Page 31

31

AMbrOSE

Ambrose couldn’t imagine a more gratifying feeling than seeing the look of wonder on Bessa’s face. Wonder that he’d induced. One moment, she was infuriating and confrontational, and the next…

They’d been standing in a frozen grove with only whispers of impending snow on the breeze, the bare trees reaching into the sky like ancient guardians. Along the way, he’d seen forest creatures beginning to repopulate the woods, snow beginning to melt. The ancient woods were waking up, although it would be nearly impossible for anyone to tell who wasn’t a forest creature such as himself. Then, she’d finally seen .

“You have much more than a few flowers and damask rose buds. You have an entire world here. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I know what absolute power does.”

“And what exactly does ‘absolute power’ do, Chandler?”

“It corrupts absolutely. First it would be a flower. Then a candle of courage. Then it would be a candle to uncover your enemies. Then a candle to subdue your enemies. Then, a candle to subdue all of the seven kingdoms. It would never end.”

“You think that of me?” she asked, her eyes flickering with pain. To her credit, she hadn’t said, “Could you do that?” as so many would, but Ambrose couldn’t back down now. He had his reasons. It was not unjust of him to stand up to a queen, to say she could not have, could not take. In fact, the seven kingdoms needed more of that. And did Bessa herself not do the same thing? Stand up to her biological family and demand they step aside?

“I think one candle taken under duress is a slippery slope.”

She scowled, crossing her arms and turning her head away as if to mask her real pain. “So now I’m the tyrant that took a candle from you unfairly, and it obviously means I’m going to try to conquer the world.”

“I’m only telling you what went through my mind. I didn’t know you.”

“You don’t know me now, either, Chandler.” Her voice was pain personified, despite her hard-edged words.

“I won’t argue with your majesty. In fact, I agree that I don’t know you. But what I do know is beautiful. I know how fiercely you love your family and how you consider the villagers of Honeywood Haven among them. I know how you treat those working for you in the castle and the warming centers you opened up. I know how it pains you to keep Eska and your magic hidden–I am all too aware of the pain that causes.”

He wanted to take her hand and show her everything, but she looked much too hurt to ask. Instead, he walked alone to the conical wicker bee hives hanging from tree branches. From this close, he could feel the vibrations of the bees, the living heartbeat inside the hives.

His voice was a whisper. “I know the true parts. The ones that matter. I didn’t even need magic to do it.”

“Tell me what you are and how you’ve done this,” she said in a quiet but firm voice. She still hadn’t taken her eyes from the rows and rows of flowers and trees he’d planted, all in blossom, all buzzing with bees. She couldn’t or wouldn’t stop drinking it down like a parched throat would gulp water.

“The queen bee is kept warm inside by the flutterings of a thousand wings of her closest companions as they constantly circle around her. They all help protect her through the chill that not even a thermal vent can quite dispel completely. Her drones sacrifice for her. That is how queenship works, whether you like it or not. Your people sacrifice for you. It’s not the other way around.”

Bessa planted her boots in the ground and blocked his way to the hives. “Tell me what you are. I should think you would be dying to explain yourself, Chandler, if you know me so well. Not give me lessons on queenship.”

“I am not human like you,” he began. Her head turned sharply at that, her gaze sharp. He felt like a bug pierced by a needle, but continued. “I am a Ghillie Dhu, and I belong to the woods. I wasn’t born knowing who I am. I didn’t find out until I was a young man that magic ran through my veins or that I could speak to seeds and understand the language of the bees.”

She took a step backwards, her face twisting into hurt. He barreled forward, his words tumbling. “I want to explain so much more, but please, let me show you.”

“What sort of magic do you possess? Speak clearly.”

“Deep forest magic. I knew exactly where to find the thermal vent and how to harness it.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of seeds. Then he held them out and nodded encouragingly at her. With a stone face that gave nothing away, Bessa opened her fist and he poured the tiny black seeds into her palm. “Scatter them along the edge of this row of summer savoury and dill.”

“What are they?” she asked, using her index finger to move them around her palm.

“Scatter, please.”

“You are annoying,” she said, dropping them into the soft earth where he’d pointed. She watched, her shoulders hunched with anticipation, as he covered the seeds with soil and let his own hands hover over them. Curls of green magic fed the seeds, and they instantly sprouted into long green onion scapes that he sheared off and handed to her. “This will help the plant focus on bulb production. If I let the scapes continue growing, they would produce beautiful purple balls of flowers and eventually more seeds, so I typically let only half go into seed production.”

“A Ghillie Dhu,” she repeated. “Earth magic.”

“Yes. I am deeply connected to the natural world and so Qanuk listens when I speak, but I could not possibly hope to command her or even form a strong personal bond as you do with Eska.”

“Let me see the honey,” she said, still perfectly stone-faced. For having grown up as a commoner, she was already well on her way to becoming an adept politician.

In response, he went to the hives, scratched off a wax cap, and pressed her finger against the glistening honeycomb. He watched as she held her dripping finger up to the dying light of day, the golden honey sliding down her finger. Just as it was about to reach her knuckle, she licked it off with one long swipe of her pink tongue, and instantly, her eyes widened at the delight of the raw honey.

“Ambrose…”

“Your majesty?”

“That was actually the most magical thing I’ve ever done.”

“I’m glad, your majesty,” he replied with a short bow, something he couldn’t recall ever doing in a sincere way before, and his body buzzed as insistently as his bees with pleasure. Her little fire fox, Eska, jumped up and down between them, a streak of red here and there as she pranced, no doubt sensing their emotions.

“Ah, now I understand the reason why you won’t take my parents’ baked goods. You do feel guilty, as you should, having all of this honey for yourself.”

“I let the bees have most of their honey and only take a taste now and then, but I still feel the guilt gnawing at me.”

Bees hummed throatily along their little paths, stopping laden with pollen from petal to petal in their search for sweet nectar. Bird song swelled in the leafy tops, and he watched her track their flight to their little nests hanging like ornaments in the branches. All of this was already created. All of these, he hoped to spread.

“It’s hard to see any evil in flowers and honey and fruit,” she admitted. “Although I am still very cross about your omission. I understand keeping it from me at first, but we’ve...” Bessa drew off, turning her head away. Angling away from him.

“We’ve been nearly as intimate as two can be?” he supplied. “Aye. I understand.”

Ambrose led her down the stone path he’d laid with such care, wending through beds of rosemary, lavender, and sage. He stopped to point out his favorites and let her smell the different varieties. “My candles would not be nearly so potent with magic alone. Flowers are magic all on their own.” He handed her the bundle, naming and pointing. Thistle, saxifrage, strawberry leaves, woodruff, columbines, cowslip, sweet briar, hollyhocks, marigolds, snap dragons, chamomile, daisies. A world of flowers she never knew existed. Her head spun more turbulently than when she drank two glasses of Duskborne’s pomegranate mulled wine.

“I can distill bee balm to fragrance your hair, or it can be medicinal for fevers and coughs. The flowers are edible and a magnet for?—”

“Bees?” she interrupted dryly.

He nodded.

“You keep bees. And so many flowers,” Bessa said, shaking her head in wonder, her lips still slightly parted and glistening from where she had licked them. “You have honey.”

“Aye.”

“Is this real life?” she asked, just as she had the first time.

“Aye.”

She was so silent, standing there in the heat of his sanctuary, that he started to grow worried. Then she reached down and put her nose in a tuft of mint. If he wasn’t careful, the mint would take over, but he kept his rows neatly groomed and organized. He collected roots, herbs, and stored seeds. He created a sustainable ecosystem, lining the beds with his very own drip irrigation by funneling water from snow outside the wards to melt and drip as it traveled through hollow reeds into his beds. He’d created a haven, but he’d only let her see a fraction of it before.

“It’s not only in here, Bessa. The rumors are true. Magic is returning, and we are its harbingers. You have the opportunity to get out in front. And while it’s true that I have kept my involvement to a minimum, I have heard the trees beginning to yawn and stretch, their hearts beginning to wake up from a century of slumber. They are beating, their sap flowing. Magic is returning.”

“What are you suggesting I do, Chandler? Juggle fireballs at my coronation feast?” she snapped. “Start tossing them at suitors who annoy me?”

“While that sight would be worth spending a few nights in your dungeon, no. I am not suggesting any sort of theatrics. Save the theatrics for Skyfold Pass’s magician. Show them the truth.”

“What truth!” she asked passionately. “I am human. I have Eska. I can create fire but I am no more powerful than a child given a match.”

He stretched toward her. “Take my hand.”

Her head snapped to his. “What?”

“Take my hand, Bessa, and see how powerful you are.”

Bessa bit her bottom lip, her ungloved fingers curled into her palm as she stared at his outstretched hand. Finally, she flexed them, touching his bare skin. The effect was nearly immediate.

One tree shook off its frost, branch by branch, slowly at first and then faster. The bark looked ashen, as if starved of oxygen. It gave itself a mighty shake, like a dog whipping off water. Creaking sounds erupted through the woods and then giant cracks! of the ice melting and snapping in long pieces. Bessa tiptoed closer to a sweet gum tree and watched as tiny, bright green leaves unfurled from branches and expanded, turning dark green as they grew into five pointed leaves like palm-sized stars. All around them, the frozen world melted away, revealing the splendor of nature beneath it. But Ambrose wasn’t looking at the trees. He was looking at her.

She flared bright red as if his gaze had provoked an unexpected response in her, and it turned his blood to fire. “How…”

“Your channeling of Eska’s fire magic supercharges mine.”

“Can it bring back summer?” she demanded.

“I don’t know. There’s no prophecy, no reason why it would.”

“And there’s no reason why it wouldn’t. Isn’t that what you told me anyway? To make my own destiny? What if I want to bring back summer? Forever. Or, at least, the right seasons for once. I want to make Frostvale as it used to be.”

Ambrose paused. He had been so excited to think about the possibilities of letting everyone see their magic together, to perhaps even prove why they could be together. He had run through a thousand courses of action since the fire, since he told her, We can’t . Praying to the old gods and the new that he could. That they could.

Well. He hadn’t thought it all the way through. He blinked hard, grimacing as he thought about the consequences. “Because I don’t think it works like that. Summer would only be brought back for as long as you and I were touching. What happens when we’re gone? Where would that leave future generations? Bessa, my parents died of a broken heart. I couldn’t do that to an entire kingdom of parents.”

“No,” she said, her eyes shining as she continued to run her finger over the softness of the new leaves. “I couldn’t give false hope. I just thought that maybe together… When we touched, I felt… magical.”

Heat unfurled inside of Ambrose at the thought of her skin and what it felt like to always touch it. That she had thought of what it might be like to always touch him. She had considered it and found it an acceptable alternative to royal suitors.

They were magic together, but they could be devastation. And she needed a royal suitor, someone who could offer military support, supplies, boring trade deals, things of national importance. Not magical candles that made her feel like she was touching the sun when all she saw was snow.

“Bessa, will you allow me to show you one more thing?” he asked, his voice raw. “After that, I will finish your candles and I will gladly place my fate in your hands. I will go if you ask. I will walk off a mountain if you ask. I will stay if you ask. Will you allow me this first?”

And she nodded yes, her eyes still filled with wonder.