Seravyn
There has been talk all throughout the palace, servants and courtiers whispering about the lords of the eastern provinces refusing to pay the latest tax levy.
A Lord Bramwich chief among them, they say.
There are even rumors of revolt. Aldric’s advisors have been pacing the corridors, speaking in hushed, urgent tones.
It’s apparently being taken seriously enough that the king has been summoned to a series of daily councils. Not that I wish for any war or hardship on the people, but I admit that, selfishly, I’m relieved the king won’t be around to hover, offering a small measure of reprieve and time to myself.
At least I thought so, until the steward enters the garden room, a look of annoyance on his face for having to search me out. “I have a message from King Aldric, Your Highness.”
I keep my expression impartial, although my pulse thumps loud in my ears. “Go ahead,” I urge him.
“The king commands that you continue your afternoons entertained by the jester,” he says. “His Majesty insists that your happiness remain a priority, as he desires to have a smiling, happy queen for his wedding.”
The reminder of the upcoming wedding date makes my stomach roil. My happiness, as if it’s a garment that can be fitted. As if this king—this callous, vain king has any concept of what my happiness might look like.
“Fine,” I say, picking up my book. “If this is His Majesty’s wish, I’ll receive the jester in here.”
The steward clasps his hands together and clears his throat. “Here, Your Highness?”
I think about the great hall, with the courtiers and their watchful eyes, and the throne room’s cold, echoing grandeur. Every moment in either I’ve felt observed, even when Aldric’s attention wandered.
“Yes, here in the garden room,” I confirm. “I prefer the light here, and the view. It’s where my happiness might have the opportunity to bloom.”
The steward blinks, hesitating, clearly weighing whether this falls within the bounds of his instructions. Then he nods, unwilling to deny the princess her wishes. “Very well, Your Highness.”
After he departs, I try to focus on the book, but I can’t concentrate on a single word. A restlessness stirs in my chest, some nervous flutter provokes my belly, and I wonder if I’ve just made a mistake.
I glance over at Isolde. She’s sitting on a lounge, her attention on her own book in her hands. She says nothing, simply raises an eyebrow without looking up.
“I prefer the private, sun-warmed chamber,” I say aloud, squaring my shoulders.
“The glass doors open onto the garden, and I have to keep an eye on it.” I tend this part of the garden myself, the area where the wolfsbane and nightshade grow, poisonous and patient.
“It’s where I feel most myself,” I add, her silence forcing me to validate my decision.
My pulse quickens as I turn toward Isolde. “You think I’m being improper for this court.”
She flips a page slowly. “You are simply choosing a space for your comfort, no?” she says without looking up.
“Exactly.” I turn forward. “Besides, you’ll be here.” I flip a page in my own book. “It’s not as though I requested to receive the jester alone.”
“Precisely,” she agrees, and I can hear the smile in her voice.
I say nothing more, letting the silence stretch. Thinking about the pure love and adoration that shone for his sister as he told her story, the grief I felt buried just beneath, and how it made my heart ache.
The way he sent me a wink—how that one small gesture sent my heart racing.
I put it all out of my mind until Ren arrives later in the afternoon. I hear him before he enters, his bells jangling down the corridor like a warning.
When he steps through the door, he abruptly stops.
Looks around the garden room, taking in the warm stone walls, the cushioned window seat where I’m curled with my book, the glass doors standing open to the garden beyond.
Sunlight pours through in gold and green, filtered through the climbing vines, and the air smells like earth and growing things and something darker beneath, the faint bitter sweetness of the nightshade in bloom.
Ren first bows to me, then nods in acknowledgement to Isolde.
He hovers in the threshold, leaning a shoulder against the doorpost. I can’t help but take in his toned build, that I know is strong despite his leanness.
It’s in the corded tension held there, the will not to break.
Like if he gets his hands on the thing he wants most, he’d hold on. Never let go.
And the scar that runs through his eye, his beautifully chiseled features it doesn’t detract from but rather seems to emphasize. It makes him look far too dangerous despite the colorful motley.
“You may enter,” I say in a low voice, giving him permission. “And address me directly,” I add, trying to keep the smile from tipping my mouth.
He does so, striding into the sun-lit room. “This is different,” he says as he glances around.
“The king is occupied with matters of state,” I say, setting my book aside. “I’ve been given latitude to choose a location for our…” I stumble, searching for the right word. “Entertainment.”
There’s the slightest twitch of his lips. “Entertainment,” he repeats, and the corner of his mouth pulls into a grin. “That’s a generous word for it.”
“I’m a generous princess.”
The look he gives me—half amused, half knowing, like a secret—makes the back of my neck flush. I almost reach for the book again, just to give my hands something to do.
His eyes sweep the room once more before settling on me with an intensity that makes me uneasy.
Then he wanders the room, restless in that contained, coiled way of his, like he’s never quite comfortable in any room of this palace.
He pauses at the glass doors, looking out into the garden.
The wolfsbane grows tall along the wall, its violet spires trembling in the breeze, and beside it the belladonna hangs heavy with dark, glossy berries.
“This is, uh…an interesting garden,” Ren says.
I tilt my head. “I happen to find it beautiful.”
“Beautiful,” he echoes, “and deeply unsettling.”
“Unsettling…” I say questioningly.
“As most beautiful things are.” He turns to look at me, and I feel the weight of his eyes as his gaze skims my face.
I hold his gaze, because looking away would be some kind of an admission. “Please sit,” I finally say, nodding to the cushioned bench near the window, a careful distance from me.
He takes a seat, and the silence presses against me. I peek over at Isolde, who is minding her own business. “Would you like tea?”
He only nods.
I pour him a cup, setting it near mine on the table.
“A princess serving a jester,” he remarks, reaching for his cup.
“Nonsense,” I say, refreshing my own. “I like doing things myself, not always having someone loitering around.”
He takes a sip of tea before placing the cup on the table tray.
The space feels different with him here.
In the great hall, there were explicit rules.
The king’s presence, the court’s gaze, the invisible perimeter of propriety that kept us at arm’s length.
Here, in this small, intimate room with the garden breathing through the open doors, the rules feel thinner. Permeable.
“Tell me something,” I say, crossing my legs.
“What most would you like to hear?”
“I don’t know. Something about this place, this kingdom. What it’s like outside these walls.”
He’s quiet for a moment, light and dark eyes studying me. Then he leans back against the wall, stretching his long legs out. His hat tips askew.
“What it’s like outside these walls,” he repeats, casting me a tentative glance. “All right, Your Highness. I can offer you that.”
Then he tells me about the village markets.
The chaos of them, the shouting merchants, the way the fishmonger’s wife sings to her eels as she guts them.
He tells me about the orchards south of his village, how in autumn the air turns so sweet with rotting apples that you can taste it on your tongue.
He tells me about Kammy—how she once spent an entire afternoon trying to teach a stray cat to sit, growing frustrated while the cat stared at her with total disdain, and how she finally gave it a name, and it never left their cottage grounds afterward.
I laugh. Properly. Not a surprised giggle but a real laugh, warm and full, rising from somewhere deep in my belly that I’d forgotten existed. It surprises me so completely that I press a hand to my mouth.
Ren is watching me with an expression I can’t quite name, something between surprise and captivation. He removes his hat and runs a hand through his dark, untidy hair. “I now see why one might be persuaded to take up the occupation of jester,” he says.
I feel some satisfaction in him admitting that he’s not one, that I knew this the moment I laid eyes on him. I lower my hand to my lap. “And why is that?”
“Wearing a ridiculous outfit and acting a fool is no bother,” he says, looking at me, “not when one gets to hear the sweetest laugh, Princess.”
I look away. Taking a measured breath, I compose myself. “Your sister, Kammy. She sounds wonderful,” I say quietly.
“She was,” he says, and I don’t miss the past tense, or how his features fall.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I offer, feeling at a loss as to how to ease his grief.
“She was the best person I knew.” His mouth tugs up slightly, but I can still register the raw anguish beneath.
The silence that follows doesn’t feel empty. It’s thick with a certain intimacy—two people who have experienced loss without needing to explain it.
It makes me want to be just as honest with him, to tell him about my mother, my home. About the courtyard, the girl I left behind, and how my father sold me off. Yet it doesn’t quite seem to compare to his loss.
Instead, I reach for my tea at the same time he reaches for his—
And our hands collide.
The cup tips, spilling tea to the floor.
“Gods-dammit,” he mutters.
“It’s nothing,” I say, waving it off. But he’s already off the bench, crouched on the stone floor, searching for something to mop the spilled tea.
“Ren, please…”
At this, he looks up at me, his eyes so intense, so open—but it’s not until I feel the warmth of his skin on mine that I realize I’ve grabbed his hand.
Ever so slightly, his hand turns, his fingers make contact with mine.
They’re rough, calloused from a life of labor.
And it makes me curious about what he did before he came here to be a jester.
The garden whispers through the open doors, warm and green and heavy with the scent of nightshade, and the room narrows to the point where our skin touches.
It’s just a touch, a graze, barely a breath of contact—but it quickens my pulse.
Neither of us moves for a spell, then we both pull away at once.
I glance around, finding Isolde across the garden room, too deeply invested in her book. Ren places the cup back on the table tray. He rises to his feet, his gaze cast on the floor where the puddle of tea still stains the stone.
I can feel my pulse in my fingertips. My hand still buzzing from his touch.
“Apologies, Your Highness,” he murmurs, his voice rougher now.
“Sera,” I hear myself say.
He looks at me. Those arresting eyes startled, searching.
“When we’re here,” I say, and my voice is steadier than I feel. “When it’s just us, I’d prefer for you to use my name, Ren. It’s nice to feel normal sometimes.”
A long beat pulls taut in the air between us.
The bells on his discarded hat catch the sunlight from where he tossed it on the bench, and the garden whispers with its poisonous life, and he—this man with a dangerous scar, whose intensity withers most others—looks at me the way he looked at me in the throne room: like he’s just been struck.
“All right.” He swallows. “Sera.”
My name in his mouth is a sound I’ll think about tonight, alone in my chambers, with the tally marks hidden in my wardrobe and the wolfsbane and belladonna growing wild outside my window.
I will think about his rough fingers against my skin.
About the warmth of his skin beneath my touch.
Isolde will later ask me, when she comes to undo my hair: “How was your jester today?”
And I will say, “Fine. He told a story about a cat.”
And she will look at me with those sharp, knowing eyes and say nothing, because she will see the flush I can’t quite hide.
I’ll add another scratch to the wardrobe to strike through the newest mark.
Returning the tally back to zero.
Because right now, as Ren meets my eyes, with my name still soft on his full lips, his mouth tips into a beautiful smile that reveals a dimple.
And against my will, abandoning my desire to remain unmoved, I smile back.