“What?” I turn to Elis, blinking. Those tingling senses, which had seemed more real than anything else, fade away at the sight of his earnest face.
“I don’t mean to cast a pall on our time together, Princess,” he says, and offers me another winning smile, so bright one could almost miss the forced edge along his jaw. “Shall I pluck a nosegay for your pleasure? I might break my fingers on these stems, but it would be a worthy sacrifice for the chance of offering you delight.”
“I doubt these flowers would stimulate much gaiety for my nose,” I reply with a doubtful lift of my brow.
“Too true,” says he, and bends to inhale deeply of a ruby-red rose. “Distinctly lacking in perfume, I’ll grant you. But also,” he adds with a wink, “lacking in summer beetles and mold-spot.”
Personally, I think even a moldy, beetle-munched rose a superior beauty to these lifeless copies. But I keep this opinion to myself. Elis straightens, leading me on down the little path. The gardens are not broad, but the trail is winding, and the flowers densely packed. There’s plenty to see, plenty to distract me from that ongoing niggling in the back of my brain that makes me want to turn and shoot sharp glances over my shoulder every three paces.
“My mother kept quite fine gardens once upon a time,” Elissays after a musing silence. “I never really appreciated them. Not until it was too late.”
“Too late?” I echo.
“Yes. Home for me is Cyran, you know.”
I frown, hastily searching my memory of all the lectures on modern history which Master Gormon has sought to pound into my skull. Cyran is, if I recall, an important trade city in Albhia, located a few miles from the coast, up the river Cy. It was set upon by dracori and occupied only last year, the first major invasion of Mhoryga’s forces on the Belanor Continent in a decade. Those citizens who were not slaughtered or transformed into dracori slaves live subjugated beneath a dark cloud of hellfire fumes.
“I’m so sorry, Lord Elis,” I say, stopping and turning to him. Though it’s only my imagination, it seems as though the prism light dims, like a cloud has rolled over the sun. “I…I didn’t know.”
His face looks suddenly older to me. He is so young, so full of life and vim and energy, but in that moment, I see the man into which harsh circumstance is shaping him. A man of action, ready to make hard decisions and take great risks. A man willing to look in the face of destiny and not flinch.
“All of us,” he says, “every one of the champions, has good reason to be here, Princess Roselle. I possibly more than most. It is Albhia which has been the most directly affected by Mhoryga’s flame. My sister was…” He stops, dropping his eyes for a moment, then looks at me again, unblinking despite the sheen of tears gleaming there. “My sister was killed during the assault. Enya is her name—washer name. My mother died of a broken heart soon thereafter. My uncle, the king, is an old man, no longer fit to rule. My cousin is doing everything he can to keep the kingdom together, battling dracori on one hand and insurrection on the other, but…it is a terrible effort.”
I don’t know what to say. There doesn’t seem to be anything beyond further expressions of sorrow, which feel so hollow. Is he looking for me to comfort him? To promise that I will put an end to the suffering of his people?
I turn away, my heart a stone in my breast. My knees feel suddenly weak, and I am relieved to spy a little bench placed before a sparkling pool. Gemstone water lilies crafted of opals and topaz float in carefully arranged clusters. It’s all so serene, so picturesque. How easy it would be to forget the horrors taking place in far parts of the world, to people I have never met. And yet, somehow, I cannot escape them. Cannot escape the sense that I am responsible for them. The unfairness of it is enough to make me want to scream. But I don’t. I sit and draw deep breaths.
There it goes again—that strange, prickling sense of watching eyes. I look around covertly, counting off five different members of my personal guard and three more likely places where others lurk. But this feeling doesn’t stem from any of them.
My jaw hardens.
“So tell me,” Elis says, sitting on the other side of the bench and resting his hands on his knees, “do you plan to go through with it?”
I drag my attention back to him with an effort. “Go through with what?”
“With marrying one of us, of course.”
I blink. “Oh! Well, I…that is to say…”
Elis laughs, that same bright chuckle which belies the terrible story he just related to me. “Come now, Princess!” he says. “You can’t think I’ve misinterpreted things so entirely. It doesn’t take keen powers of insight to see you have no wish to be here.”
I draw a long breath. I don’t want to lie to him; that doesn’t mean I can be wholly truthful either. “It is all a bit…much,” Iadmit. Surreptitiously, I rub the burns on the inside of my left palm. “I didn’t even know I was supposed to be this…this Dragon Princess. I’m still not convinced it’s true.”
Elis reaches out and takes hold of my right hand, drawing it toward him. “I know it’s a lot,” he says. “I myself was uncertain about coming here at all. If my cousin had not begged me to think of the needs of Albhia first, I probably would have refused outright. But,” he adds with a flashing look that brings a sudden flush to my cheeks, “now that I’m here, the prospect has taken on a new and unexpectedly intriguing hue.”
It’s a line. I know it is. Possibly practiced in front of a mirror earlier this very day. But he delivers it so well, with that earnest look on his face and that slight huskiness in his voice! I’d rather like to fall for it, head over heels. It takes all the determination I can muster to hold on to my reserve.
“I am glad you came,” I say carefully, the most I will allow myself.
“Really?” He leans in a little closer, still holding my hand. “And what would you say if I told you I’m glad as well? If I confessed I was glad the minute I set eyes on you from across the banquet hall?”
“I would say you’re too smooth for your own good.”
He laughs again, shaking his head of tousled curls. “But you are very pretty, Princess Roselle. You are aware of that fact, are you not?”
“And what do you think being pretty has to do with conquering demon queens and saving the world?”
“Very little.” He shrugs. “But it certainly makes the duty of your champions less onerous.”
