“I will try, Queen Elsabet.”
“Good.” She linked her arms in each of her friends’. “We must all try to set examples for the people. And your reputation is fearsome enough. They still say that you dye your hair red with madder root just so it will look like blood.”
“Ha!” Bess barked, and covered her mouth.
“But we do not always have to set good examples.” Rosamund lowered her voice and nudged Elsabet with her shoulder. “Not with those we hold most dear. We can see that you’ve been troubled.”
“And I thought I was so good at disguising it.” Elsabet sighed. Bess and Rosamund were her closest friends. She was closer to them even than she was to Gilbert, whom she viewed as a brother. Bess had been with her since they were both young girls and Bess’s mother had been in service to the Lermont family in Sunpool. Elsabet and Rosamund had been much thrown together over the course of the Ascension Year, and Elsabet had taken to the gruff soldier immediately. If she could not trust them, she could not trust anyone.
“You know they say I am unwell,” she said quietly.
“The people fear you are unwell,” Bess corrected, though to Elsabet there did not seem to be much of a difference. “That’s why they talk. They worry.”
“I think they are right.”
“Right?” Rosamund turned to the queen sharply and looked up and down her body. “What’s the matter? What is the ailment?”
Elsabet smiled. “Nothing you can see from the outside.”
“Is this about your rake of a king-consort? Give me leave to beat him. I won’t leave any marks.”
“Rosamund!” Bess exclaimed, and the commander quieted. “Tell us, Elsabet.”
“I think my gift is failing,” Elsabet said flatly. And there it was. Her secret fear, harbored for nearly a year. A year of gradually lessening visions, and increasing coughs and headaches. “I have not had a vision or felt any touch of the sight for a very long time.”
Rosamund and Bess looked at each other gravely, their steps slowing in the midst of the bustling marketplace. Elsabet shook them gently by the elbows. She should not have told them there. They will stand out in their sadness.
“How long?” Bess asked.
“Months. Many, many months.” She did not mention the strange dream she had after speaking to the moon outside her chamber window. The dream of the boy with paint-smudged fingers. That was only a dream. Nothing at all. “And what is an oracle queen without a gift?”
“She is the Queen Crowned,” Rosamund said. “And besides, how do you know your gift has weakened? It was strong when you needed it to Ascend. You must not have need of it now. The people should be glad that you have no visions. It means they are safe.”
“But surely”—Elsabet blushed—“surely it would have warned me about William’s . . . wandering.”
“Why would it?” Bess blurted. “The Goddess need not send a vision for something that is so glaringly obvious.” She gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth again. Elsabet’s mouth hung open, but then she laughed. Loudly and genuinely, her head thrown back to show her large teeth.
“Thank you, Bess. That actually does make me feel better.”
THE QUEEN’S CHAMBER
When William slunk into Elsabet’s chamber, she had already determined to be angry. Cold. Perhaps even aloof. It had been three days since she had caught him flirting with that girl in front of her entire court. At first, it seemed that he stayed away out of fear or perhaps courtesy. But as days went by, it began to feel more like a punishment. As if she should be the one to seek him out to beg forgiveness.
I am a queen, Elsabet thought. I have been a queen since I was born, and there is no begging in me.
But that was a lie. The moment she heard his footsteps at her door, she knew she would drop to her knees and plead, if only he would stop. If he would come back. If he would love her.
Bess let him into the room and squeezed Elsabet’s hand before dropping a curtsy and leaving them alone.
“Well, my dearest?” William asked. “Is it time for our quarrel to end?”
The resentment in his voice broke her heart. Surely he should try to appease her. Take her hand. Not stand there straight-backed and glaring.
Elsabet breathed in slowly. “Do you want to be set aside?”
“Is that a threat?”
“Take it how you like. Do you want to be set aside? To be king-consort in name only? I am happy to furnish you a house in the country. A small estate where the hunting is good. I will make no excuses for you, but you may disappear from the capital.”
He had not expected that. He looked positively bewildered. “Disappear from the capital? Into the countryside? And what will my cousin the king of Centra think of that?”
“He will think nothing of it. We will still be married. The alliance between Centra and Fennbirn is fixed, for a generation.” She waited and watched him think, forcing her face to remain impassive.
“And what will you do?” he asked. “When I am gone?”
“I will do as I like. I am the queen.” She was the Queen Crowned, the embodiment of the Goddess on earth. Yet that was not enough to make him look upon her as he looked upon that pretty girl in the throne room.
As she stood there silently, William started to fidget and his posture lost stiffness. “But . . . what about the triplets? The new queens?”
“You will visit my bed during every Beltane.” Elsabet swallowed. “Your sacred chore.”
He ran his hands roughly across his face, and at once the hardness there was gone, and he came forward and grasped her wrists. “Elsabet. Darling. Has it really come to this? Over such a small thing?”
“You shame me before my court. It is no small thing.”
“I know.” He kissed her face. “I know; you’re right. I was thoughtless. I was carried away.” He kissed her neck, her hands, her lips. He used what power he had to weaken her resolve until her arms were around him, and her gown around her waist, and he moved her to the bed.
MIDSUMMER
With Midsummer approaching, the capital was a bustling, jovial place as the crown and the citizenry prepared to celebrate the festival. Elsabet intended to open the grounds of the Volroy and hold the festival feast in the courtyard instead of in Indrid Down Square. It would be open to commoners and rich, gifted families alike. A show of unity and peace after decades of war games and raids. Of course the Black Council was against it.
“The sanctity of the castle would be violated, and your own security would be impossible to assure.” Sonia Beaulin scrunched her face. She did not say outright that the queen was a fool, but her exasperated expression made her feelings plain.
“Rosamund will see to my security.”
“Rosamund Antere is weak-gifted at strategy. She manages the queensguard with no more competency than a child.”
Beside Sonia in the Black Council chamber, elemental Catherine Howe tugged at her sleeve. “You know she can hear you. She’s right outside.”
“Do you think I care!” Sonia slammed her fists onto the table, and the entire table shook.