Chapter 6
Melia
Melia woke with a start, the remains of a nightmare rattling in her head: the dead horse, the entrails spilled in the dust. She reached across the bed for Amron, but his side was empty and cold, all the warmth long evaporated.
The moon poured its silver light over the room’s unfamiliar objects.
Melia had her own room across the corridor, a tiny space with a bed, a chest, and a desk—the palace in Abia was crowded because of the royal wedding, they couldn’t find anything better for her—but it felt so claustrophobic she preferred sharing Amron’s bed.
The window was open, letting in the unfamiliar sounds of the palace that never slept and the cold night breeze.
Melia reached for her silk wrap, her fur-lined slippers, and got up to close it.
By the time she’d forced the heavy latch to slide into its place, she was fully awake and disgruntled with Amron’s absence.
Where did he go in the middle of the night?
Melia tried to convince herself that he probably couldn’t sleep and went for a walk to clear his head, but a small, nasty voice at the back of her mind called her a fool. The poison that cursed lady-in-waiting had poured into her ear was eating her alive.
She returned to bed, overwhelmed by the madness of the upcoming wedding, the high tension running through the palace like a ball of lightning, the sheer, infinite wickedness of the courtiers. Sleep evaded her as thoughts buzzed in her head.
She got up and opened the door, feeling foolish. There was no guard to see her, just a small page sleeping on a pillow like a scrawny kitten. Careful not to wake him, she slipped into the dark maze of corridors.
The palace was crowded, the queen and her ladies-in-waiting busy with planning the wedding. The idea that one of them could slip out to—no, it was ridiculous. And yet, Melia’s feet kept moving, away from Amron’s room, towards the royal chambers.
· · ·
Melia was required to join the queen’s ladies while the court was in Abia.
She had no idea what was expected of her, there had been no gathering of women in Syr since her mother’s death.
The ladies who surrounded Queen Orsiana were refined, idle, and studiously ruthless.
A lion’s den padded with velvet and wool.
When she first arrived, they welcomed her with smiles and chatter, sweet wine and light gossip. For a heartbeat she balanced on the edge of hope that her status as a new bride, as Amron’s wife, could protect her, that they would allow her to become one of them.
Her illusion came crashing down soon enough, as she discovered everything about herself was wrong.
Her clothes were unfashionable, her manners provincial, her accent ridiculous.
When she gathered the courage to utter her first full sentence, she saw how their eyes widened, how they exchanged long looks.
One of the girls replied to her and for a moment Melia thought it wasn’t so bad, because the girl’s accent was also vaguely southern.
In conversation with her, Melia didn’t sound so hopelessly provincial.
And then the girl’s accent slipped, someone sniggered, and she realized the girl was affecting, mocking her.
They were bad when they were together, but they were even worse individually. And Vella was the worst. She ambushed Melia one afternoon in a cozy nook overlooking the garden. After trying to bait her with the most recent court gossip, she suddenly said, “And how is Amron these days?”
Melia stared at Vella’s large blue eyes, her button nose, her stunning auburn hair, unsure what the question really meant.
“I thought you should know we had something going on just before he left for Syr,” Vella continued, her smile wide and warm. “He was quite besotted with me, couldn’t get enough. I taught him that trick with the tongue, you know, when—”
“I don’t know,” Melia interrupted her. “And I don’t want to know.”
“Oh, but you do.” The girl’s pale fingers wrapped around Melia’s in an iron grip. “There are no secrets between friends, and I want to be your friend. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything behind your back, so I wanted to ask you if you would mind us picking up where we left off?”
“I would,” Melia said, tearing away from Vella. “I’d mind it very much.”
“Oh, perhaps I was too direct, I’m sorry. You still have a lot to learn about court life. If not me, it will be somebody else, some girl who might not want to be your friend.”
Melia wanted to tell her that no woman who ever slipped into Amron’s bed could be her friend, but it felt too crude and provincial in that place where refinement comprised enchanting music, elegant poetry, glorious tapestries, and sleeping with other women’s husbands.
Vella smiled and shrugged apologetically, but Melia hadn’t been fooled. She knew with absolute certainty that this had been a duel, and that she had lost.
· · ·
As she wandered through the dark corridors, Vella’s poisonous whisper echoed in her ears.
Melia was too much of a coward, too uncertain of her slippery position in the infinitely complicated court hierarchy to challenge Amron directly, although she’d watched him closely, looking for a morsel of proof.
There was nothing to see. He didn’t even come close to his mother’s ladies: He moved almost exclusively among the men of the court, his brother’s clique, his sparring partners and drinking buddies.
It might have been nonsense, a power move, but Abia had been so cruel to her since the day she arrived.
Amron’s cold, demanding mother; his disinterested father; his dangerous, intrusive brother.
The courtiers, with their jokes about the Elmarrans’ love for their sheep.
The ladies, with their long stares and raised eyebrows.
And even Amron, who’d seemed so large against the empty horizon of Elmar, suddenly shrank here to a cautious, taciturn shadow.
He was kind to her—he’d always been kind, infallibly—but she feared the intimacy between them was too fragile to carry them through the court straits.
Wrapped in such dark thoughts, Melia startled when a door opened a few paces down the corridor from her. She barely managed to hide behind a column when a tall shadow slipped out. “Good night,” a deep voice whispered.
A woman appeared in the yellow light pouring out from the room.
She was practically nude, only a scrap of silk wrapped around her body, her dark hair tousled, her face flushed.
Melia knew that face: It wasn’t Vella, but another lady-in-waiting, a northern girl, spoiled and mellow, whose name escaped her memory. She reached for the man. “Wait.”
Melia’s heart stopped as the man turned; she expected to see Amron’s face, just as flushed with lovemaking.
The woman grabbed the man, pushing her fingers into his thick blond locks.
He bowed down, his lips meeting hers, his hands pulling her close.
Melia almost cried out, but then her brain finally registered what her eyes were showing her: The tall, golden-haired man kissing the lady-in-waiting in the doorway wasn’t Amron. It was the king.
“Come back,” the woman whispered, and giggled when he tore off the silk scarf and lifted her as if she weighed nothing.
“Your wish is my command, my lady.” He carried her back into the room and shut the door behind him.
Melia waited to see if he would return, pressing her cold hands to her burning cheeks.
When the soft sighs and moans slipped into the dark corridor, she turned on her heel and ran away.
The king was plowing one of the queen’s ladies, and she had almost walked into them like the most incompetent, most idiotic person in Abia.
They didn’t see you, she consoled herself while she ran. They couldn’t have, they were too busy.
Looking for fresh air, for an open sky, she ran into the garden. Only then did she allow herself to breathe loudly, moaning at her stupidity, clenching her fists in impotent frustration and embarrassment.
“Melia!” someone called.
And there he was, her missing husband, walking towards her, gravel crunching beneath his feet.
“What happened?”
She let him wrap his arms around her and lead her to a bench. She laid her head on his chest, wishing she could crawl under his arm and hide in the warm darkness. “Where were you?” she asked. “I woke up and you weren’t there.”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk. Did you go looking for me? Did someone scare you?”
“I went looking for you,” she said. And then, feeling she would explode if she didn’t share it with someone, she added, “I saw your father.”
“My father? Where?”
“He slipped into a room with one of your mother’s ladies, a dark-haired girl from North Leven, I can’t remember her name.”
“You mean Lenka?” He sneered. “That’s hardly a secret. It’s been going on for half a year or so.”
The bluntness with which he said it surprised her, though she found it hard to pinpoint why. The image of the king kissing the girl was still etched on the insides of her eyelids. “How does your mother deal with it?”
The temperature dropped between them as his eyes studied her face in the moonlight. “I don’t think that’s a subject I want to discuss.”
“But your father, why does he—”
“My father, as you have probably learned by now, takes whatever he wants, and what he wants is everything.”
Melia nodded, silenced by the bitterness in his voice. She’d learned to stay as far away from the king as possible. From Amril, too, though the ladies talked about him all the time.
She bit her lip. It wasn’t her intention to get Amron upset, quite the opposite. But the quiet garden wrapped in silver and black seemed to be the only place where truth could be spoken.
“And who is Vella?” she asked.
“Vella?” He was genuinely baffled. “One of my mother’s ladies. I don’t think she has anything to do with my father, though.”
“But she has something to do with you, doesn’t she?”