Page 78 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)
Or, also plausible—he’d awoken at the inn and was frightened out of it. Lorietta or Adelaide would’ve fixed his nerves, though. Bastion at least could have entranced him out of his fear. Myrddin might’ve even erased his memory of ever being stabbed and nursed back to health by a horde of Daemons.
There were many, many reasons he could have stalled or changed his mind. But there were equally as many reasons why he should’ve been there by now. Lilac glared down that blasted hallway at the returned stares, the mouthed whispers.
There was a hand at her back. “Onward,” Piper said in her ear. “Whatever happens, you have decided it. It is within your power, and if it isn’t, for God’s sake let’s pretend it is.”
Together, the three of them walked into the corridor, Henri and John trailing behind.
Lilac led them, her shoulders pulled back, a tight, polite smile at the ready.
Marguerite eyed them both, watching her daughter and the strange girl who’d returned to the castle last night with simultaneous annoyance and wonder.
The front doors had been propped open, sunlight barely warming the sense of frost in the room.
Lady Gertrude and Lady Helena were among the nearest and first to greet her with a bow.
Behind them were Hedwig and half a dozen of her staff surrounding the tables, and a small gathering of several other friends to the Trécessons—junior nobility from surrounding provinces, those who’d likely arrived this morning as she was waiting in the Grand Hall.
She craned her neck; through the last window, Lilac could just make out a row of carriages near the unmanned stable.
“Your coachman has not yet returned,” noted Marguerite under her breath.
“Perhaps he and Albrect ran into the same bad weather,” Piper suggested.
Marguerite ignored her lady-in-waiting’s response and strutted forward, adopting a warm smile to greet her newly arrived friends.
Several of them had children around Lilac’s age. She’d played with them during her mother’s other soirees; she didn’t see any of them now, and wondered where they were before realizing most—if not all of them—were probably busy with their own lives, married and with families of their own by now.
“The emissary hasn’t arrived yet, has he?” Helena asked, craning her neck down the hallway as if he’d magically appear.
“No, it appears he hasn’t,” Lilac replied, maintaining her trained smile and posture with difficulty. “But I’m sure Albrecht will be here any time now.”
“What if he’s changed his mind?” wondered the towering woman behind Gertrude. She was Anaelle, if she remembered correctly—one of the marchionesses from Pont Aven. Her husband reddened beside her and gratefully accepted a flute of champagne from the nearest maid.
“Who?” wondered Gertrude behind her tiny gloved hand. “The emissary or the emperor?”
“ Lark. ”
Lilac shifted to follow the scoff.
There was a woman in a chartreuse kirtle lounging upon the chaise on the other side of the furthest table, just out of sight.
She looked older than Marguerite despite her youthful glow and bit into the pink tart in her hand before speaking again.
“If he’d changed his mind,” the woman offered, “may the cause be the outrageous gossips present to greet him.”
Gertrude merely rolled her eyes and angled her body away from the woman.
“I can see why either might hesitate,” Helena said, then covered her mouth. “Your Majesty, I didn’t mean—I-I only meant, considering everything…”
Piper had started to say something cutting as Helena trailed off, but Marguerite sighed laboriously. “Don’t be ridiculous. He is on the way, I assure you.”
“But what of your patriarch? Has he returned yet?” Gertrude asked.
Marguerite was taken aback. “He has not.”
“And the replacement archdeacon who conducted the Lilac’s accession?”
“He departed two weeks ago,” boomed Henri’s voice from the end of the corridor.
Someone made a sound of disapproval in the small crowd.
“Well then, who will marry her and the emissary?” Gertrude pressed. “I mean, Maximillian?”
“This is a Catholic kingdom, is it not?” Lilac couldn’t help the sarcasm dripping in her words. “There are priests everywhere. Those at the chapel in Rennes or Paimpont abbey would be more than willing.”
“And who will conduct the Le Tallecs’ funerary rite?” asked a robust woman who clung to her husband’s arm near the right-hand staircase. Unlike the woman on the chaise, this one seemed familiar; Lilac thought she recognized her but a name didn’t come to mind .
The room went silent. Then it was in an uproar.
“ Funeral ?” Gretchen nearly fell over herself.
“What happened?” gasped Helena when just Lilac stood there, not denying the truth to their hysteria. “For who? All three of them?”
“Just Vivien and Armand, from what I heard,” the woman answered before Lilac could respond, fluffing one of her red curls. “Sinclair is still in the dungeon here. Terrible, I know.”
“Where did you hear it?” asked Gertrude.
“Yes, tell us,” said Lilac, crossing her arms. “Just where did you glean this information?”
The woman didn’t seem bothered much being questioned directly by the queen. “Wendel and I were passing through Paimpont early this morning and stopped for a meal at the tavern, where we overheard. What a shame.”
Every eye in the room landed on her as they awaited a response. Lilac’s silence was deafening. She shouldn’t have expected anything different from Artus. He was probably garnering the town’s pity.
“I thought since it was news in Paimpont,” the woman explained, “that everyone knew.”
“That is enough, Agnes,” Henri said quietly.
“Agnes.” By the time they turned their attention back to Lilac, she’d left Piper’s and John’s side and made her way to the center table.
On the way, she snatched a flute of champagne from the maid she passed and peered at the small, colorful frosted cakes arranged across the lace-strewn tabletop, dappled here and there with bonbons and truffles.
Various shades of pinks, blues, and violet created the shape of a flower.
“I don’t think we’ve ever met. Either way, that was not your news to share. ”
Agnes flushed, taken aback. “Well, I?—”
“You thought since it was rumor you heard in the town, you’d revel in the satisfaction of being the first one to spread it here. At my fortress.” The room was silent. “You relish in spreading it, just as word of my Daemon tongue reached the moors and coasts without a single one of my town criers.”
Stunned at Lilac’s reply, Agnes gave a dramatically apologetic glance at Marguerite. Henri glared in the couple’s direction.
“I’m sorry,” Agnes whispered to them, pouting .
“Don’t apologize to her parents.”
Lilac looked up from the table. To her left, Piper was red as a beet, her attention fixed out the open doors even as she addressed Agnes. Every pair of eyes in the room immediately shifted to her. “They’re not the ones who’ve carried the burden of humiliation and public outcry.”
Agnes shuddered at being addressed by Piper. “No one asked you .”
“My lady-in-waiting’s opinion is favored well over yours. It is, in fact, welcome without prompting.” Lilac lifted the flute to her mouth and picked the corner cake up, one that was blue-violet, the shade of early dawn. She turned it this way and that, examining Hedwig’s fine craftsmanship.
They would talk, regardless. Let her remind them, then, that the decision to accept the duty of marriage had been hers; she had not been cornered or beguiled into forfeiting her freedom. Lilac was no one’s puppet, and she and her circle were to be respected.
That’s what Piper was to her. Adelaide, Lorietta, and Garin. Even Bastion and Myrddin. John, Giles, and Herlinde, apparently. Those who didn’t owe Lilac a moment of their time nor a shard of respect, yet she’d never felt the need to question their loyalties.
Her mother had kept the women in this room close, only to be turned on once her family was in question and the stability of Henri’s power hung in the balance of their daughter’s fading favorability with the kingdom.
In the aftermath of Lilac’s fifteenth birthday, no one had supported Marguerite.
Lilac used to think they were too afraid to stand by their friend and former queen consort, but there was a sense of spite in the air now—one she couldn’t possibly have comprehended as a young child.
There was power, Lilac surmised, after years of her life being made so public over an ability she could not help, in holding some secrets close and forfeiting the need for validation. Her kingdom didn’t deserve it, especially those who would do no good with either truth or lie.
“There will be a funeral,” Lilac said briefly, licking icing off her thumb and biting into the cake.
“Armand and Vivien are both dead. Plans are to be privately arranged with Armand’s father, and it will likely be held at the abbey.
Sinclair remains in my custody. There was an investigation to be completed before drafting an announcement.
You were supposed to be the first to hear it here, but it appears Artus had other plans.
” She stared Agnes and her bewildered husband down.
“News of it will go out to the squares today, along with my very first decree. Won’t it, John? ”
Behind her, their scribe nodded. “It shall be announced in the nearest squares by this afternoon.”
“Send the pigeons now,” Lilac said. “You are dismissed.”
John bowed and scurried up the steps. Marguerite shifted, visibly uncomfortable. Henri steeled himself, and a small approving smile bloomed on Piper’s face as she tore her gaze from the open doors.
“And what of the fire?” Agnes pressed. “It seems there are a lot of them these days. In your dungeon, with two of your prisoners escaping. Then the blaze at that filthy whore house in downtown Rennes. Not that I’m sure,” she added, “it wasn’t warranted.”