by N. C. Hayes
The door finally clicked shut, and Aydan let out a long breath, slouched in his seat, and propped his head on his fist. With his other hand he reached for his goblet, which floated off the table to meet his palm. “I’d forgotten how much I hate them,” he said. Gerridan clapped Aydan on the shoulder.
“You did well, Aydan darling.” Hannele and Alastair were talking in low voices about the various noblemen of the extended council, comparing notes while Kenna listened and nodded occasionally.
“Why not replace them?” I asked. “If they’re supposed to be advising you as well, you should at least like them, shouldn’t you?”
“Too much of a headache.” Aydan shrugged. “Those bastards are from the most powerful—”
“—wealthiest—” Kenna cut in.
“—families in Ayzelle. The courtiers here are all the same. Replacing one with another would not likely solve any problems, and the courtiers like the council as it is. The villages don’t interact with the castle, so if my citizens’ lives aren’t negatively affected by Declan and his cronies, I’ll let them play.” Aydan banished his empty goblet to wherever it was he sent the things he was finished with. “I don’t answer to the extended councils. They exist to make it easier to delegate.”
“Is there anyone you answer to?”
“My people, for one, and of course every person in this room. Kenna can be quite unforgiving.” The seer winked in our direction.
For the next few minutes, Hannele and Alastair’s conversation was taken over by Gerridan sharing bits of gossip he had picked up about the council members’ families. He was recounting some scandal or another when I leaned over and said to Aydan, “By the way, I’m sorry for your loss.” He furrowed his brow.
“Why would you be?”
“Your father is dead. I would imagine that it’s . . . difficult, regardless of your relationship.”
“You’re kind, my lady, but don’t spend too much time mourning the man who tortured us for the past year.” Aydan turned back to listen to Gerridan’s story. I didn’t listen very closely for the rest of it, as I puzzled over the word, us.
We remained in the council room for another hour before it was agreed that we should all get some sleep. I walked with Aydan and his friends until we reached the door to my suite. They each bid me good night, Gerridan sketching a bit of a bow, and carried on down the hall. Aydan lingered, but when he started to speak, I cut him off. “Good night.” I curtsied briefly, opened my door, and slipped inside before he could reply.
Chapter Twenty-One
I did not see Stefan for the next two days, until it was time to meet the others for our first official Cabinet meeting. He was speaking to the pair of guards stationed at the entrance to the north wing, where the most lavish suites, as well as the king’s chambers, were located. As I approached, Stefan dismissed the guards and left, attempting to pass me without acknowledgment. I caught his arm.
“Are you going to ignore me every time I have to do my job?” I asked. “I thought we were going to talk after the funeral.”
“I waited by your door until midnight. You never showed, so I left.” His jaw was clenched.
“Well, I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”
“You don’t owe me any explanations, Shaye, it’s clear where I lie on your list of priorities.”
“It’s been three days, Stef. You’re being dramatic,” I said.
“Am I?” He pulled his arm away.
“Stefan.”
“Is there a problem?” I turned to see Alastair walking toward us, dressed in sparring clothes. “Good morning, Lady Advisor.”
“Good morning, general.” I smiled and Stefan straightened. “Stefan, this is Lord General Alastair Greenwood. General, this is Captain of the King’s Guard, Lord Stefan Whittaker. We were just saying goodbye before I head inside.”
“I’ll escort you,” Alastair offered. “Good to meet you, captain. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of each other.” The general’s words were polite but carried an air of authority. Stefan nodded curtly, then made his departure without another word to me. I watched until he disappeared around the corner, then continued on my path to the king’s chambers. Alastair followed behind me, and I silently thanked the gods that he did not question me about Stefan.
~
Hours later, we were sitting at the long wooden table, and had nearly finished with all of the points on the agenda. The meeting had been late to start, but not because of my and Alastair’s tardiness. Kenna had overslept and refused to let us begin without her. Gerridan, having been in charge of similar meetings on the Sylvannian Council, had offered to run the first of our Cabinet meetings so that I could observe how one might do such a thing, and I readily accepted. For all his jokes and flirting, he kept us on track with a list of suggested topics, the first being the opportunity for us all to read his draft of the letter to Nautia before he sent the final copy, and the last being the plans for reopening trade with Sylvanna.
“Solandis is prepared to sign an agreement following the coronation,” the emissary said. “Her letter indicated that she would prefer to sign in person.”
“I intend to make an appearance at the next eclipse festival,” Aydan replied. “Tell her we’ll make time then.” Gerridan made a note in his book and sighed, tossing the pen in front of him and leaning back in his chair.
“Does anyone else have anything to bring to the table?” he asked.
“I’d like to supervise the extended council’s plans for the coronation,” Hannele said. “Declan is bound to turn it into some garish display. He’ll need to be reigned in.”
“Go ahead.” Aydan looked to the rest of us expectantly. I opened my mouth but closed it— not quickly enough. “Lady Shaye?” I flushed.
“Oh, I don’t know that this is the time. A budgeting suggestion.” He looked curious, leaning back in his seat. I cleared my throat. “I think it would be prudent to raise the wages of all staff working in the castle and on the grounds. By at least double.” I braced myself for my new colleagues’ laughter, but it never came. They were all waiting for me to continue, intrigued. “The money is there, you can see on these account details.” I pointed to one of the pages that Gerridan had set before us at the start of the meeting. “I didn’t often work with the others, but from what I’ve overheard, most of the servants are owed back wages.”
Aydan scowled while examining the totals before him. “Ayzelle isn’t hurting for revenue. Why are servants missing wages?”
“No one ever spoke to me directly about it, but they seemed to have been ‘forgotten.’”
“Who is in charge of distributing payments to the servants and groundskeepers?” Aydan asked, shuffling through the papers. Kenna and Hannele were doing the same thing on the opposite side of the table.
“The steward, Mr. Vyne,” I replied. Aydan looked behind him and saw a servant named Alice, who I had seen many times tending to the unmarried ladies’ suites, standing just outside the room. She’d been assigned to assist Elise for the day. He called her inside.
“Alice, please find Mr. Vyne and tell him that I would like to personally review his ledgers,” he told her kindly. She looked shocked that the king would speak to her by name but curtsied and swiftly exited.
“Why is this your first concern?” Kenna asked me with pure curiosity in her voice.
“They’re here day in and day out and go back to their villages at night completely exhausted. They don’t deserve to have their families go hungry because the Crown couldn’t be bothered to pay its employees,” I said. “Keeping them happy and well compensated benefits us just as much as them. Growing up, my uncle and many of our neighbors worked in or near the Grand Palace. News travels fast. The servants and groundskeepers here will go home at night and tell their families and neighbors all about the generosity of their new king.” Kenna nodded, and relief washed over me as the rest of them seemed to agree with my statements.
Alice reappeared in the doorway with a thick
volume in her hands. She curtsied and set the ledger down in front of Aydan, who thanked her and began flipping through it immediately. A couple of pages in, Aydan summoned a pen into his hand. He began making notes in silence, clicking his tongue occasionally. After a few moments, Aydan looked up at me.
“Your name isn’t listed here,” he said.
“Servitude under house arrest doesn’t pay a wage, it would seem,” I half joked. He didn’t smile but reached for a blank sheet of his stationery and wrote a few lines before folding it and waving his hand over the top to seal it. He beckoned for Alice to enter the room again.
“Please return Mr. Vyne’s ledger to him and ask him to review the notes I’ve made. The rest of my instructions are detailed in the letter.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Thank you, Alice.” She left and Aydan turned back to me. “The owed wages will be repaid with interest, today, and the servants’ wages will be tripled, effective immediately. If there is any hint of wages being withheld, Mr. Vyne will be removed from his position.”
“I—um, thank you,” I said.
“Don’t.” He waved me off. “It was the right thing to do. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.” I didn’t know what to say, so I just straightened the stack of papers in front of me. Kenna was asking Hannele what she would wear to the coronation, and the group relaxed into casual conversation while pride flooded my chest.
~
I returned to my suite hours later, tired and satisfied with my work.
“I think I might actually have a place here,” I told Catchfly while I prepared for bed. She lounged on my pillow and stared at me as I took my tincture and brushed out my hair, and I ignored her loud protests when I moved her to the side and crawled in beside her. She quickly went back to purring against me, and I fell asleep without worry for the first time in months.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The next few weeks were a blur. Between planning the coronation and trying to make sense of the final years of Zathryan’s reign, there was much to do for the Cabinet. Even if Stefan and I had been on speaking terms, I would not have seen much of him. Initially Aydan wanted the Cabinet to meet formally every three days, but by the second meeting, it was clear that we would need to sit down more frequently to detangle the mess his father left behind. Strange decrees regarding the functioning of the treasury, and the extended council’s ability to even tell Aydan or any Cabinet members what had been done, were tied to the power of the Crown rather than Zathryan himself, which meant they remained in place beyond his death and had become a nuisance that made governing a more difficult task than it already was. We spent several meetings simply tearing through the late king’s diaries and agendas, searching for relevant information that would allow Aydan to undo his father’s mess, but had yet to find anything useful.
After the meetings, now every other day, Gerridan was kind enough to spend an hour or so teaching me about the noble houses of Medeisia—which families were loyal, which were power-hungry, and who should be watched carefully. Many of these families would be descending on the castle for the coronation celebrations, and I wanted to be ready for them. In addition to his verbal lessons, Gerridan loaned me a thick volume bound in red leather with the gold words, Houses of Medeisia: All Territories stamped on the spine. I spent several nights devouring it, setting Enchanted, Enchanting aside for the first time in months.
On days with no meetings, Hannele enlisted me in helping her reign in the extended council’s plan for the coronation, particularly from Lord Declan, who had unsurprisingly not warmed up to me. At his side most days was the concerned-looking man from our first meeting, who I now knew was Lord Dracus. Dracus seemed incapable of an original thought and to exist only to agree with Declan. The other lords of the extended council assisted as well, but seemed content to take orders from whoever won that particular argument, Declan or Hannele.
The ceremony itself would be performed by both a High Priest and High Priestess, in the same way it had been done for millennia—there would be no negotiations on that front. However, to call Declan’s plans for the following feast and ball “extravagant” would be an understatement. I broke up several arguments myself, one being a particularly heated disagreement on the necessity of a solid gold lion centerpiece. I finally convinced Hannele to reluctantly agree to an ice sculpture so we could leave in time for dinner.
Hannele and I became fast friends during these negotiations. So much so that when we found ourselves with nothing left to do but find something to wear the day before the coronation, she insisted I accompany her to the dressmaker.
Unlike mortal dressmakers, who need weeks or even months to complete a gown for a special event, Hannele explained, Medeisian dressmakers can assemble a gown in minutes, and change details until the last second with the wave of their hand or a touch of their fingertips. She effuged us to an Ayzellen dress shop she’d once frequented before the closing of Sylvanna’s borders. The dressmaker was a short man named Cecil who wore extravagant sapphire robes, embroidered with silver thread to create ocean waves near the hem that he had willed to ebb and flow like the real thing. He greeted the princess cheerfully and me only slightly less so, then busied himself with some task elsewhere in the shop, allowing the two of us some privacy. Hannele was in her element, examining the fabrics and designs of the ready-made gowns hanging around us. She pointed out a particularly extravagant piece in lavender and said, “I refuse to leave this shop until you’ve tried that on.”
“It’s beautiful.” I huffed a nervous laugh. It was. The neckline was more daring than anything I’d ever worn, and the back was equally revealing. Once, a dress like that would have had me intrigued, curious to see what such a thing might look like on my body. Now, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever want to show that much of my flesh. “A bit more risqué than I’d like.” Hannele nodded, taking note and adjusting her decision for what I might wear to the coronation.
I was happy to let her make the selection once I had realized that I had no idea how to shop for a gown. I had never had money of my own, especially not the kind of money that was required to purchase gowns like these, until a few days ago when Elise delivered two pieces of stationery with my breakfast, which stated the balances of a pair of accounts that had been set up in my name with the treasury. When I saw the numbers on the pages, I’d nearly dropped my teacup. It was more money than Uncle Gideon had made in five years. Sure that a mistake had been made, perhaps something to do with Zathryan’s other decrees surrounding the treasury, I checked three different ledgers and found that one account contained a standard months’ wages for the role of Chief Advisor. The other held a years’ worth of servant wages plus the interest Aydan had promised. I didn’t bother asking him about it—I’d done the math, the total was correct, I had not been overpaid. Regardless, a strange, knotted feeling of guilt sat in my stomach every time the accounts crossed my mind, at the thought of the people scraping by in my former village.
“By the way,” Hannele said as she continued her search, “Priamos and Solandis gave their final answer. They won’t be attending the coronation.” I was not surprised. Just yesterday, Gerridan had been struggling to get an answer from them, as the Lord and Lady of Sylvanna did not want to leave their territory before new treaties and trade agreements were signed.
“Is Aydan upset?” I asked.
“I haven’t talked to him. Gerridan told me. If he is, he’ll be over it soon enough. The eclipse festival is coming up, he’ll see them then.”
“Is he . . . never mind.”
“What?” Hannele asked, stopping to look at me.
“Is Aydan . . . different? I mean, is he the same Aydan you’ve always known, or has he changed since his captivity here?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just curious.” I pretended to be interested in the sleeve of an emerald gown. “I sometimes wonder if the prince I knew last year is the same one you’ve known for the last century.”
She considered this. “In some ways, yes, he’s the same cocky, frustrating Aydan I’ve always known. He was certainly impacted by his most recent experience here, but not as much as you were, I expect.” I froze at her words. It was like a bucket of cold water dumped on me, and I looked down to find that frost was forming on my palms. That was new. “You don’t have to tell me if I’m right. But if you ever want to talk about it, I’m here to listen.” I rubbed my hands on my skirts before nodding, remaining silent. Hannele’s face lit up as she looked past me. “This is it!” she exclaimed, reaching for a dress behind me that I had not seen before. I felt myself smile a bit as she excitedly displayed the fabric to me and called out for Cecil.
~
Later, when Hannele and I were finally finished at the dress shop and she had effuged us back to the castle grounds, we walked arm in arm as we made our way to the north wing to meet the rest of the Cabinet for dinner. The dresses would be delivered to our rooms the next day, mine only receiving a few alterations specified by Hannele, while her gown was to be made completely from scratch. Cecil had shown her some of his designs, and I’d had to stifle a laugh when Hannele took the paper from his hands and began sketching her own. The dressmaker’s eyes lit up when he saw the finished drawing, and he eagerly shooed us from the shop so he could get to work. Now I was famished and ready to dive into whatever delightful meal the cooks were preparing. We turned the corner toward the king’s chambers and came to a sudden stop when we saw Stefan waiting in the hall. He immediately approached.
