Jenna Helland - The Fanged Crown

“I don’t understand.”

“I am a good listener, Declan. I have heard and understood a great many things from my vantage point as a prisoner chained to the wall.”

“You haven’t been chained to the wall,” Cardew said impatiently. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“This is not the time for that discussion,” Ysabel said with a hint of bitterness.

“Then what are we discussing?” Cardew asked crossly. The conversation was not going in the direction he had expected. During his ride home from town, his mind had played through a series of tantalizing fantasies about what he wanted to do with the princess just as soon as he got her alone.

Ysabel sat down on the chair in front of the fire and patted the chair across from her. After a moment’s hesitation, Cardew sat beside her, hoping to recapture the mood of the night before.

“I need to know some things, Declan,” she said quietly. “About my Uncle and about you.”

“What sort of things?” he asked suspiciously.

When she reached out and took his hand, he felt a jolt of energy surge through his skin. The desire before fulfillment, when a simple touch felt electrifying, was his favorite part of courtship.

“I know you plan to marry me, with Tresco’s blessing. But if you want me to be your wife, I need you to talk to me.”

Cardew took a deep breath, feeling as if his feet were back on solid ground. Such discussions seemed typical for women. He never understood how chatting made them more interested in rolling around in the sheets, but who was he to question why.

“Of course, Bella,” he said agreeably. “If we are to marry, I want us to be honest with each other. Ask me anything you want.”

“I know that this is delicate. But I need to know about your first wife. How did you meet?”

“Liel?” Cardew was surprised at the question. “I met her after the massacre. I was wounded, and Anais sent me to be healed by her father, Avalor. I spent several months in their care.”

“Did you love her?”

Cardew signed. “Queen Anais felt that our marriage would help heal the rift between men and elves. She was wrong, of course. But how could I refuse the queen?”

“Queen Anais is naïve,” Ysabel agreed. “But you didn’t answer the question. Did you love Liel?”

“I was bewitched by her beauty, which was substantial, although nothing compared to yours. Of course, you were just a child then. So you can’t be jealous.”

“I’m not,” Ysabel assured him. “She was kidnapped by pirates, was she not?”

“Where did you hear that tale?” he asked “Yes, while we were engaged, but before we married, she was kidnapped and taken to sea.”

“Who instigated it?” Ysabel asked.

“We never found out.”

“Was her coin paid?”

Cardew hesitated, not sure why any of it would matter, but there didn’t seem any harm in answering.

“No, it wasn’t. As fate would have it, one of the pirates mutinied against the captain and fled the boat, taking her with him. They traveled to the Moonshae Isles and then she was returned safely to her father.”

“How fortunate! You must have been grateful to the man for saving her life.”

“Well,” Cardew said, hesitating as he sought the appropriate words. “I may have misrepresented his intentions. He took her with him as capital. He planned to barter her freedom in exchange for a pardon of his crime of mutiny. It was less than honorable, you see.”

“Yes, I see. What happened to him?”

“I have no idea,” Cardew said, his brow furrowing. “Why does it matter?”

“It doesn’t. It’s a sweet story, though. A pirate saves a beautiful elf and returns her safely to the loving arms of her fiancé. Don’t you see the appeal?”

“Dear Ysabel, you are so innocent. There was nothing sweet about it. It was sordid and unfortunate.”

Ysabel frowned. “I don’t understand …”

“And I’ll say nothing more about the matter,” Cardew said firmly. He was not about to share how a ruffian had cuckolded him. Cardew intended his tone of voice to chastise the girl and stop her from asking questions, but she stared at him without a trace of regret.

“Why did you tell the Inquiry that you saw me upstairs by Teague’s body? And that you saved me from the masked assailants? And that we hid together in the woods until morning?”

“Because that’s what happened,” Cardew insisted. “Don’t you remember?”

“I remember a lot of things, but not that.”

“Bella, it was a horrifying experience. You were a mere child. You can’t trust your memories.”

“Why did you blame the dwarf? Are you such a coward that you had to direct attention away from your incompetence?”

Cardew was shocked into silence. That he was Amhar’s accuser was a well-kept secret. He and the ministers conducting the Inquiry agreed that it might sully his reputation as Hero of the Realm if he were also the prime witness against the dwarf. In fact, he’d been paid a large amount of coin to let the Inquiry take the credit for discovering the identity of the culprit behind the massacre.

“Who has been filling your head with such nonsense?” he demanded angrily.

“Did you find what you were looking for in the jungle?” she asked innocently.

“Ysabel! What do you do! Listen at keyholes? Read letters not intended for you?”

“Did you find it or not?”

“I cannot believe that you …” Cardew sputtered.

“So you didn’t find it. When Tresco said that you failed, he must have been speaking of the artifact.”

“You are obviously not the girl I thought you were.”

“And yet you are exactly the man I thought you were,” Ysabel gave him a disarmingly sweet smile. “A weak-willed coward who blamed an innocent and condemned him to die, couldn’t satisfy his wife, and couldn’t uphold his end of the bargain in Chult. I would rather stay an unmarried crone than ever let you touch me again.”

Something banged shut with a ringing sound, and Harp opened his eyes. At first he thought it was the sound of the metal doors closing at the Vankila Slab. But when Harp opened his eyes, he was looking up at the apex of a pearly dome, not the gray stones of a prison cell.

Disoriented, Harp turned his head and saw the brass starscope gleaming beside him. He was in Majida’s observatory. But where had she gone? And how long had he been unconscious? Waking up in an unfamiliar place and missing a few hours from his memory was nothing new in his life. It was usually accompanied by the onset of panic and the sickness that followed too much alcohol. But Harp felt unexpectedly calm as he pushed himself upright. Sitting on the green rug, he stretched his shoulders, trying to get an uncomfortable kink out of his neck. He tried to recall the last thing that had happened. Majida had lit the heavily scented incense. They had talked about Liel.

“I can’t promise it won’t hurt,” Majida had said. “It depends on you.”

“I don’t care,” Harp had assured her. “Believe me. I don’t care.”

When Majida began her spell, and Harp’s vision slipped sideways, although he’d have sworn he hadn’t moved from his position cross-legged on the floor. And there had been pain, at least at first. But then his mind had reached for comfort the way a drowning man reaches for something to keep him afloat. He remembered his mother, brushing the hair back from his sweaty face when he was ill as a child. He remembered the time he’d ridden on his father’s shoulders, laughing with delight as they ran through a meadow filled with orange wild flowers. And there was Liel. Mostly his mind found its comfort with her.