A Crown of Lilies

by Melissa Ragland

  “I see your training is continuing apace,” my father finally broke the awkward silence.

  I couldn’t speak, all my shame and doubt whispering inside my head. Instead, I forced my trembling hands to pluck a roll from a nearby basket. They’ll see. They’ll see right through me. They’ll see that I’m broken, a failure, a disappointment.

  “I’ve a mind to see her fit for a Freyjan shield,” my wheat-haired commander replied in my stead. “I think it would suit her better.”

  I glanced at him. It was nothing he’d mentioned to me. Afraid to draw attention, I focused on my breakfast, trying to make myself as inconspicuous as possible.

  “I wasn’t aware you’d studied the Freyjan style,” my father replied skeptically.

  “I haven’t,” he admitted, “but it’s similar enough to a buckler in function that I think I can reasonably appropriate the same techniques.”

  “An interesting idea. I’ll see you’re properly funded.”

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  I could feel eyes on me and dared to look up from my plate. My mother’s calculating gaze watched me from across the table.

  Greta shook her head as she circled with a pitcher of juice. “Not proper, for a lady to be dressed so,” she muttered.

  “Madam?” Quintin eyed her.

  She glared at him. “Dressed as a man, stinking and filthy at her father’s table!” I shrank in my chair, feeling profoundly uncomfortable. “And armed like any common garrison runt!”

  “What she wears has little to do with her rank in this house,” his cool tone reminded her.

  Greta drew herself up indignantly and stormed out of the room, muttering under her breath about uppity young men.

  “You ought not antagonize her,” my father warned. “She prepares your meals, you know.”

  When breakfast was finally over and I excused myself, Quintin followed me into the hall. Itching in my skin from the interminable humiliation of it all, I turned on him, remnants of my volatile anger barely held in check. “You don’t need to do that.”

  “She was disrespectful.”

  “So it’s only okay when you insult me,” I countered dryly.

  The barest flicker of remorse flashed behind his cool composure as he replied stiffly. “I’m just trying to help you.”

  “Since when do you give a damn?” I snapped, exasperated. This latest showing of regard from him threw me off-center, which only served to compound my aimless frustration. “A month ago, being assigned to me was a disgrace - a punishment!” I threw the words at him, anchorless fury straining for any outlet. “Trailing some spoiled noble whore-”

  “Hold your tongue, woman,” he snarled, the full weight of his Tuvrian pride brought to bear. We were not in the garden, but I ceded to him out of habit. Blue eyes glinted angrily as he pointed back the way we’d come. “As long as you hide from them, you are only playing pretend. Eat and sleep and breathe as you are, as you want to be.”

  “That is not the world we live in,” I countered bitterly.

  “In this house, it damn well will be.” He stalked off down the hall.

  Chapter 8

  I was soaking in the bath when my mother burst into the room, her eyes filled with quiet rage. “Tell me who,” she demanded.

  “I don’t-”

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

  “No,” I said 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 have at least put him off his ham and eggs. 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 her place on the stool beside the tub. Her face had changed, rage buried deep. 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.

  “Your father must never know.”

  I opened my eyes, shaken from my reverie. “Quintin will-”

  “I’ll speak to him.” She continued her work, pouring a ewer of water over my hair and gently wringing it. When she was done, I stood 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, and desperate tears leaked 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 penetrating 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 am alive.”

  She quirked an eyebrow at me. “Quintin is the reason you are 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 is a good man, and you could ask for no better guardian than one who genuinely cares for you.”

  “That prig all but despises me,” I dismissed. “He’s merely following Father’s orders.”

  “If that were so, he would not have followed you to Dockside that first night. He would’ve gone straight to your father." She left me then, to consider in the steam alone.

  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 possible, that maybe I wasn’t as broken as I’d thought.

  When Gabe and I returned to the manor later in the evening, Quintin was in the stable unsaddling his horse. “And where have you been?” I inquired as casually as I could manage. Part of me hoped that if I just pretended I was okay, then eventually, I would be.

  “Taking care of a few errands. Don’t delay, I hear supper is nearly ready.” He led his gelding off toward the stalls. Gabe and I followed promptly. As we headed from the stable toward the house, a shock of red-brown hair caught my eye. I turned to see James watching me across the yard.

  “I’ll
be right there,” I assured my companions and went to meet my oldest friend. I halted several paces from him and waited.

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets and toed a rock on the ground. “You look well,” he mumbled awkwardly. Brown eyes peered up at me through shaggy bangs.

  “It’s good to see you,” I said honestly, keeping a wary grip on the tempest inside my skin. I’d wondered how he fared often, but life and the possibility of a good marriage had kept me occupied.

  He gestured at the stable. “I noticed you heading out with Quintin an awful lot these days.” His voice was carefully neutral, but his eyes took on a hard glint. “Particularly at night,” he added.

  “Meeting a group of friends.” I wouldn’t lie to him, but the mention of traveling the streets at night dredged the panic up from the pit of my stomach. I fought to suppress the torrent of fear and shame, forcing myself to focus on the man in front of me.

  James nodded, eyes flicking to the cobblestones, the stable, and anywhere else that wasn’t me. “Van Dryns, I hear.” His careful composure began to slip.

  “Yes.”

  He did look at me then. “Not enough wolves in Laezon for you to hunt?”

  My lip curled of its own accord, but I refused to rise to his bait. “I’m doing my duty as the heir to my House.”

  He laughed bitterly. “You needn’t enjoy it so much. It’s a bit indecent. First Chamberlains, now Van Dryns. Working your way through all seven Houses?”

  I did bristle at that, though I kept my tone even. “You made it clear you’ve no interest in continuing what we had.”

  “Me?” he balked incredulously. “You disappeared the second we arrived in the city, and haven’t looked back.”

  I was too proud, then, to see the truth in his words. “I looked back long enough to see your constant scowls and hear your disparaging remarks. You refused to take my word when I told you there was nothing between Aubrey and me.”

  “And this newest one?” he eyed me, angry and hurt. My brief hesitation was as good as a declaration of love, to him.

  Frustration gripped me as his face lit with accusation. “Could you put aside your jealousy for one gods-be-damned second?” I jabbed one finger at the cobblestones between us. “I have a responsibility to my House to secure an advantageous match.”

  Another harsh laugh escaped him. “Oh, I’m well aware I don’t fall anywhere near the realm of consideration.”

  “But you could still be a part of my life!” I snapped, taking an angry step forward. “But no, with you it’s all or nothing, isn’t it? You knew from the start what would happen when I reached my majority.”

  “I can’t see you with another man!” he roared, eyes wild. My James, my sweet lad, the freckle-faced boy who taught me to charm horses…. I could still feel the straw under my skin, hear the crickets outside the stable, smell the horseflesh and oiled tack and the faint scent of lilies.

  Jealousy makes monsters of us all.

  Shera’s words echoed in my mind. I had done this to him, to us. I had driven us to this precipice. Guilt and heartbreak piled onto my already battered soul. Tears welled in my eyes for the hundredth time that day as I shook my head at him, backing away. “Then leave. I can’t keep doing this.”

  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 attitude of detached disapproval never wavered, his manner shifted in other ways. 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 anchorless 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 was not her words to me that mattered most. Whatever she said to Quintin changed his approach to me yet again. The next morning, halfway through our practice, he snatched my sword arm.

  “You’re collapsing your frame,” he grumbled, tugging my elbow away from my body. I tensed under his hand, and his eyes snapped to my face, watching warily for my reaction.

  Eying his grip on my sleeve, I set my jaw stubbornly and corrected my stance before meeting his 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 at my back 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 on the desk. “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 gentle 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.”

  He stopped a few feet from me. “And I am forever in his debt.” He swallowed audibly. “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.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “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 myself will accompany you, along with a small contingent of my men. I promise you will be safe.”

  “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 courtyard 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.”

  He pulled me to my feet, still holding my hand. “Then agree to marry me. 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.

  “I will,” I replied firmly, grabbing his lapel and pulling his lips down to mine. That kiss felt like a victory, a great reclaiming of myself. Gentle and chaste, when we parted, he looked down at me with wonder and joy. Then, suddenly, he unleashed a great whoop and wrapped his arms about my waist, lifting me off the floor and spinning me. I tensed at the sudden closeness, but only for a moment. The study door flew open at the noise, and in raced my mother. Adrian quickly put me down but kept me close.

  Reassured that I was in no immediate danger, my mother settled her hands on her hips. “I take it you have news?”

  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 debate. It was the best case we could have hoped for. We had expected, and 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.