Page 59 of The Reluctant Queen
“You are not ready to bathe and dress for dinner. Go take a walk around the grounds, explore the palace’s solar, listen in on someone’s conversation.”
“Not in the mood.”
“My lady,” she said sternly, “I must humbly request you find something to take out that...frustration on. You’ve got me half-way to apoplexy, and Thera will surely quit her position at Stormhill if you let me die at such a young age.”
Hevva laughed, a choked sound, because while Aylin’s joke was quite funny, she was also struggling to maintain her composure and not kick a piece of furniture to bits, then spear every portrait of the king with splinters of wood. “Would you mind terribly putting my hair back to rights?”
“Not at all.” Aylin lifted a few pins from Hevva’s hand and began twisting strands.
A few minutes later, with a more casual hairstyle than she’d worn outside for lawn games, Hevva set off to explore the palace halls and attempt to rid herself of anxious energy.
She avoided the east wing with its stupid billiards room, awful library, and foolish discreet stairwell. Her wanderings led her down to the ground floor where she came upon the throne room, pictured Ehmet reclining on the velvety seat, and left. Trying her very best to ignore the existence of the king, as he had done to her on the lawn, she stormed past the wine cellar and took a sharp left down a new corridor she hadn’t noticed while drunk. A sliver of light escaped cracked doors at the end of the hall, and Hevva, like a moth to flame, went exploring.
It was a gymnasium. Empty, but recently used, the tang of sweat hungin the air. Training swords were racked on her left. Dummies stood in a line, eyeless soldiers on guard under the high windows on the far wall. Foils hung from pegs to her right, and Hevva beelined for them.
This was precisely what she needed. She took a moment to find the perfect weapon, testing its weight and length with whistling slashes. Then she stretched and spun to face the dummies. Not bothering with a mask, because they couldn’t fight back, she danced toward her static opponents.
Hevva moved through her regular cadence: lunge, slash, retreat, spin, lunge, slash, retreat, spin. Going through the motions, honing skills she’d never need in real life, was relaxing, a meditative experience. Not that day.
She found herself angry when the training dummies didn’t fight back. One even seemed to lean against the wall, effortlessly casual, unbothered by her momentum. Hevva sneered at it, and found that it, and its brethren, now bore imaginary variations of Ehmet’s face. She stomped her foot before leaping back into motion: feint, attack, spin, retreat, lunge, feint, attack.
She needed them to fightback. Too much frustration bubbled in her, unbearable annoyance at the situation that should not evenbea situation with the king.
Whyhad she gone and met Berim? What astupid, stupid decision.
Fueled by a need to test her skills, drain her well, go to bed, and sleep until the house party came to an end, Hevva set the dummies to spinning. First, because she couldn’t help herself, she made them do the quadrille. Tossing proper form to the wind, she chased the dancers around, prodding and smacking them with the foil.
Shenevershould have visited his damn solarium, never should have accepted when he asked her to spend time with him and the H-children, never should have coaxed the king down to Rohilavol. She should have refused his offer to dance at the gala. She shouldnothave gone into the royal sitting room with him. When the invitation came from Kirce, she should have thrown a fit, pretended she’d developed an illness, and refused to travel south.
Sweating, fallen tendrils of hair stuck to the back of her neck. Hevva unbuttoned her spencer with one hand while she fought off an approachingtraining dummy. Sick of Ehmet’s face in her mind’s eye gracing each and every one of them, she willed herself to shift focus. It worked a bit, but not so well, seeing as one became Gamil, another her mother, the third Berim, and the fourth remained Ehmet.
Hevva launched back into her routine. Thiswouldwork to settle her. It had to. She could not dwell on the recreation of Rohilavol, the frozen candles, the sex, or the gods-forsaken proposal. She couldnotfocus on the king in the billiards room with Lady Tahereh, and definitely not on the fact he refused to consider love. That was likely a result of life with his horrible father, but it wasn’therproblem to fix. She wanted anice common boy, not a duty-laden, love-fearful, highly-titled man!
Thishadto work. She coaxed the training dummies faster, a whirlwind of movement, they slid around the floor on their wooden pedestals, approaching her, then rushing away. She’d fight them all, until she collapsed to the floor and her well was empty. Hevva hoped, by the time the dummies froze up again, stuck in their final positions, she’dforgetEhmet, and the entirety of the past month. Then, with a free mind, she’d enjoy the champagne, the conversation, and the dancing for these final few days in Serkath, retreat to Stormhill, and refuse to travel south ever again—except for when she had to, to vote in favor of the excellent-at-his-job-but-not-at-anything-else king.
In the late afternoonhe found Lady Hevva. Ehmet needed the help of Parosh to track her down, who thankfully went off to solicit information in the service wing. The manservant learned that the lady was last spotted in the king’s gymnasium on the lowest level.
Why is she in my training rooms?
He stomped downstairs and was relieved to come across no one, not even a member of his household staff. The gentlemen of the house party were engaged in an archery competition on the south lawn and the ladieswere in their chambers, readying for dinner.
But not Hevva. If there was one thing the countess did, it was march to the beat of her own drum.
He found her, foil in hand, squaring off against a bevy of practice dummies on wooden stands. With her magic, she had them dancing across the floor, sliding around on their thick puck-like bases. In her flowing muslin day dress and her unbuttoned spencer, she looked like a lady in a bar fight. A goddess in a brawl.
Hevva lunged at one statue, parried another, twirled, jabbed at a third, and then she noticed him. The dervish of movement ceased, and the dummies slid back into their places along the far wall of the room.
Pressing the tip of her foil into the floor, she panted from exertion. “What?”
“Can we talk?”
“Of course! Why not?!” She flung her arms out to the sides, and the blunted weapon went flying, clattering against the west wall of the room. The lady didn’t even have the presence of mind to look sheepish.
Her vigor surprised him. It didn’t bode well.
Ehmet approached but hung back a few paces as he began to speak, “I’m not even sure where to begin. So, I will get right into it. I want you to know before it is announced formally at some point in the coming days...”
The rise and fall of her chest stalled as she awaited his words.
