Page 13 of The Ostler's Boy

M iss Aster was far more vocal than any other woman at the ball, which was saying a lot, as I was included in the statement. She went on and on about a lady’s motivation in the court and all the things that we might do together, as the sisterly pair was often on Palace grounds. She and Agatha practically lived there while growing up. Mr. Adeline was a merchant who’d secured the King a fortune years before the War.

Aster suggested a game; it was something to do with horseshoes, but that drifted us into a much more hushed pattern of speech, as she ventured into the topic of handsome men in and near the ton.

“Lord Barrington is always the first to fall in Shoes, I’m afraid. He is intelligent in most things; however, strategy is not his forté, I would say,” one of the women noted.

“No. No one would accuse him of being a good shot either,” Aster remarked. “But he is fine to look at.”

“One of many pleasant faces,” Agatha said. “The Prince, for example.” She offered me a cheerful nod.

“And that scruffy fellow that follows him isn’t bad either,” her sister teased.

“Who?” someone asked. “Everyone is scruffy near the Prince.”

“The one with the dark hair,” Aster explained. “You know who I mean. What’s his name, Aggy?”

“I’ve never played Shoes,” I said, determined to avoid the mention of whom they spoke. “How do you win?”

They looked at me and feigned concern. “She thinks the rules matter!” one said.

Aster laughed.

Agatha patted her sister’s glove. “The name you want is Cyrus Evergreen; how many times will you ask before it sticks?”

“That’s it! The ostler fellow,” Aster said.

“Ostler?” I asked.

“Aye,” she said. “And I’d take him for a ride if you know what I mean?”

“You’re so bad,” her sister hissed.

“He’s a swordmaster,” I said. I bit my tongue. “Or something of the sort… But he’s not an ostler.” The girls stared at me. “In case you wanted to know.”

After a silence, Agatha came to my rescue. “There are no rules to Shoes,” she said. She touched me as a friend and then looked around the room. “It’s anything goes; you’ll see.”

“I-”

“And you’ll behave, Attie,” she added. “Cyrus is an engaged man.”

“Engaged?” I asked. “Who in the world would marry him?”

“One of the Swift girls,” she replied. “The younger one.”

Another girl shook her head. “What’s this? Aggy Adeline behind on gossip? You must be very distracted these days.”

The sisters frowned, turning to each other, and shrinking the accuser well into her shoes.

“It’s just…” she explained. “Lydia and Cyrus have parted, is all.”

“What?” Aggy cried. “When?”

“Early this week?” she said. She wasn’t sure. “Maybe last? All I know is that she was absolutely wrought with tears when I saw her for my fitting. She could barely speak.”

“How horrible,” I said.

“Quite.”

“What did he do to her?” I asked.

Aster was unbothered. “Or her to him. He’s a bit nice. Not her usual type. I’m surprised it took so long, honestly. What? We’re all thinking it. She?—”

The blonde stood a little taller; something catching her eye. She smiled as sweetly as I thought possible before excusing herself from our circle.

“I’ll return shortly,” she whispered to me as her sister talked. “My father is summoning me.”

“Oh, alright,” I said.

“—a real shame. They were well-suited for each other in that way, I always thought,” I heard another conclude.

“Oh, well,” Aster said. “She’ll find someone better. Not that it’s hard.”

“You just said you’d ride the man,” her friend replied.

She dismissed it with a huff. “Ride, not marry. I need my men a little harsher, I’m afraid.”

“Look at her; you’re making Her Highness blush,” someone declared.

She clicked her tongue. “I’m sure Miss Svana understands just fine. If she knows he’s a swordmaster , she’s met him. It’s all he talks about.”

“What do I understand?” I asked.

She paused, and then they went back to Shoes.

I wondered what kind of lady could find herself engaged to a man like Mr. Evergreen. He wasn’t nice. He was a rough, proven fabricator, and a rake! Sure, he was kind to the staff, and his lips curved ever so slightly whenever I had a clever insult hurling toward him, but he-!

The girls had moved on to dissecting another man, correlating his ability to play a game with impossible knowledge of his soul.

They carried on about charm and wits; each offered twenty names I hadn’t heard, but after a while, they settled their attention brazenly back to my fiancé. Sameer was at the top of every woman’s indecorous list, even if some seemed to prefer his less metaphysical attributes. I stayed quiet as they giggled about his voice, his hands, his body….

“She could’ve worn it down,” I heard someone comment from the crowd. And then,

“I bet she’s hard-headed. Nothing less is to be expected from an Eisson mare. Wild things, I hear.”

I could not place the voices, and no one seemed to look too crossly at me as I searched.

“Princess?” Aster asked. “Are you alright?”

“Better than taking after her mother, poor girl.”

“Do you think she found her?”

“I think she was quite young when it happened, if I recall?”

“She’s quite young now.”

“But didn’t the King find her?”

“Y-Yes,” I said, trying to maintain my sense. “I’m fine. …I think. Actually, I think I might benefit from some air. I’m not used to this many people in one room.”

She nodded, ignorant of the ache so few words had awakened. The girls were as indifferent to my departure as they’d been with Agatha’s. I left and cut across the floor.

Things were less confusing in the corridor, but I still passed a few nosy, ‘where is she goings’ on my path. Once I was alone, I could breathe. Outside the ball, no one worried about my hair or my mother, but my silence was cut short by a bubbly giggle .

It half-startled me, half-enticed my curiosity, but it was definitely a woman’s laugh. A crazed na?vety wanted to discover whose, despite the following of a man’s low chuckle or the intense awareness that I should not disrupt whatever they were doing.

But Mr. Evergreen came to the forefront of my suspicion, and I was sure the laugh was his. Possessed by a need to out him for what he was and to rescue whichever poor lady he had lured into ruin, I ventured down the hall and through the study’s open door to find it.

The man held an apple to the woman’s lips, and her hands were flat against the built-in shelves he’d pressed her into.

Miss Agatha.

She snickered past the skin of a red fruit as its juice drizzled across the crest of her cleavage. Then the shadowy rogue passed through the light, and it wasn’t Mr. Evergreen at all. It was my prince.

The room was dim, but he was too easy to recognize, though still facing Agatha. Mr. Evergreen did not have black hair, nor did he likely own the same gaudy shade of teal Sameer wore. I watched him maneuver the apple and inspect her reaction to his offer.

I cleared my throat, unsure of what else to do, which sent both of them into a frenzy. Sam dropped the sphere to reseat his trousers to his hips, and then tie his belt.

“Svana!” he fumbled.

“Oh, I-” Agatha’s eyes widened, but she flew by me and out of the office before I knew what to scream at her. Then it was just me. Me and my prince. Alone.

“Svana.” He straightened, smoothing the bunched-up seamed of his pants. “This is not-”

“What it looks like?” I asked. “Save your breath if that is your excuse.” I was stiff; inside, I was mush.

“I can explain,” he said. His face became sad as I analyzed it for truth— for more lies, like the ones my father used to justify the whores to me.

“The explanation is that…” I paused. “You and Miss Agatha have a relationship. Is it just the effects of tonight’s excitement, or is this an ongoing transaction?” I asked.

“No,” he said, reaching for my arm; I stepped back. “Aggy and-”

“Aggy,” I said. I hadn’t caught or cared for the pet name before. “So ongoing, I see.”

I turned to leave, but he followed after, hushed with his defense. In the hallway, he tugged at the back of my skirt and pulled me toward him so hard, that he unraveled one of my ribbons and slacked the dress. I gasped, crudely smacking his face.

“Do not touch me!” I hissed.

Sam retracted, and he apologized; his chest heaved with regret. “Please. Talk to me, my love. Let’s discuss this.”

“What is there to discuss?” I asked.

“...Us?”

“Us?” I asked. “What us? We share a single dance and trade compliments. You think you’ve won me over? That I’m what? Madly in love with you? That seeing you with Aggy injures me?”

“Yes,” he said. “You look injured.”

“You are mistaken. This is duty, Prince,” I spat. But I was. I was injured. I just didn’t want him to know. “I’m appalled by your disrespect to duty!”

I begged my body to formulate a movement that kept me safely at a distance. I would not admit it, I swore. I promised to not ever admit that Sam had said all the right things. That it had only taken a week to convince me I was special.

Duty, I told myself. Iron does not shatter, my father would have preferred.

I wanted to puke at whatever either meant.

Years of mindless words thrown at me like a book of twisted poems, and what did I have to show for it? A maimed heart? A romanticism with no place in the world?

I knew better, I wanted to scream. Sameer wasn’t Willem, and he never would be, even if things had gone perfectly. Willem was my soulmate, so why had I let myself like him?

“Svana?” he said.

“Princess, I think.”

“What?”

“You’ll call me Princess,” I said.

My head shook so frantically, and before I knew the plan, my legs had sent me well into the opposite direction, down the hall, and toward my suite.

Sam followed.

“Leave me alone!” I cried.

I tried to ignore his repeated call of my name, a blatant disregard for my request to address me as his equal. His shoes clattered; mine ticked. The closer we came to the end of the hall, the faster they carried us.

“Leave me alone,” I told him again. “I don’t want to look at you!”

“Then don’t look, but let us talk of this!” he pleaded.

“That isn’t necessary.” I slammed the bedroom door behind me, to exile him. My palms were hot.

“Svana,” he begged.

“Go. Away.”