Queen of Unicorns

by Jennifer Ellision

  Here we go again. “Nine months,” I agreed with a tight-lipped smile.

  “I could help,” he repeated. I‘d hoped the conversation was over, but it was never over.

  “Jay... Not this again….” I turned from him and began to pack up the few bits that had escaped the basket.

  “You're nine months pregnant, Lia. I worry about you.”

  I turned back to him and ran my hand through my hair, weaving my fingers through the ends. “I've had people worrying about me my entire life, Jay,” I snapped. “My parents have the worry quotient all taken care of. The job's already taken.”

  He splayed his arms in a wide shrug. “And yet… here I am.”

  I looked to the side, carefully studying the trek of a ladybug as it made its way over a blade of grass. “Why do you worry about me, Jay?”

  One of his hands left my belly to tilt my chin forward so that I met his eyes. His gaze on mine was steady and sure.

  “You know the answer to that, too.”

  I did. He'd told me the answer since we were children racing hither and dither over the meadows of Vale.

  I love you.

  He'd told me as a teenager, as we’d left the palace stables to go spy on wild unicorns.

  I love you, Lia.

  He'd told me when Luka and I had announced our engagement, folding me into a hug and giving me his blessing even as his eyes brimmed with unshed tears.

  He makes you happy. That's all I want. I love you.

  And in case there was any doubt on whether his feelings had ever wavered, he told me now, grasping my hand in his.

  “I love you. I've loved you forever. Marry me and let me raise this child with you. Let me help for once.”

  My heart thumped painfully in my chest. It would have been so easy to say yes. I loved Jay and cared for him deeply.

  But as a brother. I wasn’t over Luka, and I doubted I ever would be. And yet, I knew there was only one way this could go. One inevitable conclusion. If I didn’t marry Jay, I would eventually lose him to someone that would, and I’d lose the only friend I had that didn’t have four legs and wings.

  “Why do you want me? I’m pregnant with another man’s baby, my body is the size of a whale, and my hair is full of grass.”

  “This is just a situation, it isn’t who you are. You’ve always been beautiful, and you’ll always be beautiful. But that’s not the reason I want you. I want you because of who you are. I love you.”

  “The child isn't yours,” I said lamely, wishing things were different. I’d had men falling in love with me my whole life. It was part and parcel of being in the spotlight as the daughter of the king and queen, but of all the men, Jay was the only one I cared about. The only one for whom I wished my feelings were more than they were.

  He shook his head angrily. “You can't honestly believe I care about that. It's a part of you. I'd love the baby whether or not I share blood with it.”

  “I'm sorry, Jay.” I shrugged, feeling helpless. “I do love you. But not in the way that you deserve from a wife. You deserve to love and to be loved in return. We both do.”

  And there wasn't room for romance in my heart right now. There were still days I thought Luka might come walking through the door once again, his big arms open wide for me to rush into.

  Jay’s shoulders sagged, defeated.

  “I want to be there for you.”

  My heart twisted at his earnest words. “I know you do,” I replied quietly. “But you'll have to be there for me another way.”

  He sighed and struggled to smile. When his eyes lifted toward the unicorn, still hovering and watching us intently, his smile became just the tiniest bit genuine. “I suppose you won't have much need of me anyway. Not when you have such help as your unicorn brood to look after you.”

  “Don't forget my parents and the palace full of staff,” I reminded him gently. “Plus…” I lifted my arms. “I’ve got two fairly capable hands myself.”

  He laughed softly, chuckling to himself and shaking his head ruefully. “You’re not likely to let me forget it.”

  “You wouldn’t like me any other way. But Jay..." I reached a hand up to grab his and gave it a squeeze. “None of that means there isn't room in my life for you.” I glanced down at my belly and placed my other hand on top of it. “In our lives. I do need you. the baby needs an uncle. I need a friend.” I held my breath, hoping he wouldn’t point out that the baby needed a father more than an uncle.

  “As long as I can be there, I don't care what position I hold,” he swore fervently. He squeezed my hand back. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” I returned. My heart twisted with pity--and fondness at the same time. I was lucky to have Jay in my life. I just wished there was more that I could give to him.

  “Now...” Jay gave a jaunty little hop and swished a hand forward as he bowed. I giggled, more out of relief of the change of topic than anything else. He stood up straight and offered me his arm. “Milady, may I escort you back to the palace?”

  I took his arm with aplomb, assuming a snooty air that I'd seen from some of the other nobles at court. “You may, good sir.” I dropped the attitude and my voice to a whisper. “But let's hurry if we could. The baby's sitting on my bladder, and I desperately need to pee.”

  Caught by surprise, Jay let out a bark of laughter and coughed to clear his throat. “Why yes, I think we can accommodate madam's request. We'll set out post-haste.”

  The unicorn followed above us at a distance as we set off to the palace and home, the sun setting behind us. Jay kept up a determinedly merry stream of conversation, and I laughed, caught up in the pretense that we could remain friends. It was something I would hold onto as long as I could until in doing so, I would hurt Jay.

  Whenever we lapsed into comfortable silence, I snuck looks at him. His brow furrowed in concentration as he guided me over some of the trickier rocks and ditches in the valleys, eyes on my hands and feet as he pointed out where it was safe to step. I tried picturing him by my side as more than a friend. He was an exceptionally good looking man with just enough cuteness in the brawn to get any girl’s heart racing, but the hand in mine was just a hand to steady me, to help me in my current state. And while his hands were warm and steady, the buzz of electricity I’d felt while holding Luka’s hand was absent.

  23rd April

  After spending a morning reading in my room, I got the word that my parents were back from their trip. They’d been gone a week, which had given me a full seven days of blissful freedom. The second the guard told me they were back, I hurried to the parlor to meet them.

  “You were out yesterday,” my mother started before I’d even had a chance to close the door behind me.

  “I was in the meadow, yes,” I said with a curtsey. It wasn’t mandatory to curtsey to her, and yet, I always found myself doing so when she was on the verge of telling me off.

  “You went where?” Queen Renee of the Kingdom of Vale set her teacup down on her saucer with so much force that the cup’s base cracked. The tea spilled over her hands, and servants rushed forward with cloth napkins.

  “Mother!” My voice twined exasperation and concern, but it appeared the temperature of the drink wasn’t extreme. My mother gratefully accepted the offered napkins and waved the servants away. I took a seat opposite her on one of the rich velvet sofas.

  My father looked up from his reports over his wire-rimmed spectacles with mild-mannered alarm, half-rising from his chair. “Are you all right, dear?”

  “Yes, Bennett, darling.”

  “You just spilled hot tea all over yourself,” I said dryly as my father resumed his seat after her assurance.

  “Oh, don’t fuss so, darling. It’s tepid at best.” She patted the spots on her chest dry. The smile she flashed my way was bright white. “I’ve had worse. Besides, I’d much rather talk about what made me spill the tea in the first place.”

  Don’t fuss? That was rich, coming from her. But if she wanted to play that g
ame, I could play too. I had, after all, learned from the best.

  “All right.” I folded my hands in my lap and looked at her placidly. “It’s the same meadow I’ve gone to hundreds—if not thousands of times.”

  Her lips twisted. “You won’t get off that easy with me, Eliana Rhiann. None of those hundreds or thousands of times had you been alone and in… the condition you’re in now.” The nervous glance she gave my abdomen indicated she thought it was equally as likely there was a bomb in there as a baby. “You know, I didn’t want to go on this trip so close to the birth.”

  “My condition?” I gave a wry glance down at my belly. Do you believe this, little one? “Mother, I’m pregnant,” I said aloud. “I don’t have the plague. I was totally fine out there.”

  From his spot across the table, my father snorted.

  Mother glared at him, and he held his hands up in surrender. “You have to admit, she’s got a point, Renee.”

  “Don’t you turn against me too. You know exactly why I worry.” She pinned him with a pointed glance, and he looked away, cowed. My mother had always been this way with me. She doted on me, but she smothered me too. It was only a year or so ago that she finally let me leave the palace alone, and I’d repaid her by getting pregnant. Even though she was angry with me, she really did have every reason to be.

  Taking pity on the man bobbing in the waters of my mother’s disapproval, I threw my father a lifeline. “I wasn’t alone, Mother. Jay was with me. Come on, you trust Jay, right?” I coaxed with a wheedling tone.

  The question was rhetorical. My parents loved Jay. They’d love nothing more than for me be married off anew to him. I think my mother thought that if I was married, somehow I’d be safe. That’s why, despite her overprotectiveness, she’d been more than happy for me to marry Luka when I was only seventeen.

  At the mention of Jay, she sniffed, slightly mollified… but not completely swayed. “It would be different if you’d gone out there with him, but you didn’t. You went alone, and he found you there.”

  “How did you know that?”

  She gave me her first genuine smile of the morning. “I’m your mother, dear. I know everything.”

  After dinner, I walked back to my chambers, rubbing my aching lower back as I mulled over what I’d do with the rest of my day. I had half a mind to grab a book and return to the meadow just to teach my mother a lesson—that I would not be corralled like a child but then decided to head to the staviary to see the new unicorn.

  I quickened my step as I left the palace proper and followed the winding paths over the palace grounds to the staviary. I wasn’t two steps away from the entrance when I heard a familiar voice.

  “Testing your mother again so soon?”

  I turned to see Jay with a wry smile on his lips as he tossed a pitchfork aside into a waiting pile of hay. He left the wagon he’d been heaving the hay into leaning beside the side of the stables’ outside walls.

  “You’ve got a bit of dirt on your cheeks,” I informed him, ignoring his accusation about my mother—whether or not it was true. I licked my thumb as though I intended to wipe it away.

  Laughing, Jay dodged my outstretched hand. “Careful, Princess. I might decide that my dirty face needs wiping on those clean skirts of yours.” He made a grabbing motion toward me, but I swatted his hands away, unable to keep from grinning.

  “You’d never!”

  He dropped his hands and shrugged. “You’re right. I wouldn’t.” He raised an arm and leaned against the building. “So.” He quirked a brow. “Your mother? I heard she was back. I also heard that she’d called you into a meeting.”

  “Nothing gets past you, does it?” Jay had worked at the palace for years as a stablehand and knew more of the staff than I did. He had eyes and ears everywhere.

  “Not much,” he agreed.

  I shrugged nonchalantly, a mirror of him just a moment ago. “She just read me the riot act for going to the meadow yesterday, but she’ll get over it. She always does.”

  “You’re going to send that poor woman to an early grave.”

  I stretched my arms to the sky and leaned from side to side to stretch my back out. “She’s got you right where she wants you, doesn’t she? That’s just what she’d have you all believe, but don’t let her fool you. She’s made of sterner stuff than that.”

  “I won’t say I told you so when she has to take to her bed from the shock of what you’ve made her endure.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Don’t you worry. She’ll outlive us all. She’s the one who’s going to send my child into this world with an extreme case of anxiety.”

  Jay stepped closer and gently took me by the shoulders, smiling down at me. He turned me back toward the palace, bending over so that his chin rested on my shoulder, and his lips brushed my ear. Gooseflesh pimpled my arm.

  “Listen,” he said quietly. “I get it. But—and call me crazy here—I’m just saying maybe you could give her a full twenty-four hours before you test her again.”

  His warm breath on my neck sent a ripple of excitement down my spine, making me suck in a breath, and I found myself leaning into him.

  He nudged me back toward the palace, breaking the moment.

  So I went.

  Because I had a feeling that if I stayed, I’d regret it and that regret would have nothing to do with my mother.

  Confusion over what had just happened followed me all the way to my room. Jay had done nothing out of the ordinary, and yet, my body had responded to his touch. Not wanting to analyze why, I fell into my bed and picked up the book I’d been reading earlier. I only left my room for meals, and in the early evening, I picked up my book again, determined to finish it before the end of the day. It was only later, when the sound of frenzied knocking pounding at my door pried me from a dream of tangling lips and entwined bodies, that I realized I’d fallen asleep. Sweat coated my body, and my hair stuck to my face as I woke up with a start. My sheets were wound around my legs—I’d been tossing and turning in my sleep, and my heart beat fast in a way that wasn’t due to the visitor at my door. The dream hadn’t been about Luka, it had been about Jay.

  Apparently, even if I still wasn’t ready to consider anything happening between me and Jay, my body and my subconscious had different ideas.

  “I’m coming!” I grunted. A quick look out of the window told me it was late. The knocking paused, and I could hear the murmur of heated conversation outside as I heaved myself from the four-poster bed—no small feat with the additional girth around my middle.

  I waddled slowly to the door, but it appeared I was taking too long for my visitors in the hall for the pounding resumed with vigor.

  “Lia, please!” The voice was muffled by the thick wooden door, but it wasn’t enough to stifle it, and my eyebrows flew up.

  It was Jay.

  And for Jay to come wake me in the middle of the night, it had to mean something was wrong. Something that involved the unicorns. Because there was only one reason Jay would seek me out before anyone else, and it had nothing to do with the fact that I was the heir to the kingdom.

  “Just a moment!” I called, throwing a robe on and hurriedly knotting it over my nightdress. I threw the door open to reveal Jay, his expression grim. A palace groom stood beside him, red-faced and wringing his hands.

  “Your Highness.” The groom bowed quickly and then rushed into an explanation. “I'm so sorry to disturb you at such a late hour, but—”

  I waved away his apologies, eager to get to the point. My eyes were on Jay and only Jay. There was so much distress in his eyes, and he had a tethered sort of energy to him—like it took him a great deal of restraint to remain standing in that spot to have this conversation with me.

  A stone of pure dread sank in my stomach.

  “What's wrong with the unicorns?” I demanded.

  The groom’s eyes widened with my perception, but Jay didn’t look the least bit surprised. His leashed restraint vanished as he lurched forward to s
eize my hand. “Come with me. It’ll be faster if we show you.”

  Uncaring about my state of undress, I walked as quickly as I could to keep pace with Jay so that he didn’t have to tug me along. I didn’t care how I looked as I followed him out of the palace. As we crossed the courtyard, it became apparent that we weren’t heading to the staviary.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, hoping that my mother didn’t pick this particular time to look out of her window. If she saw me racing out of the palace grounds in only a nightdress, robe, and slippers, she’d probably murder me herself.

  “You’ll see,” Jay replied in a whisper.

  In the distance, the twinkling lights of Shipley, The Vale’s capital city, shone brightly.

  The guards on the gates raised their eyebrows as we passed, but they didn’t try to stop us. Their job wasn’t to stop me coming and going from the palace. I was in no doubt that my mother would find out from them later and roast me alive for it.

  “Jay.” I tugged on his hand to draw his attention to me.

  Momentarily, his eyes pulled from their locked position forward on our trek as he looked back at me.

  “You still haven’t told me what’s wrong with the unicorns. I know it’ll be faster if we just get there, but… I’m worried.” My fingers tightened around his. “How worried should I be?”

  Jay stopped momentarily. He ran his hands through his hair as he gathered his thoughts. “No one’s dead,” he started with.

  I laughed nervously. “That’s not the comfort you think it is.”

  “A pair of palace guards were patrolling the edge of the meadow, just outside of Shipley. Closer to the city than you were yesterday. They came across a unicorn foal—and it was in a trap. One of them stayed behind in case the hunter returned, while the other came to get us.”

  I balked. “But… hunting isn’t allowed in those parts of the meadow. Hunters are supposed to keep to the designated areas.”

  He nodded grimly. “We don’t think it was a rabbit they were after.”

  They were hunting unicorns.