Tranquility's Grief Page 28

  She’d fixed one mistake.

  Arrago’s gaze met hers and, for the briefest of moments, his smile faltered. His marriage to Her Grace was necessary, required, even. The barons and dukes and various nobility would never accept her as their Queen.

  Queen.

  Bethany snorted, even if only she noticed it in the throng of people. What did she honestly expect of her feelings for Arrago? Marriage? The thought was laughable. She was a Silver Knight. She had her own problems to work out and a war to finish. She didn’t have time to be a queen.

  Still, as she watched Arrago bragging about how he’d thumped some innocent girl he didn’t love, her heart bled. She’d not considered how miserable she would be once he was no longer hers.

  Jovan leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Give me the word and I’ll assassinate him. Consider it a victory present.”

  She tried to make a joke, but words failed her. “I need air,” Bethany finally said. “The stench is giving me a headache.”

  Kiner motioned to the exit and said, “I’ll come with you.”

  “I want to be alone,” she replied. The last thing she needed was Kiner telling her how this was for the best. She needed to be alone with her thoughts, to harden herself against the idea of King Arrago and Queen Celeste.

  “You shouldn’t be,” Kiner said, still moving with her to the exit.

  She cast him a glare until he held up his hands in submission and stopped following her. She marched from the room, pushing the celebrating masses from her path. She did not look back at the cheering crowd and their proud, new king. It didn’t matter to her that blood-stained sheets was their custom. She did not need to be reminded that Arrago had to bed his wife to produce dozens of fat sons to secure his succession.

  The early spring wind was still crisp and Bethany pulled her cloak tighter across her chest. She stared out at the ocean, across the straits. The faint glow of blues and reds of Sarissa’s Magic barrier pierced the dark sky. That was where her attention needed to remain. Stopping her sister from whatever mad plan she had, and put aside the images of Arrago dancing naked in bed with a child.

  Bethany walked down the path, slick with ice. Behind her, the stone mansion’s celebration grew ever more distant with each step she took away from it. It was the way of kings, she told herself. To marry young girls to give them heirs and spares. Celeste was seventeen and he twenty-two. Or, was it twenty one? He wasn’t that much older than her. It wasn’t unheard of, her rational side said.

  But the angry, hurt side of her, the part that bundled the hurt and held it close to her heart seethed. She hated Arrago, herself, and even Celeste, despite knowing the girl didn’t love Arrago. She wanted to scream and bash and kill the hurt inside her.

  Bethany grabbed a fallen branch from the side of the path and beat a nearby tree, screaming at the top of her lungs. She imagined Arrago’s face on the twisted trunk and hit harder.

  “Fuck! Fuck!” she bellowed, over and over, pounding the branch against the stunted tree. Exhausted, she dropped the branch and collapsed on the ground, wiping away the tears that splashed down her face.

  “Lady Bethany?”

  “Shit!” Bethany shouted in surprise. She squinted and saw Edmund, sitting on the slight embankment next to the path. Humiliated and brushing her hands against her face to wipe away the tears that were invisible in the evening darkness, said, “I didn’t…I didn’t see you there.”

  Edmund motioned for her to climb down to join him, which she did. He stank of whiskey. “I got all of the tree beating out of me an hour ago.” He offered her a bottle. “Plenty for both of us.”

  Bethany sat down next to him, the damp cold seeping through her cloak. She accepted the bottle and drank a mouthful of the burning, foul-tasting liquid. It heated her innards, though, and soon enough she’d stop feeling the cold.

  “So why did you need to beat a tree?” Bethany asked. “You feeling sad that Arrago is marrying Celeste?”

  Edmund remained silent, looking straight ahead at the shimmering light of Magic in the distance.

  Bethany turned to him. “Wait, not you and Arrago…?”

  Edmund snorted. “No, I like him, don’t get me wrong. He’s a good man. He’s just not my type.”

  “Rumor has it your type is any lady with a skirt that lifts easy.”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice starting to take on a slur, “that would be my reputation.”

  “You and Celeste?”

  He looked away, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. “Since we were fourteen. My family is nobody. She’d never be allowed to marry me. So,” he shrugged, “I let everyone think I was only interested in whores. I paid those women well to keep my secret. But the truth of the matter is that Celeste…” His voice cracked, “Celeste is all I’ve ever known or ever want to. But I can’t really sleep with my best friend’s wife, now can I? You must have a heart of steel. I commend you.”

  “Arrago taught me that it wasn’t something to be proud of. He said it made me cold and unapproachable.”

  Edmund laughed. “Arrago has the softest heart of any man I’ve ever met. The man weeps over dead butterflies. I can’t believe he led a rebellion and became king.”

  “There are days that I’m convinced this was all a bad dream.”

  “Who would have thought that he was a man of prophecy?”

  Bethany considered all of the decades of scholars trying to determine who the Elf King really would be. She’d never have guessed a human with an elven name. “Not me.”

  Silence slipped between them again. She didn’t know what to say to someone who had the same pain as herself. After all, she didn’t want anyone to say words of comfort to her. She supposed he wouldn’t want them, either. The hurt for her was too raw to talk about. Still, there was one thing that needed to be addressed.

  “For the scribes and records, I do respect, Edmund Greyfeather. Arrago would have ended up face-down if it hadn’t been you. Your father was proud of you.”

  He nodded. “Thank you, Lady Bethany.”

  “Bethany,” she said, accepting the flask once again. “Call me Beth and I’ll castrate you.”

  Edmund tipped his head back to finish the last of the whiskey. He reached off to the side and picked up a hand-sized bottle. When she looked at this quizzically, he said, “If I’m sober enough to crawl back to the castle tonight, I hadn’t drunk enough.”

  She laughed.

  “Want to get pissed with me? Can you imagine Arrago’s face when he hears we were both found passed out down here?”

  She had thought war had killed his spirit, but it had not. She nodded and said, “I’d love to drink myself blind.”

  He uncorked the bottle – raspberry brandy by the scent – and offered her the first taste. The sweetness nearly overwhelmed her. Still, it was better than the whiskey.

  “Now what?”

  She frowned and thought. “There is still breaking through that barrier, killing everyone inside of it, and releasing the spirits to the wind. There’s got to be some glory in there for us.”

  “Think they’ll write songs about us? I’d like to have a song written about me.”

  “I won’t be happy unless an entire opera is composed in my name for all of the shit I’ve put up with.”

  “Make sure I’m mentioned.”

  She smiled. “You’ll be the plucky sidekick who shows his greatness and loyalty many times.”

  “You are a good woman, Bethany. No wonder Arrago loves you.”

  “And you a good man.”

  With that, conversation died off between them. They handed the flask back and forth until it was drained. Warm and hazy from the liqueur, she leaned back on the ground and stared at the barrier.

  “Edmund, I know what we are going to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  She let the anger swim inside her. The hurt, the betrayal, the images of the dead, her lost innocence, all of it. “We’re going to break through that barrier and kill every
living creature inside of it. Do to them what they’ve done to us.”

  “Revenge?” he asked.

  “Sweet, sweet revenge.”

  He nodded. “Women, whiskey, war. I like this plan.”

  Bethany smiled.

  According to her mother, Krista D. Ball tells lies for a living. She is the author of several short stories, novellas, and novels. Krista incorporates as much historical information into her fiction as possible, mostly to justify her B.A. in British History.

  Krista enjoys all aspects of the writing and publishing world, and has been a magazine intern, co-edited four RPG books, self-published several short stories and a novella series, and has been a slush reader for a small Canadian press. She has also written a non-fiction blogging guide and is currently writing a non-fiction historical book for authors called, “What Kings Ate and Wizards Drank.”

  Whenever she gets annoyed, she blows something up in her fiction. Regular readers of her work have commented that she is annoyed a lot.