Chapter Twenty
Twenty
Hal is eager to see the world. He has a fiery, adventurous heart.
A Sagittarius, like me and Richard. In many ways, he reminds me so much of his father.
But Richard had a younger brother—dead now of the sweat, of course, but a security when the two boys were growing up.
Hal must accept there is no such security when you are the only heir.
He must give up all that does not serve his father’s aims.
—PROSPERO THE ALL-KNOWING, DIARIES, UNDATED
Four Years Ago
I waited for Hal in the meadow.
I’d counted the days until his return, sleeping through long afternoons so time would move faster.
The ground was damp, and a layer of mist slid over me until I was lost beneath it.
Hal’s mind was close. Moving closer. He broke through the trees and slowly spun around until I raised my head above the mist. The war had roughened him—his stubble was longer, and so was his hair. There was a puckered scar on his chin.
As he strode toward me, the mist parted, then was sewn shut behind him. “Hello, Mouse,” he said.
We had sent so many letters. I was nervous, suddenly, whether we would know what to say without paper.
But as he flopped down onto the grass, head lolling onto his shoulder as he grinned, I remembered he was my friend above all else.
I should not be afraid of someone who smiled so readily, even if such people had always made me suspicious.
“Back so soon?” I teased.
He flicked hair from his eyes and blinked up at the canopy. “Unfortunately. And … fortunately.”
“What was it like?”
He offered me his memory. I was brought to a sweep of tents, mud torn up by hooves, the howls of dying men, wounded men, men holding their own bodies together.
Hal gritting his teeth as he slept in layers of furs, Hal watching, as he had predicted, from the crest of a hill as the armies clashed below on the beach, watching in cold horror as bodies were dragged into carts and thrown into ditches.
“I saw one battle. I didn’t write you—I didn’t want you to worry.
But I stole someone’s armor and rode in with the soldiers.
I knew more about combat than all of these men, and—”
His eyes began to well up and I clutched his hand. Mine, so small in his. “I can take the memories away.”
He shook his head. “No, no,” he said roughly.
“I’ll keep them, only to remember that I was a fool.
You were right. I wanted to fight because I thought it would make me feel important.
It did the opposite. Anyway, King Philippe slipped through our fingers, disappeared somewhere to the northeast. Father is hoping to convince Carmin and Bastian to support us there near their shared border. ”
He glanced down at our entwined hands. I quickly returned mine to a patch of grass and began to pull up clumps. The sun was filtering through the mist now, streaking across our chests. “You know, I missed you,” he said. “I was thinking about that treatise you’re writing on transformation magic.”
I threw grass at his face. “I’ve abandoned it entirely.”
His brow furrowed as he brushed the grass from his doublet. “Whatever for?”
“Prospero said he may be able to include portions of it in his own book instead.”
“Under his name?”
“Yes,” I mumbled. “I assume I will be credited. And I would rather that than nothing at all. So that perhaps in a thousand years, when another girl is born under the Moon, she’ll have some understanding of her potential. I’m still guessing.”
Hal scoffed and rolled over, studying my face. “I don’t have to guess. I thought that as soon as I returned, you’d understand. I thought it was like you said. When we were close enough, you’d be able to sense it.”
I didn’t see, not until he reached over and brushed his thumb across my cheek.
What was magic for, if not this? He didn’t need words to tell me what he felt.
His calloused hand warming my skin, his steady gaze leaning ever closer, I began to cry. With love. With fear. I wanted to save him—I wanted him to marry the Bastian princess to secure his father’s alliance. I wanted him to have gray-eyed sons. I wanted him to stay far away from me.
But he was moving closer. His mouth was already parted. I closed my eyes and let my doom come for me.
When our lips touched, we both shuddered.
One of Hal’s hands wound into my loose hair, the other still resting softly against my cheek.
We pulled back and smiled at each other, then leaned in once more.
He was more intent, boyishly eager this time.
He bit down gently on my bottom lip and tugged.
I sighed at how good it felt, and nearly asked him if he would mind doing it again.
“Do you know—” he said, kissing his way across my jaw, “what I’m feeling now?”
Yes. I did. He was deliriously, miraculously happy.
His stubble rubbed my cheeks and lips raw. I was flipped onto my back. He stared down at me, shook his head, then kissed me again and again. As our tongues met, as the kisses deepened, his hand slid up my thigh and stalled.
I dragged it higher.
We were both panting, flushed, in slight disbelief. “I should stop,” he said. “Now.”
I wiggled beneath him, and his laugh became a groan. I felt something in him wrench and twist.
He rolled off me, brushing twigs from his doublet, and lunged for a branch he’d noticed on the ground. As I touched my lips, he threw it as far as he could, shouting at nothing. No one answered, not even the birds. We were alone here. There was no court to judge us.
“What are you doing?” I called. “Come back.”
He knelt before me, graver than I’d ever seen him. “Meet me tonight.”
I traced his lips until he smiled and bit down on my finger. “When?”
“Whenever you can. Whenever Prospero is to bed. In my father’s private chapel.”
I shook my head no as the understanding dawned.
“Why not?” Hal swore under his breath. “Why can’t I decide this for myself?”
“Whatever you may have decided, my answer is still no.” I was firm this time, pulling my finger from his mouth.
“They won’t allow this. And if we did it under their noses, and they had no choice but to agree to it, in twenty years, when you’re king and have no heir, and they all hate me and whisper as I pass, you’ll regret it.
And I’ll have to endure that hatred. They’ll say I tricked you.
They’ll say I bewitched you, that I sunk my teeth in your mind. ”
“My parents had a love match.” He had said the very same to Prospero.
He was defiant in his opinion that people were fundamentally good. I knew better. “I won’t subject you to me.”
He scoffed.
“We can meet in corners. Hidden places. You marry the Bastian princess, as was agreed. You have your sons.”
“You think you deserve such a life? Has someone made you feel you deserve that?”
I turned away from him. I was angry, suddenly, at what this had turned into. Because he’d been sighing into my neck only moments before, and the idea of standing before his court and sensing their disapproval was nothing like that pleasure.
“You do not have to be so honorable,” I whispered.
“I can be dishonorable.” He sighed and took my face in his hands again. “If that’s truly what you want.”
As he kissed me, I imagined a future. His father’s chapel, the marble altar with a blue cloth laid across it, the silver carafe and goblets.
Us kneeling, side by side. Lowering our foreheads to the stone, and then silently, in the candlelight, praying.
I didn’t know what he would pray for—but I knew I would pray, over and over, that he would not come to hate me for this.
We would twine our hands together, lower our foreheads so they met above where our hands were clasped.
Hal would initiate the vows; I would repeat after him.
I will, I will, I will. Under heaven. Under the seven planets. Until the day I die.
“Bianca, Princess of Alvion,” he would say, lowering the crown onto my head. The weight so crushing, my neck would snap.
I had waited for Roland by the fire all night, poking it to keep it alive until dawn. When he finally stumbled into our apartments, he’d taken one look at me and shut himself in his bedchamber.
This morning his hair was ruffled, and there were deep grooves under his eyes.
He was overly polite and courteous to me, as if we were strangers.
When Marguerite’s guards stepped aside and held the doors for us, Roland extended his hand so I’d go first. I made a quizzical face, but he only stared blankly ahead.
Inside her presence chamber, Marguerite sat in a low velvet chair surrounded by her women. They rose in a wave. Diane, the lady-in-waiting who’d caught Roland’s attention last night, flared pink.
“We’d like to see you alone, Marguerite,” Roland said.
“Oh?” She pressed a hand to her chest. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
She gestured for her ladies to leave us. Roland’s maid was the only one to glance back. After the doors were shut, Roland cast around to be sure we were indeed alone, then we settled opposite her in two of the vacated chairs. Roland laid the torn parchment on her lap.
“What’s this?” she asked in Lionessian.
“Read it,” snapped Roland. They must have argued last night after I’d left.
She inspected it quickly, with little interest. “Coronation expenditures. Did you steal this?”
“Yes,” I said bluntly. Roland shot me a look.
But Marguerite cocked her head, curious to know more. Not afraid of what we may have uncovered. At least, not yet.
“These records would suggest the king was not yet alive when he was coronated,” I explained. She followed where I pointed. “How can that be?”
“Strange indeed.” She frowned prettily. A single line appeared on her brow. “This must be inaccurate.”
“In the king’s portraits, he doesn’t appear to have aged since you arrived at court twenty-five years ago. Peculiar, is it not?”
She laughed. A bell chiming. “Because kings so enjoy seeing themselves as old men.”