Chapter 2 #2
as Alina lifted her gaze back to his. “Our families arranged the
betrothal, which is why I was sent to study under Laird Roger, her
father.”
Alina forced a smile. “Then she is a lucky
girl, indeed,” she said. And she meant it. Any girl betrothed to a
man as handsome as Roark, with his keen mind and rain eyes, would
be. “I’m sure she’s as anxious for your return as you are to return
to her.”
Roark let out a wry chuckle. “On that,” he
said, “you are more right than you know.”
Alina blinked and tilted her head, as if that
would help her understand his meaning any better. As if
understanding would change the fact that he was betrothed to
another and leaving tomorrow and she would never see him again
after tonight.
“I, on the other hand, am not betrothed,”
Leif proclaimed, and it took Alina a moment to realize he was
addressing her. “I would be pleased to offer myself as your partner
for the evening’s festivities, Princess Alina.”
“Thank you,” she said with polite
indifference. “But I have no need of a partner tonight.”
“Suit yourself,” he said less politely.
“I usually do,” she assured him. She caught
Roark’s quick half grin, stood, and dipped her head. “If you will
excuse me, I should go prepare for the night’s festivities.”
***
Roark was only half listening to the
middle-aged stable hand named Pavel, who had taken a seat next to
him after the royal family left the table, his mind going over and
over Alina’s reaction to the news he was betrothed and leaving
tomorrow.
“They caught me trying to steal the queen’s
hair comb in the village I grew up in, poor, half-starved, and beat
regular by my pa,” Pavel said, catching Roark’s full attention.
“They were sailing back here to Sea Ridge, bringing the queen to
her new home. They could’ve cut me hand off for thievin’, but gave
me a chance to sail with them, to learn a sailor’s trade.” He
chuckled. “I got so terrible seasick on the journey they let me
train to be a stable hand instead. Here I’ve been since.” His
jovial manner turned serious. “They gave me a new life, a good
life, King Jerrik and Queen Alyssa did. Even kept me on after some
trouble I got into with the king’s uncle. Most would’ve turned me
out.” He met Roark’s gaze head on. “I learnt my lesson about lying
twenty years ago. Nothing good ever comes of it.”
“No,” Roark agreed. The lies of omission kept
sticking in his throat. The knowledge of what he was about to do to
the king’s family, to Alina, weighing heavily on him. “It
doesn’t.”
He considered going to her, to the king, and
confessing all, or going back to The Rover and refusing to
take part in Roger’s scheme, or even walking up into the mountains
never to be seen again.
Yet no matter what he chose to do, other than
take part in the plan, the repercussions would affect not only his
family, causing them to lose Roger’s and likely many other lairds’
trade and alliances, but the hundreds of families who depended on
the lairds for their livelihood. Not to mention the shame his
family would suffer because of him. He drained his third cup of
beer and looked around the courtyard, spying Leif by the beer casks
flirting with a buxom blonde as if he didn’t have a care in the
world. As if what they were about to do wasn’t weighing on him in
the least.
Roark stared into his empty cup and covered
it with his hand when Pavel held a full pitcher of beer over it.
“No, thank you,” he told Pavel. “I’ve had enough.” Enough to dull
the sharp pangs of guilt pricking his conscience, yet not so much
he would muck things up. He stood. “It was good to meet you.”
“And you, young Green Isler.”
He walked aimlessly through the growing crowd
of revelers, trying to distract himself from what the night would
bring. He patted the vial of White Milk, known here as the Oil of
the Dream Flower, in his tunic pocket. He’d traded a bolt of finely
woven highland wool for the drug and hoped he wouldn’t have to use
it on Alina, though he would if it came down to it. For her sake as
well as theirs.
Dusk turned to night and the hum of the
gathering rose in volume as the torches were lit and the crowd
parted, opening a pathway as Alina walked with her parents and
Anders from their longhouse to a newly cleared area in the
courtyard. Roark made his way to the clearing’s edge as the family
took their places, the king standing in the middle as the queen,
wearing a lynx throw over her shoulders and carrying a harp, sat on
a stool near the back of the clearing. Anders went to one side, and
Alina the opposite.
She wore a long-sleeved gown of fern green
worm weave, the lowcut bodice skimming the swell of her breasts and
nipping in at her slim waist, the skirt flowing down in panels
flashing iridescent green and gold around her legs, which looked
even longer and leaner close up.
Her mane of burnished cedar was pinned up
with combs of gold and copper, showing off the graceful line of her
neck, and was crowned with a wreath of winter lilies and snowdrops.
Around her throat she wore a delicate chain of filigreed copper,
from which a lustrous gold pearl the size and shape of a dove’s egg
dangled in the hollow between her breasts. Alina was a beautiful
young woman, even dressed in workaday linens with soil-covered
hands, but seeing her dressed like this was a revelation.
Roark stood spellbound.
“Welcome everyone to the festival of Spring’s
Eve,” the king announced. “I hope you are enjoying the hospitality
of our city.” Shouts and whistles broke out and the king smiled and
waited for them to die down. “To start the night’s festivities, we
will sing and play the song of The Spring Maid, the Sun God, and
The Lord of Winter.”
The crowd fell silent as the king moved to
Alina’s side of the clearing and she walked to the center of it,
knelt down, and tucked into a tight ball. The queen strummed her
harp, and Alina began to sing of the cold and the endless snow, her
voice thin and reedy, then growing fuller and stronger as she
slowly unfolded and rose, unfurling her arms and reaching for the
warming sky she sang to.
King Jerrik stepped into the clearing,
jutting his head this way and that, singing in a low, guttural
growl, calling to the winds and icy snow. Spying Alina, the spring
maiden, standing and swaying as if blown by a gentle breeze,
singing with a voice as pure and clear as water rippling over
stone, he spread out his arms with his fingers clawed and enveloped
the Spring Maid in the Lord of Winter’s icy hold, blowing and
moaning his victory over her as she shrank back into a frozen
ball.
Anders’s voice rang out, rich and sure and
strong, singing the warmth back into the sky and life back into the
earth as he strode into the clearing, head high and shoulders back,
the Sun God reclaiming his world. He stood over the Spring Maid,
singing to the heavens of light and heat and rebirth as the Spring
Maid slowly thawed and rose again. Standing in the Sun God’s warm
embrace, her brilliant smile reflecting the sun’s light, the Spring
Maid sang of the new life stirring within her as she and the Sun
God held their arms out to the rapt gathering and sang together.
They beamed as their voices reached a glorious crescendo.
Roark met Alina’s shining eyes and swore
under his breath. “Damnation.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Leif
grumbled in Roark’s ear as Alina and her brother and parents
clasped hands and bowed to the audience’s wild applause.
“What do you mean?”
“The plan was for me to get close to the
princess,” Leif said. “Not you.”
Roark resisted the urge to plow his fist into
Leif’s face. “Plans change,” he said instead. He hadn’t chosen to
be part of Roger’s plan. In fact, he’d argued against it many
times, but it hadn’t made any difference. The only choice they’d
given Roark was to join them or refuse and risk severing all ties,
leaving his family shamed and shunned. “It doesn’t matter who gets
close to the princess,” he told Leif. “As long as one of us does.
You and I will simply swap roles in this. The end results will be
the same.”
Leif chewed on it a moment and then slapped
Roark on the back. “It’s just as well,” he said. “She’s too plain
and high speaking for my tastes.”
***
Dressed in her green gown and a short cloak
of gold and brown owl and hawk feathers sewn onto a leather liner,
Alina stood on the outside edge of the crowd gathered around the
musicians and peered through the eye holes of the feathered mask
that covered her nose and tufted out from her cheeks into the shape
of an owl’s wings, the eyeholes and edges of the mask studded with
stones of topaz and amber.
“Looking for somebody?” a deep voice said
from behind her.
She turned around and looked into eyes the
color of rain from beneath a headdress of buckskin adorned with a
stag’s eight-point antlers. “It seems he’s found me,” she answered,
accepting the cup of drink that Roark held out to her. She took a
sip. “How did you know I prefer honey mead to beer or wine?”
“It was what you drank at supper.” He leaned
in as close to her neck as his antlers allowed and inhaled. “You
still smell like cherry blossoms,” he said, his warm breath
tickling the small hairs on her nape.
“You smell of moth-eaten deer hide,” she
said, stepping back and putting some distance between them.
Roark laughed, low and mellow. “You should
have smelled it before I aired it out for three days.”
Alina wrinkled her nose. “I’ll take your word
for it.”
The musicians started to play a reel and
Roark lifted his chin toward the people dancing. “Would you like to
dance?”
“No. Not really.”
“What would you like to do?”
Alina hesitated. He was leaving tomorrow and
she’d never see him again. Even if by some unlikely happenstance
they did meet again, he was betrothed, soon to be married to
another. She’d already be dreaming about his quick wit, slow smile,
and rain eyes for days and nights to come. Did she really want to
make it harder on herself?
“We can do whatever you want, Alina,” he
offered.
The sound of her name spoken with his thick