I thanked her graciously, but it wasn’t that simple. I couldn’t stay in Landsome. Sorrel would never let me. Or if she did, would I really want to give up my parents and Fern? Live in a foreign world the rest of my life? Even for a man I was falling in love with? Wouldn’t I wish for home someday? I’d spent only a week in Landsome and already it had unraveled who I thought I was.
Besides, this world was dangerous. Draw could die, or I could get sick. There was no assurance of a happily-ever-after.
Oblivious to my thoughts, or perhaps to sweeten the deal, Amelia said, “If you married Lord Draw, you’ll be cousins-in-law to our fair queen.”
“Fair queen,” Queen Elthra repeated, “that’s more like it.”
I mentally blessed Amelia for the wide-open segue.
“You plan to marry Sir Ironclaw?” I asked.
“Of course.” The queen was surprised. “It should be obvious. I don’t let just any knight stare at my chest.” She sat back and took a long drink. Her milky skin nearly glowed in the firelight. When she was done, she said casually, “I heard about your afternoon confrontation. What was that about? Ironclaw’s been taking care of errands and I haven’t seen him since.”
Queen Elthra spoke as if it was little interest to her, but I saw Amelia’s eyes fix on me. So Ironclaw didn’t tell her. How was I supposed to?
“He thinks I’m distracting Lord Draw from preparing for war.” I didn’t feel I was entirely lying. “Lord Draw and I skipped our morning drills to get an early start traveling to the ruins.”
“Well-done, Dottie, I didn’t know it was possible to divert Lord Draw from his papers.” Amelia smiled girlishly at me, her muss of black hair making her face pale in the dim tent.
Was Amelia covering for me?
I had to turn this back to the queen and Ironclaw, that was the topic of conversation, not me.
My mind raced through the monologue the queen gave at the end of book five. She had had plenty to say about why she and Ironclaw couldn’t stay together. I would think if those issues were true then, they were true now. I would start there. Perhaps a new outlook would bring them closer together and put her in a position to keep Ironclaw at bay.
“You don’t care that Ironclaw’s common-born?”
She looked up from her drink, brow raised. “I would think I’m royal enough for the both of us.”
“And you don’t mind that he—”
“What?”
How did I say “slept with other women” without saying it? I settled on, “Is so independent?”
Queen Elthra frowned, her shapely lips as perfect as ever. She swirled the liquid in her cup. “True, that’s something we’re working on.” She leaned forward, her blue eyes intense. “Do you have a prophecy, Lady Dottie? Is that what you’re so clumsily working up to?”
I took a deep breath. “The Witch of Mayfair hinted that the future of your union lay in your hands...and that perhaps all was not well between the two of you.”
Queen Elthra didn’t seem surprised by the first part—she was the queen—but fell to contemplation at my suggestion that things were fractured between them.
“It is harder than I thought. If my mother was alive, she could guide me.” Elthra propped her chin on her elbow and stared into her cup as if it held an answer. “Ironclaw can be difficult to control, but it’s true. I do love him.”
The fervor in her voice surprised me. Never once did I think of their engagement as a love match.
“What do you like about him?”
“Those arms,” Amelia supplied.
“Obviously,” Queen Elthra said.
“Sir Ironclaw is very handsome.” No one could disagree. “What do you like about his personality though?”
Amelia was staring at me with wide eyes, as if to indicate I was being needlessly idiotic.
The queen smiled though. “I know what it looks like: the queen helped herself to a good-looking warrior, one to whom her army is utterly loyal, and a marriage would secure that civil devotion, but she’s going to regret it all in five years, isn’t that right?”
Don’t agree with that.
