Page 148 of Settle Down, Princess

“Why do I think he’s about to do something stupid?” Roan asked me, the fears we’d both been nursing now allowed to come to the fore.

“We’re talking about killing a king, brother,” I replied. “Most would say that’s pretty damn stupid.” I kicked off my boots and then flopped down onto the bed. “So if we’re going to do something stupid, lets do it with our wits about us.”

Insomnia isn’t a luxury a soldier can afford, so as soon as my eyes closed I started to drop off. The darkness there wasn’t a friendly place but neither was it hostile. It was merely an oblivion I dove into, like a deep still lake and just before it swallowed me entirely, I had to wonder what would happen if we couldn’t find a way through this. Would I face the scaffold, only to be plunged back into that darkness forever?

I saw then a golden hand, the fingers long and slender, the nails elegantly shaped plunged under the surface, reaching out for me. I wanted to take it so very badly, but I was sinking, sinking, deeper and deeper. Jessalyn, I said, over and over like the women do the names of the gods at church. Jessalyn.

Chapter 85

Arik

Sleep was a fine thing to suggest to the others, but I never slept within the Duke’s walls. We should’ve come here at a slower pace, stopping at inns for a proper bed and bath. We shouldn’t have come here at all, I amended. I could’ve sent word, a raven, with a message about the plan. I could’ve asked the duke to pretend he’d caught sight of the golden stag. It’s not as if Magnus could check his assertion for its veracity. I should’ve stayed in the damn capital, doing what I could to stop the worst of my brother’s excesses, but instead I was here.

The gardens at Fallspire were always beautiful. Despite the moon shining bright above me, I couldn’t see the colours of the flowers much, but the monochrome landscape helped reveal the elegant lines of the garden’s design. Not hard edges, each bed was an undulating mass of different heights and foliages, taking the beauty of a field of wildflowers as its inspiration. The hall was the duke, hard lines and Gothic arches, but this…? This place was all Ariel.

As I walked across the grass, the damp dew staining my boots, it wasn’t hard to see a young stripling of a lad towering over a diminutive girl with long dark hair and eyes as blue as the sky. He was utterly transfixed by her in the way only young lovers can achieve. They walked arm and arm deeper into the garden, what burned between them a flame that needed to be sheltered from prying eyes, but they didn’t see the shadows lengthen the further we got away from the manor.

Dark shapes loomed higher and higher, the shapes of trees on the grass transforming into something far more sinister. A cry of warning lodged in my throat, but it did not manage to escape. There was no point, that was a mantra I repeated over and over, ever since the day Ariel died, so instead I did the same thing as always and just kept moving forward.

The two of them faded once we reached here. The family cemetery was marked by a ragged fence made from deer antlers, alerting the viewer to the fact that this was sacred ground. It’d existed well before the manor was built, before the duchy of Fallspire was created. The bodies of the first kings lay within that graveyard.

As did she.

The markers for King Ragnar’s grave had long since rotted away, replaced now by formally chiselled stone, but more recently were the resting places of each of the dukes and duchesses of Fallspire. Ariel wouldn’t normally have warranted a plot here. She would be married off to someone, her body interred in her marital family’s cemetery, but Ariel hadn’t managed that. Her body was tossed aside like rubbish after Magnus got what he needed from the exchange: making clear how toothless the Duke of Fallspire was. Oh, and my unending pain.

“Arik…”

I tried to persuade myself that this was just the wind, my mind playing tricks on me. I was converting harmless shadows into monsters, so why not the breeze into a voice? Her voice. But when I turned around, there she stood.

“Ariel.”

“You’ve come again, my love?” Those full lips of hers quirked up at the edges. “You haunt this place far more often than I do.”

“I rouse you from your rest?” I frowned, then shook my head. “I did not know—”

“You rouse me from nothing.” Her hand felt ice cold as it touched mine, but I couldn’t help but grip it tight. “I am nothing, nothing but your memories. You remember me,” Ariel glanced at the manor, “more than anyone else.”

I nodded slowly, feeling it, that pain that has been aching for so long, so deeply, I barely noticed it anymore. It’d become a part of me, just another feature like my eyes or my hands. But that didn’t mean I had to like it, those jaws that gnawed at my guts, my heart. Perhaps it was that pain that had me straightening up, saying the things I never dared to the girl I had loved when she still lived.

“I remember you went to him.” My eyes found hers and I caught the flinch of pain there, but it wouldn’t stop me. In some ways I was just like my brother, hurting women needlessly. “I begged you not to. I told you what he was like, what would happen if you did.”

“But my father—”

“Knew nothing.” Rage, pure and sweet as the best honey mead rushed up and out of me. “Thought that Magnus would be bound by some unwritten rule to keep a noblewoman, his queen safe.” I shook my head sharply. No one listened to me about Magnus. They tried to fit him into the grimy pantheon of horrors they’d seen, but none of them knew him like I did. “Your father was bested on the battlefield, but that wasn’t enough for Magnus. Any sane man would’ve consolidated his position, brought about peace…”

I frowned as I considered what I’d said, realising something that seemed immediately obvious as soon as I verbalised it.

“But my brother is a madman.” I stared at Ariel. “Your father put you in the hands of a madman and then was surprised by the inevitable result.”

Ariel was a noblewoman, but she was also the daughter of one of the most powerful duke’s in the country, so her chin jerked up in a way that was all too familiar.

But it wasn’t her that she reminded me of.

Ariel faded momentarily, the daughter of a duke replaced by a princess.

“So if you knew what would happen, why didn’t you save me?”

Ariel’s eyes glittered in the moonlight, but right as I thought I would bear the brunt of her terrible rage, her hand slapped down on her neck.

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