Chapter 8
A Sister’s Scruples
T AM! Tam! Taaam, problem! Big problem!” Katarina burst into her brother’s chamber, her long red hair flying around her.
Tam had been in the middle of tying a black silk cravat around his throat. He was only donning it because of his sister’s coronation that afternoon. So he was a mite startled by her presence in the keep—she should have been at the castle preparing.
He turned away from the mirror. “What’s wrong?” What could have prompted her impromptu visit on one of the most important days of her life?
“Da wants to work as the royal cook again when he retires from the dukedom!”
Tam stared blankly at his sister. Was she jesting?
He continued gaping into her wide, desperate golden eyes.
No. No, she was not.
“Kat, don’t you have hundreds of people at your castle waiting for you to be crowned today?”
“Yeah! They can wait! Good Gods, you know I love Da and his cooking, but he would technically be my employee and we both know he has an opinion about everything!” Kat started pacing frantically.
Tam noted her untucked cream tunic and loose trousers. “Did you come here wearing your sleep clothes?”
“Not important right now!” she barked in response.
“Kat, are you maybe overreacting to this because you’re nervous about officially becoming queen?”
“Tell me, how would you respond if Da skipped on over to you and said he wanted to be your cook? Actually, that’s a great idea! Can you tell him you’ll hire him?”
“We still have Raymond.”
“Raymond’s going to retire in the next five years and you know it!”
Tam put his hands on his hips and stared at his sister flatly. “Kat… just tell him no, or ask Mum to convince him that he should spend his time traveling with her, or helping with the boys.”
“Right… right… But Mum likes her alone time! If she decides it’s a marvelous idea, I’m done for!”
“Kat, he’d be busy all day as the Royal Cook. You really wouldn’t have to see him.” Tam turned back to the mirror to take another run at tying the cravat that he loathed passionately.
“It’s about boundaries, Tam! You of all people should understand that!”
“While I do, I’m not sure you’re familiar with the concept. Especially given how you barged into my room without knocking.”
The future queen of Daxaria scowled. “You know, I’m going to fill Mum and Da’s heads with all kinds of helpful ideas while you’re away. Suggest things like how Da should be the cook here and if Mum wants a granddaughter so badly, she should start looking for your future wife herself to save you the headache.”
“You honestly think Mum hasn’t contrived a bunch of surprise dates already? I know you’re not the sharpest sword in the armory, but do you not know our mother at all?”
“Did she really?” Kat snorted, ignoring her brother’s insult. “Gods, why didn’t I hear about that?”
“Because you’d be annoying about it if you did. Now, go back to your castle. Get in a dress—or uniform, I don’t care—and go become queen. Daxaria won’t set itself on fire without your help.” Finishing with the cravat, Tam steered his sister toward the door.
“Tam, what if I’m terrible at this?”
“You’re walking perfectly fine on your own.”
“No, I’m serious.” Kat halted and spun round to look in her brother’s eyes again. It was rare for the infamous wild woman to look so uncertain.
Tam’s arms dropped to his sides as he let out a long breath, his attitude softening. “Kat, you’ll be surrounded by the inner council, and they will have Daxaria’s best interests at heart, and I’m sure your husband will curb your more… impulsive actions when it comes to acting as queen.”
“You’d think that,” Kat grumbled. “But that’s the problem with having a husband who is outrageously in love with me. I’m relatively certain that if I wanted to pass a law that said people had to walk on their hands, he’d let me.”
Normally Tam would be insulting her and making sarcastic remarks about her marriage in response to his sister’s words, but the way Kat slumped forward… she seemed like a child terrified to get on a horse for the first time.
“I’m glad you’re uncertain—”
“ Thanks! ” Kat sniped, openly offended.
Tam let out a snort and shook his head. “Kat, it means you’re taking this seriously and aren’t being cavalier about this responsibility. You are in charge of everyone’s well-being now, and while I know you’re happy you get to protect everyone, it is going to be hard. There are going to be a lot of difficult choices. It’s not a bad thing to look to others for input and advice. You’ll get the hang of it. Just don’t ever stop taking time to self-reflect.”
Kat stared at her brother quietly for a long while. “Gods, you sound like such an old man.”
Tam rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Right. I’m absolutely convincing Da to work as the royal cook before I go. Now get out.”
Kat stuck her tongue out at her brother and whirled back around toward the door, her bout of vulnerability already past.
“Oh! How has it been the past month working with Eli?”
Tam moved his hands to his pockets as he considered how best to answer… The truth was, Eli had barely been around. He had more or less restricted her to working on the contributions the dukedom would make to the coronation, which had her running errands in Austice: receiving moonshine deliveries, helping Mr. Howard categorize gifts sent by noble families who couldn’t attend, and so forth. Ever since he had overheard Eli’s vehement desire to get as far from his family as possible, he’d done his best to ensure she didn’t have to deal with them.
Which also helped keep her gender a secret. Annika Ashowan herself was busy, and whenever Eli was around, Tam ensured she was far away and that the duchess’s reading glasses—the ones she swore she didn’t really need—went missing every now and again. Really, he just had to help keep her secret until they were on a boat to Zinfera. Then Tam could rest a little before venturing into the foreign empire.
“Hello? Did you hear me? Are you ignoring me?”
Kat interrupted Tam’s spiraling thoughts, forcing him back to the present. “Eli’s fine, but there’s no sense in getting attached. He’s going to set off on his own once we return from Zinfera.”
With a sigh, Kat reached out, intending to muss her brother’s long, straight, silky black hair, only he batted her hand away easily.
“You’re going to die alone at this rate. You know that, right?”
Tam gave a groaning sigh and resumed shoving his sister out of his room. “Go get crowned. Or don’t, but at the very least, go make sure your children aren’t doing something horrendous to the guests.”
“Oyy! I left my boys in perfectly capable hands!”
“No one has hands capable enough to handle your boys. Go save whoever you dumped them on. I’ll see you later.” Tam put a little more muscle into his final shove, getting Kat out the door.
Kat cackled, but when she straightened and looked back at her brother who had braced his arms against the doorway blocking her from reentering, she said, “Thanks, Tam. I… I really am glad you’re going to be nearby while I rule. At least I know one person around me won’t be afraid to tell me when I’m being a dumb-arse.”
“You’re always a dumb-arse. Never forget it.”
Kat flipped her middle finger in the air then skipped down the corridor, hands clasped behind her back.
Tam watched her retreat, shaking his head but smiling.
Daxaria was about to experience its most chaotic queen ever: a woman whose magical abilities helped her see in the dark; one who had inhuman strength, required little to no sleep, could absorb magical power directed at her, and could ingest nearly all poisons unharmed. And if she ever absorbed too much power? She could redistribute her power to enhance the capabilities of those nearby. That was all before mentioning her familiar, Pina. The cat ruled the heart of a stone golem, an ancient beast of the earth that guarded the kingdom by standing day and night out in the Alcide Sea—not to mention the heart, body, and soul of Cleophus Miller, the kingdom of Troivack’s most legendary knight. The man had been made a diplomat to prevent him from abandoning Troivack entirely in his efforts to stay close to Katarina’s cat familiar in Daxaria.
Ah… Kat’s going to be an absolute menace to good society.
Tam leaned his shoulder against the doorframe to his room. His cravat was already pressing uncomfortably against his throat.
“Lord Tam.”
Tam jumped at the sound of his assistant’s voice, and half stumbled into his door frame, nearly thunking his head against solid wood. “Good Gods! How do you do that?”
Eli stared, nonplussed. “Do what?”
“I can normally sense anyone approaching me, but with you…” Tam willed his heart to resume a healthier beat.
Eli ignored Tam’s exasperation and plunged on, business as usual. “Lord Tam, everything is finished for the preparations for both the coronation and our departure tomorrow morning.”
“Wonderful. Thank you for doing that. You should go get ready for tonight now. Maybe have a cup of wine or moonshine before you go. If I know my nephews, things are going to take a lot longer if they’re present for the ceremony, so best to be relaxed going in.” While Tam had been talking, he loosened the knot from his throat with a subtle sigh of relief, and so didn’t see the look of stricken horror on Eli’s face until he looked up. “What’s wrong?”
“Why would I be expected to go to the coronation?”
Tam stared dumbfounded. “Because you’re my assistant. I need assistance in crowded, formal events more than any other time in my life.”
“But why?”
The desperate pleading in Eli’s tone mixed with her reluctance made Tam smile wryly. “Because I’m twenty-eight years old, a future viscount, possibly a future duke, and I don’t have a betrothed. I want to be able to escape the reception without having to deal with any of the nobles who think I should marry their daughters, nieces, sisters… You get the picture, I hope.”
“What can I do about it?” Eli asked with a grimace.
Tam bit back a laugh. He had come to know his assistant was wildly capable of hiding her true thoughts and emotions, but when it was just the two of them, she was marvelously upfront in her distaste for all manner of things.
“You, my dear assistant,” Tam started while reaching out to rest his hands on Eli’s shoulders. He felt her tense and noticed her cheeks turn a subtle shade of pink, but he ignored it when she didn’t move away. “You are going to keep talking to me about the most boring things imaginable to chase away any woman that gets within three strides of me. If an ambitious father is trying to talk to me, I need you to describe the most disgusting foods and smells you’ve ever experienced in your life.”
Eli scowled. “I’m not going to scare away women and their family members for you.”
Tam raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Oh? Have it your way then. But you still have to come tonight.”
He turned to his chamber without another look back, though he had the keen sense that Eli had opened her mouth to object further.
After closing the door with his heel, Tam waited and listened.
Sure enough, he heard soft muttering: “I don’t even have anything to wear. The lout can repel women just with his awkward personality…”
He grinned and then called out, “Don’t worry, I already had clothes sent to your chamber!”
Eli didn’t speak again. Tam took it to mean that she had cast a withering stare at the door and then had gone to see if he had, in fact, prepared proper clothes for her to wear that evening.
Making his way over to the floor-length, gold-rimmed mirror in his room, Tam plucked up the black jacket he had draped over one of the mirror’s posts and slipped it on, humming a tune to himself.
As much as he hated to admit it, it was fun having someone at his side who could be candid with him, especially when they wanted less than nothing from him.
“I wonder if Eli has heard the new version of our rumors yet…” Tam chuckled to himself as he imagined her trying to act unbothered by the outrageous turn their planted gossip had taken.
Who knows? Maybe tonight won’t be as awful as I thought.