22
A few hours of sleep on Vawn’s bed, tucked against his side, is exactly what I needed. By the time the servants show up at the door of the suite, ready to help us prepare for the feast, I’m feeling alert and refreshed.
Vawn, on the other hand, seems gloomier than ever.
“The drink has left me, and there’s no more in my flask,” he mutters.
“You can have wine at dinner,” I tell him. “You need to get up.”
He moves a little, heavily, as if something is weighing his body down. Instead of rising, he rolls onto his side with a groan.
I turn to the servants. “Thank you for your help, but please leave us for now. I will ring if we need you.”
Once they’re gone, I whirl back to the prince. “You can’t lie here. You must attend the feast.”
“Fuck the feast,” he mumbles into the pillow. “Fuck this hideous hole of a rat-riddled palace. Fuck everything.”
I march around to the side of the bed, preparing to chide him for his childish attitude—but then I spot the dark stains on his pillow, where tears have washed the black paint from around his eyes onto the pale fabric.
While I was sleeping, he was crying.
Dropping to my knees, I touch his face. “I shouldn’t have slept. I didn’t know you were hurting like this.”
“You needed the rest,” he says. “I’m glad you were able to sleep.”
“Tell me what I can do. How can I help you?”
He raises an eyebrow slightly.
“Your lower glyphs.” I wince. “You want to activate them.”
“Only a few. Just for tonight. This place is bad for me, Syth. It saps every bit of humor and hope from my body. Can you feel the rot and the ruin and the sadness? This is a dark hovel, a tomb of excess. It is a place of slow, perpetual death. These people are death, and their promises are death—” He puts his face into the pillow and roars, a muffled bellow of agony so deep that I feel the echo of it in my bones.
I place my hand on his back, rubbing in slow circles. “I’m here.”
Vawn lifts his tearstained face from the pillow. “I should never have let you come along.”
“Let me?” I smirk. “Did you really have a choice?”
He doesn’t smile. There’s a depth in his eyes that I haven’t seen before—an unending void. The darkness that follows him like an assassin he can never escape.
A wave of emotion floods my soul—sympathy, longing, and the ache of helplessness because I cannot save him from an enemy in his mind.
Rising on my knees beside the bed, I press my lips to his.
It’s a brief, soft kiss that tastes like tears. When I draw back and look into his eyes, shock has replaced the darkness, and there’s a glimmer of hunger in his gaze.
“Do what you must to make it through this evening and the negotiations,” I tell him. “I’m going to wash up.”
I retreat into the bathroom, close the door, and lean against it, one hand pressed over my pounding heart, replaying the kiss in my mind. It takes the squeak of an ice-rat somewhere behind the walls to startle me into action.
For dinner, I wear my brown dress and my boots, complementing the outfit with a lavender fur wrap one of the servants brought. “With the Stewardess’s compliments,” she said, presenting it to me. The fur matches my hair perfectly.
Vawn wears one of his slutty and fashionable shirts from Zeletas, a style that shows off his midriff.
He applies copious amounts of black liner around his eyes, adds a fur stole around his shoulders, and covers himself in jewelry.
He insists that I add more jewelry, too, and I comply, to keep him in a good mood.
When I ask the servants about weapons, they inform me that as the prince’s bodyguard, I’m allowed to bring a single knife, but it must remain concealed. It’s a reasonable accommodation—I wasn’t sure the Lieges would permit even one weapon.
We’re escorted to a dining room adorned with hundreds of clocks.
Grandfather clocks stand around the table like forest trees, cuckoo clocks cover the walls, and pocketwatches on long chains hang from the ceiling and the chandelier.
The edge of the tablecloth is slightly stained, and I don’t like to think why.
I’d rather not eat anything prepared in this building, but my stomach is growling loudly, and I need to keep up my strength, so I trust in the Stewardess, hoping that she has influence in the kitchen and has ensured a clean cooking environment.
Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, but it’s what I must believe to survive the meal.
There’s only one table in the center of the room, and as the only member of Vawn’s retinue, I’m allowed to sit with him, on his left.
Other than the Twin Lieges, the only other guests are a few nobles and their wives, all of whom look rather gaunt and desperate.
They devour the thin slices of roast and the small servings of noodles as if the food might flee their plates.
I’ve never seen wealthy people eat like that.
During the meal, Vawn recounts our adventures in lurid detail for the eager ears of the Lieges.
Roxalin squeals and claps when he tells about the wyvern that got stuck in the window.
He smooths over much of our harrowing journey through the Red Mountains, which is wise, because if the treaty goes through, that’s the region to which the Lieges and their people will be relocating.
It feels harsh, like a death sentence—unless Vawn pledges to have the Belavrin Forestry Guard help the Tularesk refugees clear out enough space for their first few settlements. It’s what I would do if I were him.
“I know we don’t have everything sorted out yet,” pipes up Roxalin, as Vawn pauses his tale to sip from his water glass. “But I was hoping we could talk about moving our things. We have a lot of treasures, and we’ll want to bring them with us.”
“Roxi, that’s something we’ll discuss tomorrow,” Remin chides her. “The prince knows that our belongings are important to us. After all, they will be his belongings, too.” He looks at Vawn, a suggestive smile on his pale face.
His words echo in my heart like the toll of a bell.
What does he mean?
“Of course,” chirps Roxalin. “Marriage means sharing everything. Remin and I already share everything, but it gets a bit dull after a while, and we’re so excited to have someone new in our bed.
We don’t have to wait until the wedding, you know.
We can begin to enjoy all the advantages of our union as early as tomorrow, once we have drafted an agreement. ”
She titters and winks at Vawn. The other guests stare at their plates without smiling.
Vawn laughs, a careless, airy sound. “We shall see. To successful negotiations.” He lifts his glass, and everyone at the table joins in the toast.
Everyone except me.
Roxalin notices and fixes me with a sharp look that belies her childish voice. “Guard girl, are you feeling all right?”
“Her name is Forsythia,” Vawn says smoothly.
“Forsythia, of course. She looks rather sickly and feverish. Almost green. Do you think she’s going to vomit?” The Liege’s lip curls as if she’s disgusted.
The ruler of a disintegrating kingdom, resident of a palace stuffed with refuse and rats, who apparently sleeps with her brother—she dares to be disgusted by me?
I could lash out at her and risk severe punishment, not by Vawn, but by the royals hosting him. Yet I hold onto the truth that I am better than her—stronger, more beautiful, more intelligent, and more regal. More worthy in every way that matters.
“Forgive me, Your Majesties,” I say, rising and bowing. “I believe I am ill, and I must retire. I beg your forgiveness.”
“It’s quite all right,” says Roxalin. “Go on.” She waves dismissively, and I clamp my lips tight as I walk out of the room.
I have no doubt they’ll keep Vawn for at least another hour, so I have some time to think about what I’ve just learned and what it means. I have some time to weep.
After struggling through the crowded hallways and locating Vawn’s room, I shut the door and look desperately around for something to ruin.
My whole body is already heaving with desperate breaths that are quickly becoming sobs.
Fire and ice take turns surging over my skin—rage and despair burning and chilling my insides.
I grab a pillow from a pile in the corner, draw my knife, and rip the blade through the fabric, spilling gray feathers onto the floor.
“Fuck you!” I cry. “Fuck you. Liar, liar, liar!” I stab the pillow over and over.
The door bursts open and shuts just as quickly. It’s Vawn, breathless and tousled, his cheeks flushed. Like he abandoned the dinner and ran after me.
“I didn’t mean for you to find out like that.” His tone is shaky, fractured.
“When were you going to reveal the truth? Once the deal had been struck?” I march toward him, gripping the knife in one hand and the half-shredded pillow in the other. “When were you going to tell me that it’s a fucking marriage contract?”
“I told you my father was trying to marry me off.”
“To them?” I point the knife at the door. “To the incest twins in the palace stuffed with filth? They’re fucking each other, Vawn. And you’re going to marry both of them? Shit—” Nausea surges in my throat, and I stifle a gagging sound.
“My brother Erling arranged it.”
“Your brother hated you, and your father didn’t care about you. Neither did your mother, if she was allowing this arrangement to proceed.”
Vawn swallows hard. “I know.”
“Why would you consider this for a single second? Why?”
His tone is hard, his eyes equally so. “I didn’t have a choice then, and I don’t have a choice now.”
“You do, though. You could run.”
“Just run?” he exclaims. “Leave my family’s kingdom in the hands of the man who slaughtered them? Shouldn’t I avenge them?”
“They aren’t worth avenging.”