Chapter 18
Though it’s hard to find fault with his concern, I’m admittedly relieved when Soren leaves with the physician. I don’t know that I’ve ever been so embarrassed.
In contrast, Princess Rosa, still in her undergarments, looks as comfortable as a queen holding court. She didn’t even try covering herself when we came in.
“Oh, Serah,” Tilly says, taking my arm and walking me toward the chair she sprang up from. “I’m so sorry.”
I allow myself to be escorted and seated like an invalid. In truth, plummeting to the ground like that was…well, an experience. “It’s all right. He was frightened, that’s all.”
She rolls her eyes. “He was ridiculous.”
A smile twitches at my lips, but I manage to restrain it.
“Let me find you some cloths,” Tilly says, and with a gentle touch to my shoulder, she then bustles over to a cabinet of drawers and begins rifling within, filling the tent with the sweet and sharp scent of dried herbs.
And also leaving me alone with a silent Princess Rosa.
I sneak a glimpse at her. Her undergarments, all silk and pink frills, leave little to the imagination.
She’s tall and willowy, yet somehow still full-figured.
Next to her, I feel a bit like a stunted plant.
She’s staring at the tent entrance with a sort of rapt desperation that’s beginning to grate on me.
I clear my throat. “I apologize for interrupting your visit with the physician. I do hope you’re feeling well.”
“I was feeling terribly lightheaded at the palace,” she says, not bothering to look at me. “It can be so stuffy in there, you know.”
Soren’s palace is hardly my home yet, but I struggle not to bristle at this. There’s nothing stuffy about it.
“I’m sorry to hear you were uncomfortable,” I say. “Are you feeling better now?”
“Much. Desert air has always agreed with me. It reminds me of the tundra.” She turns to look me up and down. “I don’t suppose you know what that is, do you?”
For a moment, I’m too taken aback to be offended. “The tundra?”
“Yes,” she says, returning her attention to the tent opening. “Didn’t Tilly say you were from one of those little islands? I can’t imagine you travel much.”
Indignation flares up in me, and I can’t help darting a glance at Tilly to see what she makes of this. To my surprise, she doesn’t seem to have heard any of it. She’s scowling and muttering to herself as she jerks open drawer after drawer.
“…bergamot, willow bark, foxglove? Why is this so disorganized?”
I lace my fingers together in my lap. “One doesn’t need to travel to a place to know what and where it is.”
Princess Rosa flicks her eyes over me once more. “But it’s rather hard to understand a place, to truly belong there, when you haven’t, isn’t it?”
I bite back my anger and instead grace her with a benign smile. “Indeed. I still have so much to learn. How fortunate that I’ve been given such a dedicated teacher in my betrothed.”
Her lips tighten, and she looks to be readying some haughty retort when a woman—a tiny woman with a braid down to her waist and an enormous emerald bouncing at her chest—bursts into the tent, startling both Princess Rosa and me.
“I told him,” she says, shaking her head and storming her way toward Tilly, “I told him exactly what would happen, and still, here we are.”
The woman takes in Tilly, and the tables, and the drawers all in one glance, and says, “Did you find anything?”
“No,” Tilly says with exasperation.
“Of course not.” She looks over her shoulder at me. “Dragons don’t have menses. It’s why Bindley doesn’t have anything useful.”
The woman strides her way to me, still fuming. “First all these challenges and now this. Doesn’t he know that you’re a proper lady? That you’re a princess?”
Shoving her hands onto her hips, she glares down at me. I blink back.
“Oh,” she says, her face softening. “You’re as beautiful as he said you were.”
She doesn’t look all that older than me, perhaps thirty years of age, but there’s a matronly, almost comforting quality to her brusqueness. I find myself smiling.
“You’re too kind,” I say with the full knowledge she’s being overly generous.
She waves this off. “I’m forgetting my own manners.” Though she’s currently in pants, she sweeps a foot back and lifts her hands in an immaculate curtsy. “I’m Marta. Rally’s wife.”
Tilly, who has moved in beside me, grins. “That means she’s equal in standing with Rally, and he’s the only one in Tirenth who can say what he likes to Soren. Though I suppose that includes you now, too.” She gives me a playful nudge with her elbow.
Princess Rosa swats at a gnat flitting about the lantern nearest her.
“Rally shared some excellent advice of yours the night of the feast,” I tell Marta. “I was most grateful.”
She was the one who said dragons and men are fools alike when it comes to women, the words calming my nerves and giving me courage when I had to face so many strangers in the great hall.
Marta’s eyes brighten at the mention of her husband. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to give it myself. A friend of mine was giving birth, and there aren’t many human women here to help.”
“Did the birth go well?”
Her hand rises to touch her necklace.“It did, Your Highness. Thank you.”
Princess Rosa has pointedly ignored us during all this, but now Marta turns to her and flashes a smile that shows all her teeth. “Hello, Rosa.”
Being equal in standing with Rally likely places Marta above most honorifics, though I can’t help noticing she referred to me as “highness.” Perhaps she and Princess Rosa are close enough to use one another’s given names?
“Good evening, Marta,” Rosa says. The disdain in her tone could be my imagination.
I doubt it, though.
“Do you need help getting back into your clothes?” Marta asks. “Or were you waiting for something?”
Rosa stares daggers at the woman.
“Oh, I can help,” Tilly says, bouncing to her side. “Rosa didn’t realize her corset was laced so tightly, you see, and she was so out of breath that we barely made it into the palace before we had to turn around. It’s a wonder she didn’t faint.”
“A miracle,” Marta says dryly.
Leaving it at that, she returns to the physicians’ drawers, locates some thick gauze, and brings it to me.
“Here,” she says. “I’ll have Rally go fetch something better for you and make sure this doesn’t happen again. My love!”
Rally appears almost instantaneously. Rosa snatches her dress up and clutches it to herself in indignation, but Rally doesn’t so much as glance her way. I watch with fascination as the giant man comes to tower over his minuscule wife, his face the very picture of a lovesick admirer.
“Yes, my dove?” he says.
Marta blushes and bites her lip. Biting back my own grin, I hurry behind the dressing screen and don’t emerge until I hear the tent flap once more. When I do, Rally is gone, and Princess Rosa is finally dressed.
“I suppose I’ll be returning to the palace now,” she sniffs, and without so much as a goodbye, she whisks out the door.
“I guess I’ll go with her,” Tilly says with a puzzled look after her friend. “Could I come see you tomorrow, Serah?”
“I would love that.”
She starts to leave, then turns back, embraces me, and hurries after Rosa. Marta sighs.
“Rally said Soren went to get you some chocolate, bless him. Could I walk you back to your tent, Your Highness?”
“That would be most helpful.” In truth, we came down so fast that I have no idea which direction my tent is.
She leads me out into the clear, cold night where, unsurprisingly, my guards are waiting. I nod to them, and they follow in silence, leaving enough distance for Marta and me to talk.
“Are you homesick?” she asks, nodding to a passing servant woman. I smile at the woman as well, but she only drops her head and fumbles through a fearful curtsy. My heart sinks. No one in Vasna was afraid to greet me.
“A bit,” I admit.
“I love Vasna. Its beauty is like no other.”
I nearly leap at her. “You’ve been there?”
She nods. “Several times. I’m a mariner’s daughter. Grew up working on a merchant’s ship. Vasnan lacemakers make the most beautiful lace on or off the continent.”
A surge of pride wells up in me. “I’ll have to show you the dress I wore to the feast then. I think it’s their finest work.”
“I would love that.”
We thread our way around a few more tents before the way opens upon my own. I breathe a sigh of relief. This has been a long day, and I’m ready to burrow beneath the pile of blankets and furs on my bed and sleep.
Will Soren join me this time?
“By the way,” Marta says, gesturing at my neck, “your mating stone is stunning. I’ve never seen a stone so large.”
I stumble over my own two feet.
“My what?”