Exile (9 page)

She let her head fall back against a stall door, her dark hair drifting past her shoulders.
Soft.
He longed to touch it. One last time. Her hair, the changeable contours of her face, her arms. The desire to hold her once—just once—without the aura of tragedy stalking them both, gripped his chest so fiercely he had to fight for breath.

“But it was my story to tell,” she said. “Not yours.”

“I think ...” Robert knew if he so much as stepped toward her, he might lose the will to let her go—that he would beg her to come with him, condemning her in the process. “I think your stepfather was trying to spare you that trauma.” It took a lot for Robert to admit, but Daria and Thomas claimed that His Lordship would do anything to spare his wife, and by extension his stepdaughter, pain.

“He’s trying to protect you,” Robert said. “I certainly failed at that.”

“What?”
Her back suddenly arched.

“I’m sorry.”

“You are what?”

“Sorry.” His control began to slip. “I am sorry for what you went through in the forest, Aurelia.” He could not help but tell her, though he knew it was his own selfish need for closure that propelled him to mention the dark memory.

She stood up. “
You’re
sorry?” Her face flared alive, that vivid shift of line and color that he knew would chase him down no matter how far he fled. “You’re sorry for being the only person on the expedition who didn’t want to murder me? For keeping me alive? For bringing a spoiled, thankless princess across the Asyan on foot?! I’m the one who’s sorry. Robert, I’ve been trying to thank you, but every time I see you, you seem so distant I—”

“I’m sorry.”

“Ahh!” She stormed from the stables.

He stared after her. Unable to take in what had just happened. All he knew was that she had come in, angry with him for doing something wrong, and left, furious with him for apologizing. And his pulse raced with the contradiction.

“Yes,” Thomas Solier’s emotionless voice drifted out of the shadows. “I see how much she doesn’t need you.”

Chapter Eight

THE PRICE OF DESTINY

HE
WAS SORRY! AURELIA RUSHED UP THE HILL toward the Fortress. It was her stepfather who should be sorry, drilling Robert about the danger to
her
life. She should have questioned Lord Lester further about the messenger from Transcontina. But His Lordship had been well into a bottle of heavy red wine, and—she might as well face it—when Robert’s name had come up, she had leaped at the excuse to confront her expedition guide instead.

After all, he had buried himself in his work at the stables. She had scarcely seen him these past weeks. The argument, just now, had been ludicrous, but even more bizarre was the way it made her feel. Humming with the interaction. Her pulse rushed, and her lungs struggled for air within her corset.
This dratted dress!

She filled her fists with the heavy fabric and tugged the long skirts above her ankles as she swept through the dirt field of her stepfather’s courtyard. She should never have put on her mother’s gown in the first place. But Aurelia had thought if she accepted the gift, it might somehow strengthen their relationship. Though no number of dresses would heal the cavity within her chest.

It was time, she thought, as she entered the Fortress and climbed the stairs.
Time to ask the harder questions.

She tapped gently on the door, then entered the Blue Room. Her observations were now far sharper than they had been on her first visit. She saw not only the sky blue of the walls but the subtle shift from black to navy along the head of the swallow in the painting beside the window. And the way slate blended to midnight blue on the dramatic wing of the heron soaring in the opposing portrait. She noted the thin white crack along the arched neck of the cerulean flower vase and the blue-gray embroidery of a dolphin’s fin among the indigo waves of a nearby tapestry.

Her mother was embroidering now. An emerald V along the throat of a mountain canary. For a moment Aurelia gazed down at the minute stitching with awe. Four different shades of green had already gone into that single V-shaped element. She could never have borne such exactitude.

Nervously, she seated herself on the chair at the left side of the window, across from her mother. Aurelia knew the continued silence upon her entrance was not rejection. After all, there were now two wicker chairs where before there had been only one. But she was about to break an unspoken rule. “Mother,” she said softly. She always found it hard to speak in her regular voice in this room. “Why did you change your name?”

Lady Margaret looked up at the personal question, blinking in the late afternoon sunlight, then dropped her gaze once again to the embroidery. “I didn’t want to be Marguerite anymore.” The answer came out even softer than the question. “Marguerite was a name chosen for me. Margaret feels less ... destined.”

Aurelia knew well the flaws of having one’s life defined by birth, but her mother had not been born royal. “How were you destined?”

The needle froze. “I was Marguerite of Valshone.”

And what did that explain? “I don’t understand.”

A strange, grim smile appeared on her mother’s face. “Well, then, perhaps some good came from my marriage’s end after all.”
Her marriage.
To Aurelia’s father. It was the first time her mother had broached the topic. The needle plunged back into the throat of the canary. “Have you never heard of the Right of Valshone?”

Aurelia racked her memory.

Her mother took another stitch. “I see. Your education must have been controlled in this matter.”

With ignorance.
Yes, Aurelia’s father had been very good at that type of control. “What is it, then—the Right of Valshone?”

“Tradition.” Her mother began to stitch more quickly. “Dating back to Tyralt’s first real test in power. There was an attack to the southwest—”

“The attack of the Gisalts.”

“Yes, well, your learning has not been too dismal then. It was the first and last time Tyralt was ever attacked on the southern coast. No one has tried since.”

“Because the mountains are so treacherous.”

“Because the people who live in the mountains are treacherous.” Her mother looked up, then down, without slowing the rapid stitches. “The Valshone are trained fighters. Their defense of the southwest border is key to Tyralt’s ability to protect itself. At the time of the attack, the king of Tyralt realized this, and he and the Lord of Valshone made an agreement, an oral contract, which means even more to the people of the mountains than a written one. It stated that the heir of Tyralt, instead of wedding royalty from another kingdom, would marry within, a member of the Valshone.” The needle paused, then lifted again very slowly. “Upon my birth, I was chosen for this Right.”

Aurelia struggled to understand. Perhaps it was unfair to blame her father for her own ignorance. She had always been reluctant to study the region of her mother’s birth. “But if the child of the Lord of Valshone is always chosen to marry the heir of Tyralt, wouldn’t that mean my father should be your cousin?”

“No. Because the lordship of Valshone is not inherited, but earned.”

Earned? Aurelia had heard of titles being given for great feats, but to do so from generation to generation? The idea was startling.

“My father earned his place,” her mother continued. “He knew and admired the lord before him, but they were not related; and my father was not required to select his own child for the Right. It was his choice.” Her thread had grown short, the loops smaller with each stitch. “Of all the Valshone people, I was the only one to have a destiny selected for me.” She paused. “I was taught that this was a great honor, and I believed it. I believed it when I married your father. And when I gave birth to you and James.” The needle came to a sudden halt. “I think I believed it right up until your brother’s death.”

A slate-gray shroud covered her mother’s face. What had it cost her to mention James? And what did it say about the change in her relationship with her daughter?

“And then you left,” Aurelia whispered, “when you found out about Melony.” She knew her mother would never broach the topic of the king’s indiscretion herself.

Lady Margaret reached for the thread scissors on the window and fumbled, knocking them to the ground. “I cried first,” she said, bending to pick them up. “And then I yelled, which served no purpose. Your father denied any responsibility for his actions.”

Aurelia’s stomach churned.

“I realized then that I wasn’t safe.” Her mother clipped the thread. “I knew your stepmother, Elise, not closely, but well enough. I knew if the king would not renounce her, that sooner or later, she would find a way to usurp me. There were rumors ... about her husband’s death.”

Another death. Aurelia had known, of course, that Elise’s husband had died right after Melony’s birth. Why had it not occurred to her to question the cause?

“I threatened the king,” her mother said, trying to rethread her needle. “Like an animal in a corner, I threatened him, and then I ran.”

“But ... how?” Aurelia asked. “How did you know to come here?”

The thread dropped, and her mother’s barren needle plucked at the fabric. “His Lordship was not, at the time, so disinclined to come to court. Though, due to the vast distance, his visits were ... notable.”

Aurelia’s eyebrows rose. Notable how? Had Lord Lester made romantic advances toward the queen?

The idea was not, when she thought about it, all that absurd. His Lordship was boisterous, opinionated, and sometimes rash. He seemed to care little for the rules and strictures of society, though this relaxed perspective did not apply, in any way, to his view of his wife’s safety. If there was one thing Aurelia could not doubt about her stepfather, it was that he truly loved her mother. And he had done all he could to protect her. Even, Aurelia realized now, from his knowledge of the threats to her own daughter’s life. Lord Lester might keep careful watch, through covert means, on the nation’s politics, but Lady Margaret was clearly oblivious.

“Tyralt owes the Lester family a great deal,” Aurelia’s mother continued. “All the land between the northern Asyan and the Geordian Desert was once theirs, you know. It was His Lordship’s father who made the decision to forego much of the title and open his lands for settlement.”

Aurelia nodded. She had studied the history of the frontier
very
well. “Yes, I know.”

“Lord Lester had come to your brother’s funeral. At the time, he offered his estate as a place of solace if I ever required it.” Her mother’s eyes peered out the window, past the garden, and into the tangled trees. “It was as far from the palace as I could hire a carriage to take me. ... As far away,” her mother whispered, “as I could hide.” The needle lay still.

Now was the time for the hardest question, the one Aurelia had avoided. “But I was only a child. Why didn’t you take me with you?” She closed her eyes, afraid of seeing the emptiness remain on her mother’s face.

“I was afraid. I didn’t know anything about this place ... or if I would be able to stay here. I knew I couldn’t go home to the Valshone. By leaving my position, I had disgraced my father. I only had a vague idea that I
must
flee. I could not take you with me. I didn’t know if
I
would survive.”

A stark image painted itself in Aurelia’s mind, her mother riding through the shadows of the Asyan, her fingers gripping the side of her carriage, lest anyone ask it to stop—such as the king’s guards, waiting to execute her on the road.

Flinching, Aurelia opened her eyes. There was no point in pursuing the topic, questioning if her mother had ever been concerned for her daughter’s safety at the palace. Or why that concern was any less valid than the rest. Aurelia already knew the answer:
fear.
Her mother was driven by, defined by, and living in fear.

Lady Margaret again lifted the needle, though there was no thread on it. “Even after I was here, I could not trust anyone.” She took a stitch. “At times ... at times, I wanted to end my life. I had failed at everything I was raised to do, and I didn’t have any dreams beyond that.”

Again Aurelia’s stomach turned. The story was too familiar. The upbringing to become queen. The disillusionment. Lack of power. Flight.

Her mother’s hand shook, and she pierced her own skin with the needle. “I can’t ever feel safe again.” Blood welled between her ring and middle finger.

Aurelia reached toward the injured hand. Was this what lay ahead for herself? This abject terror of everything beyond the Fortress? Or even a single room? “Lord Lester—” Aurelia whispered, “do you love him?” Because maybe if her mother had love here, then her life was not entirely desolate.

“I don’t know.” Lady Margaret pulled her hand beyond her daughter’s reach. The blood continued to swell. She could easily have wiped it off, but instead she waited, letting the bead fall and spread in a bright red stain upon the embroidered bird’s throat. “He loves me. Isn’t that enough?”

No
, Aurelia thought as she descended the stairs, the sick feeling plunging deeper in her stomach with every step. She hurried down the hallway to the yellow room, thrust in the latch, and shoved open the door.

To see Daria, standing like a dark omen, already there.

“I—I’m sorry,” Daria stuttered. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

She was always intruding. Always pushing boundaries. Aurelia had not been to the cottage for days, maybe a week, for that exact reason. When had Daria become so assertive?

Silence filled the room.

“But this is urgent,” Daria said, thrusting a bundle of cloth at her. “They’re . . . they’re my old riding clothes. I know yours were ruined.”

Ruined?
There was nothing urgent about riding clothes. Aurelia had not ridden since ... Bianca. The brutal last image of her bleeding horse jabbed Aurelia in her gut. “Please go.” She felt the bile rising in her throat. She was about to be ill. “Just go, Daria.”

The other girl stood, stubbornly. “Robert is leaving.”

Aurelia threw up, right onto that borrowed green dress.

Her chest felt like it was about to explode. She gagged, and her eyes watered. She tried, futilely, to undo the gown. The buttons were down the back.

Then Daria was there, releasing the buttons, ripping at the laces of the corset, helping her friend step free of the yards of reeking fabric, then wrapping up the entire pile and depositing it outside the door.

In her shift, Aurelia stumbled to the washbasin.

And Daria was there too, pouring a glass, and holding the basin while Aurelia flushed the sickness from her mouth and spit out the remnants.

Finally there was air. She could almost breathe. Enough to say, “No.”

Her friend smoothed back her hair.

Aurelia tugged away.

“No,” she repeated. “Robert can’t be leaving. I saw him”—she glanced out at the darkening sky—“only a few hours ago.” She had been up in her mother’s room far longer than she had realized.

“Yes. I know.” Daria held out the riding skirt, then helped her put it on. “Thomas overheard your conversation with Robert.”