Page 48 of Seducing the Sorcerer
“I daresay I would, but I was glad I didn’t have to. And it was a lot more than once or twice.” She turned to Fenn again. “I was fourteen when it started and I’d been told I mustn’t be rude. I started telling people I’d marry Morgrim. I even swore him to secrecy. Imagine!”
“You never intended, neither of you.” Fenn found he’d said it aloud.
“No.” She grinned and punched Morgrim lightly on the arm. “By the nine! Morgrim, imagine us getting married! What a disaster. Although you do have your moments. Remember when I was eight and ran away from home?” She turned back to Fenn. “I ran to the tower and announced that I was living there from now on. I can’t remember why. But Morgrim showed me how to make toast and gave me his bed for the night. I still think of it every time I eat toast.”
“The part I remember is that you burned all yours and ate all mine,” Morgrim said.
“What tosh! It was the other way around. You were unaccountably absent-minded that evening.”
“My robes smelled of burned toast for days afterwards. The Vizier of Kuj wrinkled his nose at me in the magician’s council chamber.”
“Ha. You never told me that.”
Fenn listened to them with half an ear. For starters it was telling that of all the people in the palace that a child could run to, the eight-year-old Aramella had run to Morgrim. But it was the other implications that were leaving him breathless. Because if Aramella and Morgrim were friends. If that’s all they’d ever been, if all those rumours about marriage were just that. Then...then...
Ah, but what about the other rumour? The one where Morgrim wanted to depose her and take the throne for himself. Fenn hadn’t been able to take that rumour seriously for days. They were so clearly friends. Morgrim so obviously wasn’t that kind of bloke. They’d laugh about it.
Fenn cleared his throat. “So, all just a rumour.”
Aramella smiled at him. “That’s right.”
“There’s another rumour going about,” Fenn said. “Bet you heard it?”
“Yes? Probably. Which one?”
“That Morgrim wants to depose you.”
Aramella laughed, as he’d expected. But then she said, “Oh, that one’s true!”
“It...wait...what?”
“It is not true,” Morgrim said.
“Yes, it is,” Aramella said. “Morgrim doesn’t approve of hereditary titles. He thinks I should be abolished.”
“That’s better,” Morgrim agreed. “Abolished. Not deposed. Deposed implies someone else might take the throne. We don’t want that.”
Aramella grinned at him. “Of course not.”
“But...but...you’re friends,” Fenn said.
Morgrim looked over at him. “It’s not personal. In fact, Aramella will make a very good monarch. But that’s just lucky. What if she were a different kind of person? One like Tullivo? No one should have that kind of power because of who their parents are.”
“I don’t know about that,” Fenn said, shocked.
He glanced at Aramella, who was still smiling.
“Morgrim’s a radical, Mr. Todd,” she said. “I’ve told him; the people aren’t ready to do without the monarchy. They like the flags and the processions and the idea of a royal family. They like that I’ve not sought power, but that I wield it out of duty. In any case, all our neighbours have royalty. They want it too.”
“We can have flags and processions without a monarchy,” Morgrim said.
They carried on arguing, though in a good-humoured way. Fenn didn’t say much because he wasn’t sure what he thought. On one hand, the monarchy was tradition. Fenn’s mam had loved the king and would have been horrified at the idea of getting rid of Aramella. On the other hand, Morgrim had a point. Letting the monarch pick their successor from their family didn’t mean you got a person who’d be up to the job. And you couldn’t get rid of them easy by voting them out.
But mainly he was quiet because he felt as if he’d swallowed a swarm of the lilac-grey butterflies that were fluttering around the horses’ feet. Because Morgrim didn’t want to marry Aramella and she didn’t want to marry him. And Morgrim didn’t want the throne either. Not even a little bit. He wasn’t a scheming rogue at all.
And that meant Fenn’s mind was made up.
***
