by Lucy Roy
Freya’s mouth dropped open in outrage, but she quickly recovered herself, drawing in a quiet breath through her nose to reel in her emotions.
“Lord Edrin spent a good deal of our trip into the city subtly interrogating me on my feelings for Aerelius and my status as queen incumbent,” she replied calmly. “He made multiple attempts to get me to admit my reticence, none of which were fruitful because I have none. He questioned how I felt about being traded off, to which I told him he should watch his tone if he expects an amicable relationship with me. He also divulged that his sister was forced into an unhappy marriage, giving him a biased view of how betrothals work.”
“He told you of his sister?” Salazar actually seemed surprised at that fact.
Freya nodded. “He did, and assuming he was being forthright, I can understand why he might feel the way he did when he questioned me.” She frowned. “Your Majesty, I am not in any way reluctant to marry Aerelius, nor do I hold any reservations about the path you, the queen, and my parents have chosen for us. Aerelius and I are fortunate to have been able to form a friendship, to become a team long before our wedding. I care for him a great deal and plan to do all I can to make him happy, both as my husband and as a king.”
“And as a father?”
Her mouth went a bit dry at that. “Bearing his children will be a great honor.”
He raised a single dark brow. “Will it?”
“Yes.” She didn’t have to force conviction into her tone; it was there, clear as a bell. Even if she still questioned whether what she and Aer had was love, she knew, when they were ready, he would be a wonderful father. Their children would be strong and capable and loved because of the true partnership their parents had.
She and the king stared at each other for a moment as he assessed the truth of her words. She held his gaze, refusing to let him see how much she was rattled by his subtle accusation that she may not want her place at her prince’s side.
After a moment, he nodded. “Alright. Do not mistake me, Freya. I know you care for my son, and he, you. It’s clear the affection you show when others are around isn’t simply for show. I hope you realize how beneficial that will be to you both.”
“I do, Your Majesty. Betrothal or not, I know exactly how lucky I am. Aerelius is more than I could’ve hoped for in a mate, and I know that will help make us effective rulers.”
“Indeed. Now, there was just one other matter I wanted to address.”
She frowned. “Your Majesty?”
“You and Aerelius have been poking about those tunnels again, despite Byrric clearly telling you not to,” he said, his voice full of disapproval. “I don’t give a damn if my son outranks him.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “I’m sorry—”
“We’ve got a foreign guest in the palace, one from a nation that has been hostile to us in the past and whose intentions I only barely trust now. I’ve already spoken to my son about this, but I’d like to make it clear to you as well. The tunnel system is one of the aspects of this palace that does not need to be broadcast while we have guests. If by chance you two stepped into a hall as a guest walked past, you’d risk piquing the curiosity of someone who is best left in the dark. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Good.” He rapped on his desk twice and stood. “Well, I think we’re done here. I’m sure Aerelius is eager for you to go to him, so I won’t keep you any longer.”
She stood and smiled. “It was good speaking with you, Your Majesty. I don’t ever want you to feel I have doubts about your son or our future together. The responsibility you’ve placed on my shoulders is one I will never shirk or take lightly.”
He gave her a sharp nod. “I’m glad to hear it.”
Irritated, she strode through the castle, nodding stiff greetings at the servants and staff she passed along the way to Aer’s chambers. Lord Jonas Edrin was truly beginning to get under her skin, something that was incredibly difficult to accomplish. That he’d achieved such status in such a short amount of time irritated her more than his actions.
“Finally!” Laz muttered when she stalked into Aer’s room. “Aer made us wait for you to eat.”
She sent a chastising look at her prince. “Entirely unnecessary, but appreciated, nonetheless.”
With a tug on her wrist, he pulled her down into his lap and gave her a lazy smile. “And how do we show our appreciation, my love?”
Grinning, she stuffed a strawberry in his mouth and kissed his forehead. “With a simple show of affection, of course.”
Narrowing his eyes, he bit the fruit and pulled the stem from his mouth, scowling at Laz when he snorted a laugh. “That wasn’t quite what I was going for.”
“Well, it’s all you’ll get for now,” she said, picking up a fork and spearing a slice of cold turkey.
“So what did the king want?” Lea asked, pouring them each a glass of iced tea.
Freya frowned and tore off a small bite of meat. “It seems our visiting friend thinks I’m feeling a bit reticent about becoming queen, or so he told the king.”
Lea gasped. “He said what?”
“Bastard,” Aer muttered, tightening his arm around her waist. She slid her hand over his and squeezed. As annoyed as she was with Jonas and his insistence on stirring up trouble, she felt worse about the fact that his meddling might cause Aer to think she was unhappy.
“All of those questions he asked that day in Iladel? I was right when I said he was fishing for information. I didn’t give him the answers he wanted, but he still went to the king, regardless.”
“I’m assuming your presence here so soon means you were able to convince Uncle Salazar otherwise?” Lea asked.
“I was,” she confirmed.
“It’s so odd,” Collin said, frowning. “First he believes you’re having relations with Lazarus, of all people, and now this.”
“It’s just so infuriating! I don’t care what his motives are. I’ve never—never—fought this!”
“Well, that’s not entirely true,” Aer said, his annoyance shifting to amusement. “You threw a knife at your father once, when he insisted we dance at my nameday ball.”
“Gods above,” Laz muttered.
“It was a butter knife and I was eight,” she groaned, exasperated. “Once I was old enough to understand the importance of it all, I was far less difficult!”
Collin cleared his throat. “Did he have any other reason to think you might be unhappy?”
“None,” Freya said, breaking off a piece of bread angrily.
Aer kissed her shoulder. “Is it safe to assume you also received the same scolding I did regarding the tunnels?”
“Yes,” she sighed.
“You aren’t truly planning to listen, are you?” Lea asked incredulously. “We may not have known each other long, Freya, but I think I know you and my cousin better than that.”
Aer gave her a look of mock confusion. “My dear cousin, whatever do you mean? You think I would go against my father’s wishes?”
“Without question,” Laz replied, laughing.
“Perhaps this once you shouldn’t?” Collin suggested, sliding a slice of bread from the tray.
“Perhaps,” Freya agreed, giving him a bright smile as Aer chuckled quietly. “I suppose we’ll see.”
Kallan, the queen, and the pixies arrived a short while later, shooing off the males so he could set about fitting Freya’s wedding dress around her wings. As Rini had forewarned, Freya was required to extend and retract her wings at least a dozen times, shifting them up, down, spreading them wide, and pressing them together as Kallan took copious measurements of her back and shoulders with each movement. By the time Kallan decided he’d taken enough measurements and notes regarding the placement of her appendages, she was quite ready to collapse in bed to let her muscles rest until the following day.
Freya was just seeing Kallan out when Aer knocked on her door. He wai
ted until the dressmaker had left, then stepped toward Freya and took both of her hands.
“Did you have a good day?”
Grinning, she wrapped her arms around his waist. “Oh, yes, Highness. My wings were in dire need of a tediously uncomfortable workout. Quite fun, that.”
Leaning down, he kissed her slowly. “Well in that case, I think I’d like to claim you for myself for the rest of the evening. Cheer you up a bit.”
She gave him a slow smile. “As it so happens, I was hoping for the same.” She’d been turning an idea around in her mind, letting it percolate a bit as she went about getting fussed over, until it became fully formed.
“Were you, now?”
Circling her arms around his neck, she nodded. “There’s something I’d like you to help me with.”
He paused, narrowing his eyes as his hands hooked around her waist. “Why do I feel this isn’t going in the direction I was hoping?”
She sent him a dazzling smile. “Because you’re incredibly perceptive and know me too well?”
Letting her go, he dropped down on the end of the bed and braced his hands behind him.
“Alright, my love, what do you need my help with?”
“I think Byrric and the king are hiding something,” she said.
Aer’s laughed. “And this surprises you?”
“No, of course not,” she said, waving a hand. “But I think they’re hiding something that they specifically don’t want us to know about.”
“Is this because they don’t want us in the tunnels?”
She nodded. “Because they both went out of their way to specifically tell us to stay away. Doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd that Byrric’s warning came only a few weeks after we scented a human in the tunnels, and more than ten years after they all but encouraged us to explore them?”
“What do you think it might be?”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I suppose it could be something as simple as a surprise wedding gift, but I don’t think it is. My father was far too serious.”
“Byrric is always far too serious,” Aer pointed out. Smirking, he curled his fingers, beckoning her forward. When she stepped toward him, he rested his hands on her hips. “In nineteen years, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him make a joke.”
Freya’s rested her hands on his shoulders and her eyes drifted toward the door to her passageway. There were nearly two dozen tunnels that branched off from it and dozens more from those. By her estimation, she and Aer had explored maybe half of those in their lifetimes, but each time they found a new one, it seemed five more appeared. Whether it was due to magic or feats of architecture, it was becoming increasingly clear to her that, despite how certain they had been as children, they were unlikely to ever map out the tunnel system in its entirety.
“You’re quite suspicious, you know that?” Aer observed. “Did you consider that their reasoning could be exactly as they stated?”
“I suppose…” She shook her head. “No, it seems entirely unlikely Byrric and your parents would be completely unaware of a human slipping through the palace in the middle of the night. It has to have something to do with that.”
Aer nodded slowly. “Yes, I suppose that’s a reasonable assumption.”
“And how often were foreign guests in the palace when we were snooping about as children? They never seemed to care then”
He narrowed his eyes. “Another fair point.”
“I have them now and again.” Cupping his face in her hands, she leaned down and kissed him. “Humor me?”
His hands slipped down to the backs of her thighs. “On one condition,” he said. With a tug on her legs, he pulled her down so that she was straddling his thighs.
Draping her arms over his shoulders, she lifted her brows in question. “You and your conditions.” She sighed. “What is it now?”
He laid a soft kiss to her collarbone. “You tell me more about these lacy things you plan to wear on our wedding night.” He laughed when he saw her deadpan look. “Alright, alright. We’ll investigate a bit tonight if you’d like.”
“Thank you.”
She tried to ignore the feelings that shifted at his mention of their wedding night. No matter her confidence in him or their pairing, romantic relations were one thing she knew little about. She and Ashton Carinald had a few stolen kisses here and there back in Watoria and she’d played her share of kissing games in secondary school, but anything beyond that, especially true, raw emotion, was not something she’d ever learned to handle well. Put a knife or bow in her hand and she’d be able to handle it a thousand different ways, but a naked male was something she knew little and less about. Just the thought of stumbling through their first time made her stomach roil a bit.
As if sensing her unease, Aer brushed her hair behind her shoulders and pulled her closer, his eyes smoldering as they gazed into hers.
“Are you thinking about lacy underthings?” he teased.
“A bit,” she conceded.
He was silent for a moment, his expression conflicted as he seemed to struggle to work up the nerve to say something. “I’m nervous, too, if that’s your concern,” he finally admitted.
She started, surprised at his admission. “As a male, shouldn’t you be overly confident in your prowess?”
“I think our exceeding levels of confidence are why we feel so compelled to be honest with one another, don’t you?” He gave her a soft smile. “But… as much as I’m loathe to admit it, I worry that I may not be able to make you as… happy as I’d like.”
With a sigh, she averted her eyes. “And my concerns are just the same as yours. I like to think that because it’s us, it will be perfect, but reason tells me it will be anything but.”
“Freya,” he whispered. “Look at me.” He waited until she dragged her gaze back to his before continuing. “Nothing about you will ever make me unhappy.” He took a deep breath. “This marriage may be arranged, but I would’ve picked you a hundred times over if given the choice.”
She let out a relieved laugh, unable to keep a smile from curving her lips as his words sunk in, searing themselves in her mind and heart. “I’d have picked you, too, Aerelius Harridan, without a moment’s hesitation.”
Chapter 33
Much to both her and Aerelius’s disappointment, there was little to be found when they began their hunt for information about what their parents might be hiding. Their trips into the tunnels hadn’t provided anything terribly interesting aside from the occasional, mildly curious conversation topics. Maghda had brought out a switch on one of her kitchen boys for stealing chocolates that were reserved for the wedding. King Salazar had taken to requesting marmalade instead of sun fruit preserves. The maids were scrambling to ensure proper accommodations were ready when wedding guests began arriving. And Jonas, according to kitchen gossip, was a shameless flirt and had already managed to bed two of the female staff members. The only thing that rang with any bit of suspicion was a hushed conversation between Salazar and the head of his guard, Sir Ervic, but they’d disappeared down a hall before any of their words could be made out.
Freya was beginning to wonder if she was grasping at straws, searching for something deep and interesting to occupy her mind when so much of it was being forced full of fittings, tastings, seating charts, and background information on the more important guests who would be attending their wedding.
Despite their lack of luck thus far, however, Freya could feel it in her bones that there was something they would find, some clue as to why their fathers didn’t want them in the passages that snaked through the palace and its grounds. The more she thought about it, the more she became convinced Byrric and Salazar’s reasoning, while valid, didn’t fit with their past behavior. Ordona had shown Freya and Aerelius the passages when they were only eight, the summer after Freya discovered the door under the drawbridge. No one had ever paid them any mind when they would pop out in the middle of a hallway, startling the staff, or worse, one of th
eir parents.
No, something about this warning had Freya’s hackles up and she wanted to find out why.
It was four weeks after their first venture, and the weekend before their final exams week, before they finally found anything.
They’d gone only about one hundred feet into their sixth venture when Freya’s ears perked at the sound of footsteps in the distance. Aer put his hand on her back, then she extinguished her lights, bathing them in darkness. As her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, she cast a cloaking spell over them, blocking their presence from passers-by.
As the footsteps moved closer, she and Aerelius inhaled simultaneously, drawing in the scent of the person coming toward them.
“Human,” Aer whispered in the same moment the scent registered with Freya.
The steps became louder, clearly coming down the same passage they were in. Soft light bobbed toward them a few moments later, setting the tunnel aglow. Freya double-checked her enchantment, then waited as the human came around the corner.
He was tall and broad, but his face and hair were obscured by a dark hood and mask that covered his nose and jaw. He wore an olive tunic topped with a sleeveless gray jerkin and tied with a brown leather belt. His gait was swift and purposeful, telling her he was clearly familiar with the layout of the tunnels. Any other features that might help her identify him in the future—hair or eye color, age, scars—were completely obscured under his clothes.
As he got closer, she felt Aer grip her hand. When she gave him a questioning look, he inclined his head toward the human’s waist. Frowning, Freya followed the direction of his gaze, then her eyes widened slightly when she saw a small, ancient-looking brass key hanging there glinting in the light of the small lantern the man carried.
They waited in silence until he’d passed, but Freya didn’t dare lift her enchantment. She waited until the glow of his own light vanished before reigniting her lights.
