The Half King

11

With their tasks divided, the three of them set to their work. Kian left for the stables to select the hardiest horses for the mountain journey. Daerick went into the city in pursuit of a guide. And Cerise and Blue visited the kitchens to secure provisions for the following day. In hopes of minimizing gossip among the staff, she enlisted the help of Wren, one of the young serving maids who had come to visit her after the fire. Wren promised to quietly set aside an assortment of dried meats and fruits, flatbreads, and several flagons of water. Cerise thanked her, and then she found a snack for Blue and carried him outside to the palace gardens to exercise his rapidly growing legs.

Though it didn’t seem possible, Blue had gained nearly half a stone in the hours since dawn. The adorable stumpy-tailed rump that had once fit in the palm of her hand now stood almost halfway to her calf. If Blue kept growing at this rate, she would only be able to carry him in her sling for another day, two at the most.

“Slow down, my sweet boy,” she told Blue as she knelt in the grass to scratch his neck. “Can’t you stay a baby for a while longer?”

As if in response, he yipped and rolled over for a belly rub. But then his head jerked up and he froze, tense and alert with a predatory instinct. He must have caught a scent on the breeze, because in an instant, he was on his paws and loping toward the hedge maze faster than Cerise could catch him.

“Blue, stop!” she called, but she hadn’t taught him that command yet, and so he darted onward and disappeared into the maze.

Cerise scrambled to her feet while glancing behind her to ensure she was alone, and then she hitched up her dress and sprinted in a most unladylike manner into the maze. She caught sight of Blue and ran after him as fast as her legs would carry her. It was all she could do to keep him in her line of vision. Blue led her around so many twists and turns that she feared she might not find her way out again. He reached the center of the maze and continued around two more corners until he finally stopped at a small, grassy nook hidden by an extra layer of hedges. The space was so well concealed that Cerise never would have found it on her own. But as she caught up with Blue, she discovered that the alcove was occupied by two young ladies seated on a marble bench, their silk-draped bodies pressed together in a passionate kiss.

Cerise gasped in embarrassment and startled the ladies, who pulled apart and released gasps of their own. One woman splayed a hand over the swell of her left breast as if to still her heart. She stared at Cerise with round, unblinking eyes, and with equal shock, Cerise recognized Delora Champlain. The other woman was unfamiliar. Slightly older than Delora, she had the face of nobility—a long, straight nose, smooth skin, high cheekbones, and a strong chin—and her auburn hair was worn in a twist secured by golden combs.

Blue broke the silence with a shrill bark directed at a basket of food resting on the grass near the bench. Both ladies started at the noise, but their gazes remained fixed on Cerise.

They weren’t afraid of Blue. They were afraid of her .

“I’m sorry for the intrusion,” Cerise told them. “I’ll go.”

“No, wait!” Delora exclaimed. Her mouth was still swollen from the kiss, but the blush on her cheeks had turned to wax. “Please let me explain.”

“You don’t need to,” Cerise said. Delora had done nothing wrong. She had taken a lover in addition to the king, and that lover happened to be a woman. Both of those things were within her rights as a courtesan, though she was wise to be discreet about it. If Kian’s spirit was drawn to Delora, he probably wouldn’t enjoy the idea of sharing her.

But then something occurred to Cerise. She noticed the tender way Delora stroked the woman’s back. Delora had never shown that kind of affection for Kian—no warm gazes, no kisses, no embraces, no touches of any kind other than to accept his arm in escort. It almost seemed like Delora didn’t share a connection with the king.

For some odd reason, Cerise’s heart lifted.

“My lady,” Delora began, pausing to lick her lips. She wrung her hands, the patch of skin at the base of her throat visibly pulsing. “You won’t tell, will you?”

“It’s not my place to tell,” Cerise said. “But to be fair, don’t you think the king has a right to know…” She swept a hand toward the women. “…about this?”

“I’m not worried about the king.” Delora lowered her voice. “He already knows.”

Cerise blinked. But that made no sense. Kian could have any woman in the kingdom as his courtesan. Why would he choose someone who clearly didn’t want him? There was no shortage of young, desirable ladies who would leap at the chance to conceive his heir and become the next queen.

“But…” Cerise began. “I thought he offered to marry you if…”

“If I conceive his child,” Delora finished. “Yes, that’s the story.”

The story? Was it a lie, then?

“Will you allow me to explain?” Delora asked again.

Cerise moved closer to the bench so they could talk quietly. She lowered onto the grass in front of the bench, and Blue padded along beside her. Blue sniffed at the lunch basket and whined. The woman with the auburn hair lifted the basket onto her lap and began feeding Blue nibbles of cold chicken while Delora spoke.

“This is Philippa,” Delora said, indicating the other woman. “She was my harp tutor when I lived at home. I loved her from the moment we met, but I couldn’t tell my father. He was raised in the old ways, to believe that women belong only with men. So when he hired a matchmaker to find me a husband, I didn’t object. I thought my suitors would be old and ugly and that I could turn them down and never get married.” Delora released a dry laugh. “But the matchmaker was good at her job. Too good. She kept bringing me handsome, wealthy men no reasonable girl would refuse. I started to run out of excuses to say no, and I knew it was only a matter of time until my father made the decision for me.”

“So you asked the king to intervene?” Cerise guessed.

“He’s a good friend,” Delora said. “Good enough to lie and give me the perfect excuse to end the matchmaking once and for all. His idea was brilliant. He said that no man would risk offending the king by proposing marriage to his courtesan. So that was the role he gave me. My father was furious at first, but then Kian added the bit about making me his queen if I conceived an heir. He even gave me the title of lady . After that, there were no complaints. Every father dreams of his daughter being a queen.”

“That’s what you meant by becoming a courtesan to save yourself.” Cerise could see the irony now. “The king’s friendship made you free, but that same friendship draws his spirit to you and puts you at risk.”

“I don’t have as much freedom as you think.” Delora reached for Philippa’s hand and gripped it. “The priests here are a lot like my father—believers in the old ways. They don’t care about the law of the land. They wouldn’t dare to act against me while the king is alive, but if they knew about Philippa, they could find a reason to send her away. Or worse.”

Anger rose in Cerise’s chest. She didn’t say so, but the priests had no grounds to object. The goddess had never been controlled by a man. Shiera loved all of her creations equally, men and women alike. Some of the priests in Mortara needed to learn their place.

“The priests won’t find out from me,” Cerise promised. “But are you saying the king has never tried to produce an heir?”

Delora tilted her head to the side, her eyes softening. “You’ve seen the way he suffers, my lady. Do you believe he would pass that agony on to a child?”

The answer formed in Cerise’s heart. No, of course he wouldn’t want his firstborn child, or any child, to bear his curse. But still, wasn’t it reckless of him to let the Mortara bloodline die out before the curses were broken? They had only just discovered how to find the Petros Blade, and that was assuming Mother Strout’s information was correct. What if they failed? Then the Order would try to take the throne, and that was an outcome more chilling than the shadows.

…

Much like the day before, Cerise awoke to a loud bark from her pup. Her eyes flew open, and she sat bolt upright in bed, peering around her room by the faint, orange glow of dawn. She found no one in her chamber except for Blue, who seemed perfectly content standing beside her, now as tall as a fawn, wagging his stumpy tail and licking his chops as if he had just finished eating.

“Did you swallow a bug?” she asked. “They always make you throw up. When will you learn?”

Blue licked her chin, and at once, Cerise recoiled from the scent of his breath. The odor was unmistakable. He had eaten a treat from the kennel master. But Cerise couldn’t imagine where Blue had found it. She didn’t remember bringing any treats back to her room. Surely she would have smelled them if she had.

Something wasn’t right.

She pulled back the sheet and tiptoed across the bedchamber until she reached the doorway to the sitting room. When she peeked into the sitting room and found it empty, she continued all the way to the suite door and turned the knob.

The door was unlocked.

“No, that’s impossible,” she murmured to herself. She had locked the door last night. She was certain of it. She had even tested the door afterward by trying to open it, and it hadn’t budged.

Someone must have stolen a key to her suite. But if the intruder had a key, why hadn’t they locked the door behind them? Did they want her to know that they had been in her bedchamber? That they had watched her sleep and could have violated her at their leisure? Was someone in the palace purposefully trying to scare her?

“Well, it’s not working,” she announced, though her trembling voice made her a liar. She returned to her bedchamber and ruffled Blue’s head. “Never mind what I said yesterday about staying a baby. I want you to grow big enough to eat the person who’s sneaking into my room. Do we have a deal?”

Blue yipped and turned in a circle—his way of communicating that he needed to go outside to relieve himself.

Cerise dressed quickly in riding clothes—a gauzy linen tunic over pants—and covered her hair in a light scarf to protect her from the sun. She had already packed two changes of clothes and her heartrending mirror in a small bag, which she strapped over one shoulder. She fastened her homemade sling around the other shoulder, and after squeezing Blue inside it, she was ready to start the day’s journey.

She stopped at the kitchens to procure a bowl of honeyed oats for herself and a whole raw chicken for Blue, and also to verify that the provisions she’d ordered the day before had been delivered to the stables. With that handled, she swept outside to the gardens, where she and Blue ate their breakfast and exercised their legs while they still could.

After Blue had run through the hedge maze and expended his energy, Cerise tucked him inside the sling and then walked across the paddock to meet Daerick and Kian. When she arrived, she noticed three horses tethered outside the stables, each bearing water and supplies and saddled for the day’s ride. Kian lingered in the shade, dressed in the light tan linen of a farmhand, surveying the castle grounds with a cool gaze and a lifted chin.

“Good morning, Your Majesty,” she called to him, searching his face for any hint that Delora had told him about their encounter yesterday. The subject seemed delicate, or at least private, and Cerise didn’t know if she should bring it up. When Kian only greeted her with a nod, she added, “Where’s Daerick?”

“At the cleric’s office for yet another bag of coin.” Kian waved her over to the shade to wait with him. After she joined him, he eliminated the polite distance between their bodies and stood close enough to make her pulse hitch. “This guide of his had better be worth it,” he said while scratching Blue’s ears.

Cerise wished he wouldn’t stand so near. A new kind of heat radiated from her chest. She fanned her cheeks, but that didn’t stop them from flushing. “What about General Petros?” she asked. “I think we should invite him, too.”

“I already did,” Kian said. “He’s away on an errand for me, but he’s an excellent tracker and an even better rider, so I have no doubt that he’ll catch up to us on the trail.”

Cerise didn’t like the idea of leaving without the general. She recalled the angry voices she had heard in the city, chants of Down with the Half King! “What do we know about our guide? Can we trust him? I would feel better if we brought some of the royal guard along, at least until General Petros can join us. A king should be protected.”

“A king should be,” Kian agreed. “To show my face outside these palace walls without protection would be lunacy. That’s why I intend to wear someone else’s face.”

Cerise raised an eyebrow.

“This morning, I summoned Father Padron,” Kian explained. “I ordered him to transform my appearance into something more…pedestrian…for the day.”

“That explains the clothes,” she said with a glance at his outfit.

“Nothing escapes your notice, my lady of the temple.” Kian winked at her. “Padron should begin the transformation any moment now.”

As if on cue, Cerise tasted the metal tang of magic, and Kian’s hair began to shorten and change color to a ruddy brown. His eyes remained unchanged, but his nose formed a slight hook, his forehead lengthened, and his lips thinned.

In a blink, the king looked like a stranger.

She glanced around for Father Padron but didn’t see him. “Did he transform you from inside the palace?”

“He did indeed,” Kian said, frowning while he probed the slope of his new nose and the wide expanse of his brow. “Isn’t it disturbing how easily he can do that?”

She understood what Kian meant, but even though her trust in the Order had been shaken, she was still amazed by the scope of Father Padron’s power. “I’m grateful he’s in your service.”

Kian laughed. “Spoken like a politician. You’re becoming a real emissary, my lady of the temple.”

“I only mean to say the Order has its use,” she told him. “And not all of the priests are after your throne. Some of them are loyal to the goddess.”

Kian grinned at her like one of the temple workers had done years ago, when she had asked if hot cocoa came from brown goats. “There’s the Cerise I met in the garden. The starry-eyed girl who sees no evil. I knew she was still in there.”

“I’m not wrong, though,” she insisted. “There are some good priests in the Order.”

“You overestimate them. You can’t help it. It’s how you were raised.”

“Perhaps I’m biased,” she said. “I can admit it if you will, too.”

“Me?” he asked, touching his chest. “How am I biased?”

“It’s simple,” she told him. “Shiera’s curse sends you to the shadows every night, and she’s the one the Order serves. You resent the goddess for punishing you, and by extension, you resent her priests and those who worship her.”

“That would make sense if…”

“If?”

“If I resented you, too.” Kian rubbed Blue’s ear, and while doing so, he reached up with his thumb to touch her chin. “But I don’t. And you’re more blindly devoted to that goddess of yours than any priest under my command.”

It took a moment before Cerise found her voice. All she could say was, “She’s your goddess, too.”

“Is that so?” he murmured, drawing closer while his gaze lowered to her mouth.

The next thing she knew, she was angling her face toward his. Her mind warned her to stop, but her heart refused to obey. It didn’t matter that Kian looked like a stranger. Her spirit knew him, craved him, and as she held her breath in anticipation of feeling his kiss, her body stirred with equal parts fear and hunger.

From far behind them, Daerick shouted a greeting, and she drew back from Kian. The king seemed to recover from the moment quickly. He returned his attention to scratching Blue behind the ears, casually grinning as if nothing had happened.

“I’ve got it!” Daerick jogged into the paddock while brandishing a sack of coin. “Now who’s ready to ride a sweaty beast across the desert?”

“Sweaty beast?” Kian made a show of looking around, trying and failing to hide a smile. “I don’t see your mother here.”

“She’s at home,” Daerick said flatly. “Recovering from the ten seconds you gave her last night.”

Kian clapped a hand to his heart. “You wound me, Lord Calatris.”

“Yes, well, I’d shoot you an ugly look to go with it, but you already have one.” Daerick squinted at Kian’s new features. “What did Padron do to your face?”

“You don’t like it? I think it’s rather—”

“Uncanny?” Daerick offered.

“I was going to say roguish. Uncanny works.”

Cerise caught herself smiling. She ducked her head and whispered to Blue, “These boys are a silly breed, aren’t they?”

“I heard that.” Daerick stroked his wiry beard. “Could a mere boy produce anything as fine as this?”

Kian snorted. “Unlike your other parts, at least the beard can keep growing.”

“Would the two of you like to trade insults all day?” Cerise asked. “Or should we go and meet our guide?”

Daerick glanced at Kian. “No reason why we can’t do both.”

“Indeed. Mount your sweaty beast, Lord Calatris.” Kian chuckled under his breath. “I think I’ll name mine after your sister.”

Daerick tapped his ear. “Sorry, I can’t understand you. Buffoon isn’t one of the many languages I speak.”

Cerise bit back a laugh as she approached the horses, all of which greeted her with bowed heads. While she took turns rubbing their forelocks and listening to the jokes unfold in the background, a horrible feeling bloomed in her chest.

How fleeting this moment was. How soon it could all end if they failed to find the Petros Blade. And even if they did find the blade, they still had to learn the exact method of undoing the curse. Only five moons remained until Daerick’s Claiming Day. And not much longer after that, Kian would run out of time. To lose either of them was unthinkable.

The thought made her breath hitch.

“We’ll ask Cerise,” Daerick said, returning her to the present. “What do ladies want more: brains or brawn?”

As Daerick tapped his head and Kian playfully nudged him aside to flex his biceps, she focused on both of them, painting a mental picture to preserve the memory. She took in Daerick’s scraggly beard and his easy smile, the wit that glowed within him like a second sun. Then she moved her gaze to Kian, to the storm-cloud eyes that could see parts of herself she hadn’t known were there. At some point during her short time at the palace, both of them had become her family. It had happened by accident, but she knew without a doubt that the bond was real.

She wanted to remember them exactly like this.

“Neither,” she teased, smiling and blinking her eyes dry. “The goddess achieved perfection when she created women. We want for nothing.”