Chapter Seventeen Blodwyn
Chapter Seventeen
Blodwyn
That night, the court celebrates the victors of the first trial.
Music and laughter fill the Great Hall, everyone behaving as if we all hadn’t nearly been murdered mere hours ago.
Sir Weston and a number of other courtiers chase one another around the long tables, battling with wooden swords in a ludicrous reenactment of the Followers’ attack.
Even Aunt Margaret is applauding, like the incident was no more than a game.
Everything is a game to these people, it seems. But I cannot bring myself to join in.
“Blodwyn!” Verity spots me and hurries over. “Congratulations! I knew you could do it. Is it true what they’re saying? You managed to fight off a Nevenwolf?”
Despite the heat of the hall, gooseflesh breaks out between my shoulder blades.
Flashes of the hunt cycle through my mind: The Nevenwolf’s snarling teeth.
The rank odor of it as it prowled toward me, like rot and death and decay.
The glow of its crimson eye. Years ago, I’d glimpsed a similar pair of eyes staring out at me from the palace gardens.
It’s been so long that I convinced myself that perhaps it was all a dream.
Today proved that it wasn’t. The Nevenwolf was real then and it’s real now. What if it was the same beast? What if…
It was hunting you, a deep instinct whispers.
“Are you all right?” Verity asks. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Fine,” I reply, banishing my thoughts of the creature. “I’m just still a bit sore. And tired.”
“That’s hardly a surprise after what you endured,” Verity says. “Come and sit with me. I want to hear all about it.”
Reliving the trial is the last thing I want to do, but I allow Verity to loop her arm through mine and steer me away. We don’t get far before another voice reaches my ears.
“Anyway, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. The princess didn’t actually win.”
I recognize the back of Lady Isabel’s head and pause, then drag Verity with me behind a statue so I can eavesdrop.
“She brought back the stag,” someone else points out.
“Alive,” Isabel grouses. “It’s against the rules. She should be disqualified.”
“You’re just jealous because your brother didn’t make the cut,” another accuses. “And now you won’t be the king’s sister.”
“That’s not it,” Isabel insists, though her tone betrays her. “And, anyway, I don’t see why you’re all pretending to be excited. No one actually wants the princess to succeed.”
“Isabel—”
“I’m only saying what the court is thinking,” she continues.
“When was the last time any of you learned of a Nevenwolf being so near to the palace? Isn’t it odd that such a creature appears when the princess returns?
And not just the Nevenwolf. You all heard what happened during the Followers’ attack. ”
My blood flashes cold, recalling the crows. The storm rolling in from nowhere.
“You can’t mean to suggest that the princess is responsible for any of that,” another courtier muses, but he doesn’t sound confident.
“I have no idea,” Isabel replies airily. “But I’m beginning to believe that my brother is fortunate to have avoided being involved with such a family. The stories about the line of White may carry more truth than we realize.”
An image rears in my mind: The witches in the illustration. The glow of their hot iron shoes. The way their faces seemed to snarl and warp on the page.
Pay the price.
The cryptic words roll around in my skull.
All at once, the air is too close, the competing scents of food and wine curdling in my stomach. I’ve had enough of this court. Enough of these absurd trials. Ignoring Verity’s concerned questions, I rush from the hall and out the nearest exit.
Cold air burns in my lungs when I at last fling myself into the night, but it does nothing to douse my anger—or the sea of worry heaving inside me.
What if Isabel is right? This isn’t my home anymore.
These people aren’t my family. And I am not Aunt Margaret, able to effortlessly adapt to any situation.
To become the person people want her to be.
Then again, perhaps it’s so simple for my aunt because people actually do want her. As for me…
“Blodwyn?” someone calls. Verity, probably.
I can’t talk to her now, or to anyone else. A glow in the distance catches my attention: the stables. The stag should be there. And his company is far preferable to any courtier’s. As Verity’s footsteps draw nearer, I pick up my skirts and head in that direction.
—
It’s late enough that the stables are empty, the smell of horses and straw a comfort after the suffocating atmosphere of the Great Hall.
I take my time as I drift down the aisles, pausing to pat the horses’ necks or offer them sugar cubes.
They twitch their ears at me, their noses like velvet as they lip the treats from my palm.
Eventually, I spot a familiar pair of antlers arching up over one of the stalls in the back.
The stag is lying on a bed of fresh straw.
And it appears that someone has been recently tending to him.
There’s a stool and bucket of water to one side and many of the stag’s gashes look like they’ve been cleaned.
Those on his legs have been bandaged as well.
But the stag’s antler is still broken, its jagged angle a reminder of the fight. A fight I shouldn’t have survived.
“Why did you save me?” I murmur.
The stag’s amber gaze locks with mine. I wish I could understand what he is saying. Wish that he could offer any answers besides—
Straw crunches behind me and I turn to find another person standing a short distance away: Gavin.
“Oh,” I say, awkward. “What are you doing out here? I assumed everyone was in the Great Hall.”
From his appearance, I don’t guess that Gavin attended the party.
He’s wearing only a loose shirt and plain breeches.
His wrist is wrapped and there’s a line of stitches running down the right side of his face, injuries he sustained during the battle with the Nevenwolf.
Yet more memories flood back to me: Gavin, fighting the beast alongside me, his strong arms firing off a slew of arrows.
Lean muscles working as he dodged attacks.
Don’t think of that, I scold myself.
“Checking on him,” Gavin replies, holding up a roll of bandages.
“You…have experience with stags?”
“Not specifically. But I’ve tended the horses and cattle around our estate. It’s practically the same thing. And Barnabas doesn’t seem to mind.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Barnabas?”
Gavin’s face colors. “I’ve taken to calling him that. It’s after a character in a book I read. The Gilded Isle. It’s about—”
“Pirates,” I finish for him.
Surprise flickers across his features. “You know it?”
“Know it?” I laugh. “I pestered the Keepers for weeks, searching every map we owned for the island’s location.”
“And?” he asks, like he’s genuinely interested. “Is it out there?”
“Maybe,” I reply. “I can’t be certain, but there’s a small island in the middle of the Western Sea. It seemed to match the description in the book. In fact, I went so far as to chart a course to the place. Told everyone I’d commission my own ships for the voyage.”
Gavin laughs at that. Dimples appear on either side of his mouth, which I find aren’t unattractive at all. But they just as quickly disappear. Gavin runs a hand through his hair, a gesture I’m beginning to recognize as his being flustered or nervous. But what’s he nervous about? Me?
“Well, I should get back to this,” he says, motioning toward the stag. Barnabas. “But you could…help. If you like.”
Aunt Margaret would have a fit if she saw me enter the stall, especially while wearing this gown. But tending Barnabas seems like the least I can do after he saved my life.
“Yes, of course.”
Gavin holds the stall door open for me. Barnabas snorts in what I interpret as a welcome.
“Take the stool,” Gavin offers. He overturns an empty bucket for his own seat, then dips a rag into the pail of water and wrings it out. “Here. Just dab this lightly on his wounds.”
Our fingers brush as I accept the rag and that same feeling from the forest skitters over my skin—a current of sparks that runs up my arms and tingles in my blood.
I tell myself to ignore it, focus on the task and not on how close we’re sitting.
On Gavin’s scent of clove and pine. Barnabas twitches his ears and I swear that he knows where my mind has wandered.
“Careful,” Gavin says. “Very gently.”
I adjust my pressure, working on the crusted blood around one of the stag’s gashes. Quiet settles between us, broken by the faint whicker of the horses and the crackle of torch flame.
“It was kind of you,” Gavin says at last, nodding to Barnabas, “to insist that he come to the palace. Anyone else would have his head hanging on their wall by now.”
Barnabas huffs.
“Like you would have?” I ask, swishing my rag in the water.
Gavin disappeared into the woods again not long after the incident with Barnabas. It didn’t take him long to return with a deer, and a gilded apple, of his own. A faint flush creeps up his neck, his grip tight as he wrings out his cloth.
“Yes, well. My father would have had my head if I failed to retrieve a prize.”
Given what I’ve observed of Lord Warbeck, I don’t doubt him. Still, my sympathy only stretches so far.
“I won without killing,” I remark.
Barnabas sniffs, as if in agreement.
“Not all of us are like you,” Gavin says quietly.
“What, reckless?” I ask.
He pauses. “I was going to say brave.”
I blink. Does he really consider me brave? I dab at Barnabas’s wound again.
“You weren’t so bad yourself,” I reply, softening a bit. “And I never got the chance to thank you for your help earlier.”
“Of course, Your Highness.”
“Blodwyn,” I correct before I can think better of it. “After everything that’s happened, you should call me Blodwyn.”
Gavin stills. “Blodwyn, then.”
He lingers over the syllables of my name in a way that makes that annoying fluttering feeling start up in my stomach.
“So you really spent your time minding cattle before coming to court?” I ask, changing the subject.
“At times,” he replies. “I liked to be involved with our tenants. Occasionally, I’d even lend a hand with their crops and harvests. Not that my father agreed with such practices.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
Gavin shrugs, but his shoulders are tense. “He doesn’t consider it important to understand our people. He prefers me to be at court, working to improve our family’s standing.”
The disgust in his voice is palpable, which I find interesting.
“If you hate court so much, why do you want to lead it?”
“To change things,” he answers simply. “Improve life for everyone in Riven.”
Everyone. Gavin’s words strike an unfamiliar chord within me. For the whole of my life, the boundaries of my world have been either the walls of the White Palace or those of Aunt Margaret’s estate. Now I’m starting to wonder what, and who, lies outside them.
“What are they like?” I ask. “Your tenants?”
“They’re like us,” he replies. “Just born without the privilege of a title. They want to live in peace. Feed their families. Have a say in their own futures.”
“That doesn’t sound unreasonable.”
“No. What’s unreasonable is—” He stops short, fisting the rag in his hands.
“Go on,” I prompt. “I may be a spoiled princess, but I’d like to hear it.”
“I never said…”
I roll my eyes. “Your opinion of me has been painfully evident.”
He reddens again. I stare him down until he continues.
“What’s unreasonable is a system in which a few people control everything,” he says at last. “Look at the party tonight. All that waste when there are others in Riven who are starving. Who have lost everything because of blighted crops. Or whose whole family has been wiped out by plague. We’re up here pretending they don’t even exist.”
Passion wafts from him in waves. I’ve never felt so strongly about anything, I realize. Not even hating Ayleth. I’m a little jealous. A little ashamed.
“This is why you challenged my claim,” I say softly.
He runs a hand through his hair again.
“Yes,” he admits. “Though, for what it’s worth, I am sorry that you’re caught up in the middle of it.”
“Sorry enough to withdraw?”
I’d meant it as a joke, but Gavin clearly doesn’t take it as such.
“I have to do what I feel is best for Riven,” he replies instead.
The same thing Isabel said at the pall-mall game.
Gavin’s meaning is the same as well—that I’m not what’s best for this realm.
The reality of this situation crashes back into me.
Gavin might have fought alongside me against the Nevenwolf, but that doesn’t change who he is or who I am and everything that stands between us.
“I should be getting back,” I say. My cloth plops into the water as I toss it in the bucket.
“Blodwyn—” Gavin starts.
“Don’t,” I interrupt. “I appreciate your assistance today, but we both know only one of us can win. You’ve made it clear that you don’t think it should be me.”
With that, I let myself out of the stall, ignoring the tightness in my chest and the futile hope that he will say something, anything, to call me back.