It might have been nonsense, a power move, but Abia had been so cruel to her since the day she arrived. Amron’s cold, demanding mother; his disinterested father; his dangerous, intrusive brother. The courtiers, with their jokes about the Elmarrans’ love for their sheep. The ladies, with their long stares and raised eyebrows. And even Amron, who’d seemed so large against the empty horizon of Elmar, suddenly shrank here to a cautious, taciturn shadow. He was kind to her—he’d always been kind, infallibly—but she feared the intimacy between them was too fragile to carry them through the court straits.
Wrapped in such dark thoughts, Melia startled when a door opened a few paces down the corridor from her. She barely managed to hide behind a column when a tall shadow slipped out. “Good night,” a deep voice whispered.
A woman appeared in the yellow light pouring out from the room. She was practically nude, only a scrap of silk wrapped around her body, her dark hair tousled, her face flushed. Melia knew that face: It wasn’t Vella, but another lady-in-waiting, a northern girl, spoiled and mellow, whose name escaped her memory. She reached for the man. “Wait.”
Melia’s heart stopped as the man turned; she expected to see Amron’s face, just as flushed with lovemaking. The woman grabbed the man, pushing her fingers into his thick blond locks. He bowed down, his lips meeting hers, his hands pulling her close. Melia almost cried out, but then her brain finally registered what her eyes were showing her: The tall, golden-haired man kissing the lady-in-waiting in the doorway wasn’t Amron. It was the king.
“Come back,” the woman whispered, and giggled when he tore off the silk scarf and lifted her as if she weighed nothing.
“Your wish is my command, my lady.” He carried her back into the room and shut the door behind him.
Melia waited to see if he would return, pressing her cold hands to her burning cheeks. When the soft sighs and moans slipped into the dark corridor, she turned on her heel and ran away. The king was plowing one of the queen’s ladies, and she had almost walked into them like the most incompetent, most idiotic person in Abia.
They didn’t see you, she consoled herself while she ran.They couldn’t have, they were too busy.
Looking for fresh air, for an open sky, she ran into the garden. Only then did she allow herself to breathe loudly, moaning at her stupidity, clenching her fists in impotent frustration and embarrassment.
“Melia!” someone called.
And there he was, her missing husband, walking towards her, gravel crunching beneath his feet.
“What happened?”
She let him wrap his arms around her and lead her to a bench. She laid her head on his chest, wishing she could crawl under his arm and hide in the warm darkness. “Where were you?” she asked. “I woke up and you weren’t there.”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk. Did you go looking for me? Did someone scare you?”
“I went looking for you,” she said. And then, feeling she would explode if she didn’t share it with someone, she added, “I saw your father.”
“My father? Where?”
“He slipped into a room with one of your mother’s ladies, adark-haired girl from North Leven, I can’t remember her name.”
“You mean Lenka?” He sneered. “That’s hardly a secret. It’s been going on for half a year or so.”
The bluntness with which he said it surprised her, though she found it hard to pinpoint why. The image of the king kissing the girl was still etched on the insides of her eyelids. “How does your mother deal with it?”
The temperature dropped between them as his eyes studied her face in the moonlight. “I don’t think that’s a subject I want to discuss.”
“But your father, why does he—”
“My father, as you have probably learned by now, takes whatever he wants, and what he wants is everything.”
Melia nodded, silenced by the bitterness in his voice. She’d learned to stay as far away from the king as possible. From Amril, too, though the ladies talked about him all the time.
She bit her lip. It wasn’t her intention to get Amron upset, quite the opposite. But the quiet garden wrapped in silver and black seemed to be the only place where truth could be spoken.
“And who is Vella?” she asked.
“Vella?” He was genuinely baffled. “One of my mother’s ladies. I don’t think she has anything to do with my father, though.”
“But she has something to do with you, doesn’t she?”
“What?” He moved away to the edge of the bench.
In some other situation, it would have amused her to see him lose his poise. But she was agitated and rash and the words spilled out of her mouth. “Vella took me to a quiet corner a few days ago and told me you were obsessed with her.”
“That’s ridiculous.” He pulled at the collar of his shirt, creasing the fine fabric.
