Chapter 29 #2
The massive Northern gate was closed, but a few guards stood there, watching over the restless city.
“Let me out, please,” she said.
They lifted their torches to get a look at her, a tired woman in a bloodstained uniform of the king’s guard, and found no objection to her plea. They unlocked the small door, and she stepped out of Abia for the last time.
It really didn’t matter where she went next, so she chose a nice tree by the road and sat down, her face turned towards the east. When the first light of dawn appeared above the mountains, and the thick, white fog rolling down the slope materialized into a white stag, Liana gripped the silver medallion containing the last remaining proof Amron had ever loved her, and closed her eyes.
· · ·
They had gone to Myrit soon after the war, back when Liana’s curiosity still got the upper hand over her disgust, and she’d allowed Amron to drag her to court.
The court was a smaller affair then, mostly political: The lords who’d survived the war gathered around the young king and his regent, vying for scraps of power.
Yet, Myrit was a proud city filled with ambitious people, and even though it had suffered greatly, rebuilding it quickly was a matter of stubborn defiance.
After all, for those who were not overly preoccupied with human suffering, war offered opportunities of renewal and growth.
And so Liana found herself in the former palace of the Lords of Leven—now the royal residence—polished to its former glory, all colorful marble, scented woods, and intricate tapestries laid in a maze around blooming gardens and murmuring fountains.
The war had made people a little reckless, a little wanton; faced with their own mortality, they lusted after every pleasure life could offer them.
They were all young, too, the new generation, the fighting generation, the winners, rushing headlong into the future so that they wouldn’t have to look behind them and see the carnage, the ghosts, the grief.
Amron shone at court. After years of blood and grime, of chainmail and leather, of sleeping in tents or worse, he was back in his element, in silk and velvet, in marble halls, under blazing chandeliers. Touched by glory, gilded by victory, all eyes on him.
Liana struggled to keep up. Her share of glory was by no means insignificant—she was revered, her courage praised, her beauty admired.
But she was a novelty, a fragment that didn’t fit in, and that showed soon enough.
She had no house, no family, no connections in the intricate network of people who ruled the kingdom, except for the old Gospodar Echton, who treated her with absent-minded cordiality.
She showed no talent for politics, she had no wish to use the fact she had a direct approach to the most powerful man in the kingdom for her own advancement.
She was a nobody; she was no lord, no lady, no wife, no princess.
The regent’s paramour, the wild northern warrior girl: She was an anomaly they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, wrap their heads around.
The men mostly tried to bed her: They found her stunning even though she was outside the court’s fair—frail—pale aesthetics.
But the real reason behind their advances was to challenge Amron’s power, to find his weak spot. The women mostly despised her.
The women—ah, the women! There were few of them around during the war, this class of women: thoroughbred, powerful in their own right, privileged.
No place for silk and sighs and poisonous whispers on the battlefield.
But as soon as the fighting was over, they crawled out of the woodwork in their brilliant gowns and dazzling jewels, ready to climb the new ladder of power that was being built in the halls, corridors, and bedchambers of Myrit.
They flocked around Amron. Liana watched their smiles, their covert touches, their relentless flirting.
She’d never been entirely free of jealousy, but there was amusement in it too, a game she and Amron played, entirely comfortable after years of sharing everything.
To sometimes bring in someone new for a night or two, when they both felt intrigued enough.
It was a dangerous game at court because sex was a currency there, a stepping stone to power.
Therefore, no one important. A lady-in-waiting whose skin was smooth as satin and who’d never kissed a woman before, a dark-eyed guard Liana devoured while Amron sat in the shadows. Rare, short-lived treats.
Isetta should have been as insignificant as the rest of them, a younger sister of a minor lord, pretty with her black hair and blue eyes and fresh face, but nowhere near as beautiful as Liana.
She was besotted with Amron—all the women were—and they danced and drank and laughed together, and Liana was warming up to the idea of her pale limbs and cherry-tinted mouth in their bed, when something happened. A disruption, an anomaly.
Instead of batting her eyelashes at Amron or accidentally brushing his ear with her lips as she whispered sweet nonsense, she talked to them.
About nothing serious at first: Abian poets at his grandfather’s court, the Seragian ivory chests in the royal collection, the silk patterns the weavers of Myrit imported from the south.
Friendly chat, but it left Liana painfully out of her depth.
She had no formal education, no courtly upbringing.
She knew how to track man or beast through the thickest woods, how to dress a wound or choose the fastest horse at a glance, how to train a hound or kill a man without making a sound.
But this was a different world now, and those skills, admirable as they had been, were useless.
She lacked refinement and, at twenty-seven, she was acutely aware she could never catch up with the people whose courtly manners were their second nature.
When Isetta pulled a lute out of some corner and Amron wrapped his arms around her to teach her an old folk ballad, the wave of jealousy that hit Liana was so strong she got up and left, afraid she would make a scene.
She took a long walk to cool down, but it brought her no relief. Then she shut herself in the bedroom and sat there, steaming in agony, replaying the moment when Amron’s fingers slid around Isetta’s wrist over and over again in her head.
“No,” she said later that night, when Amron came to bed. Alone, thankfully.
“What?”
“Not Isetta. I don’t want her.”
“Fine. As you wish.” He made no attempt to change her mind as he removed his clothes. He only said, “I thought you liked her.”
“I did.” For once, she refused to be distracted by his body, by the linen slipping over his pale skin and hard muscles. She felt querulous. “But you liked her even more.”
He paused to shoot her a confused glance. “What do you mean?”
She couldn’t tell if he was being na?ve or playing dumb. “You fit so well together. She’s your match: pretty, noble, educated, refined. I saw her brother looking at you, calculating. A man like you needs a wife, after all.”
“Liana.” He sat down abruptly, astonishment draining his face of color. “You can’t believe that.”
“I’m not the right partner for you,” she said. “They all see it. No one dares to say it to your face, not yet, but I’m a burden to you. Good enough for tents and battlefields, but ridiculous here in the palace. You need a wife who will bring you connections and power, who will be your ally.”
“I see you’ve joined the ranks of those who think they know what is best for me,” he said, only a faint line in the corner of his mouth revealing his anger. “But you should know better, Liana, you really should. Have I ever done anything to make you feel you were not enough?”
“No, but—”
“Do you think I would ever, ever agree to another political union, after all I’ve been through?”
She shook her head, all words gone from her mind.
“I can’t marry you now because the kingdom is still bleeding, and such a willful, defiant act could tear it apart. But that doesn’t mean I will marry anyone else, for any reason.”
He sat on the edge of the chair, gripping the armrest so hard his fingers turned white. She’d rarely seen him this furious, this hurt. But still, she couldn’t get rid of the claws that pierced her heart.
“Seeing you here, among these people, your people…I couldn’t understand why you chose to be with me. Why do you want me, Amron?”
“Because I love you, you fool.” He jumped out of the chair, raking his hair into a disheveled mess. “I love you, isn’t that obvious?”
“Love has never been essential in a relationship, not for someone your rank.”
He winced as if she’d slapped him. “Oh that is cruel, Liana. You’re slashing deliberately now.”
“Why did you choose me?” she insisted. “There are so many women out there more elegant, clever, and educated than me. Kinder, gentler, sweeter. Women who would make it their only goal to make you happy.”
“How terrifying,” he said.
“Why me?” she asked again.
Amron paused his exasperated fidgeting and regained his poise with considerable effort, sitting down beside her.
He laid his hand on her knee: Touch—clear, explicit—had always been his language of love.
The warmth of his fingers penetrated through the thin linen of her nightgown.
Her heartbeats measured the time, silence stretching before them as he struggled to find the words.
“Because you see me,” he said at last. “You don’t care about rank or power.
All my life, people have wanted me because of what I am—a prince, a doorway to privilege—but not you.
You see me for who I am, and you like what you see, and that is incredibly liberating. I have no better mirror than your eyes.
“I don’t want a woman who would mold herself according to my wishes, I want a woman who loves me on her own terms. I want to be myself in private, just like I want you to be yourself.
And you are entirely yourself, Liana—bravely, brazenly yourself, like a cat who doesn’t give a damn about the rest of the world.
Don’t get dragged into this courtly mire, into their stupid, volatile rules, their mercenary ways.
Do you think any of those women care about me?
They just want a prince under their thumb.
“You, on the other hand, want nothing from me, but everything of me, and I’m happy to give it. Every breath, every heartbeat, every last drop of blood, for as long as I live. And once when I’m gone, it won’t diminish you in any way. You’ll still be your beautiful, fearless, unadulterated self.”