Once, I set my sights on a legend, while ignoring the fact that she was also a woman with a mind of her own. I tried to compel Briar into marrying me without once asking whether she wanted that. I treated her like a possession. I found her. I awakened her with a kiss. She was supposed to be mine.
But she wasn’t. When she left, she took with her the one person I have ever calledfriend.
A scratch of wood on stone and harsh breaths pulls me out of my reverie.
“You look pensive.” My father shuffles forward, his frame bent almost double by the disease eating him from the inside out. His voice is as hoarse as a frog’s croak.
“You should be abed.”
“I cannot lie around all day.” He drops heavily into his seat with the assistance of two strong men, one at each elbow. “There is too much left unsettled for me to die.”
Meaning my failure to secure the royal line. Wordlessly, I wave to a servant to refill my wine chalice.
“Your thirtieth year approaches, son. I allowed you to roam free for too long.”
A lifetime would not have been long enough. “What if I do not wish to marry?”
The king scoffs. “It is your duty. Instead of fulfilling your obligations, you were out hunting monsters with that disloyal dark knight of yours.” He stabs one finger at me from across the long table. “That is why I cannot die. This is why I do not know peace?—”
He cuts off with a ferocious hacking cough. Blood spatters the gleaming table.
“Had you not attempted to seduce my previous fiancée, she might not have fled.” I keep my tone light, ignoring the way his illness unsettles me. A light breeze wafts through the dining hall, ruffling the decorative strip of cloth on the center of the large table. I refuse to be in enclosed spaces with my sire. I don’t want to catch whatever is rotting his lungs.
“Or, might I suggest that waiting until you were past fifty to see to your own legacy is what brought us to this pass?” Idly, I toy with my napkin ring. He thinks to lecture me about waiting to marry, when he married so late?
“I did not—”coughing“—think I would—”more coughing“—ever sit—”Gods, this is painful to listen to“—upon the throne.”
“Your arse has warmed that velvet cushion for six decades, Father. Don’t tell me that marrying late was a mere oversight.” I push back my chair. I’d rather eat in my room than be lectured by a hypocrite. “Rest assured, I shall be wed within the fortnight. Then you can be free.”
I don’t mean it cruelly. I hate seeing my father in pain. He insists upon joining me for dinner despite his worsening health. I wish he wouldn’t.
Outside, I find my guard, Othmar, waiting for me. He straightens, then bows. Killian never bowed to me. On the rare occasion when he did, it was to mock me. I miss that bastard.
“Did you find her?” I snap.
“Not yet, Highness.”
“Keep searching.”
“Sir. No one knows what she looks like.”
“Red hair. Aquamarine eyes.”Gemstone eyes, though I don’t say that out loud. “About yea tall.” I hold my hand at my mid-chest, then lower it a few inches, but no, she couldn’t have been that short. I bring it higher, closer to my shoulders.
The truth is, I don’t know anything about her. I caught a glimpse of a pretty girl in a ragged dress and fancied myself her savior. In the hours since, I have built one brief, startling interaction into an entire fantasy to explain why my chosen bride and my only friend abandoned me. For all I know, that girl in the streets is missing half her teeth and suffers the same coughing disease that afflicts my father.
“Othmar.”
“Highness?”
“Call off the search.” I know I’m being contradictory and that this will not win me any favor with the royal guardsmen. I don’t care. “Announce an award. A generous one. Describe only the events of this afternoon. Leave out any mention of her appearance.”
Otherwise, we’ll be inundated with pretenders doused in illegal glamours. I cannot go about arresting half the women in Belterre even if they are breaking the law. Their fathers would put my head on a pike.
A servant opens the door to my personal study. Once upon a time, this room was filled with trophies from my hunts with Killian. After he left me, I had them all removed.
The skin from the basilisk we killed together? Gifted to a neighboring nation, Caldrithonia. A gesture of goodwill worth more than the massive sum we could have sold it for. I claimed victory from the dragon we fought and mounted its head as proof, but it was Killian who slew it. He made armor from its scales and kept his mouth shut.
The damned thing disappeared from my study during renovations on the castle, necessary because of the havoc wrought by the monsters following Briar. My fault, for waking her and bringing her to Belterre Castle in the first place.
