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Chapter thirty-three

Aldric

H e narrowed his eye as he tracked Crestley across the ballroom. The man had finally ceased openly flirting with his betrothed some moments ago.

But Aldric’s desire to sink one of his hidden daggers into the strutting peacock lingered.

“This was a mistake,” he growled to Calix the moment they fought their way free from the horde of courtiers who had come to gawk at him when he first arrived at the queen’s little ball.

He had never intended to come. He still wasn’t sure just why he was there.

All he knew was that he felt ridiculous and wished everyone would stop staring at him. Beneath the press of so many eyes, he felt naked without the protective layer of his brigandine.

Calix looked a good deal more natural in their current surroundings. Nursing a goblet of wine, his second-in-command commented sidelong, “It is never a mistake to observe the enemy in their natural habitat, Your Highness, but we can leave whenever you like, of course.”

Aldric grunted at that.

“ Or ,” Calix suggested with a mischievous glint in his eyes, “we could stay long into the evening and see Kyn made all the more jealous he wasn’t allowed to come.”

Something dark and strange snarled to life deep within him at the mention of his most well-mannered Son, though Aldric was quick to snuff it out. He had no need for such feelings. Feelings complicated things.

And he had no desire for further complications.

He had forbidden Kyn’s attendance that night from a place of logic alone. His Son and the queen were always making eyes at one another when they were in the same room. He didn’t want Kyn to become attached.

There was no point when she would be dead shortly after the wedding.

And Kyn most certainly would have become more attached that night, what with his bride dressed like that —wearing dark purple and glittering like the night sky.

He had always been fond of stars.

“Wintertide,” Aldric announced as he watched the queen share a circle dance with her godmother and her Spymaster. When her eyes abruptly flashed his way and pierced him through even from that great distance, he sucked in a breath and looked away. “I want to push for a wedding before Wintertide.”

Calix pursed his lips and slanted him a look. “Do you think she’ll agree?”

Aldric shrugged. “I simply won’t give her an opportunity to refuse.”

That seemed to amuse his Son, given the way Calix’s mouth twitched up into another smile. After a few moments of pause, Aldric realized the source of that amusement when his second announced, “Well, now’s your chance to tell her just that, Your Highness. She’s heading this way.”

“What?” Aldric’s head jolted sharply to the right so he could view the entirety of the room. The queen was, indeed, coming at him from his blind side. And she was coming in fast.

She looked displeased.

Aldric balled his hands into fists and braced for the impact of her latest foul mood.

The moment she loomed over him, the queen greeted him with not so much as a smile nor a hello, but a hissed question of, “What are you doing here?” that ruffled the top of his head, given her sudden nearness.

She smelled like vanilla.

Aldric took a full step back and tilted a look up at her. Arching an eyebrow, he rumbled, “Well, I was simply standing here. Breathing. Living—”

“You told me you weren’t coming tonight,” the woman was swift to remind him, always so keen to be right about everything.

That time in particular, she was right, of course. He had said that.

But he reserved the right to change his mind.

When he provided no verbal retort to her observation, though, the queen’s frown for him deepened all the more.

Calix swiftly interjected into that awkward pause a smooth congratulation of, “Happy birthday, Your Majesty.”

She flicked Calix a glance and offered a tight little smile. “Thank you, Master Fitzjesmaine. That is very kind of you.” But her attention did not linger upon his second-in-command for long.

When next she sliced a look his way, she observed, “I see the rest of your men are not with you tonight.”

“No, they are not,” Aldric confirmed. “Disappointed?”

That time, it was the queen’s turn to hold her tongue. In response to his words, she but furrowed her brow.

And then there was naught but silence.

A deep, lingering silence.

Her pointless party continued on around them, laughter and conversation rasping over the whine of the music. A few courtiers passed close enough to their trio to offer soft congratulations on her birthday, their engagement, and all manner of other nonsense. Bows and curtsies were always gifted to them both.

But still, the queen lingered on near his side. His blind side at that.

And he was growing tired of having to keep his neck torqued to watch her .

Finally, he snapped, “What do you want?” which lured her into shooting him another glance honed to a dangerous edge.

“People will think it rude if I am not seen to be socializing with you at some point this evening,” the queen softly hissed, “given that you are my fi—”

He arched his eyebrow again when she seemed to struggle with that final word. For a time, her mouth soundlessly worked over the vowels before she finally bit out, “My fiancé .”

Aldric huffed out a breath. He waved his hand, trying to shoo her away. As though she were a fly. “Very well. We have socialized. You may now return to your guests.”

And yet still, she lingered.

“You have not yet danced,” the queen carefully observed.

Aldric made a face. “I don’t dance.”

“You don’t or you can’t ?”

“I—” he started to snarl before he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from saying something he would regret. He needed to be nice . He needed to keep her on his good side so she would allow their wedding to proceed. “I can dance,” he quietly explained, a good deal more calmly than he had originally intended. “But I don’t .”

“Well, why not?”

“What does it matter?” he couldn’t help but ask.

Calix, still lingering nearby and entirely too interested in their conversation, observed, “I believe Her Majesty is wanting to dance with you, Your Highness.”

But the queen was swift to contradict, “Want is very much not the correct word, Master Fitzjesmaine.” She frowned. “But unfortunately, I fear that since you are here, it will be expected for us to dance together at least the once, yes.”

Aldric scoffed at the very idea and wiped his palms against his trousers. The ballroom was crowded and hot.

He hated it.

“What sort of… barbaric Elmorian custom is this?” he demanded of her and Calix both. His second-in-command had no answers for him. The other man shrugged, clearly just in the dark as he. “I must dance with you simply because I want us to be wed?”

The queen looked entirely too pleased with herself when she sweetly reminded him, “And here I thought you would not wish to marry me even if I were to crawl on my hands and knees and beg you for it.”

Calix’s ears clearly pricked at that. “What’s this then?”

“Nothing,” he and the queen snapped in unison.

Drawing in a deep breath, Aldric demanded of the woman beside him, just as he had promised Calix he would, “I want our wedding to take place before Wintertide.”

That certainly seemed to garner her attention. Gifting him a rapid double-blink, the queen murmured, “I beg your pardon?”

He spoke a little more loudly when he repeated himself. “I want our wedding to take place before Wintertide.” Flicking his hand toward the courtiers still tottering about the dance floor, he added, “If you want to dance with me, those are my terms. Your word right now that we will be wed before then. ”

A breathless laugh burst past the queen’s lips as she turned away from him. For a time, they stood like that. Him staring up at her back, watching her shoulders shake while she laughed .

The back of her gown was beaded with yet more purple starlight.

When she turned around to face him again, though, it was to fix him with a cool stare as she declared, “As I already told you, I must discuss the matter with my Privy Council first.”

“You are the queen,” he reminded her. “What is there to discuss?”

The queen twisted her lips and whispered, “In the civilized places of the world, even a queen is still bound to its laws and traditions.”

Suddenly aware of just how close Calix had grown to them both while the other man blatantly eavesdropped, Aldric shot a look to his second-in-command and barked out an order of, “Calix. Go to the refreshment table.”

The man’s shoulders visibly slumped when he asked, “Were you, ah…wanting something, Your Highness?”

An arrow through the skull . This woman gave him a headache, and he wanted to be put out of his misery.

“No,” Aldric answered aloud. “But go anyway.” His one good eye narrowed as he watched his Son finally slink off.

When he next turned back around, hoping for a moment of peace at last, he took a full step backward when he found the queen still standing there, watching him like some silk-clad falcon.

“Do you not have anything better to do?” he asked her at once .

There was an entire room in which she might exist. There was no reason for her to linger next to him. On his blind side. Being irritating.

“I am simply ensuring you are not about to start another brawl, Your Highness,” the queen primly clipped. “Or start… ripping your clothes off again.”

He frowned up at her. His thoughts whirred, struggling to think of just what he was supposed to say in response to that .

But clearly, she didn’t expect any sort of retort from him, given that she soon muttered, “I simply can’t understand you, Aldric. You make… so little sense to me.”

He slowly arched an eyebrow yet again in reply.

She kept going, her tongue exceptionally loose for once. “Clearly, you do not wish to be here. By your own lips, you do not wish to marry me. And then I gave you the perfect opportunity to refuse my proposal there on Nerina Reef and you did not take it.”

Her eyes searched his face while she frowned at him, clearly hunting for something. Perhaps she did not find it, though, given the sigh soon followed. “And now you are demanding a wedding before Wintertide. Why? Why that specific date?” Her tone sharpened with that final question as she took a single step in closer to him. “For what purpose?”

The scent of her perfume choked his senses. She stood so near, he could have reached out and traced a finger across the beadwork swirling across her hip. Her gown was pretty. But excessive.

As all things Elmorian were.

As she was.

When still he did not answer her, her frown for him deepened yet again. “What in the world are you thinking right now?” she asked.

He answered without pause, “How at first glance, a man might struggle to understand how you can possibly be thirty and unwed, but after a few moments conversing, it becomes all too plain.”

She stared at him, her eyes wide, her lips slightly parted.

He took some small pleasure in knowing he had rendered her speechless for once.

In her lingering silence, Aldric continued, “You claim you do not understand me, but I would counter that you can never understand a man until you have fought him.” Tilting his head to the side, he concluded, “So, I suppose you never will truly know me, given you do not strike me as a martial sort of woman.”

The queen made a face, her ability for speech restored. “What nonsense,” she quietly insisted. “There are plenty of ways you might grow to know a person. Time. Persistence. Keen observation.” After a beat of pause, she added with a faint lift of her chin, “I would understand you a good deal better were I to play you in a single game of Sovereign, for example.”

“Sovereign?” Aldric echoed, his eyebrows knitting together. Sovereign was a child’s game. His mother had tried to teach him when he was younger, but he’d never cared for games of luck.

But from what he had observed, the queen seemed rather obsessed with it .

Never had he spent so much time in his kirei ’s company. Never had they exchanged so many words. His instincts thrummed a warning as he remained at her side.

He should have left many minutes ago. The wolf did not grow close to the lamb before he devoured her, after all.

So then, why should he?

But Aldric’s curiosity got the better of him in the end. He asked, “What is your fascination with that children’s card game, at any rate?”

The queen’s response was immediate and vicious when she snapped in return, “Why do you care?”

Jaw setting, Aldric looked back up at her, ready to reassure her he didn’t. He didn’t care at all.

But he hadn’t been prepared for the sight of her gray eyes now glistening with the threat of unshed tears. What could he possibly have said to upset her? But there were those tears, shimmering like the cold mist blanketing Kuni. As she glared down at him, her eyes threatened to pull him in and swallow him whole right then. Right there.

Right until the moment he snarled, “We will be married by Wintertide or I will tell my brother to withdraw Drakmor’s forces from your campaign.”

With those words uttered, Aldric turned away from her and stalked off into the crowd without so much as a backward glance. He offered no farewell. He offered no parting words at all. He ignored both the curious glance from Calix and the frosty glare from the queen’s Spymaster.

He simply left.