Renick
The room I’ve been given is larger than my cottage.
I stand in the doorway for a long time, just looking at it.
A bed with an actual frame and feather mattress, not a pallet on the floor.
Sheets that are made of the softest thread.
A pillow—one whole pillow, stuffed with feathers, not straw.
There’s a wardrobe, a washbasin, a window with glass in it.
Kammy and I nailed oilcloth over one of ours when it broke, because we couldn’t afford a new pane.
And here I am, standing in a room that doesn’t have one oily smudge.
I close the door behind me. Lock it. Lean my back against the wood and slide down until I’m sitting on the floor, because the bed feels like a betrayal and the floor is closer to what I deserve.
The bells on my hat rattle dully as my head drops forward.
“You’d love this, Kam,” I murmur to no one. “A real bed. You’d have bounced on it the second you walked in, you little terror.”
The silence answers me, cavernous. Permanent.
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes until stars burst behind my lids.
I will not think about the healer who could’ve saved her with curative tinctures.
I will not calculate how many tinctures the cost of that pillow could have purchased.
It will just end with me wanting to tear something apart with my bare hands. Wrecking this room.
Instead, I peel off the motley. Leaving the faded purple and black puddle on the stone floor like a shed skin. I stand in my threadbare underclothes and stare at my reflection in the glass window.
Hollow, dark circles carve beneath my eyes like thumbprints in wet clay. When I look in the wardrobe, I’m met with a row of new jester costumes.
I bark a laugh at the ceiling. It echoes off the stone and comes back to me sounding unhinged.
A servant knocks an hour later with food. More food than I’ve seen in months. Roast pheasant, bread with actual butter, some kind of stew that smells like herbs. A carafe of wine. A dish of honeyed figs.
I eat all of it. Every last scrap, hunched over the tray like an animal, barely chewing, my body overriding every principle I have.
The king’s food. Paid for with the taxes that killed my sister, and I’m shoveling it into my mouth with both hands because I am a hypocrite and a coward and so gods-damned hungry I could weep.
When it’s gone, I sit on the edge of the bed—the too-soft bed of betrayal—and wait for the guilt to hit as I chug the last of the wine to drown my pitiful existence, hoping to black out.
Yet oblivion doesn’t come. I lie on the crisp sheets that smell like lavender and stare at the ceiling and think about the princess instead.
I should be thinking about the king. About how to reach him, how to get close enough, when his guard drops. I should be running scenarios, scouting exits, cataloguing which servants carry keys and which corridors go unwatched. The tricks of my trade.
Instead, I’m thinking about the way her sultry lips twitched before she smiled. The almost unnoticeable delay, like she was fighting it. The sound of her giggle, so startled.
I’m thinking about how her gown was black in a court of crimson and gold.
I’m thinking about her eyes—the sadness in them, flowing in the same current of grief as mine. And I’m thinking about the tiny peek she sent me before I was led away.
How did such a frail and sorrowful thing wind up betrothed to that bastard of a king?
She is, for all purposes, already his—a possession displayed on a slightly smaller, slightly lower throne.
She belongs to the man I came here to kill, and I have no business lying in the dark pondering the exact shade of her eyes.
Dark. They were dark. Nearly black, lined with smoky kohl, and when she looked at me—
“Stop,” I mutter at the ceiling.
All of it churns my thoughts until dawn crawls through the window.
Fuck, I should’ve slept.
The glaring morning comes with another knock. Not a servant this time—the steward himself, the same wiry man who could barely choke out my name in the throne room.
“You are to report to the great hall every afternoon,” he tells me, in a tone that states what he thinks of me. “Princess Seravyn takes her afternoon repose there. The king will be present.”
Seravyn. Her name echoes around my skull like a sweet note.
The steward pauses, as if reconsidering whether the next part is worth wasting breath on me.
“You are to be appropriate. You are to remain at a respectful distance. You are not to address the princess directly unless she addresses you first. You are not to make jests about the crown, the court, or the king’s person.
You are not to touch the princess. You are not to—”
“Is there anything I am allowed to do?”
His lips thin further, which I hadn’t thought possible. “You are allowed,” he says, each word over enunciated, “to be a fool.”
At that, he leaves. I stare at the closed door.
A fool. Right. I rub the back of my neck. A fool who’s entire act consists of confessing I’m a fraud and eating stone with my face.
After I bathe, washing away what feels like years of dirt and filth, I re-enter the chamber to find fresh sheets and a new motley on the bed.
This one still doesn’t quite fit, although the bells don’t sound like a death rattle. I catch my reflection in the window glass and look exactly like what I am: a grieving man in a dead man’s costume. The only difference being that today, I’m the dead man, should I fail to make the princess laugh.
A memory of Kammy surfaces. The way she used to laugh at me—real laughter, that came from her belly. I never had to try with her. I just had to be myself, and she found something in that worth laughing at.
Something worth loving.
I don’t know how to do that for a princess in a black dress with sad eyes and a smile I can still feel like a punch to my chest.
But the alternative is being thrown out of the palace…or worse. And if either happens, I’ll never get to sink a blade into King Aldric.
So I straighten the ridiculous jester hat, grimace at the bells, and set off.
The great hall feels different than the throne room. Less crowded, quieter. Not as many courtiers, and the ones who are present are scattered in small clusters, murmuring over wine and food. Sunlight falls through tall, arched windows in long golden columns that make the dust motes look sacred.
And then I see her.
The Princess Seravyn is seated in a high-back chair near the window, seeming less formal with its plush cushions, positioned to catch the light. Her dark hair falls straight over one shoulder like a curtain of dark silk. She’s holding a book propped in her lap.
The king is across the hall at a long wood table with his advisors, maps spread before him, his goblet half-drained though it’s not even past midday.
He spots me and straightens abruptly, his sharp gaze sweeping down my clean motley, and there’s a slight curl to the edge of his mouth.
I can’t quite tell if it’s approval or loathing, and that alone tightens my jaw.
He returns his shrewd gaze to his maps and idly waves his hand, an impatient gesture, an order to get to my job. What I’m here to do.
Make his sad princess happy for him.
With measured steps, I approach her. My boots are clean today. A servant scrubbed them, which feels like another betrayal. Though I’m having a hard time loathing myself for it too much right now as I come close enough to the princess to make out the gentle curl of her lips.
Gods, she’s beautiful. A goddess from another realm, unearthly. Created by the divines themselves, I’m sure of it.
The fucking bells announce me with an annoying jangle, and she looks up from the book at the disruption.
And there it is again, that unfathomable feeling. Intense and terrifying. The floor tilts beneath me, gravity giving way, everything now sloping toward her.
“Your Highness,” I say, and immediately swear an oath beneath my breath. “Forgive me, I forgot. I’m not supposed to—” I shut my mouth and bow low.
The bow is clumsy, the loud jangle of the bells tempting me to rip the hat away. But as I straighten and dare to meet her gaze, I see the corner of her mouth lift a fraction higher.
It makes my chest too damn tight.
“What are you not supposed to do?” she asks me.
Hearing her voice… Seven hells, her voice is so lovely. Throaty and careful, as if every word is weighed before it’s released. It’s the first time I’ve heard her speak, and it hits somewhere behind my sternum with a jarring force.
I shake my head, trying to remember what I’d been saying before. Then, eyes darting a glance to the steward, I say, “I was told that I’m not allowed to address you directly unless you address me first, Your Highness.”
She tilts her head, just the slightest, studying me quizzically. “That would pose a problem, would it not? Seeing as you need to speak to me to perform your act.”
I rub the back of my neck, suppressing a grin. “It would, Your Highness.” I swallow, taking a bold step forward. “Or I could just stand here, if you’d prefer the spectacle of a man in an ill-fitting costume slowly dying of humiliation.” I shrug. “I suppose that’s also an option.”
She stares at me. Those dark eyes fixed on mine, unreadable. Then her lips purse in amusement. “You may address me, Jester.”
“Ren,” I say. “Just Ren.” I mimic the steward’s pained delivery of my name, and there it is again, the ghost of a smile on her lips. A hairline fracture in her porcelain skin, a flicker of warmth behind the frosted melancholy.
“Ren,” she says in agreement, and my pulse jumps in my throat at hearing my name on her sultry lips.
Fuck—me.
I glance over to the king. He’s absorbed in his maps, gesturing at something with his goblet, paying us no mind. I look back at her. “Do you want me to be funny, Princess?”
Her dark eyebrow arches. “Can you be?”
A low chuckle escapes me, and I clear my throat. “I guess that remains to be seen,” I say, lowering my voice further. “But as I am here to serve you, Your Highness, please tell me what you most want of me.”
The silence between us stretches. Her fingers tighten on the book in her lap, and there’s a shift behind her eyes. “No one has asked me what I want since I arrived.”
Her words are quiet, controlled. But beneath them I hear a breathy tremor, and my chest aches, a sudden pang that’s almost physical.
Standing here in this bright hall, looking at this girl who carries her sadness like a crown heavier than the silver one in her hair, I recognize a familiar thing in her eyes.
Someone who has lost everything, and is still expected to perform.
“Well,” I say, and my voice comes out softer than I intend. “I’m asking.”
She holds my gaze for an excruciating beat. She doesn’t let her eyes fall to my scar, not once, before she eventually looks down at the book in her hands. Angels above, I do my damnedest to fix my gaze on her face, and not the enticing swell of her breasts pushing above her laced bodice.
“Then make me forget where I am, Jester,” she says. “Even if only for a moment. Read to me.” She holds out the book.
A pit opens up in my stomach, and I frown.
She bites the corner of her lip, and I try not to stare directly at her mouth.
“Oh,” she says, setting the book aside, kind enough not to point out the fact that I might not be able to read.
“That book is quite boring, anyway. Tell me a story instead. I’m sure you have many good ones.
” She offers another frail, almost smile.
“As jokes seem to get vegetables thrown at your head.”
I’ll tell her any story she wants, if only to keep her speaking. Her words land in my chest and stay there. Warm. Aching. A command and a confession uttered in the same breath. I’d rather listen to her lovely voice all day.
I remove my hat, run a hand through my messy hair, then nod. I know what it’s like to want to disappear. And I know that sometimes the only antidote to a world that insists on being terrible is someone willing to tell you the truth about how terrible it is, and make you laugh about it anyway.
I crouch before her, forearms braced on my knees. Not daring to take a seat on the steps. “Very well,” I say, and think for a moment. A sharp laugh springs free as I recall the time Kammy made an enemy of a crow.
“My little sister had this ribbon,” I begin the story.
“A red one that she wore in her hair every day. She liked to read under our hawthorn tree, and one afternoon a crow perched on one of the limbs above her. Big bastard.” I lean forward, gesturing with my hands how this beast of a crow swooped down and launched an attack to steal my sister’s hair ribbon.
Seravyn is watching me, her large dark eyes soft.
I tell her about how Kammy ran to the field to find me, ranting about how this devil crow had stolen her ribbon. And how I promised her I’d buy her a new one, but that just wouldn’t do for Kammy. She declared war on the crow.
A sound escapes the princess at this, a breath caught between surprise and a laugh.
“She spent the next two days leaving bread crusts on the fence post,” I continue the story. “To which I told her she was only rewarding her thief. Ah, but she claimed she was negotiating. By the end of the week, the crow ate all the bread, but left behind a button on the post.”
I pause here, the ache in my chest flaring at the memory. “She never got her ribbon back, but she kept that button in her pocket every day after.”
The princess doesn’t laugh, but her smile is sweet as her dark eyes track my face, my hands, the way I gesture when I talk.
“Do you know what ever became of the crow?” she asks with genuine interest.
I scrub a hand through my hair before replacing the jester hat. “I can only imagine,” I say, then meet her eyes. “I’d like to believe it’s still out there somewhere, flying around with my sister’s ribbon, trailing red silk through the trees.”
A swallow slips along the slender column of her throat, her eyes sheening as they hold mine. And her beautiful smile spears me through.
Across the hall, the king looks up from his maps, his sharp gaze assessing the princess smiling. I wait to see the satisfaction light his features, but there’s an edge there. Some emptiness behind his eyes, wanting. Hungry.
He raises his goblet to me, his chin nodding in approval, yet there’s something menacing behind his cool eyes.
I bow my head to him.
Before I depart from Princess Seravyn, I give her the quickest wink. She looks away, to her handmaiden, fast enough she might have missed it—
Only I swear to the gods, I see a blush sweep through her skin, and it speeds my pulse with a dangerous rhythm. Daring me with a very bad idea.
But what’s a bad idea to a walking dead man?
I’ve had worse.