“I know,” Erik said. “The Phalanx can’t operate in its usual formation. But I won’t retreat. They have Oliver, and Tessa, and likely Amelia as well. Drakes or no drakes, I don’t mean to abandon them.”
“Then…howwill we do it?” Magnus asked.
Erik smiled for the first time since Oliver was taken. “We’re going to take after Ragnar.”
“What?” Birger said, alarmed.
“We’re going to be sneaky.”
~*~
Tessa was awakened at first light by the bustle of slaves in her room, stoking the fire, flipping open trunks, pushing the drapes wide to let in the early spring sunshine. For a moment, before she opened her eyes, she imagined she was back in Drakewell, in her childhood bedroom. That it was her maid, Kimberly, coming to wake her for toast and tea, a day dress already laid out. In that first swimmy handful of seconds, she smiled to herself, thinking of spring flowers in the conservatory, and butterflies in the garden, a good book, and delicate iced cakes after dinner.
But then she opened her eyes, and beheld that intricate coffered ceiling of her palace room, and panic closed around her throat like a vise.
“Good morning, my lady,” a slave with a pretty accent said, and a tray rattled down onto the bedside table. “Here’s your breakfast. Your dress is ready. Once you’re up, Prince Lucius is going to take you for a walk.”
She sat up, and rubbed the crust from her eyes. The stress of last night’s dinner, the constant effort of worry, had knocked her unconscious the moment her head touched the pillow last night. But rather than well-rested, she felt as though she’d drunk an entire bottle of wine last night, shaky and queasy. “A walk?”
“Yes, my lady.” The slave was tiny, and pale, and moved with brisk efficiency, not smiling, but wearing a pleasant expression. “Here.” Now that Tessa was sitting, the tray was placed over her lap, resting on its short legs. The slave pulled off the cloche, revealing the promised toast, tea, and a dish of sliced melon. “Prince Lucius expects you in an hour at the garden gate.”
Tessa didn’t bother to ask what would happen if she dallied or refused to go. She picked up a triangle of toast and forced herself to eat through the nausea.
Exactly one hour later, she ducked through a heavy wooden door into the sunlight, breakfasted, powdered, coifed, and dressed in a simple (for Sels) day dress of ivory and gold. Her slippers had entirely too many diamonds encrusted on the toes, but no other shoes had been offered.
The slave pulled the door shut behind her without comment, and she stood a moment, blinking against the brightness of the day, getting her bearings.
The balcony in her room had a view of the gardens, but only a partial one, and this section of it was new to her. Straight ahead, a hedge loomed at least eight feet tall, some sort of evergreen shrub, boxwood maybe. To the left and right, grass pathways stretched. Toward a rose arbor to the left, a long and intricate one of iron, the new canes green and curved, not yet budded for summer. To the right, the path became gravel, and opened up, she could tell, onto a lawn mostly hidden from view by the hedges. She heard the musical splash of water, and the twitter of birdsong.
She folded her hands together and called, “Your grace? Prince Lucius?” She didn’t want to see him, but neither did she want to appear tardy becausehewas.
A quick rustle heralded Lucius’s sudden appearance on the path. He melted out of the hedge, from a ‘til-now hiddenopening, and Tessa gasped in surprise before she could catch herself.
He froze mid-step, his eyes widening, as though he was surprised, too.
Tessa forced her hand down, from where it had flown to cover her mouth, and managed a tremulous smile. “H-hello, your grace. What a lovely morning. Are you well?” She gripped her skirts and curtsied.
When she straightened, she found him staring at her, brows lifted, fingers twitching at his sides. She was reminded of a deer on a frosty morning, startled to encounter a human on the game trail, ready to flee.
Anger spiked hot and fortifying in Tessa’s belly. Here she was, held captive, told she was to marry this prince against her will, andhewas the one who looked like he wanted to run away. How dare he?
“Hello,” he said, stiffly. He bowed, and it was an awkward jerking motion.
As quickly as her anger flared, it dimmed, giving way to hopeless melancholy. He hadn’t chosen to bring her here, and force her into matrimony, just like he hadn’t had a choice in father. This was Romanus’s fault, all of it. Lucius was just as much a pawn in the emperor’s scheme as her.
She sighed, and said, “Did you want to go for a walk, your grace?”
“Er…yes. Yes. Let us…do that.” Belatedly, he snapped his heels together and offered his elbow in a stiff attempt at chivalry.
Tessa would have rather jumped through the hedge with no clothes on, but rested her hand inside the triangle of his bent arm, and fell into step beside him as he headed down the grass path toward the sound of tumbling water.
She noted the little things. The slippery silk weave of his sleeve beneath her hand, and beneath it, the thin, unschooledmuscle of his arm. The floral undernotes of his soap. His height, the way he was only half-a-head taller than her. The light treads of his soft-soled moccasins across the grass.
The way he was nothing at all like Rune, and the way that made her throat ache with unshed tears because she missed her husband terribly.
The path opened, as she’d thought it would, to a broad, hedge-lined lawn where a tall fountain of cast bronze gleamed in the sunlight. It was rendered in the shape of a nude man holding a jar overhead, and water spilled from its lip to splash down into the pool at his feet. Benches lined the hedgerows, and tall urns held topiaries trimmed in the shapes of serpents. The leaves of the ivy were just emerging for spring, and the ends of the stems were still pale and new-cut; whatever the topiaries had resembled before, the emperor had had them trimmed into his own house sigil.
With the barest pressure, elbow drifting closer into her space so that she stepped sideways to avoid further contact, Lucius steered her around the fountain and down another path, this one paved with artfully irregular fieldstones. At its edges, the first tender shoots of snowdrops peeked through the winter-brown lawn.
