A Thousand Heartbeats

A few hours later, our three prisoners had become honored guests. Kawan welcomed them to our celebratory feast with open arms, and we were to all follow suit.

Still, I kept a close watch. They didn’t huddle together, as I’d expected, but walked around confidently, charming the room. It was easily done; Kawan had all but introduced them as our saviors.

I stayed closest to White Flag. Skittish and Spare were so tense in their shoulders, I could see that even with the warm welcome, they were going to be close-lipped. Skittish because he seemed to mistrust us, and Spare because he seemed above it all. White Flag, however, looked perfectly at ease. He had a cup of ale in his hand and was laughing loudly at something someone had said. I hung back, listening.

“The Island is supposedly beautiful,” White Flag commented. “I’ve never seen it myself, so I’m glad we’ll get to escort you.”

“What gifts are the king giving us?” someone asked, hands gripped in excitement.

White Flag shrugged. “I would guess food, as we have an abundance. We also have a history of excellent leatherworkers, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he brought some saddles as well. But feel free to imagine better.”

I rolled my eyes at his boasting. Of course there was an abundance—that’s why they took it from us in the first place.

“Did they tell you we all saw your princess?” someone else asked. Their tones were all wonder and ease. How could they so quickly forget this was the face of the enemy?

He nodded and gave a chuckle. “Let me tell you, we were all surprised to hear of her escape. She’s a kind lady, like her mother. None of us could guess she was also so formidable.”

Something lodged in my throat.

“I don’t know about formidable,” someone said. “She might be clever, but I wouldn’t call her strong. I wouldn’t be worried if I crossed her path on a battlefield.”

White Flag shook his head. “You’ll never see such a thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if her father literally locked her in a tower. Her brother, Escalus, on the other hand? He’s all manners and decorum on the surface, but I don’t doubt he could kill a man. Especially for her sake. If you cross him, run.”

I’d learned a lot about this little royal family today in the unguarded words of this unwanted visitor.

According to our so-called guests, it was rare to find one sibling without the other in public. Annika praised her brother in all situations and seemed to love no one on earth so much as him. Escalus boasted about his sister’s wisdom and goodness, as well as her strength. If I had to guess, he was the one who taught that girl to wield a sword. And by the account of the visitors, he didn’t seem to be enthusiastic about his sister’s engagement.

This one detail made my mind wander down paths I didn’t care for. If he didn’t like her fiancé, was it because the man in question was a buffoon—which was my guess—or because there was someone else he wanted her to be with? I also wondered why they bothered finding her a partner before him. Wouldn’t his choice in spouse be much more important than hers?

As I sat lost in thought, a few of our musicians paraded in heralding the arrival of our leader and my mother. Whenever we had the rare celebration, they’d make this sort of entrance, as if they truly were royalty. Kawan with his fake throne, my mother with her stolen gowns—it was all a tasteless show.

Kawan walked in, smug as he surveyed the room. But as irritated as I was by the way he sauntered in, the way he so casually disregarded his own folly, everything was all drowned out by a rush of anger at my mother.

She was wearing Annika’s dress.

The riding dress she’d left in the dungeon had been reworked to fit my mother’s frame, but it was unmistakable. The cream-colored bodice, the floral embroidery. Mother’s head was so high, her hand resting so lightly on Kawan’s.

It enraged me.

As people applauded their entrance, I marched across the mess hall to take my mother’s hand and, as calmly as I could, pull her from the room.

“What is the meaning of this?” she demanded.

“Take that dress off.”

She looked at me as if I were mad. “You must be joking. This is the first gown I’ve owned that was actually made for royalty,” she said with a smile. “Now, I’m going to go enjoy it.”

I blocked her path. “You. Are not. A queen. Kawan hasn’t bothered to marry you or give you an official position. You can parade around in as many pretty dresses as you like, but that won’t change the fact that you are replaceable in his eyes.”

She stared at me, the set of her lips conveying her anger. “Why are you always so cruel to your mother?”

I gave a loud humorless laugh. “Me, cruel to you? You stand back and do nothing while the man who sent your husband out to die strikes your son in public. How can you speak to me of what’s cruel?”

She swallowed. “I do not approve of him being so violent with you, and I didn’t appreciate that he did it in front of so many people. I’m very sorry for it.”

I crossed my arms. “That is such a comfort. Especially knowing that if he chose to hit me again tonight, you’d keep your seat all over again.”

She looked away, confirming what I already knew.

“Don’t you understand?” I whispered. “He keeps you close to keep me close. No one else here has the stomach to kill a queen, to kidnap a princess, to slaughter those who would otherwise run once they realize he’s never going to give them what he promised. If he loses me, this whole operation crumbles. I’ve wanted to run for so long, to find a better way, and the reason I haven’t abandoned this all yet is because I’m waiting for you to wake up and remember I’m your son.”

She moved her eyes to the floor, the cuff of her sleeve, to the torch on the wall. Anywhere but to me.

“Was there ever a time when you loved me? When you looked upon me as something dearer than a soldier?”

“Lennox, of course I loved you.”

Past tense. It wasn’t lost on me.

“But you look just like him,” she admitted, drawing her hand to her mouth. “It kills me to look at you and see the shadow of the man I married and lost. We have to survive here, Lennox. For the sake of getting everything we came for, we have to survive.”

I raked my hands through my hair, ready to rip it out. “I’ve been surviving for years, and it is the saddest excuse for an existence that I can think of. I’m ready to start my life, Mother. And I know, without a whisper of a doubt,” I said, coming close to her, “that when I do, you will have no part in it.”

The tears had been growing in her eyes for a while, but now one spilled over. “What do you want from me, Lennox?”

“I want to move forward. I want to go after our kingdom, the right way. For Father’s sake. I want to know I have people on my side. And I want . . . I want my mother. But she died when she became Kawan’s mistress,” I said, my lips trembling, “and I don’t think she’s ever coming back.”

She cast her eyes down but kept her chin up, refusing to be ashamed. I knew she wouldn’t be. I was powerless. I could do nothing, and it made me want to scream in frustration.

“I’m sorry to be such a disappointment to you,” she whispered.

“You’re nothing to me,” I corrected her. “You’re a nobody parading as a royal. You’re a fraud.”

Her eyes steeled over. “Fine. Then consider yourself nothing more than a soldier to me.”

“I already do.”

She turned on her heel, marching back into the feast with her nose tipped up.

I reached into the pocket on my waistbelt for my father’s button and rubbed it back and forth between my finger and thumb.

I’d physically buried my father, and now it was time to mentally do the same with my mother.

I walked out of the castle an orphan.