Chapter 3

Ethan’s POV

The first thing I did when I reached my chamber was throw my wet shirt at the wall. The second was to start tidying, and that was how I knew how angry I was.

I don't tidy when I'm calm. I had stopped letting the servants dress me at fifteen or even come anywhere close to my room, except if I found it necessary or out of my control. I swung the sleeves out over the basin, hung the shirt across a chair, and knelt to blot the puddle from the rug with a towel. The fire hadn't been lit, and the cold air bit at my bare back. I scrubbed the same patch for a full minute before I admitted it was already dry.

“I didn't even think,” I told myself. I just went in.

I had been coming back from the practice yard with my sword over my shoulder, taking the path by the lake because it was the only quiet one. A woman in a blue dress was walking out along the old dock, the one I had meant to have pulled down for two years. She held her shawl tight and kept her chin up like a soldier going into battle, and she was smiling at the water triumphantly, as if she had just beaten it at cards. I shouted for her to stop. The wind took my voice. I was already tearing off my overshirt when the board broke.

After that I remembered only pieces. The cold. Her wrist in my hand. Her eyes open under the green water, and her hair floating around her head in dark curls. The way she had come back to life all at once, with a bite that went straight through my lip. She apologized to me, while coughing up half the lake, and told me her name.

Liana, Princess of Marenne. The woman my grandmother had been writing to for three months.

I had given Odo one order the day that letter came. No one from Marenne was to have an audience with me. I wanted her fed, housed, and politely ignored until she grew bored and went home. She hadn't been inside my walls a full day, and I had already had my mouth on hers.

Two firm raps sounded at the door.

"Come in."

Boots crossed the stone, and I heard the small rustle of a bow. Gareth always bowed, even in private, even though we had trained together since I was twelve and he sixteen. He stopped at his usual distance, a few paces behind me.

"Your Majesty. The yard is full of talk, so I came to see that the lake hadn't kept any of you." His voice was easy, the way it only ever was behind a shut door. "One of the guards swore you went in with your boots on. I told him no king would be that foolish." His eyes dropped to the floor, where a pair of soaked boots sat in a puddle. "I guess I'll have to apologize to him."

"Gareth."

"Sire?"

"Not today."

"Of course not, Your Majesty." He bowed again, gravely. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine"

I turned around, and he stopped talking altogether. His eyes went to my lips and stayed there. I could feel the lip, swollen to twice its size, with a ridge in the flesh where her teeth had gone in.

"Gods above," he said, then caught himself. "Forgive me, Your Majesty. Who struck you?"

"No one struck me. She bit me."

He said nothing. His face went through shock and disbelief, and then through something he was plainly trying to swallow. He turned toward the window and pressed his lips together.

"It isn't funny."

"No, sire. Not in the least."

"Then why are shoulders trembling?."

"It's cold in here, Your Majesty." He turned back with a grave face that held for two seconds. Then he gave up and rubbed the back of his neck. "My apologies. I've seen men take arrows with less damage to their dignity. I'll say only this, if you'll allow it. The princess has been in Aurelan for one afternoon, and she has already done what Drevan's cavalry never managed. She has made the king bleed."

"One more word about that princess, and I will post you to the cold borders in the north."

"Yes, Your Majesty. I'll pack for the cold." He bowed, entirely solemn, and I felt the corner of my mouth tug and wince against the cut.

I looked back at the window. The lake lay flat and silver beyond the hedges, as though nothing had ever happened on it.

"I was meant to see Isabella tonight," I said.

"At this rate, she might actually suffer to come to you first. She must have heard about the incident, and already be on her way to see you." He glanced at the towel in my fist, at the basin, at the rug I had scrubbed too hard, and he chose his next words with care. "She really does care for you deeply, sire."

He was right. Isabella had been at my side since I was ten, the year my father came home from the quarry, just to be told of the revelation that my mother had died the day I was born. He lived in depression and died two years later from the heartbreak of losing my mother the love of his life. After he was gone and the whole court looked at me as a problem to be managed, it was Isabella's mother, Marta, who put a bowl of soup in front of me in her kitchen and sat there until I ate it. Marta had been my mother's closest friend when they served together in this house, and she took me in as a son in every way that counted. Isabella grew up beside me at the same table. She was the only person in the palace who truly cared for me.

I cared for her more than I could say. I had never once said it aloud, but Gareth knew, and the palace walls knew, though they were the kind that dared not speak. A servant could not marry a king, and I had begun to think that I would have to find a way anyway. She was steady, and honest, and she had stayed with me through every year that mattered. I respected her more than any person living. If I had to take a wife, it seemed to me the wisest choice I could make was the one woman who had never once failed me.

Two quick taps sounded at the door.

Gareth's mouth twitched. "Miss Isabella, Your Majesty. She has a particular knock." He bowed. "I'll see to the horses. And to the guards."

He went out, and she came in.

She was almost running. A wicker basket hung from one arm with a clean shirt folded over it, and she carried a wooden bowl of steaming water against her hip. Her braid had half come out of its pins. She shut the door with her heel and looked at me, and her eyes went to my lips, then to the towel in my hand, the wet shirt on the chair, and the damp rug.

"You've been cleaning," she said. She set the basket down and took the towel from my fingers, gently, the way one takes a knife from a child. "Give me that. You'll wear a hole in the carpet."

She moved around the room quick and neat, as she always did. The shirt went into the basket. The basin was emptied and refilled, the rug was blotted dry, the crooked chair was set straight, and a small tin of salve appeared beside the bowl. In about a minute the whole chamber looked different.

Then she drew me to the chair under the window, where the light was best, and I sat.

She wrung out a cloth and tilted my chin. She cleaned the cut in small, careful strokes, spread the salve over it with her thumb, and pressed a cool pad of linen to the swelling. She checked the old scar through my left eyebrow, as she did every time she saw me, to be sure it hadn't reopened. She did not ask what had happened. She did not look into my eyes. She was quieter than I had ever known her, and the silence sat between us like a third person in the room.

I knew what she wanted to ask. It was in the way she bit the inside of her cheek, and in the small pause before each stroke of the cloth. She would wait until the fire burned down before she asked for it.

So I answered for her.

"I thought I was doing a good deed," I said. My voice came out rougher than I meant it to. "A woman was drowning, and I went in. And this is what I get for it." I pointed at my mouth. "A split lip and a houseguest I never asked for."

Isabella's hand stopped.

She lowered the cloth and laid it on the edge of the basin. Then she raised her eyes to mine. They were soft, brown and calm, as they always were, and her face did not change. But something behind it did.

"Your Majesty," she said gently. "You really don't know what the servants are saying, do you?"

"Why should a King care about careless whispers among the servant Isabel"

She wiped her fingers on her apron, one at a time. "Well unfortunately, it will interest your majesty that these careless whispers have gone through the whole palace since noon, from the cellars to the top floor. And it isn't about the lake. They're saying the king has found his bride."