“Your Majesty.” She curtsied. “Do forgive me for disrupting your afternoon so cryptically. Miss Svana should not have troubled you.”
“Tell her it is wrong!” I yelled.
She tsked at me. “Your daughter was lateagainthis morning,” she revealed. “Shall I tell you where she was? In front of all these people? Or can I just proceed?”
“You hag!” I cried.
My father’s eyes widened, horrified. “Svana Paige! Your tongue.” He turned back toward Will. “...Let’s start with what the trouble is,” he said, curling his hand. “Come here, son.”
The man holding Willem let go of him so that he could approach my father. He did so with a bow.
“Your Majesty.” His face was streaked with two clean, wet lines that cut through the evidence of his position.
“Your name is Willem,” Father said. He glanced back at me. “That makes you the ostler’s boy, then?”
“Aye,” Will nodded.
“My daughter is very fond of you,” he said.
Willem didn’t react.
Father nodded. “Everything is alright. Tell me. What’s this commotion really about?”
Will looked past the King to me, barely blinking as he explained. “I can only offer you my sincerest apologies for my crime, Your Majesty.”
He nodded another time. “Crime? I see. You wish not to confess to it?”
“I wish not to offend Her Highness further, Your Majesty,” he said.
Father sighed. “I see.”
Willem’s father nodded once from the side.
“Tell me, anyway,” mine said. “Whatcrimedo you stand accused?”
“It’s not his crime,” I called. “It’s mine. Tell him, Willem. Tell him the truth.”
“Svana,”Elías whispered, squeezing my shoulder. “Don’t make it worse.”
“I,” Will started. He lifted his chin. “I kissed the Princess, sir.”
There was a collective gasp as I tried to yell over it.
“That’s not true! I kissedhim!Ikissedhim!” I shrugged the knight from my arm. “I did!” I told him. He didn’t reply. “It was me.”
Instead, a weird and stale silence fell over us with the King’s risen hand. After a second, he let out a loud, boisterous laugh.
“A kiss?” he asked. “Is that all?”
I exhaled.
“Is thatall?”Miss Hellveig cut back. Her head cocked to the side, and her teeth stood on each other in distress. “Is that all, Your Majesty?”
“They’re children,” he returned. “What of it?”
“Svana is a child, yes. Obviously. Willem is not,” she said.
“He’s barely older than her,” Father replied.
