Page 10 of The Shattered King

Though it meant missing sleep, I did not turn down Lonnie’s offer of a bath when she came to my room that night.

I followed her across half the keep, down to the bailey and the kitchen, through a rather marvelous pantry and into a back room, where a laundry tub full of water sat waiting for us.

We were not the first to use it, and the water was lukewarm at best, but I would not complain.

I helped Lonnie wash out her dark-blonde curls, and she helped with mine, us both taking turns in the tub to rinse off.

“You must have grown so fast.” Lonnie toweled off her hair. I carefully wrung mine out, hoping to keep my curls as tame as possible.

“I don’t understand.”

With a tilt of her chin, she gestured to my still-naked body. “To get stretch marks like that. You must have grown up fast.”

My face warmed at the same time my chest cooled, one hand absently touching the marks along my hips and stomach. “I ... yes,” I murmured before grabbing my dress.

“I was so slow.” Lonnie laughed. “Didn’t even look like a woman until I was seventeen. My pa used to say he had three boys. I have two brothers.”

I nodded, my throat tight, and tied the laces of my dress. “Thank you, Lonnie. I so appreciate it.”

“Oh! Don’t go just yet.” She dressed quickly and then motioned me into the pantry, suddenly all whispers and tiptoes.

As I followed her, I noticed the scents of butter and sugar, and homesickness struck me so hard, my steps faltered.

Five and a half weeks since I’d last tended the apiary.

Longer since I’d had a taste of honey, or chided my youngest brother, Terrence, as he tried to sneak a bite of honeycomb.

Lonnie led me to the back of the kitchen, then across the bailey. I didn’t understand what she needed until she turned around, a palm-sized pastry in her hands. I hadn’t even seen her filch it.

“Cook won’t notice,” she offered with a sly grin. She broke the pastry apart—it looked to have a berry filling—and handed half to me. Mouth agape, I lifted the treat to my nose and breathed deeply, then took a small nibble.

Heaven exploded on my tongue.

“You are an angel,” I whispered.

“Just don’t charge me if I poke out my other eye,” she jested, then shrieked.

“Awful, nasty thing!” She ran just past me to a mouse—perhaps a small rat—scurrying along the wall.

I was impressed she could see it, given our distance from any torches.

She tried to stomp on the poor creature, but it proved too quick, and soon the shadows stole it away.

Sighing, she returned to my side. “We’re supposed to kill them on sight,” she explained. “Physician Whitestone said they’ll make us all sick if we don’t. Ah well. I’ll see you when I see you, Nym.”

I took another soul-mending bite of pastry. “I’ll see you when I see you, Lonnie.”

The next morning, I reported to the prince’s suite a few minutes early, just as Ard, the guard who wore a blue cincture, was stepping out. Presumably to fetch me.

“I need you to retrieve something for me,” I said.

He frowned. “My duties are for His Highness alone.”

“It is for His Highness. We’re strengthening his legs, and now we must strengthen his mind.” I tried to sound convincing even though, while he was physically incapacitated, Prince Renn was just as educated as any noble. Perhaps more so, given the number of books he read. “Are you capable or not?”

He was, and I waited outside the door for him until he returned with a polished wooden box, larger and finer than the one I had at home.

Thanking him, I stuck it under my arm and entered the prince’s suite.

Sten was helping him from his room, the prince taking baby steps on his shaky legs while leaning heavily on the guard.

None of us said anything as he shuffled to the couch and, gripping Sten’s forearm, sat down.

I placed the box on the small table nearby and began opening it.

The prince’s eyes flashed from the box to me. “What is this?”

“Danerin.”

“What?”

I paused. “You’ve never played danerin?” Let alone heard of it ...

He shook his head. A line formed between his eyebrows, as though the very idea of not being aware of the game was insulting.

Shrugging, I took out the colored pieces and flipped the box over, revealing a pattern of black, white, and gray triangles. “It’s a strategy game. You said you were bored, so when the physicians aren’t bullying you, you can play this.”

His brow crinkled. “If you want to play at strategy, there are better methods—”

I gave him a withering stare.

His frown deepened. A few seconds passed before he asked, “How does it work?”

I explained the rules to him. One of us would be red, the other blue; the green pieces were neutral. I explained how converting the pieces worked, and how to win.

“It sounds complex, but once you start, it’s simple enough.”

He scoffed. “It sounds simple, so I don’t think it will be a problem.”

I didn’t care what he thought of it; it beat hunching over him, staring at his lumis every hour of the day. I pulled the table closer to him, took up my stool, and set up the pieces.

I beat him within five minutes.

He grimaced. “You cheated.”

I rolled my eyes. “If it were my intention to cheat, I would have told you false rules.”

“Perhaps you did.”

I swept the pieces off the board and began packing them up. “You’re as bad as your mother,” I muttered.

Two heartbeats passed before he said, “Again.”

I glanced at him. “I don’t think you enjoy this game, Your Highness.”

“And you will follow my orders, healer,” he retorted. “Again.”

Sighing, I reset the game. Let him go first.

This time, I beat him in eight minutes.

He tossed one of his blue pieces across the floor. Even my brother Terrence wouldn’t have done that.

I scooped the rest into the box and closed it. “Perhaps you are used to winning at these things, but I’m not going to cater to you. You can obviously do hard things; figure it out or don’t play.”

His expression, always so guarded, opened at that. I did not think it due to my disrespect. Rather, that I recognized his struggles were difficult. Yes, everyone in this castle, as far as I knew, could walk. But Prince Renn wasn’t everyone else.

Just then Physician Whitestone arrived, and I was more than happy to excuse myself to the corner.

He and an assistant guided the prince through some more exercises, pushing down on his ankle as he lifted a foot, or pulling his knees apart while Renn pushed them together.

However much I did not like the royal physician, he did seem to know his vocation, and his work with the prince had already proven beneficial.

Renn’s knees buckled an hour in, so I came to heal him again, sluffing away the edges of exhaustion, patting smooth cracks in the baubles I had reassembled.

After lunch, the physicians left us in peace while I dowsed, sorting through more of the mess of Prince Renn’s lumis, being pulled out of the spell thrice because his coughing fits grew so violent.

He went through six handkerchiefs, which were thankfully stowed away by the time the queen came to check on our progress.

Dim and early the next morning, I came to the prince’s room on my own, the second morning I’d been allowed to do so. I knocked, and almost immediately Sten wrenched the door open, startling me.

When he saw me, his expression collapsed.

“What? What’s happened to him?” I pushed my way in, running to the bedroom.

“He is not here,” the guard confessed, shoulders tense. “The others are searching for him.”

I whirled around. “Not here ? Where could he have gone?”

Sten shook his head. “I’ve been ordered to await his return. Do not”—he flinched—“do not tell the queen.”

Panic butterflied in my stomach. “Believe me, I have even less desire to talk with her than you do.”

I slipped out into the hallway, running past the suite, searching the corridors, too afraid to call the prince’s name.

It would be the guards who would answer for his disappearance, though with the queen’s logic, likely me as well.

I peered down every corridor I passed, even taking the steps up the nearest tower to look out the windows—

There you are.

Relief blossomed in my chest that I was able to catch his golden hair so quickly. Were he not standing by a garden in contrasting purple, I might not have noticed it.

I took the tower steps all the way down and was rewarded with a door near their base. A maid hurried by with towels, not so much as looking at me.

Once on the grounds, everything became a maze; I had not yet been allowed to explore the castle gardens.

Not even the bailey. But I wound through, heading toward that cluster of purple flowers.

As I neared, I noticed Ard standing a ways back, arms folded across his chest. They’d found him, then.

Someone should tell Sten, if only to prevent his heart from failing.

I hesitated, gaze passing from Renn to Ard, Renn to Ard. If his guards hadn’t known where he was, then they hadn’t brought him out here.

The butterflies in my stomach expanded as I carefully approached the prince. He was staring east, right into the rising sun. No cane, no assistance. His legs trembled, but he stood on his own. He’d walked out here on his own .

I had done this. We had done this.

As I neared, the sunlight caught on a wet streak down his face, left by a tear.

He noticed me, turned, his blue eyes all the more brilliant in the sunlight. He cleared his throat, schooling his features. I stood at the ready, afraid he might fall, afraid his lumis would crack under the stress of the outing. We stood there, not together but not apart, for several minutes.

“Thank you,” he whispered, finally noticing his wet cheeks and wiping them with the back of his hand.

The words stunned me. So simple, and yet he was the first in his entire family to thank me. I had not thought him capable of it.

Another guard, this one named Bay, approached from the south. “Your Highness, we should return inside.”

Renn’s features hardened instantly. With the guard within earshot, he said to me, “You are to wait for me in my chambers, healer.”

I frowned but nodded, taking the dismissal in exchange for the gratitude.

I reentered the way I had come, dreading a little less the idea of spending another day sorting through broken pieces of a man who, for a moment, had been eternally grateful to be a little less broken.

And, when I arrived at his suite, I told Sten where the prince had gone, and he immediately left for the grounds.

Leaving me alone in Prince Renn’s chambers.

I shut the door and moved with haste. Crossed to the unused desk and pulled out a piece of parchment.

There was no graphite, so I uncorked an ink jar, sharpened a quill so quickly I nearly split my thumb, and began swiftly writing a letter to Lissel, telling her what had happened and that I was all right, daring to take the time to list the things she would need to see done, the school assignments and our meager investments, our customers and where to meet new tradesmen passing through.

I reminded her to update the hive records and watch for mites, and told her I loved her, and that I would be back soon.

I put everything away as I’d found it. Then, blowing on the letter, slipped from the suite and darted down the hallways back to my room. The ink dry, I folded the parchment and shoved it into the bottom of my bag.

Safely finished, I needed only to sort out how to send it.