“Prince Amron, you must come, now! It’s your brother!”
Chapter 20
Melia
Melia wondered ifher own wedding night had looked anything like this from the outside, to the guests who’d celebrated while anxiety raked her guts.
The crowd of giggling young women led the bride upstairs. The queen’s ladies, the Seragian escort: no one Melia usually associated with, but now their bubbling excitement pulled her into their chirping flock. The wish to disappear, to melt into the background, to crawl into her bed and forget about the awful day, disappeared as Princess Amielle caught her hand.
“You don’t want to miss this part,” she said.
“I’ve never seen it before, not from the outside.” Against her better judgment, curiosity seeped into Melia’s voice.
“It’s your duty. You’re a royal now, you must witness Amril’s wedding night, in case someone tries to claim the marriage wasn’t consummated.” Amielle winked; she wasn’t entirely serious.
“I doubt anyone would dare to claim such a thing.” Melia chuckled, but in the back of her mind, a sharp shard of memory cut through the mirth. Amron putting his clothes on in haste, leaving her alone in the cold, empty marital bed in Syr to contemplate her flaws all through that long night. She winced, but the princess wasn’t looking at her. Her bony, long-fingered hand held Melia in an iron grip, pulling her through the brightly lit corridors to the royal chambers.
On the other side of the carved wooden door flanked by the two royal guards, it seemed the feast at the great hall hadbeen a mere prelude to the real party. There were tables laden with food and drink in the antechamber. Not the greasy, heavy, show-off dishes and strong wines that were served downstairs, Melia noticed, but exquisite, dainty bites that smelled exotic and looked divine, paired with iced pomegranate juice and elderberry wine. A girl in Seragian dress played a soft, sweet tune on a lute while the women chatted and laughed.
“This looks very cozy,” Amielle said. “I remember my wedding in Myrit, Amril and Amron got me tipsy and told me so many dirty stories I couldn’t stop laughing when Erian entered the room. He thought I was laughing at him, poor soul.” The princess grabbed two glasses from the table and handed one to Melia. “Did Amron live up to your expectations on your wedding night? He can be awkward around the people he doesn’t know well.”
“He was…very accommodating.” Melia blushed.
She looked desperately for something to save her from the conversation. The queen’s ladies surrounded Melia like a flushed, rowdy mob, filling her with discomfort. She’d never learned how to work a crowd, how to charm people, chat politely. The ladies closed their ranks against her—a few acknowledged her with a brief nod, but most of them simply went on ignoring her like any other day.
She was saved by the carevna’s arrival. The emperor’s daughter glided between them, flanked by her escort. Melia found herself staring at their elaborate silks, transparent gauze, and layers of intricate gold jewelry on their chests and wrists. Once more, she felt like her idea of the Empire had been childish, ignorant. She knewnothingabout those women and their lives.
They formed a procession that followed Aratea from the anteroom to the bedchamber, quiet and filled with fragrant flowers, with a massive canopied bed with the sheets already turned down.
The queen’s ladies were eager for the disrobing ceremony, with all the teasing, pulling, and more or less accidental pinching it involved, but the carevna’s own women took her gown off so swiftly and deftly that no one had the chance to step in. Fast and silent, they decked her in a gossamer-thin white shift, which they covered with an embroidered, lace-trimmed white wrap. Aratea’s hair, brushed and braided into a simple braid that reached the small of her back, was shockingly red on the pale background.
Aratea turned to the queen’s ladies and said, “Thank you so much for your help. I have presents for all of you.” She signaled to her women. They brought beautifully carved wooden boxes and guided the ladies back to the antechamber, emptying the bedroom.
“Please stay,” Aratea said to Melia and Amielle. “I’d like to think we’re sisters now.”
It felt frightening, this open invitation. This familiarity was so strange to Melia, who’d never had a sister. Meeting her eyes in the mirror, Aratea shot her a pale smile. “I can tell I’m not the princess any of you expected.”
Melia blushed, but Amielle said, “We refrained from speculation.”
In the brief silence that followed, Melia studied her own hands, trying to ignore the other Melia locked inside her head, the one who wished nothing but death on all Seragians, the one who’d laced Amril’s drink with gods knew what. She convinced herself that Amielle and Aratea certainly had secrets of their own, and she was no worse than them. No Amrian princess, no Seragian carevna, ever harbored any love or friendship for the lords and ladies of Elmar.
“So what can you tell me about Prince Amril?” the carevna said.
What was it with the princesses and their bluntness, Meliawondered. She kept her gaze on her entwined fingers, afraid that if she looked at Aratea, she might blurt out that Amril was a conceited, spoiled, insecure bully who sought adoration but offered nothing in return.
Amielle saved her.
“You might have heard he’s difficult, and I won’t deny it. But I assure you my brother’s heart is in the right place and he knows how important you are.”
Melia admired Amielle’s skill at saying something true without saying anything important. Unwilling to add anything, she picked up a glass of cold pink liquid, fruity and fragrant, that fizzed on her tongue, leaving a faint trace of alcohol.
Aratea narrowed her eyes. “I’ve been taught that the men in your kingdom are barbaric, uncouth and uneducated in the art of communicating with women. You leave the art of seduction to chance, the lovemaking to a mere physical act.”
Melia almost choked on her drink. Making men feel good was for courtesans and the wanton ladies of the court, not for royal wives, wasn’t it? Thinking about it now, she realized all that Amron ever tried to do was make her feel good. “You were taught those things?”
“I was taught all manner of things, but I’m not sure my husband will appreciate any of them.”
Melia had spent months feeling sorry for herself, hating the life at court, unable to let go of her past. But, looking at the Seragian princess before her, she felt a pang of shame. Aratea was more foreign than anyone here, in a country where she had no one and everything was different, and where many still considered her an enemy. And she didn’t marry the patient, considerate prince; she married the other one.
