1
“Iassure you,” Lilac said, resisting the most unlady-like urge to uncross her ankles beneath her thick chiffon gown and start fanning herself in the late spring heat. “No one is attacking.”
The boy stepped up from the line of about one dozen townsfolk who had traveled to the castle for an audience. In the center of the Grand Hall, he had introduced himself as a blacksmith’s son fromLa Guerche. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen.
He clutched his cap to his chest. “But my father insisted I come and warn you.” The woman behind him, who was accompanied by a handcuffed prisoner wearing a burlap sack over his head, nudged the boy roughly in the back. “Y-your Majesty. He saw plumes of smoke yesterday, just before dawn. Said they were signals.”
“Well,” she replied, her ears growing warm, unsure of the most appropriate way to argue with a near child. “He might’ve misinterpreted them. There are scouts already all over Fougères and Vitré, and it is warming up. Perhaps they were travelers,” she said, noting the fortress villages within a day’s trip north of his town. “Trust me, if there was concern—which there is not—I would have received word by now.”
“This is why we waited a few weeks after your accession to acceptinquiries at the King’s Bench,” John, the family scribe, muttered with a yawn. He rapped the desk from Lilac’s left. “Next.”
“Please, Your Majesty,” the boy pleaded, wringing his hands.
One of the guards stood from the table against the wall near the courtyard entrance. Some of the crowd behind him began to whisper amongst themselves.
“Gods—there is no need for panic,” Lilac hastily announced to the room. “No one is coming. No one is attacking.”
“Is His Grace available?” the boy inquired, straining gently against the guard attempting to tug him away. “My father suggested I might appeal to him if there was any trouble.”
“No.” She’d specifically asked her father not to interfere, told him that his scribe was sufficient and had seen to enough of their family affairs to stand in place of a council or Henri’s supervision during her first Court of Common Appeals. “No, he is not.”
“Would you mind sparing your castle guards, then? Or direct some of the guards from Fougères to protect us and the smaller towns?”
Most of her kingdom’s experienced militia were nearly aged out of service, with the last skirmish they’d fought being over half a decade ago. After the Raid led by Laurent and Garin, her grandfather had been forced to focus on quelling fear in the towns, meanwhile allowing for consensual vampire feedings to avoid something as gruesome from happening again. The Le Tallecs did not agree, and when Armand inherited his title as a child after his father went mad and was denounced, the training of a new army—the next generation’s recruits—fell to the wayside.
Of course, efforts were not revived under Henri, either, and Armand’s attention had pivoted to hunting Daemons since her father undid her grandfather’s feeding law after her Daemon tongue was revealed.
She considered him carefully. Historically, that was what the fortress villages were purposed for. There was no harm in dispatching a few of the guards from Fougères, but doing so publicly would stoke panic in the towns.
“Until there is official word, until there is documentation of French troops at our borders, I will refrain. I cannot have the country in hysteria without reason, especially after my ceremony.” She eyed the guard beside him. “Take him.”
The guard dutifully escorted the complaining boy out into the bailey through the courtyard.
Lilac leaned into the scribe. “Send my order to increase the perimeter presence in Louvigne and Fougères. Quietly.”
She sighed, rubbing her temples. The first three requests had been easy enough—not without trouble, but their complaints weren’t entirely unexpected. The first two had blamed their drying crops on curses, due to the presence of the witches and warlocks allowed to live in the town. Lilac had asked them if they’d simply considered asking the witches they suspected if they were responsible, if there was some obscure vendetta one held over them worthy of withering cabbages. The answer, of course, was no. She invited them to perhaps see if those witches had anything tohelptheir said withering crops.
The third asked if she could truly speak to Daemons, and when her answer was an unflinching yes, she had the nerve to ask if Lilac could then simply communicate to the creatures that the townsfolk of Paimpont wished to be left alone, citing a korrigan thievery that had long ago taken place at a bakery there.
She was reminded then of little Aife stuffing her mouth with the smooshed pastries from her bag and the korikaned’s horrified mother, fearing terrible retaliation. Lilac’s answer was straightforward, that these issues would only lessen because she intended to make changes to the treaty that gradually allowed for the Daemons to integrate into society.
That had silenced the room. Needless to say, no one had seemed satisfied with any of her answers so far.
“Next,” repeated John, scribbling onto the piece of parchment unfurling onto his lap.
The woman who stood behind the boy dragged her prisoner to the desk, his hands tied with a familiar reddish-brown rope. She snatched the bag off his head—it was a man whose black hair had been chopped crudely as if with a knife, reminding her of her own lopsided haircut done by the blade at her thigh. She shifted, suddenly reminded how uncomfortable her scalp felt beneath the ridiculous towering wig that squeezed her head, thanks to her mother and Yanna, who’d insisted on cramming her into it for court.
Lilac tossed a pale yellow ringlet out of her eyes. “What are we looking at?”
“This,” she croaked, reaching into her apron pocket and pulling out a sheet, holding it for the room to see. It was the WANTED illustration her scribe had drawn under Adelaide’s spell. The pair on the poster resembled what could be described at best, a caricature of a vampire and witch—the former with huge fangs and wide ears, the latter with hollowed eyes and gaunt cheekbones. “Is one of your dungeon escapees.”
John leaned forward, peering closer. He blinked. “Did I draw that, Your Majesty? I don’t recall?—”
“Yes, you did. We were all very shaken after my ceremony.”
“How much is your reward?” the villager pressed.
Lilac held up a hand. This was absurd. “That is not him.”
