentment at Father’s absence, how could he let this happen, and frustration at Mother’s endless weakness. All that remained was hatred for these men who were not Espen and who had come here to buy me like a cow in the market. An animal.
Shrewd Eyes’ eyebrows rose, his gaze almost meeting mine, yet he saw nothing, nothing but a placid cow he could roast and eat any way he liked. “Yes, quite good.”
Now Flemming was the one tightening his hold on me, the stupid man miraculously sensing I was on an edge, but I shook him off in one impatient movement. My heart was pounding. “Do you, sir, mistake me for a cow, or a horse, to be examined and purchased if it is satisfactory? All the money in the world would not convince me to marry a goblin’s ugly brother!”
In his indignation, he forgot to hold onto his glamour and his wrinkles were visible in all their glory. He opened his mouth, but I moved past him, looking at the rest of the suitors, their looks of shock. They all wanted a cow, not a wife, not someone who thought and felt and mourned true love. None of them knew what love was.
The next in line was dark-haired and doubtless thought himself dashing. “You hoped to buy yourself a simpering maiden who would nicely set off your suitcoats. Pity your suit coat is fit for no one more impressive than a circus master.” He flushed angrily.
Flemming tried to grab my arm, hissing, “Helena, control yourself!” in my ear. I would never be enough. I would never please him, never pass the Council’s arbitrary standards, because I could not control myself as much as they wanted me to. It seemed that exercising that much control would force me to cease existing, turn me into a shadow that resembled me but behaved like a well-groomed flower.
That thought inspired my next insult, for the vague-looking pompous man next in line. “And who are you, the gardener that got into his master’s clothes? Thought I’d make a nice addition, that you could plant me next to the
rosebush and show me off to your friends?”
“I never—” Lord Pompous began indignantly, but he had no more luck stopping me than Flemming had.
“Please forgive her, she’s quite young and head-strong and still grieving—” Flemming stayed behind to try to apologize to the wounded egos.
Four left.
“I declare I have never seen such a beard, sir! Doubtless a superb disguise when hunting for ducks, you’d blend excellently with the thrushes,” I said to a youngish man with what was, in all honesty, a fairly well-trimmed beard. “Hoped I’d be a nice prize to add to your wall of antlers, did you?
“A rooster! Thought I’d be your hen-wife and fix your coxcomb! Your feathers are far too fussy to be suited to any actual action, sir, except perhaps skirt-chasing.
“You, though, are ready for battle—your face is quite the pickaxe with that nose that you tried to magic away. Thought I was too foolish to see that, entirely blind to magic because I myself have no skill with it? You’ll win no bride that way.”
The last one’s face made me hesitate, just for a moment. His eyes were blue, as blue as Espen’s had been. For a split second, it was almost like Espen was peering at me through the face of another. But it faded—Espen was tanned, as a sun-god should be. This face was pale. “My lord, perhaps you should consider stepping into the sunlight on occasion, you are quite the corpse. And I am not at all ready to go down to my grave as your bride.”
I finished, and whirled to face the group.
Mother’s face was painful to see, angry and disappointed and helpless. The Council all wore varying degrees of the same emotions on their faces. I turned to them, despair clutching me as I realized I wouldn’t be able to live this down, would never be able to fool myself into thinking I could please them again. “I will never be enough for you! I cannot marry these men! I cannot fall in love, not now, not ever, and I hate all of you for not caring about anything but your own selfish concerns! None of you—none of you, cares who I am or what I want! Fine! I don’t care who you are or what you want either!” With the last word, the emotions that had been burning in me reached my core of magic, boiling within me like live fire.