21. Lilias
Lilias
ON YOUR OWN
It takes a lot of buckets to fill a bath.
I feel like I’ve already made at least twenty trips to and from the kitchen, and the massive basin in the bathing room is still only half full. I sigh, then bend down to pick up the empty buckets. At this rate, the water will be cold again by the time I’m done.
There’s a knock on the door. I freeze; my heart beats inside my throat. Is it Gerard, come to tell me Zarek has left?
Is it Zarek?
“Lilias?” a woman calls. “May I come in?”
Anura. I drop the buckets and cross my arms over my chest. Anura knocks again.
I huff. My back aches from carrying buckets of steaming water. And from riding across half of Vsenrog to pass on a desperate message that my brother completely ignored.
Well, he didn’t completely ignore it, my mind whispers. He just thought the one marrying for political gain should be me, not him.
“Please?” Anura calls from the other side of the door.
“Fine,” I say.
The door opens, and Anura comes in. She’s carrying two steaming buckets.
Great. Even Anura thinks I’m incapable of filling my own bath.
“I can do that,” I snap.
“I know,” she replies. “But it’s a lot to do on your own.”
She gives me an apologetic smile, which I ignore. I grab my empty buckets and storm off to the kitchen, but she follows me. Two trips later, the bath is full. Steam swirls against the room’s tiled walls and fogs the windows.
And it’s getting very awkward trying to ignore Anura.
I sigh, set down my empty buckets, and turn to her.
“Thank you,” I say grudgingly.
She gives me another small smile.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I should have told you.”
Well, yes. I cross my arms over my chest again and wait.
“Neither of us wanted you to have to marry the snake,” she continues. “I’m sorry we didn’t do more to stop it. And, really, it’s not too late to undo it.”
I open my mouth to say it’s actually far too late for that, but I think better of it and say nothing. Anura shrugs.
“We didn’t tell anyone, to be honest,” she says. “I didn’t even tell my mother.”
She’s staring at the empty buckets on the tile floor now, and something tightens in my chest. I love Anura’s mother. As a child, I used to pretend she was my mother, and that Anura was my sister, and I was just pretending to be a princess so my real family could live in the palace too.
“I was afraid,” Anura adds, in a low voice. “Of what the king would do if he found out.”
I shiver. With everything that happened last night, I hadn’t even thought of how my father might have reacted to the knowledge that his only son had married without his permission.
A dark memory rises in my consciousness.
Father didn’t want me to see it, but I snuck out of my room and found a window anyway.
Elrick was tied to hitching posts in the courtyard, his chest bare in the cold winter air.
Mel, my father’s personal guard, held a long black whip in his fist. My father stood next to him, commanded him to use it on the prince.
The snap echoed through the freezing air; blood blossomed on my brother’s back.
My eyes filled with tears, and by the time it was over, I was sobbing into the fist crammed in my mouth.
I never found out why the king had my brother whipped in the courtyard. I was too terrified to ask, and Elrick never mentioned it. I’d almost managed to forget it ever happened.
But Anura is right. Whatever Elrick did to offend our father that winter day, it couldn’t be worse than marrying the daughter of the castle’s head chef. Now, one of the few options we had has been destroyed by the two people I thought I knew best in the world. And Marion is truly alone.
I sigh, then turn to stare at the steam rising from the tub.
I don’t even have the strength to feel angry right now.
Elrick and Anura have loved each other since they were stupid little kids.
Everyone in the palace knew it, and everyone pretended it didn’t matter.
We all acted like love was the kind of thing you could set aside when it was no longer convenient.
Slowly, I turn back to Anura.
“It’s okay,” I force myself to say.
The smile Anura gives me is so bright and hopeful it makes my chest ache. It’s not okay, not really, but what choice do any of us have?
“Thank you,” Anura says in a soft voice. “I’m glad to have you as a sister.”
I hadn’t thought about that. My body feels stiff as I slowly realize my childhood fantasy is true, now. I’m a part of Anura’s family.
“We’ll find a way to help you, too,” Anura continues, although I’m only partially listening to her. “You deserve the same. To find someone who makes you happy.”
I nod, and Anura excuses herself as I start to peel off the filthy clothes I’ve worn since leaving Dungal. Finally, I sink into the hot water and close my eyes, trying to think of nothing at all.
But instead, I remember sitting in a garden in the sun, with a basket of peas next to me, as Zarek told me he would have raised my child. Did I feel happy, as I turned my face to the sun and imagined life in a palace, with Zarek as the father of my child?
And then I remember something else, something so strange it must have been a dream. Zarek, his features washed by the light of the rising sun, his eyes closed and a look of fierce concentration on his face.
Zarek, singing prayers I’d never heard to gods I didn’t recognize.