10. Katya
10
I didn’t get up quite as early as I'd intended. My first foray into hard alcohol resulting in the most miserable morning of my life. I’m still a bit queasy, but at least my headache is gone, and I managed to heal the bruises on my face with the sythra Mama gave me. I wish I could heal this damn hangover, but if there is a way to do it, I don’t know how. I’m honestly lucky it wasn’t worse, considering the way I spoke to Leodin. I must have lost my mind. I’ve always had a smart mouth, and it’s gotten me in more trouble than I can count, but that was a whole other level of stupidity.
Still, I’m doing what I said and visiting the princess. Hopefully, I’ll find a juicy bit of information that will keep my stepfather from ripping my head off the next time he sees me. One can only hope. Elsbeth’s room is down the hall on the right—that’s what the maid told me—but I would have known it, regardless. There’s no mistaking the sound of Elsbeth’s voice, which is so loud it’s leaked into the hallway.
I stop at the door, raise my hand to knock, then pause. Now that I’m closer, I can hear a male’s voice, as well, and he doesn’t sound too pleased. Maybe I should come back later. If she’s with the prince or worse, Lieutenant Aemon, the gods only know how they’ll react to me showing up at the princess’s door unannounced. Sitting beside Aemon last night, while he speared and chomped on his food like it had done him some personal injustice, was so uncomfortable, I’d almost have rather gone back to Berezin and his wandering hands. I’m just about to turn around and make a run for it when the door swings open and once again, I come face-to-face with Aemon Cregg.
Fabulous.
Aemon stops short, and he blinks, as though he’s as shocked to see me as I am him. Then that annoyingly attractive smirk spreads across his face and he leans his forearm against the doorframe, blocking my view inside. “You lost, witchling?”
“I… uh…” Good gods, Katya get it together. “I came to see Elsbeth.”
He scratches the underside of his cleanly shaven chin. “Did you? And here I thought you came to visit me.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I say, reaching up to tuck an errant lock behind my ear.
Aemon grabs my wrist. “Who did this to you?”
“What?” I attempt to pull my arm away, but he isn’t letting go. He twists it slightly, showing me what he sees: a mottled blue and purple bruise covering half my forearm. I hadn’t wanted to waste a sythra healing it. I didn’t think anyone would notice, truth be told.
I guess I was mistaken .
Aemon brushes a calloused thumb over my pulse point, his gentle touch at odds with his furious expression. “Who did this to you?” he asks again.
Heat floods my veins, and my drawers grow damp. Gods, can he smell it? I swear, if he says he can smell my arousal, I will die of humiliation. “Uh, I fell,” I finally manage to say.
“Katya.” The tone of his voice brooks no argument, but it’s the sound of my name on his lips that’s turning my legs to jelly. It’s almost musical the way he says it, Kat-ya, his deep baritone drawing out the word—dancing with it.
“Katya,” he says, more sharply this time.
That wakes me up. I jerk my hand free. “It isn’t a big deal. Really. I’ve had much worse.” That was definitely the wrong thing to say. If anything, he looks even angrier. His eyes are slits, jaw clenched so tight he’s sure to chip a tooth.
“Excuse me,” he says, storming off down the hall, and I’m left standing in the open doorway with what must be a befuddled expression on my face, watching him leave.
That was… What in the world was that?
When I turn back around, I find both the prince and princess looking at me like I’ve grown two heads.
“Hi,” I say, with an awkward wave.
For a split second, the prince glares at me, his eyes so full of malice, I take a step back out of fear. Then just as quickly it disappears, and he’s smiling. It’s so sudden a shift, I’m not certain I saw it at all. He crosses the room, arms spread wide like he’s welcoming me into the fold. “Hello to you. I don’t believe we’ve met.” The prince takes my hand and cups it between both of his. I think it’s meant as a kind gesture, but it feels more like he’s making sure I can’t get away. Stupid, I know.
Elsbeth takes mercy on me and answers since my brain is not fully functioning yet. “This is Katya. Katya, this is my husband, Prince Troi.”
“Your highness,” I say, doing my best semblance of a curtsy, sans the hand his highness has been holding a little too long.
“Katya. A lovely name for a lovely girl.”
I have to stop myself from rolling my eyes at his poor attempt to woo me, or whatever it is he’s doing, right in front of his wife. He’s the prince, though, so I guess the rules don’t quite apply to him. I’m just about to respond when he slides back the hand resting over my fingers, then raises it to his lips and proceeds to kiss each of my knuckles in turn—even my thumb.
I glance at Elsbeth to see what she’s thinking about this behavior, and she just rolls her eyes. Well, at least she’s not upset with me about it. That’s something, I guess.
“I’d invited Katya to tour the garden with me. I apologize, I forgot,” she says.
Is she covering for me? That’s interesting.
Finally, the prince releases my hand. “Of course,” he says, eyes still locked on mine. “You ladies have a nice time.” When he turns to speak to Elsbeth, there’s an edge to his tone that wasn’t there a second ago. “We’ll continue this discussion later.”
She simply nods, steps around him and loops her arm through mine. “Shall we?”
“Is everything alright,” I ask as soon as we’re out of earshot.
“I think I should be the one asking you that,” she says, one slim eyebrow cocked. “That’s quite the bruise you’ve got there.” She nods at my arm. I really should have worn long sleeves.
I shrug. “Leodin, my stepfather, was just a teeny bit” —I hold my thumb and index finger slightly apart— “upset about me making a scene at dinner yesterday. Said it made a bad impression.”
“What did he expect you to do?”
“Smile,” I say, giving her my toothiest grin.
She nods in understanding, but doesn’t look at me with pity, which I appreciate. We continue down a grand staircase and exit onto the ground floor “Just a little farther now,” she says
Glancing around, I realize we’re passing into a part of the palace I haven’t seen before. “Where are we going?”
“The Queen’s Garden. As the princess, I’m allowed to use it, and the queen couldn’t care less about flowers and plants, so I take care of it now. Over here.” She points to a heavy wood door, and I follow her through. Immediately, I’m struck by the change in atmosphere. The air is thicker here—warm and heavy with moisture—and perfumed by the scent of what must be hundreds of flowers. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful. The entire garden is enclosed in glass—like a giant greenhouse. Every bit of usable space is devoted to a myriad of plants and flowers of all sizes and colors, separated by narrow walkways and dotted with tiny sitting nooks tucked between bushes and under small trees. There’s even a stream gurgling through the center of it all that deposits into a tiny pool, no bigger than my bed back home, teeming with graceful fish covered in blots of orange, yellow and white.
“This is amazing,” I say in genuine awe. We have gardens back home, but they’re mostly utilitarian—food, herbs and the like—but this is built for beauty, and it succeeds.
“Thanks. Nobody else really cares about any of this, so it’s become my little oasis. I’ve always had a fascination with medicinal plants, and it gives me something productive to do with my time. Being a princess isn’t as exciting as I thought it would be.”
“I know how you feel. If it weren’t for the library back home, I probably would have lost my mind by now.” I nudge her with my elbow. “So, are all of these medicinal, or…” I leave the sentence hanging there because I’m not exactly sure how to phrase the rest of my question, but Elsbeth is able to catch my meaning.
“No. The only thing medicinal that was already here before I arrived was that willow.” She points to a small weeping willow rising over the flowers in the far corner. It’s arched branches, falling just short of touching the ground.
“What do you use a willow for?”
“Its bark can be used to ease pain.”
“Really?” I’m getting kind of excited now. “Show me something else.”
Her eyes dance with mirth. “Well, since you asked...” She glances around and points to a cluster of bulbous yellow flowers. “See those? That is cotton lavender. It can help clear parasites from the body, and this,” she says, pointing to another plant, this one with tiny white flowers. “This is Jasmine. The flowers can be used to clean wounds.”
She takes a careful step over a batch of tiny purple flowers and starts down the narrow path.
“Where did you learn all of this?”
“Books, mostly. My mother taught me a little. I grew up in Yaresh.” She glances over her shoulder to make sure I’m behind her. “It’s in the southern tip of the Ajir Province. We didn’t often have the healing sythra at our disposal, so we had to adapt.”
I nod. It makes sense. At Duje, we always have healers around, so there was never any need to learn how to heal with plants. “Yaresh,” I muse, tapping my lip. “That’s where Dom Kai is.”
“Yes,” she says with a little hop. “I was actually an acolyte at Kai before I was chosen to marry the prince. I didn’t get to finish my schooling, but I do have an almost unlimited supply of sythra to tend this garden with. Watch.” She kneels beside a droopy little plant and lifts her sleeve—revealing a bracelet covered with sythra and a yellowing bruise circling her wrist, which I pretend not to notice. Elsbeth pinches a tiny clear sythra between her fingers, and I watch her gaze grow distant as she accesses the spectrum. Some witches struggle with this part of the process. Not me. Opening my mind to the spectrum has always been as easy as breathing. It’s when I attempt to touch the magic that I always fail.
Elsbeth isn’t failing, though. Green chroma fills her gem like smoke then disappears again as she touches a wilted leaf. The whole plant springs back to life and a cluster of golden flowers that resemble miniature suns sprout from the earth. The sythra cracks, then disintegrates, every ounce of magic going into growing those flowers .
I glance around the remarkable garden. “You did all of this?”
She shrugs. “A lot, but not all.”
We walk on for a few minutes in companionable silence, then Elsbeth pauses and kneels down to inspect a pretty little plant with bell-shaped flowers.
“So, what does that one do?” I ask, genuinely curious.
She smirks up at me. “This is a Lily of the Valley, and it isn’t medicinal.”
“No?”
“It’s poisonous. Incredibly so. It’s amazing when you think about it, how something so small and pretty can kill you.” She stands and wipes her hands down her skirt. When she lifts her head to look at me, her eyes positively gleam with mischief as she speaks. “It’s a nasty death too.” She does a little twist and lifts one shoulder cutely, then starts down the trail again.
Good gods, is everyone in this palace borderline insane?
“So…” She pauses, and I have a feeling she’s gearing up to ask me something I’m not going to be too thrilled about. Great. I’m supposed to be the one interrogating her. “Is something going on between you and Aemon?” she asks, not turning around.
I draw back, a little stunned. That is not at all what I was expecting. “I hardly know him. Why?”
She doesn’t immediately answer my question. We come to a circular clearing with a stone bench in the center. Elsbeth takes a seat and pats the spot next to her in invitation. “Sit.” She rests her hands in her lap and waits.
I guess I’m sitting down then. I sink onto the seat beside her, and she turns to me .
“Aemon was asking about you this morning. What are you like? What did we talk about? I just thought maybe there were some sparks, is all. I’ve lived here for three years and have never seen him with a female.”
The thought of him asking her about me sets off about a billion butterflies in my stomach, but I mentally squelch them. If he’s asking about me, it’s most likely because he thinks I’m up to something. And that isn’t a good thing, at all. “Maybe he isn’t interested in females.” Good gods, what a tragedy that would be.
She tips her head side-to-side, as if to say, “Maybe yes, maybe no.” “It’s possible, I guess, though I’ve never seen him show any interest in males either. Unless you count all the times Troi calls him in for meetings while he’s with a woman. Not that Aemon has a choice in the matter.”
I think my jaw just became dislodged from my face and has landed on the floor. “That’s…”
“Odd. Yes. I’m not sure if it’s a sexual thing or just Troi’s way of asserting dominance—you know, like a dog that urinates on everything to mark their territory.” She leans in so our shoulders are touching. “He has some issues.”
I chuckle. “Don’t they all.”
She grimaces. “Not like this. The queen enjoys belittling him. She’s too powerful for him to take the throne, and she reminds him of it often and brutally.”
“She has him beaten?”
“As a child maybe, but no, her methods are more devious than that. This morning, she called him to meet with her, then left him waiting in the hallway outside her door for over an hour. He was not pleased.” She lays a hand on my arm. “Please don’t tell anyone I told you that. The situation with the queen is a well-known secret around here, but Troi would have a hissy if he knew I told you.”
“Is that what you were arguing about when I stopped by?”
“I don’t know that I would call it arguing as much as him taking his frustration out on me.” She pulls the sleeve of her dress down, exposing her shoulder, which is red and swollen. “You’re not the only one with male issues.” She lifts her sleeve back into place. “I’ve become fairly adept at avoiding his ire, but sometimes, when the queen gets him in a mood, there isn’t much I can do.”
“Does Aemon know?” I ask, though I’m not entirely sure why it matters to me.
“He does his best to divert Troi’s attention, but he’s beholden to the crown, same as me. There’s only so much he can do.”
I shake my head. “Men are so ridiculous sometimes. They act as though we’re so fragile, when they’re the fragile ones, throwing fits if we aren’t constantly stroking their egos.”
“So true,” she says, leaning back on her hands. “You know what the worst part is?”
“What?”
“I wasn’t even supposed to marry him. I was to marry his cousin Edmund, but his betrothed got cholera on her way to their wedding—stupid girl didn't boil her water—and I took her place. Lucky me.”
“One day you’ll be queen, though. That’s pretty amazing if you think about it.”
Her eyes shine, and she swallows hard. “If I live long enough to see it.” She gives me a sad smile and something in my chest twists at the expression on her face.
Because she doesn’t think that’ll happen.