“Nevertheless.”
She fell silent once again, still staring stubbornly at the floor. He’d taught her to feel at ease with him, and now he was going to use her. Let him feel the guilt of that, if he could.
“This,” King Soren said finally, a world of pain in his voice. “This is why it must be you.”
She had no answer for that.
“You may go,” he whispered, and Leisa fled before he could read the pain of his betrayal in her tears.
She’d been right, of course. Three weeks was not enough. Not enough to fully resign herself to her fate, let alone accustom herself to living in another woman’s skin. But those three weeks passed like a spring wind, and before she knew it, she was on her unwilling way to Garimore.
A prisoner to her debts and her king’s desperation.
It was worse than iron shackles.
Yes, of course she cared for Princess Everaine, and served as her bodyguard without resentment. But this?
This was different. It took everything Leisa trusted about herself—all of her hard-earned skills—and smothered them behind a facade she was ill-suited to maintain. After all, she had never once envied the princess—not her privilege, or her wealth, or her influence. Leisa enjoyed her anonymity, and the simplicity of her lifestyle.
But there was no escaping her duty, especially once they slammed the coach door shut behind her and the caravan bearing her to her doom rattled off down the road to Garimore.
It was a long journey, which gave her plenty of time to prepare herself for what she might find at the end of it. Or, more accurately, to completely terrify herself wondering about the truth of all the rumors she’d heard of Garimore’s king.
He was said to be harsh, unyielding, and unforgiving. A stern, uncompromising sovereign who dedicated his life to amassing wealth and power, and had no love at all for mages. So why would he seek this marriage for his son? Princess Evaraine was not known to be a mage, but Farhall was a land of both mystery and magic. What could he possibly want with it?
Where Garimore was a broad, fertile kingdom of rich soil and lush pastures, obvious in both her beauties and her charms, Farhall was a land of secrets. She was filled with towering cliffs and shadowed canyons, with rocky spires and hidden waterfalls, icy winters and sharp pine-scented air. A small kingdom, but if you paid attention, Farhall concealed tantalizing secrets around every corner. There were days when the wind carried voices no one could understand, and places where ancient trees stood twilight sentinel over deep woods that humans still hesitated to enter.
In Farhall, magic was all too real, all too palpable—in every breath, every shaft of sunlight, every gurgle of its ice-cold streams.
Perhaps that’s why mages seemed to gather there and linger. Or perhaps they came and stayed because Farhall was the only one of the Five Thrones to welcome them with open arms. Oh, mages existed in every one of the Five, but often led self-contained, solitary lives. They helped their neighbors as they could, but typically in secret, and rarely practiced their magic openly.
Whatever the case, Farhall was everything Garimore’s king claimed to despise, so it was vital that Leisa discover what he hoped to gain from an alliance.
She strongly doubted the answer had anything to do with Princess Evaraine herself. The princess was sweet, shy, pale, and uninteresting if you didn’t know her well, and the sons of King Melger were nothing if not sought after. They could have commanded a marital alliance from any other kingdom in Abreia, but so far as anyone knew, they’d approached Farhall first.
And now, Leisa was the one stuck figuring out why, though she was no closer to an answer by the end of her journey than she had been at the beginning.
It was two weeks to Garimore by carriage, and by the time their party approached the royal city of Hanselm, she was well past weary and bored, more than ready to reach their destination and get the worst over with. Though she was no longer certain that anything in Garimore could possibly be worse than being stuck in a coach for weeks with three people who obviously didn’t like her very much.
Princess Evaraine’s ladies were beautiful, graceful, perfectly dressed, and perfectly behaved, unlike Leisa. And while she would have expected them to shun a bodyguard—who favored trousers and boots, spent most of her time in the kitchens and barracks, and preferred street dances to waltzing—she hadn’t realized until she wore Evaraine’s face that they held their princess in little higher esteem.
Not that they would ever display such a lack of respect openly. In fact, Leisa discovered that they rarely showed any emotion at all. At no point in the journey did they express an opinion to her about anything, only exchanged glances and whispered confidences that conveyed little except their discomfort with the woman they believed her to be.
So as the royal cavalcade rolled past the gates of Hanselm and into the city proper, Leisa couldn’t help feeling a bit of relief as she glanced around the coach. No doubt, the other ladies would be equally glad to reach their destination, if only to rid themselves of her company for an hour or two. Not that she would ever know. As in all other things, the ladies remained serene, their facades never wavering. From the rocky, terrifying tracks through the highlands to the smooth, flat roads through Garimoran orchards, they’d been too well-bred—or perhaps too well-trained—to display either discomfort or dismay.
Much like the honor guard that followed them through the streets. The princess’s entourage was the size of a small farming town, but none of them had so much as rolled their eyes, let alone complained of the conditions.
Which, as Princess Evaraine had explained, was part of the royal expectations.
A princess is never unhappy. Never uncomfortable. She never displays anger, nor allows anyone to see her fear. She must remain serene. Gracious. Patient. Unflappable. Commanding when necessary, but never flippant.
Obviously, Leisa’s companions knew more about being royal than she did. Which was hardly a surprise—they’d been born to this life she was only pretending to live. When expected to speak or act, she was guessing more than half the time, or, at best, trying desperately to remember some hint from amongst all the facts that had been shoved at her in the weeks between her assignment and departure.
A duke is your equal, but a Margrave is not. A duke’s wife must be addressed as Lady. So too a Countess. No one may be seated until the king sits, and no one eats until the king eats. When the king is finished, so is everyone else, and one curtsies when the king leaves the room.
There are forty-seven different curtsies, twelve that are appropriate for a king, and only one correct curtsy for any specific situation.
Leisa was never going to remember it all. No matter what King Soren believed, it wasn’t enough to have the right face. Not enough to wear another woman’s jewels and possess enough gowns for every day of the year. She had to inhabit this role completely if she were to convince everyone that she believed in her own right to be here. Put on the unconscious self-possession of royalty.
That alone would have been a challenge, but she also had to remain enough herself to be the person King Soren needed. The one he was relying on to determine whether Garimore considered Farhall to be a worthy ally, or whether they would look down on their smaller, more vulnerable neighbor with a greedy smile. Leisa alone would bear the burden of discovering whether Prince Vaniell of Garimore was a monster or a man, a suitable match for Princess Evaraine of Farhall.