He chuckled. “At least the middle name didn’t come out.”
She sighed. “I give up.”
“Oh, no, you don’t.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “You’re too stubborn to give up, my queen. You’re too strong.”
“Right now, I don’t feel strong at all.” She cleaned the wound with a touch as light as wind. “Can we not do the my queen thing? I know I said you could, and I know you struggle not to do it, but there’s so much noise in my head, and that word is like an amplifier. Despite what I’m dealing with, I’m going to be a queen, and I don’t know how yet. I’m not backing out—I’m pursuing this. I just…”
“Need a bit less pressure?”
“Exactly.”
Easy. This was easy. He’d call her Cara, she’d talk about her feelings, then he’d go back to queen. She didn’t have to know that the title was necessary. “Will you tell me what you feel, Cara?”
She bit the corner of her lip as she worked.
The wound looked much better. The swelling was down, the redness had turned to a much healthier pink, and the discharge had cleared. Fantastic, since the last thing he needed was another day on his back, feverish and useless to his queen.
“I feel betrayed,” she said. “You know what Nathan has in common with everyone else who’s used me in my life?”
Pointy could shake his head, but she didn’t really want an answer. He sat still, waited.
“They all love me. Or loved. Celestine, Chastain, Frank, and now Nathan. My Nathan.” Her fingers slowed, then she continued to turn a fresh bandage around his thigh. “This is going to leave one hell of a scar.”
Pointy’s mouth dried. “Are we talking about my leg or Nathaniel?”
Her eyes filled. “Both.”
His heart gave a small lurch. Had Nathaniel just shut up about using her, she’d have forgiven him. Yet, Carabelle deserved to know what her body meant to the man she loved.
Pointy pushed a chunk of loose hair off his forehead as best he could.
She reached up and tucked it behind his ear without shifting her gaze from the bandage.
A fight between his best friend and his queen. Lucky that Nathaniel was in the wrong this time, or it would have been more complicated to side with Carabelle. Or would it?
Admiration. He admired her, as his queen.
Carabelle applied salve to the smaller cuts on Pointy’s legs, removed and replaced the bandages around some of the deeper wounds, then helped him back into his trousers.
“Nathan and I were cursed from the beginning.” She sat cross-legged on the ground and picked at the bandages around his left foot. “Even you said so. Even if I wasn’t a Lenoir, he was a physician, and I was an apprentice. Nothing could have happened between us in Roicester, and if we’d moved anywhere else, I’d have been forced to give up medicine. The problem is, he ended up following me, and had to give up everything else. I don’t think there was any outcome for this love that wouldn’t end in one resenting the other.”
“Was?”
Carabelle winced at the state of his foot. “I don’t know, Pointy. How do we pick up from here? Look, this is personal, but you know everything about me anyway, and it isn’t hard to guess, considering my past.” A small, morbid smile quirked her lips. “I’d never been intimate with anyone, before the other night. It was my first time. Ours. It meant something to me.”
Meaningful sex. Ironic that the least experienced person in the room had experienced something that he’d never had. Something he’d never wanted. Still didn’t want, in fact. Jacques Du Pont didn’t have time for love. A small voice in the back of his mind burst out laughing.
Why, then, hadn’t he had sex with anyone during the past five months?
Carabelle sniffled, then turned her face towards him. Twin tears raced toward her chin. “Can you get that, please?”
He pressed his hands to her cheeks. “Turns out bandages are good for something other than annoying me.”
“Tsch. Anyway, I thought I was doing something right when he wanted to do it again. And again. I think now that maybe it wouldn’t have mattered at all what I did. I should have realised something was wrong when I asked him to stop, and he pressured me to keep going.”
Pointy’s blood turned to smoke. “He did what?”
Carabelle shook her head. “I was a thing for him to use, like for those men in the valley.”
No. No, she wasn’t a thing. This idea had to go before it had time to root, to spread its blight.
Pointy leaned forward and tilted up her chin. “Look at me, Cara.” He caught every tear that dropped from those eyes so blue—those eyes that should never have claimed his soul. “They told you that you were invisible, but they were wrong. You are blazing fury, gracious light. You are a tempest, an inferno, a torrent. You are a warrior. You are a queen.
“You are strong, and brilliant, and beautiful. You have lived a million horrific events, things that would have blasted the fight right out of ordinary people, but each time you have walked through the fire and come out tempered. You are astonishing. Glorious.
“You are no man’s thing. Nathaniel might have used you, and he was a fool to do it.” And I might have to kill him for this. His voice cracked. “But please, don’t measure yourself against his mistake, because there is no measure in Ehrdia or beyond that could accurately capture your immense worth.”
She smiled—a real smile, one that touched her whole expression. The kind of smile that made his heart skip and his stomach feather-light. “Thank you, Pointy.”
“Always.” Distance, Du Pont. “My queen.”
Her eyebrows jerked together, then smoothed. “Would you forgive him? If he’d done this to you?”
“I’ve known him my whole life,” Pointy said. “There’s so much more history, and my background is completely different. You have known him for, what? Six months?”
“You’re diminishing what he and I have?”
“Not at all. Trust me when I say that I know how quickly a person can come into your life and flip it around, so nothing makes sense, and everything that came before is meaningless.” Distance, damn you. “What I mean is that my decision would come from a completely different place than yours. I’ve never been a woman in love, freshly traumatised, taken to his bed for the first time.” To hell with distance, he had to say this. “But Cara, if you ever tell anyone to stop again—Nathaniel or anyone else—and they don’t stop? I’ll kill them.”
She kissed his cheek. “If nothing else, I’m so thankful the insanity that is my life brought me to you. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Jacques Du Pont.”
A friend. Good. He needed a boundary or two.
She sterilised and dressed the rest of his wounds, then moved to one of the chairs and toyed with the ends of her hair. “Thank you for listening.”
“I’m available any time of the day or night, if and whenever you need someone to listen.”
She shook her head. “That was your plan, wasn’t it? To get me to talk.”
“I’d bow, but—” He gestured at his feet.
She studied him for a moment. “This might sound strange, but do you remember after I’d punched Celestine? When I was really shaken, and you told me to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth?”
“Of course.”
“What was that?”
“A calming technique used by Intelligence agents.”
“I get these panic episodes sometimes, and Nathan used to count for me.” She licked her lips. “Look, I’m more anxious than usual, and would like a way to calm down without having to think of him. At least until I know what to do about him.”
“Shall I teach it to you, my dear?”
“Please.”
***
Pointy joined Carabelle and Vendla for dinner in Vendla’s tent.
Carabelle still ate far too little, but she tried. She wasn’t the only one with no appetite.
Vendla picked at her food until she notice
d Carabelle’s frown, then ate with vigour.
“I take it that talk with Varda didn’t go well?” Pointy said.
Vendla’s lips thinned. “This is no easy thing. She’s marrying him tomorrow—a marriage I arranged because, at the time, I thought it would be best. She wouldn’t be alone. Now, my only living child is willingly using a fertility treatment and marrying a man she knows will likely kill her as soon as she’s delivered his child. She says the gods want this baby.” Her hands balled. “If I went in there now, Du Pont, if I killed Francois, what are the chances of all of us walking out of here alive?”
Pointy shrugged. “This is Mordoux, chief-queen. Kill a king, even an unpopular one, and the people will rise. You’d be hunted and killed. Clarity may be dead, but there’s bound to be someone who’s already taken her place. Intelligence would come for you.
“According to the report I had earlier, we have more support than we’d believed. About a third of the people of Collinefort would follow us if we walked out tomorrow. Many of them are civilians, but we could use them all. Kill the king, and no Mordian would fight by your side. Your people are physically stronger, his people have an abundance of crossbows. The Dvarans have learned how to shoot, but still prefer heavier weapons. Still, a hundred and fifty Dvarans and as many bears will kill some of them, more if you throw in the element of surprise, but in the end, you’d be slaughtered, Carabelle would be caught, drugged again and put on the throne as a puppet in Clarity’s successor’s hand, and all of this would have been for nothing.”
“So.” Vendla’s nose turned up. “You’re telling me to walk away, strengthen our armies in Aelland, then come back and kill him.”
“Just so.”
“I want one thing clear,” Carabelle said. “We’re going to Aelland to ally with Sera. Not to invade. We’ll be three queens banded together against Frank, and ultimately, the emperor. But when we walk out of Aelland, we walk out for good. The only land I have any sort of claim to is Mordoux, and that’s enough.”
Pointy grinned. Ah, this queen of his. “Mordoux is enough—a good campaign slogan.”
Vendla crossed her arms. “When do you want to leave, dragonling?”
“How long would it take to pack up all these people?” Carabelle asked.
“I’ve instructed the outpost-bound groups to wait for us due north. Three of the groups were sent with supplies to replenish the outposts they serve, which will help us on our journey. I plan to claim more supplies to settle the debt Frank owes me. We can leave the night after the wedding.”
“And the cubs?”
“Don’t worry about them. We’ve travelled with cubs before.”
“All right. And Pointy,” Cara said. “I want Nita to stay and protect Varda. If Varda does fall pregnant, I want Nita to get her away from Frank.”
“I’ve given her a similar order, majesty.” Pointy leaned back in the wheelchair.
“I’m looking forward to watching that blasted grin crumble off Francois Lenoir’s face,” Vendla said.
Chapter 49
Varda rubbed scented oil into her skin. She’d chosen a clean scent, simple, like fresh air over grasslands. Probably not at all what a Mordian bride would have selected.
Once she was done, she sat on the chair by the mirror and undid her twin braids. Her hair tumbled down her back in soft waves. She played with it for a moment, combing out the tangles with her fingers. Maybe she should braid it again, in a different style? Or should she call one of these Mordian serving girls and have them curl the hair with those tools they used?
The door opened and a grim-faced Vendla and Skjold entered. Vendla carried a bundle wrapped in brown cloth. “You’re going through with it then.”
Vendla had been so adamant the day prior. So angry. Said she’d made a mistake; the gods didn’t want this farce. Had she decided to witness the wedding after all?
“Yes, Mother.”
“Very well.” She placed the bundle on the bed.
So, her mother had come to see her wed a man who wanted to kill her. There was something fundamentally wrong with being unsurprised upon learning her husband to-be wanted her dead, then going forward with the wedding anyway. But what other choice did she have?
Varda would have to scoop up her heart from her soles later. She had to prepare for her wedding and would figure out how she’d survive her husband afterwards.
Skjold grunted as she set herself down next to the fire and Blizzard. How in Vanadis’s name was she supposed to birth cubs at this age?
You’re doing what the gods want, Varda Ahlström, so why not Mother and Skjold? Maybe, if the gods spoke to everyone as they’d been speaking to her, she wasn’t as special as she’d believed. Maybe, her course wasn’t the only one. The right one.
Vendla came to stand behind Varda and ran her fingers through Varda’s hair.
“May I?” Vendla said.
When last had Vendla played with Varda’s hair? Back in Fjordheim, back when they’d all been happier. Those days were long gone.
Varda gave a nod.
Vendla picked a hairpin from Varda’s lap and clamped it between her lips. She pulled a spool of golden yarn from her pocket and unrolled it. The yarn had already been cut into lengths. Vendla then picked up a thin chunk of hair from Varda’s temple, split it into two strands and tied a piece of yarn to either side.
The gold glittered in Varda’s hair like glowing embers.
Vendla twisted the split hair to create a braid that resembled a rope. Once she’d progressed about halfway down the selected chunk of hair, she pinned it down and repeated the process from the other side of Varda’s head. The two strands joined in the centre, and Vendla selected another chunk of hair about three fingers’ breadth below the first braid.
She did this three times on either side of Varda’s head, but left the other hair to cascade around Varda’s shoulders in their braid-made waves.
Vendla met Varda’s gaze in the mirror. “What are you wearing?”
Varda owned one dress—her nightgown. Since Frank had avoided the subject of their wedding for so long, then jumped into it without granting her enough time to prepare, she had only her armour.
Some part of Varda accused herself that she could have prepared. She’d known they would be married eventually. Maybe she put it off because she didn’t really want this. Just like Frank.
“Armour,” Varda said. “I polished it.”
Vendla snorted, then unrolled the bundle on the bed.
The brown cloth turned out to be a cloak, folded around a simple slip-dress, the colour of seafoam.
“You can wear this, if you’d like.” Vendla caressed out a crease. “I had it made when we arrived here.”
A bubble rose in Varda’s throat. She swallowed, then blinked away the annoyance of tears welling in her eyes. “Thank you, Mother.”
Vendla helped Varda dress, then tied the cloak about her shoulders.
For once, Varda’s femininity wasn’t hidden. An echo of Ylva was revealed in Varda’s features.
She almost seemed innocent.
Vendla circled Varda, then sighed and removed a shiny object from her pocket.
“What else do you have in there?” Varda asked.
“Hush.” Vendla shook out the shiny thing—her clan necklace.
The golden pendant at the bottom of a delicate chain had been hand-crafted by Varda’s father as a wedding gift to Vendla. A round tiger’s eye had been cut and polished then set into the pendant with small arms in the shapes of claws.
She hadn’t seen Vendla wear the necklace in years and had thought the thing had remained with their other heirlooms on the ships. Still, the armour and furs would have hidden the trinket well enough. It must have been around Vendla’s neck all along. A precious object, surrounded by thousands of memories of happier times, of laughter and dancing, of cuddles in a mother’s lap. For a moment, a glimmer of that woman settled on Vendla’s face—the warmth, the unconditional love.
But t
he mother in Vendla had died a long time ago. To survive, to lead her people to safety, she’d adapted to something made of granite and steel.
Vendla moved to put the heirloom around Varda’s neck, but Varda shifted out of reach.
“I can’t, Mother.”
“It’s a gift, girl. You’ll take it, and remember me by it.”
Vendla was leaving. The truth of the realisation crushed Varda’s breath from her lungs. Olaf had said she was at a crossroads. Had she chosen the wrong path? Had everything gone wrong because she’d done the opposite of what the gods had wanted?
No, she couldn’t afford to think like that. She’d see this through, with or without her mother by her side.
Frank didn’t need to know about this, just as he didn’t need to know that Nita had helped Cara escape and probably wasn’t loyal to him at all. Just as he didn’t need to know that Varda suspected what he planned for her.
Like her mother, Varda had become a thing of granite and steel.
Varda stepped closer and Vendla fastened the gift at Varda’s neck.
“May the gods guide you,” Vendla said.
“And you, Mother.”
“Almost time for the ceremony.”
“Frank said to be ten minutes late.”
“Have you anointed the blade?”
Varda pointed to the table where her armour was laid out. The sword she’d chosen to give Frank had belonged to her brother Bjorn, and she’d oiled it before she’d oiled herself.
“And the ring?”
“I made one.” Varda walked over to the table and picked up the ring she’d carved from oak. She held it out to Vendla to inspect.
“Good.” Vendla handed it back. “Now we wait.”
“Now we wait.”
Would Olaf come? Sven? Any of them? Blizzard had barely looked at her since she’d chosen to stand with Frank. He’d gone out, but if he’d mated, she didn’t know. If Blizzard loathed her, why would her people give a damn about her wedding? She’d do this alone, that was the path she’d chosen. The path her gods had chosen for her.
A runner came to call them once it was time to go.
Vendla drew the hood of her cloak and offered Varda an arm, then walked her down the hall.
A Trial of Sparks & Kindling (Fall of the Mantle Book 2) Page 38
