Path of Charms (Their Lady Knight #1)

Chapter 1

Belle-Belle

Once upon a time there was a king who was very powerful, yet at the same time very gentle, and loved by all his people.

However, his neighbor the Emperor Matapa was even more powerful than he.

They had often been at war with one another, and at last, the emperor won a great battle, took the king’s capital city, and sent him fleeing through the countryside.

I know this because he fled through our estate.

It was the eve of my eighteenth birthday, and we were to have a small celebration, as befits the youngest daughter of an impoverished nobleman.

And so I stood at the kitchen door, dough on my hands and flour smudging my face, as the king’s entourage rode through.

King Aristide rode at the front of the procession, mounted atop a mighty warhorse.

His knights and captains rode after, followed by other members of his household: his sister the princess, and the handful of her attendants who made it out alive.

Some of the knights were spread out to surround the party, and my hands twitched upon seeing their ornate saddles and sheaths.

But it was the king who caught my eye, sitting tall on his horse, his broad face creased with the weight of the last few years.

He was barely older than I, his parents murdered by the emperor.

Rumor had it the royal family had been large and gregarious, with a court full of song and entertainment.

Minstrels would perform for the royal family, then slowly make their way to our small household on the frontier, sharing gossip and stories and ballads alike.

Being surrounded by a large, loving family was everything I’d ever wanted, and as my two sisters liked to remind me, it was the farthest thing from my grasp. Their dowries would deplete the family funds, and I would be lucky to be wed at all.

The king’s entourage stopped in the courtyard, and my father went out to greet them, bowing as low as his arthritic knees would allow. I was not close enough to overhear their conversation, but I ducked behind the door in shame when my father gestured in our direction.

No money, no prospects, covered in flour, and I wasn’t even that good of a baker. My recipes did not stand out in any way. I would make a poor wife.

My sisters invaded the kitchen.

“All the loaves of bread, now!” Marguerite demanded.

“The cured meats, too!” Colette said, one step behind her, her skirts all a-flurry.

We could only afford to keep one household servant, and she had gone home for the evening, so I helped pile provisions into my sisters’ waiting arms. Even my sad little birthday cake, a round honeycake made with honey I received from a trade with local beekeepers, as we could not splurge on sugar, joined the baskets to be sent with the king’s entourage.

We decided that the root vegetables could stay, as well as the duck eggs, as they would prove difficult for the entourage to prepare and eat on the move.

I would have to go hunting for more game to replenish our stores.

“Will you come deliver the food, flour-face?” Marguerite asked. As the eldest, she took the lead in most household tasks, including humiliating me, and Colette was quick to follow her lead.

“Yes, will you come, Belle-Belle?” Colette sneered, making my father’s nickname for me sound like a taunt.

“No, sisters,” I said, turning away from them.

“I will bake another cake.” I bore them no ill will; when our mother died, and our aunt and uncle and cousins left, Marguerite tried to take over running the household on her own.

Colette dogged her steps, and the two of them bickered much over dwindling resources.

If they found enough time to tease me when their tasks were nearly done, well, at least the tasks to keep the estate being functional were being done.

Once they were gone, I turned back to the doorway, straining to catch a glimpse of the king.

His dark brown curls cascaded around his face, pulled back by a golden circlet.

According to the minstrels’ songs, his eyes were the verdant green of our land’s deepest forests.

His wide lips were rumored to smile more often than not, his laugh a hearty song of its own merit.

He glanced my way once. I froze, gripping my locket, afraid to catch his eye, afraid he would see a pale waif with white splotches all over her.

But his sister rode up, blocking my view.

Her hair was a web of dark brown braids, jewels glinting in them.

Though older than he by some years, she could not inherit the throne; our politics were always some centuries behind those of Faerie, and their first queen was only recently crowned, in my grandparents’ lifetimes.

The siblings’ devotion to one another was legendary, though. After their parents’ deaths, the king had publicly sworn an oath to protect his remaining family at all costs, tying his promise to his crown. If only someone would swear such an oath to me and my family.

Back to the pantry. I pulled out my ingredients once more: flour, honey, the cinnamon I had traded for two years ago, duck eggs, and leavening.

It would be a smaller cake than the first. But that was fine, as there were few left in our household.

I missed the days when we were a larger household, when I could play with my cousins, seek solace in my aunt’s arms, before they had all departed, claiming the frontier was too dangerous.

I especially missed my cousin Claude, who had been exactly my age and just as mischievous as I.

My aunt and uncle had been right about the dangers, though, and I had been lonely ever since.

I gathered later that we had offered hospitality for the night, and the king had politely rejected our offer, in order to travel on to the next nobleman’s villa.

It was the choice I would have made as well; I would not wish to be trapped here, but if I left under the only suitable condition available to me—marriage—that prospect held only dread as well.

A noblewoman with little dowry or land to my name, I could expect only to be a bargaining chip in someone else’s game, with small chance of finding the love I so craved.

What I truly wanted was a home, a family of my own, someone who would make me blush and smile the way I recalled it being between my parents, as well as my aunt and uncle. A house with walls that could barely hold all the laughter and joy that emanated from within.

But those things were never meant for me.

Until the decree came.