We stepped into the hallway, and the guards at the door immediately flanked us. We pretended not to notice as we walked toward the dining hall, arms linked.
A strange feeling of jealousy twisted my insides. Oliver’s future lay ahead of him as a blank map. He could plot the course and choose his path whichever way he wished. Mine was a map drawn for me. A map I had willingly picked up and demanded to be mine.
I shouldn’t have envious feelings about Oliver’s freedom or future choices. I should be content to help him choose and glad he had stayed for as long as he had.
But friends like him were so rare. Since being in the palace, I had made no other significant relationship. Unless you counted Clesta. But even she seemed to hardly tolerate me.
If Oliver left to return to Heprin, I would be alone. Truly alone. I would have gotten everything I wanted and still have nothing.
I would do my best not to influence Oliver’s decision, but I knew even I couldn’t hold myself to that perfectly. Of course, I wanted Oliver to stay. Of course, I wasn’t above scheming, begging, or writing royal decrees to make him stay. But hopefully, he would simply choose the right thing and let that be that.
“You meet your sister tonight,” he said evenly, breaking into my thoughts.
I had quite forgotten Katrinka would be at dinner. Or rather, I had put her arrival out of my mind completely. I was equally nervous and excited with a heavy dose of fear mixed in.
Would she blame me for running away?
Would she remember me at all?
“I do,” I confirmed, hoping Oliver didn’t notice the way I stiffened next to him or held his arm too tightly against mine.
Which of course he did, immediately. “You’re naturally nervous.”
“I am.”
I felt his sidelong glance on my profile. “Do you remember the time the Archbishop of Gnalghli spent a week at the Temple, and you were so anxious to make a good impression you threw yourself at his feet too forcefully? He tripped over you, then fell down the Temple stairs, broke his arm, and was in bed with a headache for a week?”
I cleared my throat. “I do.”
He pressed his lips together to hold back his laughter. But just as we reached the dining hall doors, he added, “Don’t do that.”
ChapterFour
Oliver and I were not the first to arrive like my uncle had wished for us to be. But we also weren’t the last to arrive. And while Tyrn might not have seen the value in that, I was proud of us.
We were announced with all the pomp and circumstance I had come to expect in palace life. All my titles and future titles. And Monk Oliver of Heprin. He somehow had vastly fewer titles than I did and still managed to be delighted every time the herald mentioned his name.
Afterward, we were ushered to our seats, far away from each other. My uncle did not believe that people who knew each other should be allowed to sit by each other. It made for dull conversation. So Oliver was squeezed between a duchess from Tenovia and a portly minister of something-something from Barstus. He looked as though he had to hold his breath to fit between the two of them, and I worried his dessert eating would be cut short due to lack of room.
Although I knew him well enough to know he was resilient. Where there was a will to eat as many desserts as humanly possible before one met the great Light, there was a way.
Meanwhile, my uncle had saved a seat for me near the head of the table. Far enough from him so that he wouldn’t be forced to converse with me but close enough that I was still within earshot.
The dining hall had somehow expanded over the past few weeks of preparation. Walls had been removed to make a space larger than a ballroom. Tables had been pushed together to make a great rectangle. Elegant, high-backed chairs glittering in gold and velvet dotted the outside border all the way around. Servants stood against every wall, sharp and at the ready with carafes of wine. And the door to the kitchens was constantly being opened and shut as more servants carried in trays of spring fruits, fresh cheeses, and hunks of freshly roasted meat.
Tyrn nodded as a footman led me to my place. My skirts were so wide and so full that I worried I wouldn’t need a chair at all to sit down. I could perhaps just lean back and let my skirts do the work. But the footman anticipated my dilemma and helped me sit without incident.
I turned around to offer him a genuine smile and managed to surprise him. Maybe it was that most monarchs don’t make a point to meet the eyes of servants, or maybe he wasn’t expecting my smile, but his eyes bugged, and he coughed in surprise. “Your Majesty,” he murmured before scurrying away.
“Do you make it a point to terrify all your servants?” a cool voice to my right asked.
I turned back to my place setting, hating that I already recognized the deep timbre of the voice next to me. The seat to my left was still open. But to my right sat the second son of Vorestra himself, Caspian Bayani.
“Only once or twice a day,” I responded breezily. “Honestly, I much prefer terrifying royals over servants. Their screams have a more satisfying tenor.”
“She has bite,” Caspian murmured, sounding surprised. “I suppose you learned this from your monks as well?”
Yes, I thought. And how to slice a man in two. But I kept those thoughts to myself. “Is your brother here? Or does Vorestra think so little of my uncle, they only sent their second son?”
