Matt had given her the shove she needed to leap out of the nest, and now she would fly without him.
She would be the best ruler she could be. She would do what she could to make the kingdom whole again. And maybe, one day, the broken pieces inside her would start to heal. One day she would forget how much she’d loved a man who didn’t care for her at all.
She settled back quietly into her cushions, suddenly exhausted, as Nim and Alanna bickered good-naturedly over the best way to introduce more women into the Blues. It was strangely soothing to sit quietly, listening to them chatting, without anyone expecting her to say or do anything. She didn’t have to hide or pretend; they accepted her as she was.
Keely was also quiet, and looked just about ready to drop too, her pretty green eyes closing in her wan face. Whatever she might say, her fight with Tor was hurting her as much as it was hurting him.
Eventually, the cups were empty, the moon long past the window, and the fire burning low. Nim and Alanna gathered Keely up, and they all said their goodnights and made plans to meet early the next morning as Tristan and Val made way for Jos and Garet outside her door.
Lucilla cleaned her teeth and then sank gratefully into her soft mattress. She’d chosen a wing of empty rooms on the far side of the palace and the suites had been aired and cleaned and quickly filled with cushions and bedding. None of them had wanted to use Alanna or Ballanor’s old rooms, and this way Nim, Alanna and Keely could all stay on the same corridor with her.
Until the Blues had been thoroughly vetted and retrained, only the Hawks would be guarding this wing, and both Tristan and Val would be sleeping on this corridor anyway. Tristan had doubled the external guard after hearing Dornar had escaped, mixing Nephilim into all the patrols. She was safe. Yet somehow, she couldn’t make herself feel it.
She stretched her arm out across the empty space next to her in the bed, remembering the cramped, dirty shelters that she’d slept in with Matt and how much happier she’d been then, compared to lying all alone on the clean, soft sheets of her lonely new bed.
She didn’t want to remember the last words he’d spoken to her. The closed-down look on his face.
He was gone forever, so why not choose her favorite memory? She brought to mind his burgundy scales, the way his arm had lain, so big and hard, over her pale skin as they curled together in their forest shelters, and drifted off to sleep remembering how he’d told her she was beautiful, brave, and smart. How he’d made her believe that it was true.
She came awake an hour or two later, with the fire burnt low and her room dark. She yawned, trying to orient herself. Trying to understand the deep, muffled voices arguing outside her door.
“No. Absolutely not.” Was that Garet’s voice? He was always so reserved and quiet that to hear him sounding so furious made her sit up in her bed and listen.
“Please, Garet, I have to speak to her. I….” Whatever else he said was too low to hear. But she knew that voice. She would know it anywhere. Even if she’d never expected to hear it again.
A door opened and then slammed shut, ending the murmured rumble of discussion.
“What the fuck is this?” Tristan’s irritable growl was unmistakable.
She slipped out of the bed and crept over to the door, pressing her ear against the wood to hear better.
“I need to speak to Lucy… to Queen Lucilla. Please.”
“Do you know what fucking time it is? How did you even get in here?”
“I let him in.” That was almost certainly Tor.
“Come on, Tristan, I need—”
“Need. Want. I’m fucking sick of this. What you need, Mathos, is to leave.”
Mathos’s voice rose. “Oh, like how we made you leave after you hurt Nim—”
“Don’t you dare compare your behavior with mine—”
There was a grunt and a scuffle and then Nim’s clear voice. “What the hell is wrong with you people?”
There was a heavy silence and then a rush of whisper-shouting, which Nim spoke over. “The only person who can decide if she wants to see him is Lucilla. And since you’re guaranteed to have woken her, you might as well knock on the bloody door.”
Lucilla wanted to climb back in her bed and pull the cover over her head and go back to pretending that they had never left the woods. But she was the queen now, hiding was no longer an option.
She swung the door open to step into the corridor, blinking in the lamplight after the darkness of her room. Gods, everyone was there. Val, Alanna, the Hawks.
They all turned to look at her and she was suddenly acutely aware of the delicacy of her shift clinging to her body, her wild hair falling loose down her back.
“Take this, Your Majesty, before you get cold.” Jos passed her the dark blue cape he had been wearing over his formal tunic, and she took it gratefully.
She breathed in and out again slowly, hoping that her voice would be steady when she spoke. Then she lifted her eyes and looked directly at him. “What do you want, Sergeant Mathos?”
