Page 38 of Prince of the Northwest Forest
“I feel like I got the feels out, even though I haven’t solved anything. So, yes?”
Daryl takes my empty ice cream bowl. “Beer now?”
I nod.
He gets up, puts the dish in the sink and his bottle with my recycling, then returns with two fresh beers.
I give him a knowing look. “Now, tell me about you and that sexy pool boy of yours. What realm is he from? And what’s this about visiting him?”
Chapter Nine
KALLE
Royalty does not get nervous. That’s what my mother always used to tell me. We are like granite. Dependable. Unchanging. Our subjects can rely on us.
We do not have butterflies the size of bald eagles flying around in our stomachs. We do not feel like we’re going to vomit. We do not make scenes. We are impassive. Restrained.Royal. Except …
I think I’m going to be sick.
It’s the morning of my wedding, and my heart is beating as fast as a drum riff. Like some of those David Bowie songs.
Don’t think about Bowie.
Because Bowie makes me think about Justice and all that cannot be.
My wedding is going to take place in less than an hour, in a ceremonial spot in the Northwest Forest called Checkermallow Hollow. Located close to the border with Princedelphia, it’s an amphitheater surrounded by trees, set beside a natural grotto. Rough-hewn logs have been sanded to make benches on both sides of a center aisle. At the front is an area that can be used as a stage or pulpit or, as it is now, to accommodate a wedding arch consisting of wildflowers and linen ribbons woven aroundbranches. A stream sings to the side, the water flowing placidly despite the dreariness of the day.
While all I want to do is jump into the water and let it take me out to sea.
I’m dressing in a private staging area off to the side, attended by Feder, a deer with opinions on fashion, and Risteárd. My parents already thanked me for doing my duty and are out front greeting guests from our realm and the Fire Realm, as well as dignitaries from other lands. Einar is out there, too, with his friends.
No word from Mats.
I wish I had it in me to resent him for going off somewhere that the fae could nab him, but it’s not his fault. And, in some ways, it doesn’t matter. I always knew my duty would be to marry. It’s no big deal that I’m interested in someone else. At least, that’s what I’ve been repeatedly telling myself.
I’ll just be … tied to her for the rest of my life.Firecats. I barely know her. I don’t even know if she will like me.
I shift my weight from one foot to the other and then rock back on my heels. I straighten my spine and lift my chin.
Do your duty. Be a prince.
Except … flashes of my future—things I haven’t considered before—race through my brain like a wildfire.
We’re supposed to have children to secure this union, which means I’m expected to bed Eleanor, Princess of the Fire Realm,tonight. It’s so distasteful. Not that I don’t like sex, but I don’t want to do something with her that I suspect she won’t want to do. Even if she consents out of duty, who wants to have sex with a reluctant stranger? So it won’t happen until we both want it … which could mean never.
Just get through this, Kalle.
“Let me fix your vest,” Feder says. Because he’s a deer, he uses his teeth, his lips curled back like he’s eating the new,bright-green leaves on a bigleaf maple, to delicately adjust my vest.
“My clothes are fine,” I grumble. I take a step forward and check myself in the reflecting pool below us.
My animal helper gives me a wide-eyed look that would literally be a deer in the headlights, as they say in so many of my books, if there were headlights around. “I’m sorry, Your Royal Highness, but you simply cannot go out like that. It would cause a scandal.”
I look down. I’m wearing our traditional wedding clothes: off-white breeches, horn buttons on my cream brocade vest, my hair tied back in a ponytail with a leather strap. Deer are such gods-damned fashionistas. “What’s the matter with the way I’m dressed?”
“You’re wearing your sword!” Feder says, giving me a reproachful look in the way only an animal can, all big brown eyes.
“Lots of military weddings feature ceremonial swords.”
