“I didn’t realize we were having the king for dinner.” He scowled for the sake of tradition. The expression was short-lived, unable to survive long in the presence of Lindy’s smile. She brightened as he entered the room, perking up like a cut flower in a vase of cold water, and jumped from her chair to greet him.
“We’re not having himfordinner,” she corrected with a twinkle in her eye. She wrapped her arms around his waist and tilted her head back for a kiss, which hehappily dropped onto her lips, tasting sugar and lemon. “You need to choose different words if we’re going to salvage your reputation.”
“Will doing that result in more visitors?”
“It could.”
He pulled her chair out for her and took a seat beside her. Ms. Fumley handed him a plate piled high with shortbread. “In that case, I stand by my previous statement.”
Lindy shook her head with a smile and a long-suffering sigh. Corbin’s eyes darted back and forth between them under raised brows. “Should I be concerned for my safety?”
“You’re asking this now? I already turned you into a swan.”
“True,” the king conceded as he took a sip of his tea. “Though if I had known being considered as part of the menu was a possibility, I would have brought Elise along to plead my case.”
“If you make your pregnant queen climb a mountain, you’ll go back down as a toad.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “No son of mine is going to treat his wife that way.”
“Yes, Mother,” he answered dutifully, setting down his teacup in a polite and refined manner. The two of them kept up the act for a few more seconds, then dissolved into laughter.
Atlas met Ms. Fumley’s gaze and shook his head in baffled amusement. The largest, and most unexpected, change that had happened since Lindy’s trial and subsequent, self-imposed exile had been the shift in herrelationship with the princes. Though they trotted out the “stepmother” title for laughs, all seven of them had adopted her as a sister.
Corbin, especially, soon learned the value in having another person at hand who understood the pressures and complications of ruling a country. Though Lindy stood firm in her avowal of never wanting a throne, she still had years of training and experience to draw from, and it was rare that more than two weeks went by without him or one of his brothers making the climb up the mountain to ask her opinion on something.
He quickly accepted that he was powerless to prevent the sudden increase in traffic, and, as time went on, he had to begrudgingly admit that Ms. Fumley had been right in her predictions—once the thrilling idea of the angry giant at the top of the mountain had been debunked as a myth, he had fewer and fewer trespassers of the adolescent variety.
With the exception of Jacques, who was there nearly as often as Corbin was, and had developed a passionate interest in gardening and assisting Ms. Fumley in the kitchen. He followed her around with as much devotion as Phoebe had for Atlas, and as the young prince’s character improved the longer he spent around the matronly housekeeper, Atlas couldn’t find it in him to chase him away. In fact, he even went so far as to carve some additional hand and footholds into the cliffside to make the climb easier and less treacherous.
“Speaking of Elise, I have a letter for you.” Corbin reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a neatly sealed envelope. “She also said to tell you thatshe ‘requests your presence at the birth of our child, as her darling husband will be of no practical assistance.’”
The delighted smile that had appeared on Lindy’s face when the letter was produced dimmed as Corbin delivered Elise’s message. She took the letter and tucked it away. “I think my presence might cause more harm than good. Not to mention, if something goes wrong, they’ll probably accuse me of cursing the baby.”
The thought of his sweet Lindy being thought of as anything but the compassionate, generous soul that she was made Atlas frown. “They’re a bunch of fools if they do.”
Corbin shook his head reassuringly. “I think you’ll be surprised, Lindy. It’s been long enough now that people have had time to be reflective. Once Haldrick was demoted and reassigned, the number of rumors being spread decreased significantly. Those that were still swirling were checked by fact—other than some sharp words and scathing comebacks, no one could claim to have been actually harmed or threatened by you.” He smiled gently. “Not to mention, you have a half dozen princes who are actively campaigning on your behalf.”
Lindy lifted a brow. “Only six?”
“A half dozen princes and one king,” he amended. Corbin stretched his right arm out across the table to her. The downy white feathers that covered his skin ended at his palm, which he held up and open in invitation. “You’re family, Lindy.” His eyes flicked to Atlas. “You and your giant. We may not have done a great job of showing it at the start, but you will always be welcome.”
She accepted his hand, and Atlas caught the sheen of moisture in her eyes as she smiled tightly at Corbin.
“You know,” the young king said a moment later, releasing Lindy’s hand and taking a slow sip of tea. “I found some of Father’s journals. I knew he kept personal records when we were younger, but these were dated from around the time of your marriage.”
“Oh?” Lindy dropped her hands to her lap, and her back went taught with tension.
Atlas draped an arm over the back of Lindy’s chair, gently brushing a hand up and down her shoulder. As much as he hated the reminder that she had ever been anyone else’s, he couldn’t deny her this closure.
Corbin nodded. “I always wondered what it was that compelled Father to marry you—no offense, of course. But you were significantly younger than he was, and it wasn’t as if he were in need of an heir. In fact, we had all assumed that after his last wife died, he would remain a widower. His marriage to you was a bit of a surprise.”
Lindy nodded wordlessly.
“When he received the offer of a peace treaty from your father—with you as collateral—he was curious. He wrote that the tone of the letter was desperate and almost callous, as if King Alfred couldn’t get rid of you fast enough.”
Atlas’s arm tightened around Lindy’s shoulders, and he hoped she could feel through the contact just how much she was treasured.
“He was offering you as a bride for one of us, but before Father could agree, he wanted to meet you, especially given what had occurred with Prince Dorian,”Corbin continued. “He said that when he arrived in Nedra, he was struck at once by how poised and seemingly perfect you were—how every movement, every answer, every smile seemed to be calculated to please your father. He saw the way your eyes changed whenever your father entered the room, and he decided to bring you back with him to Cygnus, knowing that what you needed was not marriage to one of his ‘spoiled, unruly sons’ —his exact words, by the way,” he added with a rueful smile. “—but to be free of Alfred’s influence.”
“So he married her himself,” Atlas interrupted, putting the pieces together.
