Page 8 of The Rejected King
The royal secretary sitting behind a cherry desk had already offered her water.Her.Paintings of past royalty adorned the wall across from her. Two guards stood beside the hand-carved mahogany door, behind which, she could only assume, sat the queen mother.
Emree had traveled five days in a carriage from the province of Kenmare to get to Enderlin Castle. Six hundred miles in a carriage—a bumpy, uncomfortable carriage—pulled by smelly horses. And she couldn’t forget about the mishap at the Morreck Inn three days prior. The encounter still made Emree uneasy, but she was determined to put her grueling travels behind her and focus on the purpose of the trip. Yesterday afternoon she had arrived in New Montana, the capital city of Enderlin. After a much-needed night to rest at the Tana Inn, she was rested and clean and ready to show Queen Arillia how amazing she was.
Emree had first seen the job posting for Promenade Director in the Kenmare newswriter one month ago. She had been sitting at her parent’s kitchen table, eating a bowl of hot cracked wheat when she came across the position. She had read the words out loud:The Promenade Director will be in charge of running the Promenade event as well as overseeing King Davin’s public affairs as they pertain to the Promenade. The director must work well with the newswriters as part of the job requirement is to be a liaison between the king and the press. This is a short-term position, but if done well, a permanent event planning job at Enderlin Castle could be offered.
After reading about the position, Emree had dropped her spoon and ran to show the paper to her parents. They shook their heads at her, saying she was too young to ever be considered for a job like that, but Emree hadn’t given up. She went straight to High Ruler Kemp’s office and asked if he would write her a letter of recommendation. Fennish Kemp had always been like a second father to her. Emree had grown up at the Kemp’s estate. Her father oversaw the High Ruler’s farming, and her mother ran their household. Their families were close friends. Fennish and Yvonne Kemp were more than happy to send a letter to their friend, Queen Arillia, on Emree’s behalf. That must have been quite the letter of recommendation because Emree had been invited to Enderlin Castle for a job interview two weeks later.
Emree glanced at the guards in front of the queen mother’s door, giving them a quiet smile. Neither one of them smiled back. She furrowed her brow, wondering what it would take to get one of them to smile back at her. She tried again, widening her grin and raising her shoulder up in a flirtatious way. Then she wagged her eyebrows up and down. Confusion swept over both their expressions, but both men eventually smiled back at her in a this-girl-is-crazy sort of way.
Emree called it a success.
She wondered if Portlend had ever stood like that, guarding that exact door. He would’ve smiled back at her. A rush of nerves fluttered through her stomach. It had been so long since she had seen Portlend, and now, they were both in New Montana. Still, the king’s guard had at least a hundred soldiers in it. It might take a few days for them to run into each other. What would he say when he saw her? She hoped he would be excited, but it was hard to know. They hadn’t exactly left their relationship on good terms. At least in Emree’s eyes.
Portlend had been stationed at Enderlin Castle for the last four years. Emree could still remember the day he had left to join the king’s guard. She’d cried for hours—not entirely unexpected from a fifteen-year-old that had just lost her best friend and childhood sweetheart.
Portlend had promised to write every week, and at first, he had, but as the months and years went on, his letters got further apart. Instead, Emree had to settle for quick visits on holidays or weekends, whenever he was allowed time off to come back home to the province of Kenmare.
But if Emree got the job, she would live at Enderlin Castle for the next month. If she did well with the Promenade, she could even get a permanent position at the castle running events. Then she and Portlend could be together. Maybe he would finally propose. They had been talking about getting married since Emree was fourteen, and Portlend was fifteen. Their future was inevitable.
They were meant to be together, like butter and a hot roll.
But Portlend wanted to make his mark in the king’s guard before they got married. He had left Kenmare when he was sixteen and had been gone ever since, promising Emree that once his career as a soldier was established, they could get married.
Now his careerwasestablished. He was an officer in the king’s guard, and three months ago, when he had come home to visit, Emree had been sure a proposal was coming.
But Portlend had shocked her.
“I’m not ready to get married,” he had said as he rubbed the side of her arms.
“But you’re an officer in the king’s guard. What more do you want?” She remembered how tentative her smile had been at that moment. “Don’t you want us to be together?”
“Of course I want us to be together.” Portlend had shrugged off her concerns. “But we’ll have our whole life together. We don’t need to start now.”
Thinking back on the conversation, Emree hated how desperate she had sounded. Especially when Portlend hadn’t sounded desperate to be with her at all.
He had kissed her forehead. “Just give me time, Em. I need more time to climb the ranks in the king’s guard, then we can be together.” Portlend had given her his best smile, the one where his lips opened wide, and his hazel eyes sparkled with charm. The one that he always gave when he wanted something from her. The one that Emree couldn’t say no to. She had nodded and plastered on a smile of her own, refusing to let him see how broken-hearted she had been.
Emree shook her head, pushing the memory out of her mind. She didn’t want to think about Portlend. Right now, her future rested in the queen mother’s hands, not Portlend’s. She would never get an opportunity like this again. The chance to be the Promenade director for the king of Enderlin was once in a lifetime. It was everything Emree had worked toward. Her odds were slim. She was young, probably the youngest candidate applying for the job, but she wouldn’t let that stop her. It’s not like she didn’t have any experience. She had worked on High Ruler Kemp’s campaign as an intern when he’d run for the king of Enderlin against King Davin.
Emree grimaced.
Maybe she shouldn’t have put that on her resume. Would the queen mother hold that against her? She hoped not. Fennish Kemp had lost the election, after all, and her son had won. How could Queen Arillia really be mad?
She grimaced again.
Fennish Kemp hadlostthe election, and Emree had worked on his public image. Would the queen mother assume that Emree hadn’t done a good job? She shook her head, swallowing back her angst. It wasn’t like she had been the sole manager of High Ruler Kemp’s campaign. At the time, she had only been seventeen and was considered a volunteer. Still, seventeen or not, Emree had taken charge and had done a great job; Fennish Kemp had lost, but he had done so with grace and dignity and a public image that even the most cynical newswriters had respected.
She could handle the Promenade; doing so would get her that much closer to her ultimate goal—a permanent position at the castle.
Emree took a deep breath, smoothing the skirt of her fitted, charcoal dress. She hadn’t chosen a colored dress for the interview, though Yvonne Kemp had given her a few. It wouldn’t be appropriate for a working-class woman like Emree to show up in a colored dress. She didn’t want the queen mother to think she was trying to rise above her station. No, Emree wanted Queen Arillia to see her as a working-class woman—a woman she could trust to have the utmost level of professionalism. The charcoal dress conveyed all of that. So did the sophisticated bun her dark brown hair was coiled in.
Emree looked around. It seemed like she had been waiting for a long time. What if they had forgotten that she was here? She glanced at the royal secretary, but his head was down, focusing on a piece of paper. She cleared her throat to remind him of her presence, but he didn’t move.
She tried again, louder.
Nothing.
She cleared it again, but it turned out there was such a thing as clearing her throat too many times. Emree’s throat tightened, and her esophagus burned, making everything tickle. A loud cough erupted from her mouth over and over again as her body tried to dislodge the clump of air she had created deep inside her lungs. Her hand went to her lips to quiet her coughing spasms, and her eyes flashed to the secretary.
