Chapter 2 The First Root

Arianna was sure no one had seen her.

She told herself so three times between the garden gate and the stable door, and by the fourth time she had almost started to believe it. The brown cloak was thick. The hood hid her face. The evening smelled of hay and woodsmoke and the faint sweetness of the last roses, and Fredric was waiting inside the doorway with his sleeves pushed up and straw in his hair.

“You came,” he said.

“I said I would.”

“You say lots of things.” He took both her hands. His were warm, rough from reins. “I spent the whole afternoon sure you would think better of it.”

“I did think better of it. Twice.” She tried to smile and could not quite manage it. “Fredric, I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer before you start joking.”

His grin faded by a degree. “That serious?”

“Run away with me.”

The words fell into the straw and lay there.

Arianna had rehearsed them for a week. In her head they had sounded romantic and brave. Out loud, in the cool dim smell of horses, they sounded like exactly what they were: a seventeen year old girl asking a prince to throw away his name.

“Arianna.” He said it gently. “Where would we go?”

“Anywhere. Seatopia. The southern coast. Somewhere nobody cares who we are.” She was talking too fast. “Your father will never allow it. You know he will not. He will marry you to some northern duchess and I will be sent back to Corvane to be somebody’s useful wife, and I would rather...”

“Hey.” He lifted her chin. “Look at me.”

She looked.

“I will not run,” he said. “Not because I do not want you. Because if I run, you spend the rest of your life being the girl who made a prince abandon his family. I will not do that to you. I would rather go to my father tomorrow and ask him properly.”

“He will say no.”

“Then I will ask again.” He smiled. It was the smile that made people forgive him in advance. “I am very stubborn when it matters. It is my one virtue.”

She laughed, a wet, shaky laugh, and pressed her forehead against his shoulder. For a moment, in the dark, there was nothing in the world but the sound of his heartbeat and a horse shifting in its stall.

That was when the lantern light swept across the doorway.

“Your Highnesses.”

The voice was smooth, unhurried, and chilly as a knife drawn slowly from a sheath. Maeron stood in the door with a lantern in one hand and two Silver Guards at his back. He was the Chief Advisor to the crown, a lean grey man with a lean grey face, and he had the gift of making a scandal sound like an administrative detail.

“I regret the interruption,” he said. “I was told the princess had not attended evening lessons, and I confess I took the liberty of looking for her.”

Fredric stepped in front of Arianna. “Maeron, this is not what it...”

“I am sure it is not.” Maeron’s eyes slid, without hurry, to the straw, to the cloak, to the way Arianna’s hands were still pressed against the prince’s coat. “I am sure it is entirely innocent. But I am afraid the king will have questions, and there are two guards here, and guards, Your Highness, are people who talk.”

Arianna felt the whole world tilt.

The throne room, the next morning, was lit by a thin, unfriendly sun. King Jeremy sat on the dais with both hands gripping the arms of the chair. He was a big man gone heavy with age, with a grey beard and a famously short temper. At his side sat Queen Elizabeth, pale and upright, her face giving away nothing. Below them stood Fredric and Arianna, not touching, as if the distance could undo the night.

Adrian stood by the pillars with his arms folded. Athalia stood beside him, her hands folded demurely, her eyes lowered.

“Explain yourselves,” the king said.

“It is my fault, Father,” Fredric began.

“I did not ask whose fault. I asked for an explanation.”

“I love her.” Fredric said it plainly, as if reporting the weather. “I want to marry her. I was going to come to you today.”

A murmur ran through the hall. King Jeremy’s face went a slow dark red.

“You were going to come to me. After sneaking into a stable with a ward of this house, in front of the Silver Guard, at night.” His voice rose. “Do you understand what you have done? Do you understand what they will say? That the king’s son ruined an orphan in a barn. That I cannot control my own household.”

“Nothing happened,” Arianna said, and her voice came out steadier than she expected. “We only talked, Your Majesty. I swear it.”

“Nobody will care what happened. They will care what it looks like.” The king slumped back, suddenly tired. “Maeron. Advice.”

The Chief Advisor stepped forward and bowed. “There are two options, Majesty. The princess may be sent away quietly, and the scandal allowed to die. Or the matter may be answered with the one thing a scandal cannot survive.”

“Which is?”

“A betrothal.”

The word dropped into the hall like a stone into a well.

“But the prince is the younger son,” Maeron went on, smoothly, “and the prince’s elder brother is not yet betrothed. It would be improper for the younger to marry first. Unless, of course, both houses were bound at once.”

Athalia lifted her eyes.

She did it slowly. Nobody noticed. Nobody was looking at her. Everyone was looking at Maeron, and the king, and the two pale children in the middle of the floor.

“Both?” said the queen softly.

“The Lady Athalia is of age, and of equal rank. Two brothers. Two sisters. Two betrothals, announced together, and the court will see a union of houses rather than a girl caught in a stable.” Maeron inclined his head. “It is tidy.”

“It is an insult,” said Adrian.

Every head turned. The elder prince had not spoken since the hearing began. He stood very straight, jaw tight, a muscle working near his ear.

“I mean no disrespect to Lady Athalia,” he said, more quietly. “But she should not be handed to me as a repair. Neither should I be handed to her.”

“Adrian,” the king said. “You are twenty one. Your brother is making a mess, and you are the one who is going to clean it. That is what an elder son is for.”

Adrian’s face did not change. But Athalia, watching from two paces away, saw something go out of him. As if a candle had been quietly set down.

“Lady Athalia,” the king said. “Have you any objection?”

The hall waited.

She could have said yes. She could have wept, or protested, or lowered her gaze and let her silence say it for her. A dozen small choices lay open in that moment like cards on a table.

She looked at Fredric. He was gazing at her sister. He had not once looked at her.

She looked at Adrian. He was staring at the floor like a man who has just been handed a debt he did not borrow.

And something inside Athalia, cold and quick and wonderfully clear, turned over and began to count.

Fredric would marry Arianna. That much was settled. Nothing she could do in this room would change it. But Fredric was the younger son. Fredric would never be king. And Adrian, the dutiful one, the quiet one, the one nobody ever chose, would be the man who sat on that throne someday. And whoever stood beside him would sit there too.

“I have no objection, Your Majesty,” she said.

It surprised even her how steady it sounded.

“I will be honoured,” she said, and curtsied low, and when she rose, she met Adrian’s eyes for the first time. He looked startled. As though he had expected to be refused, and did not know what to do with being wanted.

She smiled at him, gently, the way you smile at a frightened horse.

Afterward, in the corridor, Arianna caught her sleeve.

“Athalia, I am so sorry. I never meant for you to be dragged into this.”

“I know.”

“Are you all right? Are you angry?”

“No.” Athalia kissed her forehead, and her lips were cool. “I am fine. I am happy for you, darling. Truly.”

Arianna sagged with relief, and hugged her, and went away smiling through her tears.

Athalia stood alone in the corridor and watched her go. The hallway was empty. The tapestries hung still. She let her face fall, just for a moment, into the shape it really wore.

“I will be queen,” she said, very softly. “And I will not let my sister take one more thing that belongs to me.”