She was born of slavery, given freedom and married to my father when she was fifteen. When I ask, my personal servant Marieke tells me that my mother and father never had a loving relationship. He liked to keep my mother by his side to show off her beauty like a trophy, but nothing more. He would take my mother into his bed as often as he could, hoping for an heir worthy of the Rose title and inheritance. Claus had always been a weak child, and Koen Rose wanted a son who didn’t seem like he would die from a single storm-season sickness. He was unlucky in this. I try to imagine my mother standing beside my father, slapped and beaten if she ever misspoke; the years she must have waited, patiently watching and observing and learning everything she could, so that the moment my father died, she could inherit and control the title of the Rose. Sometimes I wonder if my mother had a hand in Koen Rose’s death, but there’s no way to know something like this now.
Even before my father’s death, my mother had been so dearly loved. She only ever spoke to islanders with respect and kindness, even though she had been handed the power to consider them beneath her. She would walk the plantations of Lund Helle with baskets of mango, sugar apple, squash, and banana bread, handing out the food to anyone who worked the fields. Marieke told me, once, that my mother had heard of a slave’s whipping at the hand of my cousin Bernhand Lund and went to the shack where the islander lay. She rubbed aloe on the man’s back with her own two hands. It’s difficult to know if any islander would’ve done the same if in her position. I’m in her position now, and this is something I’ve never done myself. Perhaps this is why the islanders loved my mother yet have such hatred for me. Before she was murdered and after my father had been beneath the sea for many years, she’d promised freedom to each and every slave of her household and of Lund Helle following Bernhand Lund’s death. It’s a promise I can still feel burning in the slaves’ hearts. The chance to escape these islands without the fear of being hunted down and killed.
But my mother is dead, and this is a promise I can’t keep. I need the slaves around me. My mother had the respect of the regent, the power of the Rose and Lund families; I have nothing. Nothing, but the coin of the Lund inheritance, which will only get me so far. To release my slaves would be to release the last of the power I have, and if I’m going to succeed in my plans, I’ll need them. Disgust radiates from the slaves of Herregård Dronnigen whenever I cross their paths. Most of the slaves I’d known as a child died in the Massacre of Rose Helle, but the slaves of Dronnigen still remember me from the visits I would make when I was young. It must be only out of respect for my mother’s memory that none creep into my room at night to cut my neck. I make it a habit to avoid my slaves whenever I can, to keep a barrier between me and their thoughts. I hold enough self-hatred. I don’t need to expend the energy to use my kraft and read their minds, confirming the thoughts I already have for myself.
The shade of the hall is a relief from the sun, but not from the heat, which is so thick it’s something I must move through, something I must breathe. The heat swarms my skin, filling my veins, and I can see the girl standing before me, crying; hear her mother’s screams. The screams grow louder when I close my eyes.
Friedrich’s voice startles me. “Are you well?” he asks, walking into the hall behind me. I can’t be sure if he asks out of genuine concern or if he asks because I’m his Elskerinde. I don’t think he knows the answer himself. When I turn to face him, his eyes scan my own, perhaps searching for a humanity I’m not sure I have.
I need a distraction. Friedrich is a good distraction. I ask him to my chambers, and though he doesn’t speak on it, I can feel his hesitation. His fear. But he doesn’t argue. He can’t argue, I remind myself. My self-hatred rises, but I push it down again, allowing myself to pretend for a moment that I’m not Elskerinde Lund, and that Friedrich is not my slave, and that we are two islanders who have escaped Hans Lollik, living in the north, in freedom and in love. It’s the only lie that allows me peace whenever the boy shares my bed.
Friedrich follows me up the winding stairs, closes the door behind him, and allows me to kiss him without complaint, lets me press myself against his body, wrapping my arms around the back of his neck.
“Elskerinde Lund,” he says, “perhaps this isn’t the right time…”
I raise a brow and let my hands fall over his shoulders, the buttons of his shirt. “But you’re always so eager to please me, Friedrich.”
He steps away from me now, a flicker of hurt crossing his face, pinching through my chest. He wants me to respect him, to think of him as someone who is strong, intelligent, could easily become captain of my guard. He spends much of his time trying to make others laugh. He goes to the kitchens, flirting with the cooks and tasting their guavaberry tart. He drinks rum with the guards by the stables, telling stories of how he’d get himself in trouble with the head of his guard when he was a child, running away from his beatings. He wants to make others laugh, but he doesn’t like it when others laugh at him. This is the worst thing that I could do.
My hands smooth over his chest and down his arms, lined with thin white scars. Friedrich honestly believes he’s in love with me—the knight forever ready to protect his princess—but this isn’t love. It’s no more possible for Friedrich to love me than it is for me to love any of the Fjern, just as it wasn’t possible for my mother to love my father, her master. It’s simply a fairy tale that Friedrich has told himself—another lie to help make this life of his bearable. He was born to an enslaved family on Årud Helle. He only has a vague memory of his mother hanging a white sheet, ballooning in the breeze. He was sold to another Fjern family, at first to be an errand boy and then to be trained as a guardsman when Friedrich began to show talent with a wooden sword. I bought him myself, to join my guard under Malthe, five years before; bid on him from the docks of Niklasson Helle. His life, apparently, is worth six silver coins with the guinea-grass insignia of Lund Helle imprinted on the front.
I lean forward to kiss Friedrich’s clenched jaw, the corner of his lip. His lips loosen against mine. He lets me guide him to my bed and helps me pull my white dress over my head. Friedrich is young and clumsy, but he makes up for it all with his enthusiasm. He won’t stop until I find my pleasure. When we’re finished, we lie in my sheets, sticky with sweat. I stare at the invitation, still waiting atop my stand. Friedrich notices, and curiosity hovers over him. Friedrich can be annoying after he’s shared my bed, and I want him to leave, but I’m afraid of being alone now, too.
Friedrich lies on his stomach, propped up by his elbows. “Have you ever considered escaping the islands of Hans Lollik?”
He speaks to me as one slave might speak to another. Escape. I don’t have to escape, hidden away on a ship, praying to the Fjern gods that I’m not captured and hung by my neck. I’m free to leave anytime I please. “And go where?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Anywhere. Another island, another empire.” He dreams of seeing the lands to the north, where the pale-skinned Fjern of Koninkrijk and dozens of other empire nations have days and nights so cold that ice like frozen sand falls from the sky.
“Why would I?”
“You could do anything you wanted. You could become another person.”