Page 57 of Grave Flowers
I wished to tell him the truth. The one thing Radix wanted more than anything was something he could never offer: our independence. He didn’t understand and couldn’t, not really. The Acusan people loved security and safety and sweet things. We did not. Forbetter or for worse, our pride could never be beaten nor bribed from us. He could offer us every coin in the Acusan coffers in exchange for becoming a vassal, and we would not accept it. Even if I saw the advantages for us, it didn’t matter. No matter who wore the crown, Radixans were their own true rulers, and they would never submit to an Acusan king.
“If you know what’s best, it’s only for yourselves,” I said. “You don’t know us.”
“Perhaps,” Aeric replied. A smile lurked in the corner of his mouth. “You’re much fierier than your sister, aren’t you?”
I was startled. I’d never considered myself fiery. Not when Radix was so foggily wet and damp all the time. I’d always felt crafted from the same elements, full of doom and gloom and shifting fog. “The fire belongs to you,” I said. “And to the Acusan sun, of which I want no part.”
I kept leaning closer to Aeric to hear him better. Every closed inch between us demanded another. I was pulled to him like a moth to a flame or a fish to bait. Abruptly, I sat back.
“Oh?” he asked. “For a princess who claims not to want anything here, you’ve traveled far.”
“I want to do my duty for my family and my kingdom,” I said.
“And what of your own heart?” Now he leaned toward me, as though we always must be what the other was not and remain in opposition, even in posture. If one of us was relaxed, the other was rigid. If one of us leaned close, the other leaned back. “What does it wish?”
“Whatever do you mean?” Impatience surged through me, and I didn’t bother keeping it out of my tone. I thought of my sister, who relied on me for her peace, of my kingdom, which relied on me for its freedom. “To be born is to be cast in a role. To have a role is to have a duty. It isn’t that your heart doesn’t matter—it’s that your heart knows, always, there is some part it must play. If you abandon your duty entirely, your heart will break. If you embrace your duty entirely, your heart will likely still break, and what of it? Who are we to expectanything else when all who’ve gone before us have faced the same and broken some parts of their hearts for us?”
Aeric lifted his goblet to his lips again. This time, his drink was different. It was fast and desperate, as though he sought to lose himself within it. When he lowered the goblet, there was no guise to his face, only a stare that was so open, I wished to look away.
“I’m envious,” he said, and I was shocked at how broken his voice was. “You know who you are and what you are. You know what to do and how to do it.”
“Your Highness!” Horatio, one of Aeric’s friends, stepped onto the dais’s lowest step. His presence cut between me and Aeric, demanding the focus we’d been giving only to each other. “You’re much too somber tonight. Come, we will make you merry.”
Seeing the exchange, the other guests cocked their heads toward us, waiting for their monarch to respond. Prince Lambert had been kissing Queen Gertrude’s neck, but she pushed him off, eyes narrowing at us.
“I’m sitting with the princess,” Aeric said, continuing to refer to me without the possessive, making me feel like an entity all my own, when nothing could be further from the truth. “It is all the merriment I require.”
“We are most happy the princess is here!” Horatio sensed Aeric was defending me and quickly changed tactics. He turned to the crowd, then shouted, “Let’s raise our goblets to the betrothal of our gracious monarch and our beautiful soon-to-be queen.”
Aeric stood. Only I noticed the hitch to his rise, the subtle abruptness masking his hesitation. I didn’t stand. I didn’t dare. Not with Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert there. Frenzy spread as the guests hurried to procure goblets and participate, eager to show their support. Bottles popped up as servants raised them overheard to show where the goblets might be filled, and the crowd surged like flocks of beak-bobbing birds to whichever servant was closest. The drunken, confused theatertroupe didn’t know what was happening but added to the frenzy by dismantling their pyramid in a desperate effort to secure more wine.
Goblets were timidly offered to Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert. Holding up her hand, Queen Gertrude turned away. She strode from the ballroom, Prince Lambert following close behind her. She would not toast her son. Some of the nobles followed them.
“To our prince and the princess!” Horatio shouted. He lifted his goblet. Wine splashed over the sides. The guests who’d managed to get wine in time raised their goblets too. A goblet was extended to me. I hesitated. Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert were gone. Slowly, I took it and stood. As I rose, the crowd hummed in excitement. Aeric and I raised our goblets toward the crowd and took a sip. Horatio wasn’t done. Pleased by his success with the toast, he cried, “A kiss! A kiss for the happy couple!”
I stiffened, finding myself panicked and fearful … and, though I didn’t dare acknowledge it, desirous, deep within.
“No need,” Aeric said. “There’ll be enough kissing at the wedding. As Yorick once said, ‘delayed gratification is the most exquisite’ and I’m inclined to agree.”
He was rejecting a kiss. I knew it was out of respect—he didn’t wish to force a kiss on me before the entire court—but our talk of hearts and duties left me empty. I was allowed no far-reaching desires of my own, but a kiss, even one I should not have, might be mine to command. Perhaps I’d take it. I could explain it as strategy if word got back to Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert, especially as the court had demanded it. It would be different from the kiss on the balcony. That one had overwhelmed my reason. But this kiss I’d take with clear eyes and a closed heart, knowing it was the last of its kind. Such a thing existed, didn’t it?
“Nonsense.” I addressed the party: “Why wait when we don’t know what tomorrow brings?”
Aeric was the one to go rigid now. Even though he was a foot away, I felt his confliction. For once, he reminded me of Radix: foggy, disordered, confused. He stared at the crowd, but his gaze didn’t focus. It was adrift, and I had the desire to snatch it, to call it home to me, to draw it to mine one last time. The party fed on my response. They crowed and raised their glasses again, and half of them turned to kiss each other, as though they were us.
“Well,” Aeric said, setting his goblet on the arm of his chair, “I am yours and, as such, yours to command.”
The guests cheered again, and those kissing redoubled their passion, so all I saw was the underside of jaws and the vanishing of lips, arms encircling necks and bodies pressing together as though they wished to climb inside each other. Aeric still didn’t look at me. He’d said he was mine to command, but he stared out at the party in the way someone stared out at the sea, seeing something vast and limitless and being made tiny by it.
It wouldn’t do.
I stepped toward him, carried on the moment and my own craving that I needed to kill—yet wouldn’t, not right now, not this second. Suspicion crossed his face, but there was something else within his gaze: a fierce, unquenchable longing. At the last moment, all distrust disappeared, and he came to me with decisive abandon, and he truly was mine to command.
Our kiss was desperate and ragged, as though we’d changed much since the last time, even though it had been only two nights before. Without thought, my leg curled around the sturdiness of him, and I was hoisted in the air. My gown’s thin silk skirt collected at my thighs, and suddenly I adored the Acusan immodesty. Aeric’s hands pressed against my flesh, every finger indented against the suppleness of my skin.
I never wanted him to stop.
“Huzzah! Huzzah!” Horatio led the crowd in cheers. Their voices grew loud, reminding us we were not alone.
