Chapter Two
By the time the council ended, the light in the lanterns had gone thin against the afternoon sun.
Lugomir rose first. He was not a man to linger once business had been concluded.
Jasenka stood with him, gathering up her notes and tucking them into a leather case no bigger than a curled leaf.
Eogan remained seated a beat longer, as if he disliked the idea of anyone thinking he had been dismissed. Then he stood as well.
“The canopy court will decide on the matter of the bee scouts before the week is out,” he said.
“See that you do,” Karai said dismissively.
Eogan looked at him. “I was speaking to the queen.”
“Yes,” said Karai. “And I was speaking to you.”
Ina put down her pen. “What Prince Karai is trying to say is that we all await your decision with interest, Prince Eogan.”
That earned the smallest change in Eogan’s face. It might have been annoyance. It might have been approval. With him, the difference was often hard to tell. He bowed to her, then to the others by necessity rather than warmth, and left.
Lugomir gave Ina a steadier, plainer bow. Jasenka paused on her way out and laid two fingers on the table.
“You did well today,” she murmured, her voice gentle. It was not dressed up as comfort or excessive praise. That made it easier to take the compliment.
“Thank you,” said Ina with a slight smile.
Jasenka nodded once and followed her husband out. The door shut behind them.
The room went still.
Not silent. As high up as they were in the forest, it would never be silent.
The chirping of birds was a whisper against the wood walls of the chamber.
Somewhere just outside, a guard shifted, and the faint clink of armor carried through the door.
But the kind of noise that came from work and other people had gone. What remained sat close.
Ina bent over the papers in front of her and dipped her pen again, though she had already finished the line she was writing. She added one more note in the margin of some figures, blowing on it gently to help the ink dry faster.
Neither man said anything.
That in itself was enough to make her aware of them.
Usually one or the other would speak. Derran would make some remark meant to cut the stiffness before it could take hold, and whenever possible, to cut Karai too.
Karai would point out some flaw in an account, or some carelessness in the wording of a decree, or some shortcoming of Derran’s.
They had become oddly good at that in recent weeks, taking turns keeping the hours from settling too heavily.
They read and argued and corrected, mostly with each other, though from time to time they joined forces against her over some point of law or custom until she accused them of conspiring against the crown.
It had become easy, in its fashion.
Too easy, perhaps.
She had grown used to Derran’s boots propped under the library table while he read records he found dull and pretended not to.
She had grown used to Karai appearing at her shoulder to move a book from the wrong stack into the right one, as if chaos in shelving were a private insult.
She had grown used to all three of them passing whole mornings bent over maps and old court records, sharing ink, trading pages, reaching for the same volume at the same time and drawing back before fingers met.
That last part had become a habit as well. Drawing back.
Ina wasn’t sure exactly when it had begun. There had been no quarrel. There had been no command. It had crept in by inches while they had worked to restore fairies back from their animal shapes. And then it had grown larger after her coronation, as they worked to help her find her place as queen.
A hand not quite offered. A glance cut short.
Derran no longer leaning over the back of her chair unless the matter was urgent enough to excuse it.
Karai taking pains to address her as “your Majesty” in public until it nearly sounded natural, then forgetting and falling silent after hurrying to correct himself.
Nights in the library ended with bows and goodnights and everyone walking away under the full burden of their own self-command.
Neither of them spent a moment longer next to her than would be deemed proper.
Both gave her the fealty her queenship demanded and asked nothing in return.
And she had encouraged the distance, not wanting to make either of them jealous of the other, even as they both seemed to beg her, without speaking, to make a decision.
To choose.
To choose one or the other of them to love and let them both live in her choice.
A choice she did not want to make.
And so, it had all been sensible. It had also been miserable.
She turned the page before her and wrote another note she did not need.
Across the table, Derran sat with one arm resting on the chair beside him, his wings folded tight.
He had loosened the clasp at his throat after the council and drawn back his hair with his fingers, though one strand had already fallen loose again.
Karai had not moved much since the others left.
He sat in calm stillness the way some men sat in ease, fingers steepled over the papers before him, gaze fixed on the table for so long that it ought to have meant nothing.
It did not mean nothing.
Ina kept her eyes on the page. She was not foolish. She had known, before the council even ended, that being alone with them after a morning of measured voices and public ceremony would be its own kind of problem. The three of them had made a life lately out of being quiet.
It had kept the peace. A wretched peace.
She laid down the pen and reached for the next sheet.
Neither moved, but the feeling in the room changed, enough for her to notice that both men were now looking at her.
She looked up before she meant to.
Derran’s gaze met hers first. He did not look away. There was nothing careless in his face, even as his sapphire eyes gleamed in their playful way, always on the verge of teasing her. He did not tease her now.
Karai was watching her too, and the look in his eyes was worse because it gave away less. He had the habit of keeping still when he wanted something, as if motion itself might spend too much of the effort he needed to find the right words.
She became aware, in the most practical and unhelpful way, of how she must look to them – hair coming loose from its pins after hours at council, dress sleeves rolled back from her wrists because ink always found them otherwise,
mouth stained faintly darker from the berries she had eaten before noon and forgotten since.
Her dress was one of the plainer ones she’d claimed from the sky court wardrobe, more shirt and skirt than beautiful gown, fitted for a day of comfortable work rather than display, and that made no difference at all.
If anything, it drew their eyes everywhere she did not want them drawn.
No one spoke.
Derran shifted first, only a little, leaning forward the width of a hand. Karai did not move at all.
Ina stood up so quickly her chair scraped against the floor.
“I have to go,” she said.
The words were out before she had shaped them into anything better.
Derran blinked as if coming out of a daze, then rose half out of his seat. “Go?”
“No.” She collected the nearest papers though she did not need them, then put them back down because they were the wrong ones. “I mean, yes. I do. I have something else to do.”
Karai’s eyes dropped to the papers she had nearly taken and then lifted again to her face. “If you must,” he said softly, unconvinced.
She gave him a look that would have had more force if her ears were not burning.
“I remembered something,” she claimed.
“What thing?” asked Derran.
“I don’t know yet. That’s why I must leave and find it.”
Derran put a hand over his mouth, though it did not hide his grin.
Karai rose then, slower than Derran had done. He did not come around the table. He did not block her way. That would have made the matter simpler, and none of the three had ever been granted the simpler version of anything.
“Ina,” he said, a sigh that was almost a question.
Derran shot him a look Ina couldn’t quite place. Karai did not say more after that. Perhaps he’d meant to and thought better of it. Perhaps he knew her well enough to hear the edge in her voice and stop there.
She looked from one of them to the other and wished, not for the first time these past weeks, that ruling kingdoms came with easy answers.
Derran was watching her with too much understanding in his face for her comfort. Karai’s expression was harder to read, but not so hard she missed the restraint in it.
That was the worst part.
If either of them had made light of it, teased her, tried to corner her into staying, tried to discuss the choice before her, she could have been angry and gone with good reason. Instead they stood there being careful with her, being far too quiet, taking the wind out of any fight she had.
She put a hand on the back of her chair to steady it, though it had not moved.
“I’ll see you both later,” she said.
Karai inclined his head. “Yes, your Majesty.”
Derran said nothing at all. He only stepped back from the table and gave her room to pass.
That small courtesy made her heart beat faster.
Ina crossed the chamber, opened the door, and went out into the corridor without looking back. Once outside, she shut the door behind her and stood still against the wall, long enough to scold herself in silence.
---
Ina went to her mother then, because there were some questions she could ask only in a kitchen.
Mara was exactly there when Ina found her, at the familiar table where she had spent more than two decades of her life, waiting for the rest of it to come to her.
The room smelled faintly of bread and dried herbs, and a basket of mending sat open at Mara’s side, one stocking draped across her lap.
She looked up when Ina came in through the open window.
“You look troubled,” Mara said before she’d even settled on the table near her elbow.
Ina laughed a little at that, because there was no use pretending otherwise. “I am.”
Mara set aside the mending. “Then tell me.”