“Have you slept with her?”
That made him pause, avert his eyes to the sky. For a heartbeat she thought she’d crossed the line dividing his right to do ashe pleased from her right to interrogate him; she thought he’d simply get up and leave. Abandon her in her nightgown and wrap, wild locks escaping her braid, an uncouth, pitiful savage, the laughingstock of the court.
“They like to draw blood, my mother’s ladies, don’t they?” he said slowly. “They’ll stick their claws into your flesh to see where it hurts. Don’t let them do it.”
“But have you—” She tried to repeat the question, but the words stuck in her throat.
“They’ll all tell you I have, and two or three will be telling the truth.” He frowned and it seemed to her he was genuinely digging through his memory. “Vella? Yes, I believe I have, twice. Over a year ago, after some celebration when I was too irritable to be alone, and just before I left for Syr, when she cornered me with some wild talk about kindred spirits and I did it just to shut her up. Does that answer your question?”
“I didn’t want you to tell me the details, I just—”
“Yes, yes, you did.” He rubbed his temples. She’d noticed he did that when he was upset. “I’m not my brother, I don’t have to lift every skirt that passes through this court, but I’m not a hermit either. I make mistakes, though I try not to make them with my mother’s ladies because they scare the daylights out of me.”
It sounded almost like an apology. So she gathered the courage to ask: “And will you be making more mistakes?”
“What?” It took him a second to understand. “Does it matter to you?”
She opened her mouth to answer him and found herself mute once more. It did matter to her, she realized, but she couldn’t understand why. “I don’t know the rules of this court,” she managed to utter at last.
“Rules be damned,” Amron said. “Does it matter to you?”
His unflinching gaze lay heavy on her, and it suddenly becametoo much to bear. Like that first night, she couldn’t allow him to see her vulnerable. She turned her face away from him, gathering her wits and her dignity. “This is a political union,” she said. “You are free to do whatever you please. I apologize for interrogating you.”
A long silence followed. And then, after an icy eternity, he said, “I understand.” He rose. “I’m going to bed. I’d prefer to be alone tonight.”
• • •
The next day,a maid brought her the news while she was sitting in the garden with the queen’s ladies, pretending to read a book of poetry just to avoid speaking to anyone. The sight of Vella made bile rise in her throat. She’d spent the long hours of the previous night tossing and turning, angry at herself for swallowing the bait, angry at Amron for being so stiff, angry at the whole world.
“My lady, the Elmarran delegation has arrived.” The maid’s voice cut her reverie.
“Did my father come?” she asked, jumping to her feet, but the maid shrugged. Abia was a barely controlled chaos, bursting at the seams. The guests had been pouring in throughout the whole week and the Seragians were expected to arrive the following day. Some overworked clerk probably had the list of every man, woman, and child who currently resided there, but it was too much to ask of a maid. “Never mind, I’ll go and see for myself.”
It was late afternoon, sunny and mild. The sun descending towards the White Mountains illuminated the Bay of Abia at an angle that turned the waves into liquid gold. Melia paused for a moment, breathing in the salty air, basking in the mellow light. She found it strange, this absence of harshness, a place that wasn’t hostile to its residents. Her father had always claimedthat such hospitable surroundings bred weak, spoiled people. But looking at Queen Orsiana, born and raised in Abia, as she sat on a wooden bench with her eyes closed, her face radiant in the sunlight, Melia thought that she looked neither weak nor spoiled, but peaceful and happy.
In the few precious memories Melia had of her mother, she never looked peaceful and happy. Her young face—she was not yet thirty when she’d died—was either a tight-lipped mask of worry or a frowning grimace of displeasure. No matter how hard she racked her brain, she couldn’t remember one instance of her parents smiling.
“My lady.” Melia curtsied. “The Elmarran delegation arrived. May I go and greet them?”
The queen opened her eyes. “Is Roderi with them? I’d like to see him.”
Hearing the queen call her father by his first name surprised Melia, but there was no polite way of asking why she’d done it. “I’ll check, my lady.”
Sensing her curiosity, the queen added, “Has your father ever mentioned we knew each other when we were children?” She shaded her eyes, looking up towards Melia. “Our fathers were friends, I think they had plans for us.”
Gentle melancholy dripped from Queen Orsiana’s words. Melia’s father had never mentioned the friendship or the betrothal plans, and she found it very hard to imagine this pale, delicate woman among the rough red stones of Syr. What kind of wife could she have been to Roderi of Elmar, what kind of mother to his children? She loved Amron, that much was obvious to Melia, and she wondered what it felt like to be loved by your parent.
“I don’t think he mentioned it, my lady,” she said.
“Oh well, it was thirty years ago,” the queen said. “And it came to nothing.”
Queen Orsiana’s father was murdered in a bloody coup, which left her as the sole heiress of Larion. The king had scooped her up like a shiny prize in a shrewd political move that resulted—as far as Melia could understand—in a profoundly cold marriage.
“Don’t let me detain you with my old stories.” The queen waved her away. “Go greet your countrymen.”
Melia rushed through Abia, followed by two guards and a surly maid, but instead of excitement, her mind was filled with the questions about the royal marriage. The image of the king with Lenka, the brutal, primeval desire he radiated with in contrast with his appearance at court, formal and distant, taking up all the space, all the air, all the sunlight like a massive oak tree. His presence dominated every corner of the palace—except for the queen’s chambers. An invisible wall surrounded Queen Orsiana’s world, and few men were allowed to enter it: the poets and musicians who entertained her and the little pages who served her, but no male courtiers, not even the princes. The ladies made up for this lack of men as soon as the queen retired, flocking like sparrows around Prince Amril and his pack, but the queen seemed quite happy to be left alone.
Melia wondered if she and Amron were heading in the same direction, towards a marriage which was nothing but a formal engagement that required her to stand beside him occasionally and smile. Although—the queen had produced two male heirs and a girl, which must have contributed to her current liberty. Melia had no such achievements.
