Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAY
“Growing certain plants together can encourage faster growth, provide ground cover and shade, improve your overall soil nutrition, and also increase both the size of your harvest and the flavor of your crops. These plants will be referred to as ‘companion plants’ for the remainder of this text.”
~ Growing Greatness: Common Garden Plants in Arcanloc
A s soon as I walked out of the entry chamber and saw her scrambling up from the ground, I knew exactly what I’d interrupted.
Audrey’s cheeks were flushed, and her skirts didn’t sit smoothly. The pillow she tossed onto the chair, then launched herself onto, I’d not seen since I’d helped move her into the tower.
If she’d been a friend, I’d’ve apologized and left. But I needed to speak with her, and she wasn’t my friend.
So I shut the door behind myself and walked further in, ignoring her quick breaths and the hands that trembled a little as she reached for the sheafs of parchment never far from her elbow.
As I warmed the back of my thighs and my behind, I considered that she and I probably could’ve been friends, under other circumstances.
She let out a frustrated sigh and shifted in the chair. Her cheeks were still flushed.
“Something wrong?” I asked innocently, in case she hadn’t learned her lesson. “Anything I can help with?”
The color in her cheeks deepened. Her gaze skittered away, settling on the hilt of my sword. “No. Thanking you.”
The breathlessness of those words went to my head. Or mayhap it was the way her lips were slightly parted. Irritated with myself, I considered calling her out.
She had access to five other rooms over two other levels. She could’ve grinded up against plenty of stuffed objects all over the place because there was only one other person up there.
I didn’t bother pointing out any of that. If she hadn’t figured it out for herself, she was too foolish to use the information anyway. “Apologies for the interruption,” I said.
She nodded, as if her skirts weren’t all tangled around her calves. I tried not to think of how, if she liked to grind, it would be so wonderfully easy to angle her just so, and I hated that I even had that image in my head. Butcher’s daughter. The cause of the deaths of children. Magically bound to me against my will.
It worked to cool my blood until she said, “You didn’t interrupt anything, sir.”
I snorted. “Since I’m so clueless, you ought to probably just tell me straight. Next time, should I offer to angle the pillow differently to help you get off? Off the pillow, of course.”
A twist of guilt went through me as the words left my mouth. She was a gently raised woman, for all her matter-of-fact presentation. There was so much blood in her cheeks, I wondered if she’d grow dizzy from it.
“I doubt you have the necessary skill set, sir,” she said without missing a beat.
Humor twisted through me at her self-conscious attempt to one-up me. “Oh, I didn’t realize heirs to a duchy had unusually complex needs. My mistake.”
She waved a hand in a dignified dismissal. “Worry not, for I can manage quite satisfactorily by myself, allowing you more time to practice doing your job.” I stared at her, torn between wanting to laugh at her and shock that she’d actually engaged in the conversation so wholeheartedly. “Is there a reason you’re here, attempting to speak to me?”
There was. I tried to recall it, but her skirts were bunched around her calves and her chest still rose and fell in an exaggerated rhythm. My own breath was quickening in response.
“You said yesterday you wanted to see Ylva in the morning.” That was it.
The look she sent me was one of irritation, but she stood, scooped up her pillow, and said, “I’ll be down later.”
I didn’t watch her go. But I did see, from the corner of my eye, the spring in her steps and the curve of her neck.
I let out a long breath, and then another, moving away from the fire as the backs of my thighs grew too warm. They matched the rest of me.
It took her some time before she made it back downstairs.
It would’ve been faster had she stayed.
* * *
She’d moved Ylva to a suite of rooms that had sun and air, at least. I figured the prisoner would escape at some point, when she got tired of toying with Audrey.
So far, she hadn’t, and I wasn’t quite sure why that was, but I didn’t overly care. I’d probably be blamed for it when it did eventually happen, even after warning Audrey.
I hadn’t warned the guard. I’d rather Ylva break free and deal with the lecture and another stay in the dungeons. It was all I could do to stop myself from dropping the keys in the heir’s lap.
They sat in the sun around a chessboard, and I tried not to fall asleep in a chair. They didn’t speak. Audrey had asked basic polite questions for the first few days, but that had given way. They just sat in silence and played chess. Every day. For two weeks.
It occurred to me that Audrey was probably lonely.
It occurred to me that she didn’t once attempt to speak to me.
So when I heard Ylva say, “You’ve got quite a problem out there,” I paid attention. There was nothing else for me to do, anyway.
“I do.”
“You know this plague is magical, right?”
I watched as Audrey’s fingers hesitated over her knight. “I don’t know much about it.”
Ylva’s smile kicked up a little. “Shame you’re on this side of the battle lines. I’d have a bow in your hands in a moment if we were at home.”
There was enough regret in that statement that I went to stand beside Audrey. Ylva could escape whenever she damned well wanted, but she wasn’t murdering the person I was bloodsworn to protect on her way out. At least not in my presence. And with Thomas settled in the camp and preparing to face the approaching winter, that meant she wasn’t murdering this woman at all.
“At ease,” Ylva said, not glancing at me. “She can take me.” And this was followed up by a leer that gave me secondhand discomfort for Audrey, who surely knew she was being mocked.
“I understand those thoughts must irritate you,” Audrey said, shifting her knight defensively. “But the only place I want to take you, Ylva, is to the orchards with a good horse and some supplies, so you can go and cut throats in peace.”
It was Ylva’s turn to still, and I watched as the fine silver chains in her ears shivered, giving away her tiny movement. “You know how to woo a Worg, my lady.”
“Sit down, Chay,” Audrey said, and the utter disinterest in her words made the boy inside me shrink. Rather than follow her command, I wandered to the window, folding my arms over my chest as though I held that boy to my chest. I didn’t block the sunlight falling over Audrey, but I did take what I needed, turning my face into the warmth, and I breathed.
I didn’t need to exist in the shadows. And no one would make me.
“What’s a Worg?”
Ylva looked at her, eyes wide. “Seriously?”
“What I don’t know could, and does, fill hundreds of books,” Audrey said with a shrug, and her shawl slipped just a little, hugging her strong arm. “Enlighten me, while we’re both stuck.”
“You aren’t stuck,” Ylva said with a snort. “You could do anything. You’ve the money and the power.”
I remembered someone accusing Kadan of the same. He’d laughed at the lie, but Audrey didn’t. “I can do a lot,” she said, straight-faced. “I don’t know how. What’s a Worg?”
Ylva glanced at me, unsettled, but I just met her look blank-faced, so she turned back to Audrey. I didn’t know how to take the comment, either. I remembered the day in the orchard. She’d burned, then. I’d seen glimpses of it, but that fire was hidden.
I was glad. It consumed what it touched.
“Why do you put up with it?”
“Put up with what?”
“This.” Ylva flicked her fingers in a movement that was both contained and aggressive.
Audrey sat back, her eyes still on the chessboard. I resisted the urge to explain that Ylva meant her situation at large as the prisoner made a swift move that sacrificed one of her pawns and put Audrey’s knight in another dire situation. I didn’t like the symbolism of that.
“I don’t know how to shift the power,” Audrey responded. “Not properly. I could drop some matches on the city, but they’d rebuild it on the bones of the innocent. I could throw my father’s wealth to the wind, but he’d just seize it at sword point. I could leave, but he’d just adopt.”
Ylva picked up her queen and tipped it at a jaunty angle. “Have you considered, and I’m just throwing this out there, mind, but have you considered sticking a knife in his eye?”
I couldn’t help but glance toward the door. I’d been in La’Angi too long. It was making me jumpy.
“How’d that work for you?” Audrey asked sweetly.
Ylva dismissed that with a flick of her fingers. “It wasn’t me, it was my cousin. If it’d been me, he’d be dead.”
Audrey didn’t laugh at her bravado. I suspected my gently reared lady didn’t see the offer of a shared joke in Ylva’s eyes. I smiled to make the prisoner feel better, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“And without my father, what changes?” Audrey asked her.
“That depends on what else is in play.” Ylva leaned forward. “What else do you have in play, Audrey?”
She looked at her chessboard with a curiously blank expression, and I was back staring at Kadan’s broken body, hearing Darrius’ efficiently summarized plans. “Nothing,” she said softly.