Page 5 of A Guard and a Gardener

“That is not in my job description,” said Starling with barely restrained horror, staring at him pleadingly. Evidently realising the futility in appealing to Ren’s infamous lack of mercy, she turned huge eyes my way instead. “Please tell him it’s not!”

I cleared my throat. “We are all honoured to serve our king,” I reminded her, and she huffed out an irritated breath. Had she really expected me to take her side over his?

“If you’re going to be more of a sullen ass than my husband on an early morning, Estrella,” Ren drawled, “you can check Jiron over instead.”

There it was.

Starling immediately gravitated to my side in relief, running sparking hands over my shoulder as it was the closest to my head she could reach even up on her toes.

Some of the tension eased from my body, but I knew that the reprieve was physical only: nothing she’d ever done had eased the mess my mind had become, or made sleeping any easier. Either I tossed and turned for hours seeking rest that never came, or I drowned in far-too-real nightmares like the one Luis had woken me from this morning.

But letting Starling do her thing made my king happy, and that was all that mattered.

“We’ll be heading to Stavroyarsk in about a fortnight’s time,” he said casually as she worked, inspecting his fingernails even though they wouldn’t be allowed to be anything less than perfect. “You might as well travel with us rather than on your own next week.”

“I’m not-”

“Excellent, it’s decided,” said Ren, cutting off her protest.

It seemed he’d already managed to use his promise to Mathias to his own advantage in delaying the healer’s scheduled return north. Starling spent half of each year with us and half in the Mazekhstani city of Stavroyarsk, but clearly our king had decided that halves didn’t need to be equal portions.

“Now I wish to visit the gardens,” he declared the moment the healer threw her hands up in frustration, grinning at me with entirely unconvincing innocence. “Carry me,” Ren demanded, and I’d instinctively gathered him into my arms before I realised what I’d done.

“I can’t,” I said with reluctance. I attempted to put him back down on his feet, but the obstinate royal clung onto my arms, narrowing his eyes. I tried again. “Your Majesty, if I have another...episode, I could drop you.”

“You won’t,” he said cheerfully, and patted my chest as if that was all the assurance either of us needed.

“It’s not a good idea,” Starling disagreed, folding her arms.

Ren groaned into my shirt, wriggling around to do so, and I tightened my grip on him before he could fall. “You’ve never shown concern for my welfare before, señorita, so for both of our sakes please don’t start now.”

“I don’t give a shit about you,” she retorted, and I tensed as I always did when someone spoke disparagingly of Ren. I’d had sore shoulders for months after Mathias arrived in our lives. “But Jiron needs rest, and hauling your fat ass around isn’t helping.”

The king froze. “Fat?” He dragged his brown eyes up to mine, looking murderous. “Did she just call me fuckingfat?”

“The gardens you said, Your Majesty?”

I carried him swiftly out of the surgery before he could demand the healer’s head.

*

Chapter Four

“Woah!” I said hurriedly, dropping the bucket I was carrying and leaping forward to catch the back of the boy’s shirt before he could throw himself into the rose bushes. “Don’t you see the thorns?”

The child spun, entreating me to an irritated expression and an angry set to his shoulders. He was barely half my age but certainly more than half my size.

I let go of him and grinned before putting my hands up, palms out, to show him I meant no harm. His attitude fizzled out into shame.

“I wasn’t gunna damage them,” he muttered sullenly.

“I was more worried about them damagingyou,” I retorted, eyeing the long, wicked thorns on the plants and spotting a flash of pale brown nestled among the soil deep within the bushes. “Is that your ball?”

The boy nodded.

“It was a gift he daren’t lose, señor,” came another voice behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder to find a girl a little older than he was standing with her hands on her hips. Seeing them together made me realise I recognised them as two of the palace kitchen servants, part of the group the king had brought with him when he relocated from the smaller palace ofla Cortinain the north east.

The smart thing to do would be to go and get one of the long sticks we kept near the shed for exactly this purpose – that and dislodging kites from tree branches too high to reach. But the determination on these two children’s faces suggested that they’d be scratching up their little hands and faces trying to recover the ball the moment I turned my back, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.

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