Chapter 16
Melia
Melia scrubbed her palm with short, savage movements, but the dye from the marzipan had soaked into her clammy skin and now she had a red-stained hand, like a sloppy child.
She savored the shame that went with the thought, the feeling of incompetence, because it blocked the memory of the savage humiliation she’d witnessed.
She found it hard to define Amron’s status at court.
Admired by the guards and the clerks, well-liked by the ladies, respected by the nobles, and loved by the queen, he was nevertheless ignored or challenged by his brother and openly disliked by the king.
Melia, who was no stranger to cold, demanding parents, found this unusual, for Amron was everything the king could have wanted in a son.
As opposed to Amril, who frightened and disgusted Melia, but seemed to be regarded as the amusing, generous prince by the courtiers, and was clearly his father’s favorite.
Melia felt this injustice keenly, even though Amron refused to acknowledge it even existed.
Drying her hands, she considered going to Amron, offering kindness, as he would have undoubtedly offered her if the roles had been reversed, but before she gathered the courage, it was already time to dress for the ceremonies and get on with the endless day.
She should have followed the queen when she left the audience chamber, should have been helping her dress, but her father’s visit and the scene he’d caused had disrupted her morning schedule.
She called the maids to help her dress, but only one girl came—in the chaos of the palace, it was almost impossible to find help.
“My hair is fine as it is,” Melia said, assessing the thick black braids pinned to her head with pearl and ivory combs. “Just help me change.”
Melia’s attire for the ceremony was blue.
An underdress of the finest periwinkle silk, light as a breath and smooth as water, and a gown of heavy silk brocade in a vivid shade of ultramarine, with a delicate flower pattern, had all been chosen by Queen Orsiana; she had picked the designs, patterns, and colors.
Melia, who had never worn blue, felt strangely cold when she put it on.
It didn’t compliment her skin; the icy tones killed its natural warmth and made her look sallow.
But the gown wasn’t there to make Melia look pretty, it was there to make her look regal, and that task it accomplished without a doubt.
She had never worn—or seen—anything so fine.
If she ignored her harried face in the mirror, if she squinted until it became a blur, she could almost discern a fine dusting of royal grace on her person.
There was a knock on the door, and a little page announced, “Her Royal Highness, Princess Amielle.”
Melia took a deep breath and clenched her teeth. She hadn’t met Amron’s sister yet—she’d left the court when she married—but they were of equal rank now and were supposed to stay together during the ceremony.
“Where is my brother’s wife? The queen is waiting for her.
” An imposing blonde woman walked in, almost as tall as Amron and equally bony, with eyes of the same dark shade of blue-gray and a thick, heavy mass of golden hair.
A closer look revealed a slightly finer, more delicate structure of her face and a barely visible hint of pregnancy under the layers of linen and silk.
She was more outspoken than her brother, too.
“I suppose that’s you,” she said, her gaze fixing on Melia.
Melia nodded. “Princess.”
“Call me Amielle,” the princess said curtly. “And I’ll call you Melia.”
It was a command, not a suggestion. The princess looked around the room, taking in the mess Melia could never force the maids to tidy: the strewn clothes and shoes, open chests, a myriad of bottles and perfume vials, boxes, clasps and pins, combs and brushes covering every flat surface.
“I apologize for the mess,” Melia said.
“My brother would hate it.”
“Excuse me?” Melia said, not quite sure she heard correctly.
“I said Amron would hate it.” The princess stated it flatly, as a simple fact, without mockery or judgment, but also without kindness.
“Clutter makes him physically uncomfortable, he can’t help it.
If he walked into this room, he’d feel the instant pressure to leave. Is that what you’re trying to do?”
“No, I—” Surely the princess was joking? “Amron never mentioned—”
A sharp glare pinned her down. “You’ve been married to my brother for months and you don’t know that? What do you know about Amron?”
Melia’s cheeks heated up. What did she know about Amron, really? He was diligent. He tried to be kind to her. He was intensely reserved. “I know what he shows me,” she said.
The princess looked down on her as if she were a slow child. “My brother is unhappy,” she said. “And he doesn’t deserve it.”
It struck Melia that this was the single most infuriatingly difficult morning of her life. So many people demanding more of her than she could give. “In what world do those who deserve happiness get it?” she asked.
The princess chuckled. “Not without spirit, I see. That’s a good start. Now, let’s go, Mother will be furious if we’re late.”
While they walked down the corridor, Melia dared to ask, “Have you seen Amron this morning, after the—” She didn’t know what to call it.
“The spectacle our father made of him?” the princess asked, her long stride forcing Melia to run. “No. He’s licking his wounds in private somewhere, I’d wager.”
“Is he all right?”
The princess paused so abruptly Melia almost stumbled. “No, he’s not all right. Would you be?”
“No, I—”
“But that’s what our father does. He’s done it to all of us, but to Amron the most because the two of them are like two wild dogs who just can’t let one another go.
Amron refuses to bend and Father refuses to stop trying to break him, and they’re both worse off for it.
” She resumed her stride. “Men and their pride.”
No one has ever talked to Melia with such bluntness. “What could I do to help him?”
“Pretend it never happened,” the princess said as they stepped into the queen’s chambers. “He’ll be grateful.”
The ladies were just pinning the veil to the Queen’s braids with tiny diamond stars. She turned when they entered, beautiful in icy shades of the palest blue, yet her face was distracted and worried. “Someone get a chair for the princess,” she said. “You should rest.”
“Oh no, I’m fine. We can go if you’re ready,” Amielle said.
“Stubborn as the rest of them,” the queen muttered. “Let’s go, then.”
A long procession formed in the corridor and descended into the yard, where the king’s party already waited for them. Melia looked for Amron in vain—she couldn’t spot his golden head anywhere in the crowd.
“What are we waiting for?” the princess muttered, just as an odd silence spread throughout the crowd.
Melia stood on tiptoes, trying to see what was happening at the gate, but the men from the king’s retinue blocked her view.
Whatever it was, it didn’t last long, and the procession moved, meandering towards the harbor.
Passing through the gate, she saw a bloody, roughed up girl being held by two guards.
For a brief moment, she wondered what the girl had done to deserve such treatment.
Then she remembered the royal wedding must have attracted all kinds of madmen and troublemakers, and averted her eyes.
· · ·
As the bells rang the eleventh hour of the morning, the Seragian fleet carrying Carevna Aratea and her entourage sailed into the Bay of Abia.
Melia watched them from a wooden dais, shaded by a blue and gold canopy, crammed in with the members of the royal household.
Princess Amielle stood beside her. Amron had materialized behind his brother at some point between the palace and the harbor, perfectly poised and immaculately dressed.
She tried to catch his eye, but he kept close to Amril, whispering and laughing in a rare display of brotherly intimacy.
Melia stood on her toes, trying to get a breath of fresh air.
The sky was blue as the royal livery, with feathery white clouds sailing fast across it.
The day was windy, but it was still too early in the year for the wild gales that lashed the coast in the winter.
The three imperial galleys sailed smoothly into the bay, lowered their red sails in a series of fast, precise movements, and rowed into the harbor.
Their long, slender hulls cut the waves like sea snakes, with eyes and gaping maws filled with sharp teeth painted on their prows.
“My, my, are they planning to eat us?” Amielle muttered.
The remark was light, without a trace of premonition, and yet Melia felt cold dread spreading through her veins.
Despite living her whole life on the border, she had never met real Seragians, seen the true face of the Empire.
Up until that moment, she could only imagine them as brigands, scrawny, desperate men attacking in small groups, hiding in the mountains, freezing and starving in the caves and abandoned villages.
When her father talked of them, they were nothing more than vermin to be flushed out and destroyed.
She knew, in theory, that the Empire was vast, and that the Elmarran border was just a nuisance for the emperor, one of the many wars that smoldered on the edges of his lands.
She knew that those unruly tribes were no more than grains of sand on the imperial map.
The conflict that shaped her life, that took away the people she loved most, that had left her empty and dead, and turned her father into a flaring husk of hatred, was just a small, irritating note in the margin of the Empire’s history.