Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
I worry for him, darling. Since returning from Cyngalon he has
been distracted, and fearful. His nightmares are worse than ever. I
worry he is still too young, too gold-hearted for whatever he saw
there.
Pray, come home to us. Leave the unrest. Come home to your son,
and your daughter. Come home to me.
Undated personal letter penned
by Her Majesty Queen Ena of Khaim: 659-693 A.S.
TWENTY-FOUR
Meilyr had kissed him. Meilyr had kissed him.
Osian tried not to want the taste to linger. Tried to push back the storm of feelings that ripped at his walls, threatening to tear him to pieces.
Meilyr had kissed him—
Stop. Meilyr had kissed him, but only to save them from discovery. He had to bury it with everything else, in the depths of the watery grave of his heart. Meilyr had kissed him, but that was all: a once-unimagined taste of spirit-nectar. A soul-changing taste he could never have again.
Because Meilyr had kissed him, but Meilyr did not want him.
Could never want him. There were some things that could not be, some agonies that ran too deep; Osian was the physical embodiment of all of that pain for Meilyr, and always would be.
He had to accept that – did, even as his heart and his body…
Gods, would it be worse now? To live with that taste burned into his memory – the feeling of Meilyr grabbing him and throwing their mouths together so… fiercely. Pulling him close, fingers in his hair. His tongue slipping past Osian’s lips. The press of his body, as though—
Enough.
Osian put his clenched fist firmly on the stone wall behind the basin, letting the water drip from his face and hair. That was enough. It would die with him, after it had slowly killed him, the inevitable death he should have seen coming in that street when he had looked up and…
Perhaps it was what he deserved.
At least Meilyr had not seemed too shaken. All this must be more than unbearable for him – utterly, unspeakably unbearable – but Osian would find a way to keep him safe.
That was all that mattered.
Deryn had taken time off, abruptly. Meilyr only hoped she was all right.
Dressed and readied by Parr and Maitane, he muddled his way through Harlan’s lessons. By lunchtime, his head might as well have been stuffed with wool, incapable of concentration to the point where he was actually ravenous.
All he had stomached that morning was a snatched mouthful of raw camelia, fuchsia and sword lily: not a well-rounded breakfast, but he had not had time to make anything else with them. The gardens still buzzed in his mouth, making it even harder to focus.
Someone with access to the gardens had killed Kenelm Radnor, and almost certainly Lord Leighton as well. He had to do whatever he could.
‘Right.’ Harlan closed the history book from under Meilyr’s hands. ‘I would get more sense from your horse today. We will continue tomorrow.’
Faina took his arm as he reached the doors of the reading rooms. ‘Lunch?’
‘Please,’ Meilyr said. ‘If you are offering.’
‘More demand than offer. Come on, Demelza will be here in a moment, then we can all go together. Let me put these away.’
‘Would you like a hand?’
‘Always, but I could not possibly ask such a thing of you with our dear steward nearby.’ She winked scandalously, and Meilyr bit back a laugh. ‘No,’ she continued, ‘you catch some air and I’ll be right out. I’m very pleased with this development, though.’
‘What development?’
‘I made an inappropriate comment about hands and it’s the first I’ve seen you smile today.’ She bowed dramatically and shot him a grin, before striding towards her office.
Meilyr’s mouth tugged again. It was easy around her.
Pedr followed as he stepped out of the network of reading rooms. The knight’s near-constant presence was still tangible but had eased with time.
Today, however, they felt very… present.
Perhaps it was only Meilyr’s nerves. The foolish panic that Pedr knew, that Harlan knew, that everyone knew, as though him kissing the prince was somehow the biggest scandal Eascild had to offer.
Two crownsworn turned the corner ahead, very close to him. He stepped aside reflexively, so saw as one of them forcibly clipped Pedr in the shoulder.
The offending crownsworn turned on their heel to take their next strides backwards, openly glaring at the knight, until the second guard pulled them back into step.
Meilyr moved after them, bursting with protest. But Pedr put their arm before him, watching the two depart.
‘They did that on purpose,’ Meilyr said. ‘That was—’
‘Not worth the breath,’ said Pedr. They turned to wait for him to continue walking.
‘Highness Cadogan…’ Demelza’s greeting slowed as she followed his gaze. ‘Is everything all right?’
He glanced once more at Pedr. ‘Yes, Highness. Thank you. Lady Faina is—’
‘Here!’ Faina swept out of the reading rooms, dusting her skirts of imaginary dirt. ‘Apologies – my, what did I miss?’
‘Nothing,’ Meilyr said, smile no longer genuine. ‘Just a misunderstanding.’
Osian stored the practice sword and re-belted his own. ‘So, someone is spreading rumours.’
‘It would seem that way.’ Blythe breathed hard, flexing her broad shoulders. ‘Or they’ve come to the conclusion themselves.’
That seemed less likely, but either way, the Cyngaleg populace now whispered of vengeful spirits: a force risen from legend to make Khaim pay. If they were not careful, that could be a torch to a hill of dried kindling.
‘We’ll do what we can to halt the spread,’ Blythe said. ‘Without force, of course.’
They left the training grounds side by side, and Osian tried not to wonder if Meilyr had already made his way from the reading rooms. The day was bright, and neither of them was the type to miss a morning.
He needed to see him, soon, to know he was all right.
Sunlight ignited the puddles in the courtyard as they strode out of the shadows, the cobbles ringing with the castle’s morning sounds.
‘Where to next, Majesty?’ Blythe asked.
To see him, Osian wanted to say. ‘To the bridge,’ he said, ‘to deal with the latest shipments heading for Sanford. Then lunch.’ Hopefully Meilyr would join him.
Hopefully he felt comfortable enough. The afternoon would be for attempting to salvage any hope of peace with Flintwick March – Sanford, as well.
The former had had their heir murdered on Principality soil, and had withdrawn their seat from the Council entirely.
Had threatened worse. Meanwhile, Sanford had succumbed to in-fighting over leadership, making their hold over imports and exports through the Marches even more precarious.
The king had ordered a strengthening of Eascild’s defences in response. Osian had warned against sending troops from Khaim, but perhaps that too was only a matter of time.
There was a small commotion towards the gatehouse: raised voices and movement. Osian changed trajectory towards it, Blythe only a step behind. Someone was being dragged into the courtyard by two crownsworn, their head bleeding.
‘Hold! What happened?’
‘We were making our rounds in town and they resisted a search,’ one of the crownsworn said, expression shifting from self-assured resolve to hesitance at Osian’s presence. ‘He had something suspicious on him, Majesty.’
‘Why were they searched?’
They were clearly of the peasantry, garb simple but not overly worn. Their face was split in two places, heavily lined, their hair grey. Even hanging limp in the crownsworn’s hold, it was clear they had been weeping.
‘What was the charge?’
Both crownsworn faltered slightly. ‘Majesty,’ the other began. Nash, their name was. ‘Everything happening—’
‘Does not give you reason to rough-hand townsfolk. What was the charge?’
The courtyard was not empty; the event rolled out like ripples in a pool, stilling all else.
‘They had something suspicious on them, Majesty,’ the first repeated. Levett – Levett, who was on the list of crownsworn Blythe and Pedr had secured for Osian. ‘Something for sorcery, certainly – look.’ Levett held out the item in question: mulchy and earthy, bleeding out of brown paper.
Osian knew it was Meilyr who approached before the sound of his footfall on the cobbles, before he swept into sight, fear burning away to purpose, his freckle-dusted cheeks lightly flushed. ‘Mister Bevan?’ he asked, shocked.
Mister Bevan stirred in the crownsworn’s hold. ‘Mast… Meil…’
‘You know them?’ Osian bit back the dread that came from Meilyr yet again being here, in the middle of danger.
‘Yes,’ Meilyr said, ‘and that is a poultice – for a summer rash. I had it made for him.’
‘Master… Meilyr…’
Osian took the offending item. Its herbal tang struck his throat, and he turned it over for show: Meilyr would not lie. ‘Care to explain again?’
Nash looked at Levett, panicked.
‘That’s no proof,’ Levett said, pointedly glancing at Meilyr. ‘It looks like something for a spell. When we asked him to hand it over, he refused.’
Mister Bevan strained weakly to see Meilyr and mumbled through broken lips, ‘They… took our savings. All I had for Sioned… Master Meilyr—’
‘You – you liar!’ Levett shoved Bevan, hard, and he fell to the cobbles.
Meilyr moved to shield him as Osian caught the crownsworn’s wrist.
‘Hold! Is that true, Levett? Nash?’
A panicked pause as Levett recalculated the situation. ‘M… Majesty—’
‘Did you?’
Levett’s gaze flitted nervously. Nash had frozen. ‘Majesty,’ Levett murmured, ‘these people – they’re always late on taxes, and everyone knows they’re to blame for all this.’ Another glance at Meilyr.
‘So you relieved this family of their coin, robbing them like common thieves. Then what did you do?’
‘No, that’s not what happened!’
‘Blythe, see this man taken for medical care.’ He caught sight of more of his knights towards the training grounds. ‘Garrick, Bada! Escort these two to the holding of the dungeons and await me there.’
‘Majesty – no, please, they’re only Denelanders!’
‘They are our people, ours. The oaths you swore to the Crown, you swore to all its people, and you have broken those oaths today. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Garrick, Bada, now.’
The knights moved with detached urgency, and Levett and Nash thankfully went without a struggle.
Blythe stepped in briskly to help Meilyr steady the beaten man to his feet, and Meilyr’s eyes met Osian’s. It was a look Osian had to turn away from, tearing himself free like the tide from the moon.
The courtyard returned smartly to business, and Osian – the ruined poultice weeping through his clenched fingers – decided it would be two bells, at best, before the entirety of Eascild Castle knew what had happened here.