Page 38 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)
She escorted Lilac to the library, where Riou’s map had been placed for the night, and reluctantly went to fetch the cartographer, John, and both of her father’s councilmen at the queen’s behest. By the time the group arrived, looking disheveled and concerned, Lilac had already tidied the corner desk she’d recently claimed as her temporary office while drafting the Accords and ball invitations with her poor handwriting.
She grabbed her notes on Daemons and stuck them beneath the tomes and manuscripts she’d previously acquired from her room and the library shelves.
Then, she ordered her newcomers to be seated along the table that divided the eastern half of the library as she surveyed the map.
From then until dawn, Lilac launched herself and her small, confused team into a set of administrative tasks.
Riou spent the better part of their meeting assessing the map and explaining the markings to her; there had been one other smoke signal sighting just north of La Guerche yesterday, but by the time the guards had arrived, the camp was cleared.
Lilac ordered fifty men to the area—half to scout and the rest to stand by in camps around and north of the border town.
They would monitor it for several days, make their presence known, and then return.
When Riou suggested this might be seen as escalation, she pounded her fist upon the map and demanded it so, turning to John, who watched Lilac with a mixture of fear and admiration above his quill.
With John’s help, she then began to draft the beginnings of a decree announcing the requirement of all able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and fifty to register with their respective duchies, effective immediately and without any mention of pending war.
Lilac would abide by Garin’s commands—she had no choice, especially if it was going to affect her ability to rest—but she was thrilled to learn, even in her sleep-deprived state, that this did not seem to affect her ability to take other related matters into her own hands.
She would set up defenses, even if her father’s men were hesitant to, even if advised against it. She would try, because everyone—rich, poor, human, and Daemon—deserved a queen who did.
Also, because it seemed Garin had agreed with the general consensus of her country’s military being unstable and unorganized. She would prove him wrong, even as she found and took a husband.
In hindsight, the thought of marrying a stranger should have made her as angry as it had mere hours ago when she was chucking candelabras at Garin’s head—but the horrifying thought of standing at the altar with a powerful stranger began to entertain her if it meant devastating Garin.
By the time sunlight streamed through the tall window, Isabel joined them, bringing with her a plate of baked goods and sliced apricots from Hedwig’s pantry.
Too heated to eat, Lilac found herself in the middle of her second argument with Riou—and this time, Henri’s council. She’d demanded John draft a letter to Henry VIII, seeking possible aid in the event of a war, believing he would accept as their former ally and protector in war.
This immediately drew sounds of protest from all of them, the councilmen citing very sternly that the King of England would too gladly launch into a full-fledged war with France again.
They had the resources and the men, they’d said—which was her point.
But, according to them, without a marriage or betrothal in place, even their longstanding friendship would not secure a solid enough relationship to be worth a war in her stead; England could then decide at any time they decided to retreat at the price of the Breton crown.
No one, not even her kingdom, wanted a repeat of the Hundred Years’ War, or one to that scale, that much was true.
She was in the middle of arguing that she would perhaps explain the nuances of her situation and he’d merely send her several brigades, when the sun on her back felt suddenly unbearable.
She sidestepped into the shadows, but this didn’t seem to help much.
The heat was getting to her. Lilac barely ground out that she would revisit the option of outsourcing troops without marriage at a later date, before she found herself being lifted off the library floor by two sets of hands, one at her head and one at her feet.
Her shoulders and back of her skull throbbed, the sharp voices of Yanna and Isabel ringing out above her as the councilmen carried her up her tower stairs.
She spent the rest of the day—what she remembered of it at least—dizzily being tended to by her handmaidens, Madame Kemble, and Hedwig, who spent several hours pressing cloths to her head and staving off any pending fever.
She did recall her parents coming to the door, only for Kemble to usher them away.
Her caretakers found it most concerning that the usually breakfast-ravenous queen had not thought to request food be brought to their early morning meeting, but she hadn’t realized she was starving until it was too late.
Even with a full platter beside her bed, Lilac’s first inclination was not to dig in under Kemble’s watchful gaze, but insist on her privacy.
She had the girls draw her curtains against the sunlight before they left, and as soon as the door shut, she shakily bit into a sausage, devouring the entire thing along with an apple and half piece of bread, washing it down with a glass of water.
As she’d feared, this did nothing to quell the ache in her chest and churning in her gut, the general feeling that something was wrong—and, for once in her life, that something wasn’t nerves or fear. Or hunger.
At least for food.
She’d laid down and, again, forced herself to shut her eyes.
She lay there in the silence, hating being inside her own mind and once again willing rest to come easy, but all she could think of was Garin.
How cross she was with him, what she would say to him if he were there. What she might do to him.
There would not be much speaking or fighting, she knew. Her hands slipped beneath her nightgown and she cursed him. Cursed herself and her humanity.
When the sun dipped beyond the trees, casting her room in fire and gold, Lilac finally slept, the last of her energy reserves spent by making herself come to the mere thought of him next to her.
It was a poor semblance of sleep, riddled with broken dreams of Garin’s hands and teeth.
In her dreams, he was pacing the length of his room at the inn.
He was a monster who needed comforting. Shaking, shivering into his quilt, the bottom half of his face and teeth smeared in burgundy, eyes shut tight against the world, the embers dying before him.
Lilac woke the following morning with a start, rays of sun peeking through her curtains, her nightgown drenched in sweat and her hair a bird’s nest atop her head.
She’d prolonged it as much as possible. If Garin’s sanguine magic, his entrancement—whatever it was—continued to torture her this way, who knew what might happen? It might drive her mad. She had set her defenses in place as much as was reasonable without any true provocation from France.
She had a choice… or wanted to believe she did. Lilac could continue as she had and not do anything. Continue to suffer and allow Garin’s magic to work around her—against her. Or, she could do as he demanded and make him regret every moment of it.
She could watch him beg for her blood and body, and revel in it.
Lilac had then leapt from her bed before her dutiful handmaidens could stop her and marched downstairs, nightgown drenched in sweat, to the Grand Hall.
She’d swung the doors open and doubly shocked her parents by demanding all propositions received by the courier in the days she was gone.
Marguerite had then slowly glanced up from her breakfast to exchange a glance with John, as if it hadn’t been a topic of conversation as of late.
The scribe then cleared his throat to announce in front of her parents, near dozen staff and scullery either taking their meals or helping organize it, and the six guards lining the room that there had been none thus far.
No proposals.
For the first time, Garin was wrong .
Lilac had her mother repeat the news, just to confirm.
Begrudgingly, Marguerite did as she requested, along with a strongly-worded suggestion for a bath.
By the time her mother began nagging on about the next thing, Lilac had turned heel, her ears ringing.
She could not marry if there were no offers for her hand.
Impossibly, she felt something shift, an immense pressure off her shoulders and chest. The sensation of restless dread in her chest had begun to dissipate.
Lilac grabbed a tart from the incoming breakfast cart she met at the door and marched back up to her tower, followed by the baffled gazes of her parents.
Lilac had simmered in giddy rage as Yanna and Isabel arrived had drawn the bath she sat in now.
Garin was a monster with a sweet tongue, wielding a terrible kind of magic.
He would never hold this kind of power over her again.
This had made the first and only other time he’d entranced her feel like nothing ; the way he’d had her hold her vibrating dagger to herself, bringing her to a swift and shattering orgasm—though, that had not been a request she’d intended on fighting.
But being humiliated, made to crawl across the floor…
Heat blossomed upon her cheeks, moisture stinging her eyes.
How dare he entrance her, strip her of what little freedoms he’d spoken of.
A spark of defiance brought on an abrupt wave of vigor, her strength returning with her anger as her mind finally started to clear enough to consider the repercussions of Garin’s betrayal.
It was time. She had played his game, a little too roughly for her liking. Now, she would play her way. She would make him pay, risk of a blood bond or no.