Chapter 11
Rikard
Frozen in daysleep, Rikard’s anger built as he watched Hannalinde move her things into the nesting chamber he’d designated for her.
It was adjacent to his own, designed for fledglings who’d outgrown their parents’ nest. The former Nadir, who’d been childless, used it for a study, but Cléa had hastened to make it ready for her new daughter-in-law, polishing the woodwork and replacing the furs, even if she disapproved of them sleeping separately.
“For my comfort,” Hanna had soothed her, rubbing her belly, which had been more than enough to convince Cléa that it was a good idea. Everything was about the hatchling as far as his mother was concerned.
However, it had all been a show, because Hanna was proving completely unconcerned about her own comfort.
He’d arranged for the keepers to carry her possessions up the Tower and install them, but despite this courtesy, she insisted on doing much of it herself, even carrying some up the ladder on her own back.
A basket of folded linens. A sewing kit in a leather roll. A jewelry box. Another basket, this one filled with bone spools of silk embroidery threads.
Up and down, seven ladders each way. She was four months pregnant and had slept for fewer than four hours in her new nest by his count, and she made every trip without asking for help, pausing only long enough to put away her possessions and catch her breath before climbing back down for more.
There was nothing he could do to stop her while the sun shone.
He shook off the dust of daysleep just in time to see her complete her sixth trip. Her final trip, as he would not allow any more. Flushed and breathing hard, her pale hair plastered to her temples with sweat, she carried a wooden box full of dirt and trailing vines on her back.
He rushed to help her unbuckle the leather straps holding it in place.
“Careful!” she exclaimed, as he lowered the box to the floor, spilling a bit of the soil from it.
He frowned at its unwieldy weight. Even he would have some trouble hauling it up seven stories. “You should scold yourself, then. A keeper could carry this for you. Why did you refuse their help?”
She shook her head as she pressed both hands to the small of her back, and stretched, wincing. “They’re too careless. I couldn’t trust them with something so precious to me.”
He eyed the plants in the shabby wooden box. They weren’t much to look at, just a tangle of green with a blossom or two. “I would have carried it for you, then.”
She fixed him with a level look but didn’t speak. Ah, so she didn’t trust him, either.
He sighed. “Will you at least let me carry it to the balcony for you?”
“The window in my room, please,” she directed.
He obliged, carrying it to the broad stone sill outside the arched window of her nesting chamber.
The view of the greenery added a bit of life to the otherwise somber room, he had to admit.
Most of the décor, with its dark wood furniture and ancient tapestries, still reflected the taste of its elderly former owner.
“Were you comfortable last night? Warm enough?” He gestured awkwardly to a depression in the center of the room that housed the nest.
She nodded. “Very. Of course, I was very tired, and that helped.”
“It was a long day.” He grinned to himself, thinking of all the rumors that must be swirling because of it. He enjoyed the knowledge that they had unsettled the higher tiers. “Is there anything you need for the room?”
She turned, regarding the space. With her plain skirts tucked into her belt and her hair in plaits, she looked like a common milkmaid. He found the effect rather charming. Perhaps he’d ask Pudding to wear something like it next time she visited his office.
At that moment, Cléa descended, having overheard the question from outside the open door. “She needs new draperies,” she declared. “The old ones were so thick with dust, I had to throw them out.”
“Done,” Rikard said, adding to Hanna, “You will choose the fabrics, of course. Anything else?”
“I’d like strong locks,” his mate said mildly. “On the window and the door.”
Cléa blinked. Then her wide mouth compressed into a thin, disapproving line. “You are safe here, Hannalinde. Rikard will defend you from any harm, and if he is attending to his duties as Nadir, Roul and I will be here.”
“Thank you,” Hanna murmured, dipping in a respectful curtsy. “I would still like them, if you don’t mind.” Her soft tone and polite wording did not disguise the iron underneath.
Rikard nodded before his mother could pry into her reasons. “Of course. I’ll have the keepers call for a locksmith. And the rest of the room? Is it to your liking?”
“I like it very much. I think I’ll be quite at home here.”
He did not know his mate well, but he had seen her pretend. She pretended to be brave when she was not. She pretended to be happy when she was not. She pretended she was rested when she was not. But she did not pretend to like the eyrie. She liked it honestly, and that caught him off guard.
He’d believed she’d simply endure it. Living with gargoyles on the seventh tier was part of the price of their arrangement, a hardship to be borne in exchange for safety and a name.
Instead, she stood at the narrow, arched window and looked out over the city with an expression he hadn’t seen on her face before.
She looked younger, closer to the person she might have been a decade ago, when she still had a good name and fewer cares.
“You can see the palace quarter from here,” she said.
He came to stand behind her, dipping down to share her view.
The rooftops of Solvantis spread below them in the deepening dusk, the tael-drenched walls circling them in the distance.
The palace quarter was a neighborhood of pale stone buildings surrounding the human king’s palace, their facades gleaming between well-lit streets.
“Can you see it?” She pointed into the distance. “The one with the dead roses climbing over it. That was my father’s house.”
There it was, a townhouse strangled in blackened vines, its windows blinded by shutters. It was obviously uninhabited still. It seemed criminal, somehow, that it sat empty while Hanna was forced to occupy meagre rented rooms. “Do you miss it?”
“Not anymore.” She drew back from the glass and did not speak of it again.
In fact, she settled into the eyrie with a speed and competence that surprised everyone.
Within a week, Hannalinde had transformed Bardoux’s old study into something new.
A copper mirror hung on the wall, reflecting the candlelight and brightening the room.
Her embroidery supplies occupied the shelves that had once held scrolls, her silks organized into a rainbow of color.
New blooms had appeared in her windowbox, and occasionally Rikard caught a hint of their fragrance when he passed by her door.
However, they rarely crossed paths or exchanged words. They’d designed their arrangement that way, and it worked. She lived in the daylight hours: rising at dawn, tending her flowers, taking her meals, conducting her hobbies and household tasks, and retiring to her locked room at night.
He lived in the dark: waking when the stone released him at sundown, descending to his office, suffering through his queue of complainants, drinking with his friends, and climbing back to the seventh tier in the small hours before dawn.
Nothing significant about his life had changed, just as he had planned.
However, his parents adapted to his new mate in their separate ways. Cléa adopted her as a project, a protégé, and, increasingly, a confidante. She visited Hannalinde’s room every evening, where the two of them would drink tea and discuss whatever topic the moths were reporting.
Roul liked Hannalinde because she laughed at his jokes, tolerated his drinking, and didn’t try to improve him, three qualities his mate and son had never reliably demonstrated.
He began calling her “the girl” with gruff affection and filling her plate at meals with all the choicest bits of meat from the platter, using the excuse that it was for the hatchling.
Bolstered by his parents’ support, Hanna took to the role of lady of the house with a grace that made Rikard feel like a squatter in his own eyrie.
She managed Cléa’s social ambitions with diplomatic finesse, patiently redirecting the more outrageous schemes.
She coaxed Roul to give her language lessons, which distracted him from drinking until a more appropriate hour.
She dealt with the keepers who serviced the seventh tier to ensure the eyrie was always well cared for, navigating the human servants’ confusion and occasional resentment with the ease of someone who had spent her girlhood in a noble household.
She was, in short, better at being the Nadir’s wife than he was at being the Nadir.
At first, that made him sulk in his office, often roosting there during daysleep rather than returning home, using the excuse that mounting the ladders was too onerous.
But rather than garnering him the fussing attentions of his mother, it seemed that no one noticed or cared that he was absent at meals and his roost was empty.
They had Hanna, who was by all accounts more pleasant company.
So much the better. He could carouse with his friends and drink himself silly. He didn’t want to be fussed over, anyway. But soon, curiosity and jealousy got the better of him. What was so wonderful about her, anyway? Was it merely the magnetism of the child inside her?
So the next night, driven by a mead-induced headache that additional cups of mead had worsened rather than cured, he returned to the eyrie before dawn and found her at the wide table in the main chamber, eating her breakfast of bread and cheese by lamplight.
She startled when he came through the door, her hand going to her throat in the involuntary reflex he tried not to take personally. “Forgive me,” she said, already rising. “I’ll eat in my room.”