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“Spring.”
I shifted my cheek on Chevalier’s shoulder to look up at him. “Spring?” I repeated.
He brushed my hair back behind my ear and nodded. “Our wedding.”
“Spring?” I said again in disbelief, pulling back from him to sit on my knees. His arm remained looped comfortably around my waist. “Isn’t that a long time?”
“You’re terrified of becoming queen, Ivetta,” he said gently.
I stared at his steady blue eyes for a moment, wanting to refute that, but the sinking feeling in my stomach said he was right. He pulled me closer as I dropped my eyes to my fingers, clenching in my skirt.
“I thought I was just scared of the honeymoon,” I muttered.
He sighed and wrapped me in a warm embrace, resting his cheek on top of my head. “I pushed for the coronation ceremony and the engagement ceremony to happen as soon as possible because I wanted no barriers to keeping you here with me, and I knew you could and would do whatever was required of you without complaint. And you handled everything the same way you’ve always handled any job, meaning you pushed down your wants and needs to do what I wanted. So now, I’m doing what you need. Sariel has orders to reduce your workload and plan our wedding for eight months from now at the earliest, and I can extend that if necessary.”
The butterflies stirred in my stomach and swirled up and around my heart. I looked up at him and smiled. “Well, I kind of wanted to stay, too, so don’t talk like you did something wrong.”
He smiled, too, and leaned in for a short, sweet kiss. I hugged him back and nuzzled into his chest, happy to just sit here on the sofa, cuddling. And not crying. I wouldn’t cry anymore. I’d done enough of that today.
“Why spring?” I asked after a while.
He didn’t answer immediately. His fingers threaded through my hair, trailing down my back, and then he said, “It’s more likely to rain in the spring.”
So much for not crying anymore.
I squeezed my eyes shut and buried my face in his chest, trying—and failing—to hold the tears back. I’d cried too many times today. When I woke up and saw the portrait first thing in the morning; when I thanked Gilbert for the portrait; and, as I'd predicted, when Chevalier and I returned to my room and I saw it again. And now, he had to say something sweet like that. Spring. Just because I’d told him a fond memory about Mother saying rain on a wedding day was a blessing. And after I’d just finished crying about the book. The random book I'd pulled from a shelf in his library, which happened to be a book I'd picked out for him at the Rhodolite Foundation Day festival when I was just his maid. He'd simply opened the front cover, and the moment I saw the inscription written in a neat, elegant script I knew so well from my father’s journal, I’d broken down all over again, and then he translated it for me.
19Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8GWeF82iT1
To Evelyn, my love and my queen.
May these few verses keep you warm during the nights when we cannot be together.
From your devoted husband and king, Arvon.
19Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0zwCqHvPBq
It was a book of poetry from Garnet, a gift from my father to my mother, lost in Obsidian’s invasion and somehow ending up in the hands of a rare book dealer who happened to bring it to his annual stall at the Foundation Day festival the one year I attended with Chevalier, as if the book wanted me to find it. Chevalier would have bought it if he’d seen it a previous year. I wouldn’t have even glanced at it if I hadn’t been with Chevalier. And with Chevalier’s memory, seeing that inscription once was all he needed to immediately recognize my father’s handwriting when he saw the journal, further confirming what he’d already guessed about my background.
My heart was raw. I was so emotionally exhausted from the day that I thought I’d have no trouble sleeping that night. But I lay there in bed long after Chevalier left, long after the sunlight faded and the candles had burned out, and sleep wouldn’t come. It came for Theresa. I listened to her slow, steady breathing from the other side of the bed, and I stared at the dark ceiling, wondering why I was still awake. I had a splitting headache from all the crying.
At least I hadn’t spent the entire evening using Chevalier as a human handkerchief. We’d both laughed at my recounting of the events with Clavis. But Chevalier had been as evasive as Sariel when I asked about Gilbert and Obsidian, and there had been nothing humorous about the twins’ reaction to my knowing about their mother.
I hadn’t told him about Gilbert’s kiss, and I hadn’t told him about my fears that Licht was cutting himself to cope with his pain.
My head hurt nearly as much as my heart.
I really wanted to go to sleep. Maybe tomorrow I would wake up simply refreshed, simply relieved that I had eight months to settle into my new life as a princess and the king’s fiancée before the next major life event happened.
Maybe, with a clear head, I would know exactly what to do with the twins.
But what if Licht couldn’t wait until tomorrow?
I sat bolt upright in bed at the thought. Nokto, Chevalier, Sariel—they’d all said, or implied, that Licht had been trying to commit suicide ever since he’d killed his mother to save his brother, and it sounded like he’d been using indirect methods, like taking unnecessary risks in battle. But what if he tried something direct? What if he was hurting so badly, the dagger he reserved for cutting himself found a different use tonight?
I jumped out of bed and grabbed my dressing gown, tripping over my slippers and righting myself before I tumbled into a pile of assorted gifts. Theresa’s breathing stuttered, and I froze, wondering if she’d accept an order to just go back to sleep and not ask questions. Her sighs settled back into a relaxed tempo, though, and I continued more cautiously toward the door, slipping quietly into the hall.
“Princess Ivetta?”
I froze again with my hand on the doorknob. I hadn’t thought about my guards.
“Um…”
“Should I get King Chevalier?” Eric volunteered helpfully.
“No,” I said quickly, turning to face them and realizing how pointless that syllable was as soon as I said it. “Well, just…come with me. We’re going that way, anyway.”
Eric squared his shoulders and spread his stride, blocking my path with the clear message that we weren't going anywhere until and unless I explained. I sighed in resignation. There was no point looking to Mark for help. This was one area where Chevalier’s protective measures would not budge.
“I need to talk to Licht,” I explained, unwilling to divulge more.
Eric and Mark exchanged glances. I’d wondered before if they were twins, as they seemed to have the same ability as Licht and Nokto to communicate without words, but I’d never asked. After a moment, Eric turned his back on me and began to walk, and I restrained another sigh as I followed, listening to the clank of armor from Mark walking behind me. It was only a week ago people were trying to kill me, I reminded myself. These annoying precautions were more than justified.
I still didn’t like them.
The halls were dark and empty. I hadn’t checked the clock before I left my room, but I guessed it was after midnight, and I suddenly wondered if I was just being paranoid. What if Licht was asleep? Resting peacefully, and I disturbed him?
No, I had enough experience with trauma and nightmares to know even if he was asleep, he wasn’t resting peacefully.
What if I was right, but I was too late?
Bile rose in my throat at the thought. I swallowed it down and kept my head held high, and when we arrived at the hallway with the princes’ bedrooms, I marched straight to Licht’s door and paused with my hand poised to knock.
“Please tell Chevalier to wait out here until I come out,” I told Eric, who was about to knock on Chevalier’s door. He nodded, and I steeled myself as I rapped firmly at the polished wood in front of me.
“Go away,” Licht’s voice answered immediately.
My heart leaped in my chest. He was awake, and he was alive.
“I’m coming in,” I replied, opening the door and slipping inside without waiting for a reply.
The metallic smell of blood hit me right away. I closed the door hurriedly, hoping Mark hadn’t smelled it. My heart was already racing as I remembered the bloody dagger I saw the first time I’d been in this room, superimposed against the bloody dagger that had marked me up in that dark dungeon. I took a deep breath, straining my eyes against the darkness. No candles; the curtains closed; nothing but black. Not even shadows.
“Why are you here?” Licht asked, his voice cold and hard. I heard a soft thunk, louder than it should have sounded in the black unknown. Probably him setting the dagger on the table, I told myself, letting the breath out and sucking in another, pushing memories of darkness and daggers and blood aside.
“C-could you l-light a candle or o-open the curtains?” I asked, clenching my hands into fists at my sides.
There was a moment’s pause.
“Ivetta?” he asked.
“Just open the curtains, please,” I said again, more forcefully than I meant, but at least my voice didn’t tremble this time.
Fabric shifted; the bed creaked; two steps, and then the scraping of metal rings across a metal curtain rod as moonlight flooded into the room. Licht was shirtless, the straight, parallel lines of dark red marking his right forearm standing out against his pale skin in the silvery light. Blood dripped from the sharp steel of the dagger onto the brown of the coffee table, pooling next to a pale blue tea set. My heart was pounding in my ears. It took everything in me not to turn and run. Licht turned away from the window and reached for the box of bandaging supplies on his bed, but his crimson eyes flicked to me, and he frowned.
“You need to sit down,” he said, walking toward me.
“You need to stop doing this,” I replied through clenched teeth.
He wrapped his left arm around me and guided me toward the bed. I collapsed on the edge of the mattress, and he sat beside me, returning to his box of bandaging supplies as if this was completely normal for him.
“I can’t.”
“Licht, you—”
“I’m only happy when I’m in pain.”
I closed my mouth and stared at him. He uncapped a bottle of alcohol, poured it onto a cloth, and cleaned the fresh cuts on his arm, wincing at the sting. Lines of raised scar tissue, white and pink, stood out between the new marks in neat and even rows. I dragged my eyes to his left arm and saw them there, too. Straight, rigid, structured, like tally marks on a sheet without the cross mark. And next to his arm was mine, covered to my wrist by the dressing gown, hiding irregular scars, long, short, straight, jagged, wherever and whatever the torturer felt like cutting into me.
I took a deep breath. This wasn’t about me. I put my hand on his left arm, and his crimson eyes flicked to mine, then returned to his work, smearing salve over the cuts.
“Licht, when I told you I would keep this a secret, I didn’t know you. I didn’t know anybody here. I was scared, and…and I can’t keep this a secret anymore.”
“Don’t tell anybody,” he said, enunciating each word.
“Licht—”
“I know what you’re going to say,” he said sharply, shoving my hand off his arm. He looked at me, his brow furrowed, the shadows around his crimson eyes darkening them further. “Everybody says the same thing. It wasn’t my fault. I had no choice. I did nothing wrong. But I did.” He grabbed the bandages, winding them tightly around his right arm. “I made Mama’s life miserable, and I killed her. There’s no forgiving that.”
“Stop.” I grabbed his left hand. He flinched. “You’re wrapping it too tight. Let me.”
“You know what I did. You shouldn’t even be here, and you shouldn’t care,” he said vehemently, but he didn’t shake my hand off this time.
I pulled his hand away from the bandages, setting it on the mattress beside me. Then I stood and moved around to his other side, unwinding the bandages and starting again, forcing myself to breathe and look at the white cloth, not the red blood. I'd seen the doctor redo my bandages enough times to know how to do this. In theory.
“I’m here because I know what you did,” I said softly. “I’m here because I care.”
He didn’t reply, but he didn’t push me away, either. I took another breath and kept talking, not sure what to say, sure I needed to say something.
“I…always felt guilty about my mother,” I began hesitantly. “I didn’t know why, but I felt like it was my fault somehow. That she would have been better off if I’d never been born. She never beat me, like your mother did, but I saw other people beat her, sometimes because of something I did, and I couldn’t do anything about it. And then she got sick, and I couldn’t take care of her the way I wanted to, the way she deserved, and…” I swallowed and secured the edge of the bandage. “You remember that spot by the river? Where you found me?”
He stood abruptly. I looked up in alarm, but he walked past the dagger to retrieve his white pajama shirt from the light blue lounge chair on the other side of the coffee table. I let out a sigh of relief and averted my eyes as he shrugged it on.
“Sometimes, I’d think about throwing myself in the river, just to make it stop hurting. But I couldn’t, because I had to take care of Mother.”
He sat down beside me again. I curled my fingers into my skirt, as if that was enough to ease the ache in my heart.
“And then I found out I was a princess, and she was a queen, and that made everything worse. Why would she make us live like that when she could have come to the palace for help?”
“I’ve wondered about that,” he said quietly.
I took a deep, shuddering breath. “Garnet and Obsidian had an agreement. Chevalier and Sariel are the only ones who know this, but…the first princess of Garnet was promised to Gilbert.”
“You…were engaged to Gilbert?” Licht asked in disbelief.
I nodded. “So, it was my fault. If I’d just been a boy, or if I’d been stillborn, or…something, Mother would have come to the palace, and maybe she’d still be alive today.”
A tear slipped free, and I wiped it away, frustrated that I was crying yet again. When I lifted my head, Licht’s dark crimson eyes weren’t empty or cold anymore. They were full. Full of pain.
“Maybe I don’t know what it feels like to actually kill my mother, but I know what it’s like to feel guilty, to think everything bad that ever happened to her was my fault, and I know what it’s like to hurt so badly that I just want the pain to stop. And I know that keeping it all inside never made it better. I thought I was handling it fine, but I wasn’t. Chevalier made me start talking about it, and that helps. It still hurts, but it’s better. Sometimes a lot better. Sometimes just a little. But I don’t have to handle it alone anymore, and I don’t want you to handle it alone anymore, either. You need to talk about it, Licht.”
His jaw clenched, and he turned away, but not before I saw the moisture in his eyes. I hugged him without a second thought. He tensed, made a choking sound, and then leaned into me, his hand coming up to hold my arm and his head resting on mine. I squeezed my eyes shut and let the tears fall. The throbbing in my head made me cry harder, and hearing and feeling him crying in my hair didn’t help, either.
I really hated crying.19Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDGwJZgyYFZ
