Traitor (A Crown of Lilies Book 1)

by Melissa Ragland

  My mother held up one hand, silencing me. Venom radiated from her. “That Van Dryn wolf? One of his kin?”

  “No,” I rebuked firmly, meeting her terrifying gaze.

  “Who?” Her voice was ice and fury, carefully contained.

  I didn’t want her to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. Quintin might have told them, but my father had seemed undisturbed at breakfast, and surely such a thing would’ve at least put him off his ham and eggs. Given Shera’s reaction, I doubted she had been the one to divulge, either. My mother had taught me to read people as easily as the pages of a book. In my tormented state, I was certain mine had been left wide open.

  “It doesn’t matter, they’re dead.” I turned away from her and sank down into the water. Part of me hoped she’d be gone by the time I resurfaced. I waited until my lungs burned. When I came up for air, she had dismissed Shera and taken my handmaiden’s place on the stool beside the tub. Her face had changed, rage buried deep beneath that fortress of composure. She gathered my hair in her hands and began rubbing a palmful of rose oil into it.

  There is a kind of sacred peace in a mother’s touch, a buzzing calm that suffuses the body and separates the mind from all that troubles it. More intoxicating than any liquor, more restorative than any balm, it pulls you down into a deep well of surrender that cannot be denied. As she worked, I felt that haze settle over me, her dexterous fingers on my scalp massaging slow circles that chased away the darkness hovering in my mind. Even her smell, barely detectable over the rose oil, set me at ease. She worked on me for several long minutes before she spoke again.

  “Your father must never know.”

  I opened my eyes, drawn from the depths of that calm. “Quintin will-”

  “I’ll speak to him.”

  She continued her work as skillfully as any attendant, pouring a ewer of water over my hair and gently wringing it. When she was done, I stepped from the tub and she wrapped me in a soft towel. Her hand tilted my chin to meet her gaze, pain and regret echoing in her eyes.

  “Are you alright?” she asked gently.

  Something in me cracked, desperate tears leaking through the fault. “Shera has been very kind to me,” I whispered. It was true, but it was a deflection, one last shield to protect me from my shame, my fear, my anger, my guilt – all the hateful emotions that had overtaken me. It didn’t last long, under my mother’s compassionate gaze.

  Soon my last defense faltered and she held me as I sobbed on the floor of the bath, crooning reassuring nothings and stroking my hair. Slowly, impossibly, my boundless anguish ran its course and I told her what had happened. When my hollow summation came to a bitter close, I looked up to see my mother’s face streaked with silent tears.

  “I am so sorry, Elivya.”

  I shook my head, my parents’ uncompromising conditions echoing in my mind. “You and Father are the reason I’m alive.”

  She quirked an eyebrow at me. “Quintin is the reason you’re alive.”

  I laughed softly. “Don’t tell him that, he’s already insufferable enough.”

  She pulled me to my feet and gave my shoulders a bracing squeeze. “He’s a good man. Loyal and trustworthy. And you could ask for no better guardian than one who genuinely cares for you.”

  I snorted outright at that. “That prig all but despises me. If it weren’t for Father’s orders, he’d likely gut me himself.”

  A small, private smile tugged at her lips, but she kept her own council on that front and left me to Shera’s care.

  Aubrey was the hardest to face, harder even than my mother. I was glad, when he pulled the tale from me, that I had already emptied myself of my grief. Still hollow from the bath earlier, I explained the previous night’s events to my horrified friend. It was the only other time I would put them to words, and there was something terribly grueling and cathartic about doing so.

  “Would it be alright if I embraced you?” he asked quietly when I’d finished, his voice aching with sorrow. Only Aubrey, I thought. Only he would know to ask. When I nodded, he wrapped me carefully in his arms. Perhaps it was because I knew he could never see me as an object of desire, or perhaps it was simply because he was my dearest friend. Whatever the reason, I felt a comfort in his arms that I feared I’d never feel again in a man’s embrace. I was relieved it was even possible, that maybe I wasn’t as broken as I’d thought.

  Slowly, inch by inch, I began to regain a sense of control over my life. Quintin’s patient instruction provided a backbone of stability on which I built each day. Though his familiar attitude of detached disapproval quickly returned, his manner shifted in other ways – softened, almost, as much as a hard bastard like that could soften. Where before, he would have snatched my wrist or kicked my foot to correct my grip or stance, now he made sure never to touch me. At first, it helped. Then, it didn’t. In the dark whispers of my mind, the hateful voices used it as evidence that I was soiled. Repulsive. Tainted.

  Shera pulled it all from me, waiting out the storm of irrational anger and shameful tears before wrapping me in a sisterly embrace. I cannot recall precisely what it was she said to me, lost as I was in the torrent of my tortured mind, but it wasn’t her words to me that mattered most.

  The next morning, halfway through our practice, Quintin snatched my sword arm.

  “You’re collapsing your frame,” he grumbled, tugging my elbow away from my body. I tensed involuntarily under his hand and he froze, a wary uncertainty seizing him.

  We teetered there on the knife’s edge for a long moment, my eyes fixed on his grip on my arm. The small, frightened girl inside me recoiled from that trespass, thrashing in a fear-fueled fury against any man laying a hand on me, no matter the reason.

  But that wasn’t me. That had never been me. I was Lazerin-born, willful and proud, an heir and a soldier. I could bury that frightened imposter and find my own path forward. All I had to do was choose who I wanted to be.

  I set my jaw stubbornly and corrected my stance before meeting Quintin’s watchful gaze. Swallowing yet another unwanted wave of indecipherable emotion, I nodded.

  “Better,” he said, releasing me.

  It took all three of us to piece me back together. Pride could not fix what that grimy hand had done to me. Stubbornness alone could not pull me from the dark whispers of my mind. But together with a strong, steady guide and the gentle hand of a friend, I found my way back.

  When nearly a month had passed without a word, a silence that only served to increase my feelings of inadequacy, Adrian came calling at the house. One late morning, I was well into my studies with my mother when Emmett knocked at the open door, stepping in to announce the arrival of my dark-haired suitor. Adrian bowed low to us from the doorway as my mother stood from her chair and set her book aside.

  “I’ll give you a moment,” she said with a glance my way before slipping quietly from the room, closing the door behind her.

  He stood unmoving, grey eyes a tempest. Long moments passed and neither of us spoke. I could tell he knew. I wondered if it was my mother who had warned him, to ensure he was careful with me for a while.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered into the silence.

  I chewed the inside of my cheek and gave my head a small shake. “Nothing you could have foreseen.”

  He stepped slowly around the couch as if I were a doe likely to spook and dart into the forest. “I knew Dockside was a dangerous place. I should have assigned you an escort.”

  “I had one.”

  “And I am forever in his debt.” He halted a few cautious feet from me. “I know you need time, but should you wish to return to the Greyshor, I thought you ought to know that steps have been taken.”

  “Steps?”

  He folded his hands before him. “Tommy and his boys have taken care of a few things. Should you decide to rejoin us, I will accompany you across the city myself, along with a small contingent of my men. I promise you’ll be safe.”

&nbs
p; “You’ll draw too much attention.” Two or three riders could go unnoticed. Such a large group was sure to be conspicuous.

  He shook his head, eyes filled with guilt and worry. “I don’t care.”

  “There will be talk.”

  “We could make talk of our own first.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him but said nothing.

  He took a few careful steps toward me and knelt before my chair. “I mean to make you my wife. Whether it takes six months or six years in the making, I mean it all the same.” He reached carefully for my hand, watching my face.

  “You should know, sir,” I said, my voice shaking. “It’s sullied goods you’re getting.”

  He smiled gently. “If you mean your stable boy, I’m not the jealous type. Rumor has it you’ve made a clean break of it.” I’d never told him about James, but our shouting match in the stable had been less than discreet.

  “Clean isn’t exactly the word I’d choose,” I muttered miserably.

  “Nothing ever is, in matters of the heart.” He met my eyes in earnest. “First love leaves scars on us all.”

  I took a deep breath, straightening diplomatically. “You have me at a disadvantage, sir. You seem to be privy to all of my scars, yet I know none of yours.”

  He grinned wolfishly. “Would you like to?”

  It drew a soft laugh from me, my defensive edge vanishing, and I looked up at him through my lashes. “I would, I think, very much like to.”

  “Then agree to marry me,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “Maybe not tomorrow or even this year. But tell me you’ll be mine someday, and I’ll wait as long as it takes.”

  I studied him with all my hard-earned skill. If he was dissembling, it was beyond my ability to detect. There was genuine affection in his face, and hope, and fear of rejection. Those swirling tempest eyes had captured me from the first moment I’d seen him across the room at Crofter’s Castle. My heart still ached, but in time it would heal; it had been, for months, largely in the presence of this unlikely man. The rest of me, well… I had to believe that, too, would mend in time.

  I had a duty to my House, and his offer was better than any other I could expect. It was an advantageous match, to be sure. Beyond that, though, was a visceral calm that settled on me. My hand, resting in his, didn’t tremble. I didn’t want to pull away. My skin didn’t crawl at his nearness. The feel of his breath on my face didn’t turn my stomach.

  I wasn’t afraid.

  My parents were overtly pleased, and a contract was drawn up over the course of the next few weeks. Adrian and I, along with both our parents, closeted ourselves in the study for several hours with a solicitor to lay all the details in writing. The date of our marriage was left to us, though the contract would expire in three years. Our first son would inherit the Van Dryn bloodline, and our second would carry on House Lazerin. That much was established after much heated debate, and was the best my parents and I could have hoped for. Lord Yuri originally pressed for the Van Dryn estate to absorb House Lazerin, morphing it into something new but mostly Van Dryn. My parents – and, to his credit, Adrian – made it clear that was not an acceptable arrangement.

  Beyond that, other details were firmed in writing, though I couldn’t recall now what they were. To me, only the succession mattered. House Lazerin would endure, provided I could supply at least two heirs. Eyeing Adrian across the table, I could easily imagine us working toward a sizable brood of children. That, too, had returned, despite my worries that it was gone from me forever. My desire, twisted and shattered by violation, reignited in his presence.

  When the negotiations were concluded and the contract signed by all parties, the Van Dryns held a gala at their manor, a glamorous who’s who of noble society. Adrian and I smiled, raised glasses, and danced chastely for our attendant audience. When we finally managed a moment alone, he leaned close to murmur in my ear.

  “I feel quite like a pair of dancing monkeys.”

  “Monkeys?” I asked, unfamiliar with the term.

  He smiled and grabbed my hand. “Come, I’ll show you.”

  A few whispers followed us into the hall as some of the guests noticed our hasty departure, but it no longer mattered. We were betrothed before all of society. Let them whisper.

  Pulling me into one of the salons, he pointed out a painting of a long-limbed, hairy creature with a bald face. Beady eyes stared out at me, long tail curled in taunting. The next canvas over contained a great white feline, fierce fangs and claws bared to strike.

  “I’d much rather be one of these,” I remarked.

  He positioned himself behind me, wrapping arms around my waist. “Sand lions are deadly beasts. Difficult to kill, nearly impossible to capture. Hasha had a cub when I knew her.”

  “Poor creature,” I said softly. “How did she manage to get one?”

  “A gift, she told me, from the Emperor of Persica.” We stared at the painting a few moments longer before he pressed a chaste kiss to my temple. “We should return before we make a complete scandal out of the evening.”

  As it was, our absence was little noted thanks to its brevity, but a stern look from my mother assured me that any more disappearances would be unacceptable. We resumed the mantle of grace and propriety until the final guest departed. It was an altogether exhausting evening, and sleep claimed me nearly the instant my head hit my pillow.

  The following dawn, I hurried down the staircase in my breeches and tunic, ready for the day’s instruction. To my surprise, Quintin waited at the bottom step, my common wool cloak over one arm.

  “No drills this morning,” he said. “We’ve an errand to run.”

  I followed him to the stables to find Valor already saddled, along with one of the household mounts: the dun gelding Quintin seemed to favor. Seth flashed me a crooked smile when we approached, so painfully similar to his brother’s. He opened the main gate for us and we set out into the cool morning air. The first hints of spring took some of the bite from the chill, but it was still bitterly cold and I was glad for my cloak.

  Venturing out into the city dressed as I was unnerved and thrilled me all at once. We journeyed east into the smith’s district, a section of the city I’d only ever seen in passing. Neatly appointed merchants’ homes and tidy shops lined the streets. The smell of hot metal and the pounding of hammers rang out as we picked our way through the morning crowd. When we dismounted in front of one unremarkable shop, an apprentice scurried out to take our mounts.

  The smithy was open to the air, as they all were, with a high roof and three sturdy walls to keep out the worst of the elements. A large brick forge pit glowed in the center of the workspace, a few lengths of metal protruding from the coals. Benches of tools and various pieces of half-completed arms and armor filled the space. A second apprentice sat at a grindstone, honing a gleaming blade. A tall, burly man of middling years crossed the sand-covered floor to greet us, his thick, red-gold beard making his already imposing figure even more striking. Equally fiery hair had been wrestled back into a tidy club. He grinned and clasped Quintin’s forearm in a friendly greeting.

  “This is Miss Elivya fen Lazerin,” the Tuvrian introduced, sweeping a solicitous gesture my way. I had expected him to try and pass me off as some house boy under a false name, dressed as I was. The startled glance I spared him was met with guarded expectation. Eat and sleep and breathe as you are - as you want to be.

  Now or never.

  “Well met,” I extended my hand to the smith.

  He hesitated a moment, then grabbed my forearm in the same soldierly fashion. “Viktor, my lady. Quintin’s told me a lot about you,” he grinned. “Here for your fitting, I take it?”

  My companion replied for me. “Ivan said it would be ready today.”

  “It is, it is,” he reassured, turning away from us to retrieve the piece in question from a nearby bench. Somewhere between a gauntlet and a vambrace, lobstered metal plates covered the top side from elbow
to knuckle. The underside offered less protection, a simple panel of boiled leather with some straps and buckles. “Give me your arm, lass,” he grumbled, and I held out my right obediently.

  “Your left,” Quintin corrected, and I tried to suppress a flush of embarrassment.

  Thick hands, rough from a lifetime at the anvil, wrestled the piece into place. The gauntlet was bulky, several layers of leather concealed beneath the metal. The interior was lined with soft kidskin, adding a minor level of comfort to the weighty piece of armor.

  With the buckles securely fastened, the smith stepped back to examine his handiwork.

  Quintin pointed to my slightly-exposed elbow. “One more plate here.”

  “Mm,” the burly man agreed, nodding. “Well go on, lass! Give it a try!” he waved at me impatiently. I moved my arm about, testing the mobility and flexibility.

  “I’m not entirely sure what you expect me to do with it,” I confessed.

  “It’s a Freyjan shield,” Quintin explained. “Well-known back home, but… difficult to find, even here.”

  “Designed and worn by the Daughters of Freyja,” the smith swelled proudly. “The fiercest women fighters in the world.”

  “It’s lighter and more versatile than a shield,” Quintin added. “Not as much protection, but it’ll save your life if a blade slips past your guard.”

  “Why is it so hard to find?” I asked, admiring the craftsmanship with a renewed appreciation. “Surely, there are plenty of Tuvrian and Euzrosi smiths in Litheria.”

  The two men exchanged a glance, and I heard a conspicuous lull in the otherwise constant racket produced by the apprentices. My wheat-haired guardian leaned back against a workbench beside Viktor, arms crossed.

  “They refuse to craft such a thing,” he said carefully.

  “Why not? Our coin is as good as any other’s.”

  “It’s a matter of pride, miss,” the smith said gently. “It’s not their way. The bad blood between the Houses of Freyja and Tuvre…it goes way back. As far back as such a thing can go.”