Chapter Two Idris
Chapter Two
Idris
No one could contest it: King Byrne’s ballroom is far grander than our own.
Three hours into my eighteenth-birthday celebration, I still cannot stop gawking at the number of windows and the vibrant color of the tapestries. Even the wine is a better quality than at home. I’ve sampled thoroughly just to be certain.
“You might want to try some of this, brother,” says a voice at my elbow. Abram holds a glass of water under my nose. “It’s not even midnight yet.”
I roll my eyes but take the glass. Somehow I’ve ended up on the edge of the room, without a partner or a delegate to engage me.
In the unexpected pause, an image rises in my mind: vivid darkness and the hot bite of iron.
I’ve worked hard all day to put aside the nightmare that woke me early this morning, but it returns every time I am still.
It keeps coming, and each time heavier, even though the details of the dream have become muddled.
Trying to chase the dread away, I gulp the water. It tastes like fresh snowmelt—crisp and cold. How is even their water better than ours?
“I take back all my complaining,” I say, drinking more. “Father was absolutely right to drag us to another country for my eighteenth.”
“I guess we’ve solved the mystery of why a foreign king would go to all this trouble.” Abram nods toward the king’s daughter, currently joining hands with a man who stares so openly that he trips over his feet.
I keep my thoughts to myself. I’ve never been troubled about why King Byrne would be quick to host us—he’s been angling for a match between me and Princess Catharine since I attended his second wedding four years ago.
His people have ruled this region for a thousand years, though mine only came to power a few centuries back.
We were humble fishermen, while his grandsires waged wars.
But though he has the finer palace, the better lineage, we have the trade routes—connections to every ship crossing the Terallic Sea.
With land traders opting for roads farther south, he will soon find this sort of extravagant living far beyond his reach. Unless he can make an alliance.
No, I’d never been particularly curious as to why he would want us here. What always confused me was how fast Father agreed—almost the moment the offer was out of the messenger’s mouth.
I glance over the ballroom, wondering where my old man has gone. He’s on the far side, head turned toward a modern brass-and-walnut clock, and then he looks around—apparently for me, because once our gazes meet across the room, he starts walking my way.
The music ends, and King Byrne steps into the circle of revelers to take his daughter’s hand. He, too, searches the crowd, sees me, and makes his way over. He’s closer than my father.
“Well, that’s my exit,” Abram says.
I gulp the last of the water and give him my glass. “Please don’t go and sit with the old men, little brother. You could easily be dancing yourself.”
“No, thank you!” He slaps me on the shoulder and grins. “I’d much rather be talking with the dusty councilmen.”
He melts into the crowd before I can argue.
I exhale. Abram can never stand too much merriment.
To those who don’t know him, he might easily be mistaken for dull and humorless.
But I’ve seen him make ridiculous costumes for my dog from discarded clothes, rally the staff’s children into a fierce snowball fight, and more than once I’ve opened my notes in council to find he’s left cartoonish doodles of the members.
Of course, everyone thinks all that was me. Idris, please stop dressing up your dog like your father. Idris, you shouldn’t excite the children. Idris, it’s disrespectful to draw caricatures of the nobles.
And every time I nod and apologize. Abram shrinks under even the hint of disapproval, and if he had to bear the price of his pranks—small as it is—he might truly turn into a dusty old gentleman overnight.
The scolding I receive is hardly anything, and in return I have a brother who comes alive, if only around me.
“I hope you are enjoying yourself, Prince.”
I pull my thoughts back and find that King Byrne is already in front of me, Princess Catharine on his arm.
“Immensely.” I take the hint of expectation in his look and tilt my head toward Catharine. “I hope this means you have no partner for the next dance?”
She opens her mouth, but her father answers for her. “She would be honored.”
Catharine smiles uncertainly and offers her hand.
I take it and lead her out, where we assume our positions on opposing lines of the dance—me with the men, she with the women.
Though we’ve spent dances, conversations, and even a formal dinner together, the sight of her is almost as bewildering as her family’s aged wine.
Her hair is an impossible black, startling against the sea-foam white of her skin.
Her eyes, when she glances at me shyly, are a silver brighter than the simple circlet on her head. A silver like … fish scales.
Fish scales? I try to shake my thoughts into order. Abram was right; I need to keep a closer count of my cups.
The music starts, and we pay honors in a bow and a curtsy, respectively. We step together and turn a full circle. I take the opportunity to ask, “Did you really not have another partner?”
“My father is a bit … over-keen for, ah …” She doesn’t finish with the words a match between us, but her blush betrays her thoughts.
“Don’t worry—mine is a little over-keen about everything,” I say, and she smiles.
We move down the line of the dance, me teasing and her with an ever-present smile. Her every movement is graceful but almost timid. Sweet and friendly but cautious. She strikes me as someone born for political friendships, but whose heart would not be easily touched.
The dance brings us sometimes together, sometimes apart, and as I wait for my next chance to take her hand, I glance idly behind her. My father stands farther back in the crowd, being talked at by one of the nobles, but he stares at me and then glances at the clock again. His jaw tightens.
Perhaps he’s annoyed I’m not making more of this opportunity?
Catharine would be a good match for many reasons, and I don’t plan to object to an arrangement.
Yet she seems to me untouchable. I’d like to surprise that polite smile into an unguarded grin.
I wonder if she snorts when she laughs, or if she ever gets food stuck in her teeth.
She must sometimes, I suppose, since she’s human, but it’s hard to remember that when her wrist turns like an ethereal willow branch and her eyes shine like silver as she faces me.
We join hands again and step close, looking at each other through the window of our arms. The serenity of this dance certainly shows her to advantage, but I wonder …
“Do you like jigs?” I blurt.
She blinks and pauses, as if trying to find the answer I want in my face. “I like all dances.”
“I prefer the faster stuff,” I admit. “There’s nothing like the energy of it—you should end a dance breathless and dizzy. I wonder if the next one will be livelier.”
As if on cue, our current tune ends. Catharine looks toward the musicians in their booth. “Well, let’s see.”
Movement snags my attention—my father coming to the edge of the dancers but not quite stepping out. His expression is hard to read. Expectant? Nervous? Likely hoping I won’t waste this chance to take a turn with Catharine again.
Sure enough, the rapid notes from a fiddle and quickened tempo of a drum marks the start of “St. Ramble and the Hidden Folk.”
“There you have it,” Catharine says, smiling at me.
I lift her hand between us. “Can I steal you for one more, then?”
She lowers her voice conspiratorially. “I’m sure my father expects no less.”
As it turns out, Catharine is very good at a jig—though rather too precise in her steps, maybe. She smiles, but her eyebrows are knit with concentration. She is more well-schooled than wild. Which is a pity, but perhaps something I could tease out with time.
But these observations take me only the first rotation to make—and after that, I am lost to the music.
My blood pumps to the beat. The turn and turn of it spins the room delightfully, and my feet barely seem to touch the floor.
When the fiddle reaches its fastest, I am all impulse and motion like a river, a bolt of lightning, a gale.
A laugh bursts out of me. I can’t quite stop once it starts, and I’m wonderfully breathless when the musicians hit their last note.
Then I am back in the ballroom, surrounded by civilized people who seem remarkably calm and held together.
Catharine gives me a refined smile and sweeps a deep curtsy.
I manage to bow in return. Unlike the dance, this movement feels stiff and formal.
My spirit settles back into my body, and for a moment I wish I didn’t have to go back to playing prince.
I begin to thank Catharine, but before I can finish, someone lays a hand on my arm. I turn to find my father beside me.
“Come, I need you for a few minutes,” he says. His face is strangely pale. When he nods an apology to Catharine, the gesture is tight with unease.
I excuse myself and let him lead me away, wondering if I’ve done something to upset him.
I talked to Catharine and danced with her twice, so surely it isn’t that?
Or maybe Father caught word that I’d been complaining about coming here in the first place, though I’ve only really expressed my frustration to Abram.
Father takes me down the hall and ducks into a side room.
Books line the walls floor-to-ceiling. A library.
Abram would like it. A large wooden clock is tucked by the door, and the thud of its second hand dominates the space.
The fire has been lit, but the air feels much cooler than in the ballroom. I shiver despite my formal coat.