Chapter Twenty-Five: O Frabjous Day!

We stopped at the fortress on the other side of the wilderness, sending riders ahead to inform everybody that the Estival Procession would be several hours delayed. Sometime, in the wee hours of the morning, as I caught a few hours of shuteye curled next to Meliswe, a messenger arrived with news from the capital - the king's guard had discovered two assassins, a fae and a dancer, who'd planned on poisoning Calivar and myself as we rode into the city. It was decided, therefore, that the two of us would sneak into the city from the side while two decoys rode in our stead. Calivar and I would part from the others twelve miles out from the city with a small detachment of elite guards.

"If you encounter further trouble, you should fly the rest of the way to the city," Alathea said. "I hope you now understand my overprotectiveness this past month."

"I'm coming with them," Meliswe stated.

"You are not, Lady Meliswe," the queen replied - it was the first time that anybody important had called Meliswe 'lady' and, since it was the queen who said it, that just about made it official. "Morwen will dye your hair to match Laeanna's and you will ride the royal carriage in my daughter's stead - no one else in our number resembles a fair princess of Vernal and your Oncaran fight-master swears you're nearly as handy in a fight. If four fae battlemages cannot keep them safe, though, I'm afraid to say you're unlikely to make much difference. You will do as I say."

"Yes, my lady," Meliswe said, and she kissed me on the cheek and whispered: "if you die, I'll never forgive you."

We mounted our horses and prepared to ride. And, as I surveyed the Vernal contingent of riders and carriages, I noticed that Ben wasn't there. I hadn't seen him since the attack last night. To be sure, he hadn't been among the dead, but I'd completely forgotten to check on how he fared. I shot Captain Vittoro an anxious glance.

"Captain… my friend, Ben Boyd… where is he?"

"I'll check the fortress, princess," the captain said, and we delayed our departure for another fifteen minutes as they checked.

No Ben. If he hadn't died and he wasn't with us, that meant he'd been taken. I looked back to the wall separating Estival from the wild and for a minute considered buzzing right over it and scouring the woods until I found him. But I knew that would be beyond foolish, even if I wasn't already a soon-to-be-married princess with a crosshairs on her forehead. Instead, I worked myself up and demanded that as many men as could be spared should ride out into the wild and scour the place until Ben was found.

"Estival already has one hundred men scouring the nearby forest, and soon our men from our side of the fortress will join them," Vittoro said. "If he's there to be found, we'll find him."

"And if he's not?"

"Then we must wait to hear word of his whereabouts. We cannot scour the world over for one or two individuals of intermediate importance."

I wanted to protest that Ben wasn't a person of intermediate importance. He was my best Earth friend, but that didn't matter a whole lot in the schemes of the fae. His main value to the fae, beyond whatever limited information he could relay about earth, was his ability to activate an artifact that some utterly unknown villain was in possession of. That was more than nothing, but not enough to expend the resources of a whole kingdom over, and making a spectacle over that would only make me look foolish. So I nodded and rode off with Calivar and our escort, hoping my best friend wasn't currently befalling a fate as bad as the one slated for me when I'd been captured out in the wild.

For a while, Calivar and I trotted through the countryside, flanked by two guards on either side. The morning air was muggy and warm, gearing up for the press of humid heat of an Estivalic day during true summer. The trees of the plantation were a press of green denser than the deepest wood of the wild forest, impossible to see through except when you passed the little irrigated rows between trees, where workers wandered along bamboo walkways, plucking off orange-red fruits the size of my head and tossing them into carts. Some of them spotted us riding past, but we were incognito, so there was no hullabaloo about royalty.

"I don't think your handmaiden likes me," Calivar said.

"Who? Dill?" As far as I new, Dill didn't dislike anybody except the raiders who'd enslaved her for the better part of a year. "I doubt I've mentioned a single negative thing about you to her."

"No, the one who's riding in your coach… Meliswe. She's not your handmaiden?"

"She was the first time I was here. She's my advisor now and… well… we're very close, she and I." I made eye contact with him. "Very close. When she saw me acting sweet on you during my visit for our betrothal she got upset. She was angry that I'd fallen for you…"

"You'd fallen for me?" Calivar smirked.

"I haven't decided yet. You're very charming, but charm alone doesn't make a good lover. Meliswe and I have an understanding, and I'll make it very plain to you - you are to be my husband, and if love grows between us, that's wonderful. If we have our two royal children and dote on one another as we dote on them, that's wonderful, too. But these things haven't happened yet. I'm already head over heels for Meliswe, and I'm not going to change my affection for her or even consider doing so. Do you understand."

Calivar rode in silence for a minute. Our guards exchanged glances with one another - they were suddenly privy to all sorts of royal dirt. "I have taken lovers here, but I haven't fallen in love, though my heart begs for an excuse to love you. Would you begrudge me my dalliances after we wed?"

"See whomever you like," I said. To be honest, I didn't like the idea of him sleeping with a dozen pretty courtiers, but if he wanted to be discreet and respectable, I supposed I would have to live with it. "If I can be generous with my love, I ought to be stingy with my jealousy."

"Perhaps Meliswe and I can come to an understanding…"

I laughed. "I'm not about to bring that up to her. Maybe if she suggests it, which she probably won't. And if you suggest it, she'll definitely say no, if only to save face."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Not the ideal outcome for me, then," Calivar sighed. "Inviting my wife's lover into my palace and knowing I'm likely to always play a distant second fiddle."

"Give it time… we have a long marriage ahead of us. I just didn't want to start out our marriage in bad faith, and now we've got four witnesses to affirm that I've been forthright."

Calivar glanced to the four battlemages, who did their best impression of very tight-lipped men of high discretion.

Soon after, we were past the plantations and fruit distributors outside the city, and soon we rode into Estivalia proper, past the towering sandstone walls and into the dusty quarters of the old city. The oldest parts of the city were close to three thousand years old, hailing from the days when the fae realms were still new upon Alfheim and each kingdom was less than a tenth of its current size. We passed through the slums of the city, squat adobe buildings crammed together, some of them shingled with clay tiles and others simply sloping into rounded adobe roofs. It was one of the poorest parts of the city, and yet I didn't feel unsafe - pedestrians paid us no mind and when the merchants perked up, it was only at the prospect of a sale. But the merchants were already doing a decent trade - even the poorest parts of the Estivalia weren't so bad, and travelers from distant kingdoms often marveled at how there were no beggars or lepers on the streets and the lowliest laborer could afford a modest home.

Estivalia was a terraced city built upon a broad, gently-sloping hill. The different districts were separated by big walls - reddish sandstone for the outer city and ivory-white marble for the richer inner parts of the city. Pedestrians took any of the hundreds of zigzagging stairs between the terraces and there was no restriction on who could go where - a day laborer who lived in the old city could walk to the Upper Courts in two hours and slap his palm against the great shimmering alamite walls of the palace and not a soul would stop him, though he'd certainly get stopped if he tried to scale the wall or stroll in through one of the entrances. While the main roads had gently-sloping ramps for carriages and other wheeled traffic, our less public route had the horses trotting up the flat, gentle stairs of the lesser roads, trotting up through four or five districts until we got to the Upper Courts, where the palace and a few royal structures were situated. From there, you could look back and see all of the city sprawling below you, miles of buildings interspersed with broad avenues, tree-lined aqueducts, and glittering fountains.

"Your mithrins or your lives, my lords and lady!" a voice boomed out.

I had my sword drawn an instant later, as did the battlemages surrounding me. Calivar just laughed and hopped from his mount, strolling over to the 'highwaymen' who, on second glance, looked a lot more like Estival military men with cloaks and dark masks covering their faces. Calivar embraced the man before turning to face us.

"How did my bride-to-be do?" he smirked.

The man removed his mask - he looked to be half-human and half-fae from the slight peak of his ears and the fiery orange of his hair. "Very well, my prince. She was the second one to have her sword drawn and ready."

"Our swords are longer, my lord," one of the battlemages said.

"So are your arms," Calivar's friend observed. "My prince, we're here to escort you from the lawless lands of the Upper Courts and into the palace."

"Laeanna, this is Artoro, the captain of my guard. So, captain… no more assassins, I hope?"

"One more, my prince. She'd found a way to excavate out a portion of wall in the south palace and holed herself up just outside the kitchen. As far as Captain Delcotha's men could tell, she planned on mixing the poison in her little crawlspace and then contaminating the food for the wedding feast… or perhaps before whatever refreshments were scheduled for before then if she was intent on stopping the union. I'm uncertain. In any case, a scullery maid heard her sneeze and raised bloody hell thinking it was a ghost. The assassin pushed her way out from her false wall and stabbed the poor woman, but the maid screamed again and the guards managed to apprehend the assassin. So, hopefully, that's all of them."

"How did the maid fare?" I asked.

Artoro shrugged. "I think she lived, princess. But these assassins are determined."

"It sounds like we should get married pronto, then," I said. "I'm tired of having a target on my back and my understanding is that the minute the two of us tie the knot our friends with the magical poison have no more reason to slip us the big death than any other fae."

Artoro nodded. "I'll renounce my commission if I can't keep you two alive all the way to the chapel."

+++++

Artoro had reason to be confident - the back entrance he escorted us into led right to the chapel, a cathedral-sized structure built right into the palace. From there, Calivar and I proceeded down a long torch-lined corridor before we were sent our separate ways for pre-wedding preparations. Before we parted, he pulled me close to him, so close that I could feel his heartbeat against my chest, and he kissed me. And damnit if I didn't nearly swoon right there in the hallway. As much as my brain kept telling me to put on a good face, just in case Meliswe was watching, whenever Knut Dietrich pulled his Dashing Prince Calivar act… however much of an act it really was… my knees went weak and some deep princess instinct took over. The struggle was real.

From there, I was escorted along a narrow corridor under the chapel and into a large and luxurious room labeled Bishop's Preparation Area in golden fae script. The bishop's area had been repurposed, though, to prepare the Princess of the Vernal realms for her wedding. It was bustling with a dozen different people, some from Alathea's staff and some from Alvaelic's, as well as Meliswe and Dill.

"Princess! You're safe!" Dill shouted, as if she hadn't been expecting that outcome.

Meliswe pecked me one… two… three times, right on the lips and pulled me along to a little modesty screen. Her hair was still nearly the same color as mine - beyond her alchemy, Morwen had a real eye for color. "I've been told we've got one hour before sundown, when they want to start this ceremony. I have no idea how we're going to get your gown, hair, and wedding adornments properly prepared by then."

I pulled at the chiffonet mesh of my gown, breathable, comfortable, and stronger than any natural fabric. "Why? What's wrong with my gown? What's wrong with my hair?"

Meliswe took a good five or six seconds to look me up and down. "Absolutely nothing," she said. "Not one thing. But it's not a wedding dress, Laeanna, and it's not a nuptial hairstyle… and this is your wedding."

I guess a small army of Estivalic tailors had been busy with my wedding gown, because it was a true masterpiece of lacework. The green fabric of spring interwoven with the warm, brassy orange of summer swirling in ornate lace up the dress, with subtle blue snowflakes of winter and the red and brown leaves of autumn to complete a motif of the four seasons. Somebody must have sized me pretty precisely, because the thing fit like a glove without a jot or tittle to spare. As Meliswe got to work with the complex lacework at the back to tie me into the gown, one of Alvaelic's ladies worked on getting my face prepared and Dill hummed happily, placing no fewer than fifty flowers into my hair and singing a happy dulcet tune whenever she placed one to get it to flower and take root in my hair:

Grow, little bud, and you shall bloom many seasons.

Woodsong didn't come without its price. "You realize we're going to have to plant each and every one of these…"

Dill nodded excitedly. "Isn't it wonderful?"

Whether or not I wanted to spend hours in the courtyard planting tiny flowers was the least of my concerns. Some duchess from the Estival looked me over, squinting and frowning over my appearance as she consulted her big book of fae style (it was titled Nuptial Decorum) to ensure that nothing in my appearance would cause a fracas or faux pas. When I was deemed acceptably prepared, a page dashed off to inform the officiants that I was ready and I awaited my signal with Meliswe and Dill each clutching at one corner of my bridal train.

A moment later, an even bell sounded from above and the duchess rushed up to us.

"Please follow me, princess. They're ready for your entrance."