Page 2 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

I had been teasing him with sweetling since I learned Lady Cattiget had been using it as a pet name for him after the two of them had a rather ill-advised entanglement.

Baron Cattiget had taken his family along on an official visit to the ancestral seat of our shared House of Lithaway.

Arkadian had, in turn, taken the baron's daughter to his bed.

"Gods, Aelia, don't remind me. She is waiting in the wings, as you might have noticed." He looked to the ceiling with a fair amount of despair. "Everywhere I turn, she is just there with that ridiculous look on her face."

I laughed, despite the hundreds of eyes trained on the two of us from around the room.

They would call me fickle and say I had no shame to be laughing so loudly with the unmarried Duke at my side, no matter that he was my cousin and my closest kin.

Improper, unladylike, not what a queen would do, they would whisper.

I turned to face my cousin. "Oh, you poor thing. How terrible to be adored by everyone! You know you have no one but yourself to blame for that particular misunderstanding."

When Arkadian only sighed dramatically, I looked into the alcoves that lined the sumptuously decorated Great Hall.

The shadowed archways provided a surreptitious vantage point for those who wanted to observe the spectacle of the feast, without looking too eager.

One could never endure the horror of looking too eager, after all.

"I take full responsibility for that part of it, Aelia. But she is planning our wedding," he added with a look of disbelief.

I scanned the crowd for the woman as he continued grumbling. "One night, over a month ago, and Petta tells me she's trying to determine whether the ceremony should be pre- or post-harvest!"

I huffed a laugh. "If it's post-harvest, you'll get the bonus of bedding her on a mattress stuffed with godsgrass so you can be sure to conceive a son." Windemerians had all sorts of ridiculous notions about what the grasses that covered the plains could accomplish.

Arkadian closed his eyes and shook his head. He was not enjoying my teasing, but then, it wasn't truly that funny when you considered what might happen if their assignation was discovered.

I looked at him, my expression more serious.

"You have to be more careful, Arkadian. You know what would happen to her if it was found out.

She would be cast away from court." I forced my voice to soften, not wanting to make him feel too harshly judged.

"Even if by some chance they do not find out how far it has gone, if it is widely known that you had shown any interest in her, and then chose not to marry her, any other suitor will wonder why you've spurned her. She would be blamed for it all, when everyone should know that it’s your inability to even contemplate taking a wife that's—"

Arkadian cut me off with a somber look. "I know, cousin."

I suddenly felt guilty that I made him feel guilty. Perhaps he already did have some regret for how he behaved with her. I was on the point of making some excuse to justify his behavior, just to assuage his guilt, when my eyes finally found her in the crowd.

Lady Aubury was standing beside her father, the burly Baron of Cattiget, and she was looking directly to Arkadian at my side.

She was tall and exceedingly pretty with long, straight golden blonde hair, pulled to the side and artfully braided.

The expression on her face as she stared at my cousin could only be described as lovesick, and the sight of her red-rimmed eyes sent a wave of sympathy through me.

The baron at Aubery's side leaned down to whisper something to her. The young woman's expression first went taut with anger, and then her head whipped around to face her father. She spat a few words at him that I couldn't make out and turned to stalk away.

The baron gave the dais, and Arkadian, one last angry look, and then left to follow his daughter.

I sighed, "If you would stop being so difficult and agree to be my chancellor, I could probably manage to snag you a Castering princess."

Arkadian snorted derisively. "I have heard that Castering princesses have a beard hanging between their thighs that they braid and put trinkets in."

"That is rather disgusting," I told him, my cheeks heating.

He loved to make me uncomfortable, especially in public as he so often lamented my unfortunate virginity.

He thought I should be as free with my body as he was with his.

As if I wasn't the princess at the heart of Windemere whose maidenhead was set upon the auction block like a priceless Withian vase.

"And smelly, I've heard," he added, irreverently.

I forgot that we had been talking about Castering crotch beards, and I snorted another laugh as I realized what he meant.

"Which is why I must turn down your generous offer, Aelia," he finished sarcastically, taking a drink of his wine.

I sighed in mock consternation. The argument over the chancellery was one we often debated.

And it was one I was destined to lose. Since his father and elder brother both died, leaving him unexpectedly as the Duke of Lithaway, my cousin's duties had shifted necessarily to the people of his estates.

It upset all our plans to rule Windemere together, with him as High Chancellor at my side.

Well, together with my husband, I thought with some ire as I, once again, surveyed the crowd.

"I hate this," I complained.

"Which part?" Arkadian asked again with a smirk.

"All of it!"

"You are dropping your arm too quickly," Arkadian said, grasping my arm and raising the sword higher. He guided me through the swing as the sunlight shining in through the tall, arched windows of the training room glinted off the faint blue whorls that ran down my blade.

The sword had been a gift from Arkadian on my sixteenth birthday. It was made from Obeskan steel, a rare and nearly priceless metal whose method of forging was lost when the ancient city of Obeska fell to the dragon mages of Darkwatch so many thousands of years ago.

If the Obeskan steel didn't prove the value of the gift my cousin had given to me, the pommel with its ring of small blue idylstones inlaid into the metal, would have. Each stone on its own was worth a fortune, and my sword had five of them.

"My arm isn't strong enough to hold the blade up for that long," I said, irritably, as I failed the next attempt just as spectacularly.

Going through the steps, turns, and swings of the fabled Nuoctelenne warriors of the Temple of the Sword, where Arkadian had trained for seven long years, was a desperately difficult process.

It required balance and precise foot placement to execute the moves that looked more like dancing than combat.

Add to that the weight of a sword, and it called for a great deal of strength.

I had gained a lot of muscle in the three years since Arkadian started passing on his knowledge to me, but I still had limitations that his big, muscular frame could not relate to.

"Have you been using the weighted cuffs I gave you?" he asked.

"I tried. They cause my bracelets to dig into my skin too much.

" I held up my wrist to remind him of the gold-plated mellitrium cuffs I wore—the ones all rulers of Windemere wore from birth.

The metal cuffs were fused onto my wrists so that I would remain free of the influences of magic and those who wielded it.

I tried the exercise again and managed to keep my arm a little higher on the stroke.

"Better," Arkadian said approvingly, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms.

"This would not be an issue if I had been allowed to train on Fareye. I would already be strong enough," I told him breathlessly as I began to move through the steps again.

"Princesses do not go to Fareye," a voice spoke from behind me.

The regent was framed in the doorway, looking at me disapprovingly. But anything else from him might've surprised me so badly I would collapse dead from the shock of it.

"I know that, uncle," I said snidely, narrowing my eyes at him in distaste.

Markus had been especially odious of late, as he felt his control of Windemere beginning to slip.

He was named temporary steward following the deaths of my parents only days after my birth. After a series of spiteful actions by the council, who'd wanted to install Arkadian's father on the throne, they had ended up with Markus Smeck as permanent steward.

"This training will need to end when you are wed, Princess," Markus added, nodding as though I should already be aware of the fact. "Muscles on a woman are very unbecoming. And you will never have any need for these skills. You will be the queen. You will never be on a battlefield."

"Thank you for your advice, uncle," I said shortly, turning away from him. My own mother had been a warrior of sorts. And by all accounts, she had been a good one. So his words rang quite hollow to my ears.

I began the exercise again. I was determined to get it right, and I did not give a damn what Markus thought of it.

I'd spent far too many years suffering under the obsessive level of control he kept on me.

Only when I reached my majority and the council forced him to give me a measure of freedom, had I even been allowed to make my own choice about whether or not to train.

It chafed him to see me grasp even a small amount of power. Proof of his anger was on his reddened, oddly oily face with its rounded gray beard, and the slick dome of his bald head.

He had never been a handsome man, but the last decade of heavy drinking had caused his features to soften, redden, and sag in a very unfortunate way.

"The council is forming an enclave in the castle chambers," Markus said to Arkadian, pointedly excluding me even though I had been expected at every enclave of the eldermen since I reached eighteen.