Page 17

I ona should have slept well in her own bed, but instead she tossed and turned, her thoughts filled with Aedan’s plot and the impending alliance between Capria and Wessett.

Aedan expected her to become queen one day. She had no desire for the crown.

Roughly an hour before dawn, she gave up on any further sleep. She left the warmth of her blankets for a chair by the low-burning fire, where she curled up with a sketchbook. In the dimness she mindlessly sketched, a habit born from her need to channel her inner turmoil into something productive. The practice had served her well in the past. This morning, however, when what she intended as a generic face stared back at her with the crown prince of Capria’s eyes, she tore the page from the book and tossed it into the flames.

She could not warn him, and he seemed happy enough with her sister anyway. Lisenn was always on her best behavior for him.

Another sketched face manifested the same results as the first. It met the same fate, too, and she switched to drawing hands instead.

Bina trudged from her adjoining room with the first light of dawn, yawning broadly. She took one look at Iona curled in her chair and immediately went to the wardrobe.

“You should have woken me,” she said, pulling a dress from the depths. “I thought you’d sleep later, after everything.”

Iona simply shut her book. She left it on the chair and crossed to the vanity.

“Is your cousin posing for his portrait this morning?” Bina asked as she brushed the princess’s hair from its long braid.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.” Iona hadn’t thought of the portrait in days. Was it Aedan’s excuse to have more access to the castle and to her? But his father had commissioned it. Did that mean the Duke of Gleddistane was involved in the conspiracy against the immediate line of succession as well? Or had Aedan somehow convinced his father to ask for the portrait?

Perhaps it had nothing to do with the subversive plot at all.

Bina dressed her in brown, a rich color that Iona didn’t object to until she moved into a patch of sunlight at her window.

She stopped short and stared. “This dress is pink.”

“It’s not,” said the maid, pretending to be absorbed in reorganizing a box full of hairpins.

Iona moved the skirt, observing the shift of color as the sun hit it from different angles. “It is pink.”

“Strictly speaking, it’s not. The tailor called the color rosewood, and it is most definitely a shade of brown. And as your sister wouldn’t be caught dead in any shade of brown or gray, I should think you would enjoy the full spectrum those colors can offer.”

She opened her mouth to argue but then shut it again. Even if it had a hint more color than Iona was used to, Lisenn would never wear a dress of this hue. She probably wouldn’t see it as anything other than brown.

And Iona liked the way the sun revealed that hidden shine in the fabric.

“I’ll probably have paint all over it within the hour,” she said .

Bina only shrugged. “A dress is meant to be worn, not to sit in a wardrobe waiting for moths to find it.”

Iona wore the dress, but her heart jittered in her throat as she left her room. Lisenn didn’t usually get up until mid-morning, and they rarely saw one another anyway.

Even so, the younger sister crept along the hallways, checking at every corner before she proceeded, all the way to her art studio. The door lay open at the end of its corridor, light from the windows spilling into the hall. Eager to be back in her most comfortable space, she quickened her gait.

Two feet from the threshold, she halted. Through the opening, clutter met her gaze: brushes sprawled across the floor, scraps of canvas and splinters of wood…

A few more steps brought Iona fully into the room.

Everything was destroyed. Furniture overturned, books burned to embers, canvases slashed, paints poured out across the floor and left to dry. Nothing had escaped untouched. Her practice clavichord, already scarred, had been shattered into pieces, its keys and strings strewn like bleached, broken bones and sinews and the wooden case split apart. The lute, nearby, had a crushed body and a splintered neck.

Her easel, too, lay on its side, one leg broken. The canvas it had once held sat in a bent frame, face-down on Aedan’s platform, amid a pair of toppled columns and torn drapery.

Breath shallow in her throat, Iona approached. A knife had destroyed the canvas itself. She lifted it to view the other side but dropped it just as quickly.

The slits crisscrossed the area that had once been Aedan’s face.

A rustle sounded behind her. She whirled.

King Gawen stood within the door, a solemn expression on his face. Iona locked gazes with him, the silence between them like a tightly strung bowstring.

Tears spilled unbidden down her cheeks. She blinked and looked to the wall, swiping them away, mortified to reveal such deep emotion to a father who valued control above all. But once uncorked, her grief refused to remain contained. It expanded and swallowed her, the culmination of days—weeks, months, years—of anxiety and loss. With a deep, shuddering inhale she sank into a crouch, covering her face with one forearm and sobbing freely.

She had kept to her own corner, had never encroached on Lisenn’s domain, and yet her sister crushed everything she loved, crushed and splintered and destroyed so that Iona could have nothing beautiful in this world.

Movement in her periphery didn’t register until a hand rested on her head. She paused, frozen, waiting for the words of rebuke which her father would surely speak.

Instead, “Most unfortunate,” he murmured. “I’m sorry you had to experience something this difficult, Iona.”

Shock pierced through her. She raised her head, staring up at him through bleary eyes.

He met her gaze and then surveyed the wreckage around them. “Your sister was distraught. Who can blame her? In one fell swoop, you and her intended were swept away with the current, presumably dead, all of her expectations ruined in an unfortunate accident. Or so it seemed.”

She could not believe her ears. He was making excuses for Lisenn? Would he be so indifferent if she had burned down the whole castle, or was it merely acceptable because he didn’t care about the items lost in his eldest daughter’s tantrum?

Something deep within Iona snapped. “She pushed me,” she whispered.

Her father stilled. For a breath, he said nothing, and then, “What?”

“She pushed me. Into the river. She wanted my sketchbook, and I didn’t want to give it to her, so I threw it into the current, and then she pushed me. She tried to kill me.”

He stared as though uncomprehending. Iona started to rise, but he stopped her with an outstretched palm .

“I should think,” he said, and a hard glint entered his eyes, “that a child of mine would know better than to sling false accusations in a fit of pique.”

Her eyes bulged. “It’s not false! She pushed me!”

“You are distraught. Only, instead of a few paintings, you’re trying to destroy your sister’s life. We can get you new art supplies, Iona, if you want them. This reckless story you’re concocting, trying to exact revenge for something your sister did in the throes of her grief—”

“I’m not concocting it. She tried to kill me!”

“Enough!” he roared, his face purple. Iona flinched, falling back from him on trembling limbs. He breathed deep and ran a hand across his eyes. “I don’t want to hear any such ridiculous accusation again, and if I discover that you’ve spread it elsewhere, you will dearly regret it. Do you understand?”

Instinctively she nodded, an odd numbness gripping her soul.

His expression softened. “She should not have acted as she did, but this is why I have always warned you against making deep attachments, especially to objects that time or human hands may destroy. You can take comfort that, if all goes well, you have only a few days more of her to endure.”

It was the closest he had ever come to admitting Lisenn’s personal failings. Iona sat back on her heels, her head dropped and her hands clenched into fists on her folded legs.

Again her father rested his palm on her hair, the gesture a voiceless benediction she could not accept. When he withdrew, a measure of resentment filled the gap he left behind. Before he could exit, however, a new figure darkened the doorway.

“What on earth—?” Aedan’s exclamation stuck in his throat, his eyes huge.

The king, as though surveying the damage anew, glanced around. “It is unfortunate, isn’t it. I’m sorry about your portrait. I’m sure Iona will express her apologies to your father for the unfulfilled commission, and I shall do the same. ”

After a significant look to Iona—a warning in that pointed glance—he exited the studio, Aedan scooting out of his way to let him pass. As the king’s footsteps receded up the hall, the marquess picked his way across the destruction to kneel beside his cousin.

Light fingers rested on her shoulder. She met his gaze, and the compassion she found there crumbled what tenuous control she had cobbled together. As she dissolved into tears anew, he knelt with her, cradled her to him, and let her cry.

“Your sister spends a lot of time with her cousin,” Jaoven said.

Lisenn looked up from the flower she had bent to smell, her attention following his across the garden to the broad fountain where Iona and Aedan sat.

“Too much time,” she said simply.

That drew his attention from the pair. Frowning, he asked, “Why too much? Do you think him a bad influence on her?”

A tinkling laugh escaped the crown princess. “Aedan? He’s a puppy and nothing more. Are you concerned about what might influence Iona?”

She asked the question innocently enough. Jaoven, sensing a trap, said quickly, “No. I hardly know her.”

“Were you not at school together when she lived in Capria?” Lisenn strolled around him, her emerald green dress swishing.

“There were a lot of us there,” he replied, evading the question.

“Ah. I wish I could have gone to such a school.” She paused at a rosebush, cupping another flower to smell, but as she bent to the task she flashed him a coy smile. “Would you have gotten to know me if I had?”

“The crown princess of Wessett must always be known wherever she goes.”

Again she laughed. “Well spoken. But the second princess of Wessett was not known? ”

He had walked straight into that one. However, Denoela and Clervie had already informed him of Lisenn’s ignorance concerning her sister’s time at the Royal College, and of what they had disclosed. “I’m sure, as the second princess of Wessett, she would have been. She didn’t care to be known to us, a difficult creature to approach.”

“Is she still a difficult creature to approach?” Lisenn asked.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Jaoven said.

She snapped the rose off at a joint in its stem and twirled it between two fingers. “You jumped in a river after her.”

He dismissed the implication. “I would have done the same for anyone.”

“Really? You would have done the same for me?”

Was she testing him with this question? Did she worry that he might hold a preference for her younger sister when his engagement to her was mere days away from an official announcement?

He touched her elbow and looked her straight in the eyes. “Absolutely I would.”

Lisenn’s smile blossomed, dazzling in its brightness. It should have sent a jolt of warmth through him, but Jaoven felt only the same, steady numbness he had felt ever since his return to the capital.

Only scant moments had disrupted this odd, all-encompassing calm: when his eyes had met Iona’s across the courtyard yesterday afternoon; when she had entered the dining hall last night; when he saw her enter the garden on her cousin’s arm only moments ago, wearing a dress the color of dusk.

This was bad. He needed to focus on his duty, on the lovely young woman standing right in front of him. Forcing a wry smile, he said, “Of course, I hope you would be wise enough not to fall into a river in the first place.”

She chuckled. “Yes, I do tend to play things safe. I have not my sister’s dramatics. I suppose that’s a luxury afforded her as a second-born.”

“I wonder that she’s out in the garden,” Jaoven said, staring across the expanse of manicured lawns and walks. “After so many days away from her studio, one would expect her to lock herself in and make up for lost time.”

An aloof air settled on his almost-affianced. “Perhaps her precious light has already shifted.” She stroked the deep red petals of her rose, thoughtful. After a silent breath, she said, “You seem terribly preoccupied with my sister. Should we change the terms of the treaty agreement?”

He wrenched his gaze from the pair across the garden, his pulse spiking. “No. How ungentlemanly of me, to allow my mind to wander. I am quite happy with the agreement as it stands.”

“Well, so long as it’s your mind wandering and not your heart,” Lisenn said, her lips curving in a winsome smile. “But what about Iona draws your mind, pray tell?”

He floundered for how to respond without revealing the treacherous thoughts he refused to admit to anyone, let alone the woman he was supposed to marry. “It’s the treaty. We worried, you see, that she might… perhaps… sabotage our efforts.” With the excuse thus determined, he babbled on. “I think my advisors have told you that her time in Capria was not exactly pleasant. It has been a great worry of ours that she might work against us in this treaty.”

Enlightenment dawned upon Lisenn’s pretty face. “I see. You needn’t worry about that. Iona has no diplomatic influence.”

“It was more her familial influence we worried about,” he said with a frown. “You’re not at all angry that she received poor treatment on our shores?”

“As I understand it, you didn’t know who she really was. And besides that, she returned hardly worse for wear. Why should I hold a grudge on her behalf when I know none of the particulars?” She blinked, almost as though inviting him to fill in the gaps of her knowledge.

Jaoven, eager to abandon the subject, said simply, “You are all graciousness, Your Royal Highness. Shall we return inside and check on the progress of our treaty? ”

He offered her his arm, and she slid her own snugly into the crook of his elbow. They exited the garden, leaving behind the stem of a rose with its petals torn and scattered like drops of blood.