No Secrets Between Spouses
"What a waste! If you were going to tear it up, you should've given it to me!"
Ever since we'd returned to the red brick house, Loomdrax had been repeating the same gripe on an endless loop.
"Come to think of it, that thing was mine!"
"Oh? So you feel like working now, do you? I did promise it to you the moment you accepted the job, remember?"
"F-fine! I'll do it!"
"And what would my being sorry accomplish? One page is already gone. I'll make it up to you with something else."
Loomdrax accused me of being impulsive. I felt a little wronged by that.
Yes, I'd been furious at the bank staff for treating Fiona so callously, and it was true I'd wanted to teach a lesson to the bystanders who watched her struggle without lifting a finger. But I hadn't acted on raw emotion.
Today's scene is bound to make the papers. With a fuss this size, an article was a certainty.
And once His Majesty reads it, might he not take a second look at the special allowance procedures? Even at this very moment, people were surely being cheated as unjustly as Fiona had been, all across the kingdom.
If I had the power, I'd have overhauled the system on the spot. But alas, I was a child—and not yet head of my house. Only as head of House Ehrenberg, with a seat in the council of nobles, could I even raise such an issue.
Whipping up a scandal to drag the matter into daylight was the only card I held. It's a shame about the Dragon's Vow, though.
I was still imagining how tomorrow would unfold when the tip of Loomdrax's staff prodded my foot. I looked up to find his eyes gone strangely deep.
"No need to replace it with anything."
"I'm sorry? Does that mean you won't work after all?"
Had I pushed too hard? I'd have to walk him through my reasoning properly.
"Hold on—just hear me out before you decide."
Loomdrax shook his head.
"No need to."
"Loomdrax!"
Then, abruptly, he smiled—wrinkles folding into his grandfather's mask.
"Ha! Fine, I'll do it. Half price, because I like you."
At last, Loomdrax was mine. What a lucky day.
Loomdrax threw himself into the work of acquiring Phoenix Bank. In the meantime, the article broke, and public sentiment toward the bank flipped completely. A windfall for me.
But where good fortune goes, misfortune follows.
"The door's been sealed."
The passage I used to come and go from the Third Prince's Palace was blocked.
Ah, Julia. She could hardly be pleased that Cassion and I were meeting. She would want to stop us by any means necessary, but since I had never once passed through official channels, no document or procedure could be turned against me—so in the end, she must have ransacked the royal palace searching for my way in.
"What do we do now?"
Jenice asked, loading the food basket I'd brought for Cassion back onto the carriage.
A few days without me wouldn't put Cassion in any danger. For exactly this contingency, I'd been moving medicine and food into his palace little by little, and generous stockpiles now sat in reserve.
But what if Julia combs his palace too? The ugly thought surfaced, and I shook it away. Julia had never tormented Cassion openly—not with her precious reputation to protect.
Searching the Third Prince's Palace would take a small army, and a small army tearing through a prince's residence could hardly fail to draw eyes.
She won't do anything that conspicuous. Blocking the rat hole is as far as she'll go.
"Let's go home."
I brushed past the hesitating Jenice and climbed into the carriage. My gaze kept trying to drift back over my shoulder; I clamped down on it hard.
How petty of you. Resentment toward Julia piled up with my anger on top of it.
He'll be waiting. What if Cassion waited, and ended up disappointed?
I hope he goes and checks the hole himself. When he'd asked how I came and went, I should have simply told him it was a rat hole. No—I'd made it a "secret" as a joke, and the joke had come back around to bite me.
Anyone as quick as Cassion would grow suspicious at my long absence and go inspect the rat hole on his own.
Really, spouses shouldn't keep secrets from each other. I let my thoughts run wherever they pleased, and look where they'd landed. I flinched. Here I was, thinking as though the two of us were already married.
"My lady, are you warm? Let me open the window."
Jenice had noticed my flushed face.
Please, just pretend you didn't.
Fanning myself with both hands, I leaned my face toward the window to catch more of the breeze, then scrubbed every last thought from my head.
Before long, the carriage arrived at the estate.
Matthew's eyes went wide at my unexpectedly early return. Saying only that he had hoped I would come home soon, he added with unmistakable urgency:
"A vassal council has been convened, my lady."
Well then—a sealed rat hole alone hardly made this an unlucky day. The inevitable had simply arrived at last.
I accepted the letter Matthew held out. The name on the envelope was familiar: Junas, spokesman for the vassals.
Count Junas governed the largest, most fertile stretch of Ehrenberg land.
Whose side had this one been on, again? Not that dividing into camps meant all that much—but confirming whether he was well disposed toward Count Kolkos was a procedure I could not skip.
Yet no matter how I churned my memory, nothing particular about Count Junas surfaced.
If the memory won't come, then its absence is trouble all its own. Everything concerning Count Kolkos, on the other hand, returned to me in exhaustive detail, so that my blood boiled anew every time I faced him. Governing that anger was a job in itself; there had been moments I'd genuinely wished I could forget.
The memories I need won't come, and only these useless Kolkos memories stay razor-sharp. And besides, I ought to wean myself off leaning on what I've already lived through. I had to learn to cope with missing information too—anything unknown, I could always delegate to Cho.
With the paper knife Matthew offered, I slit the envelope and checked the council date. It was stated only roughly—no exact day, just a window. Vassals had to travel in from every corner of the realm, so even scheduling devoured considerable time.
There's a little breathing room before the council, then.
Its agenda was plain.
They'll simply push to appoint my guardian as fast as possible. Count Kolkos must have been burning the roads with visits all this while. I'd read his movements well enough and still left him to it, having calculated that winning Cassion over was the faster route. And win him over I did.
Everything is proceeding as predicted—but being formally notified of the council like this still leaves a sour taste. Not that I couldn't understand the vassals' jitters. The subsidy payments from Ehrenberg were running late; naturally they were fretting.
Still, their own territorial income ought to keep them fed. This isn't Nobel, where scraping by is a daily battle. A year or two without Ehrenberg money wouldn't cripple a single one of their estates.
Count Kolkos is working his schemes behind the curtain, obviously. He was guilty—and so were the vassals swept along by whatever rolled out of his mouth.
"Maybe I just won't go?"
"Absolutely not, my lady!"
I'd meant to keep that muttering inside, but it slipped out loud, and Matthew nearly leapt out of his shoes.
"I'm going. That was just talk."
There were any number of ways to wreck a council. I could simply fail to appear on the day; I could push the meeting with the head of house further back; or I could challenge the impropriety of a unilateral summons to the head of house and punish Junas for it. Though with me not yet head of house, that last option was out of reach.
The most plausible way to stall was the second. Pretexts were abundant—I could plead illness, or declare my heart not yet ready to name a guardian. A child my age would be indulged without a second thought.
But I talked myself out of postponing almost as soon as the idea formed.
I can't put this off forever. I tapped the corner of the invitation against the desk, tik, tik—a steady rhythm; sometimes a little noise helped me think.
An uprising would soon break out in the Nobel region. If the right support for Nobel was decided before it did, the revolt could be strangled before it started.
At the council, I'll declare my marriage to Cassion and make sure the guardianship question never sees daylight again. But first, there's one mountain I have to climb.
I rose and went to the window, throwing it wide open.
The head of house's office window faced the royal palace—a statement that Ehrenberg and the crown stood firmly bound together. So on a clear day like today, standing there and gazing out, one could see the tallest spire of the palace.
It looked impossibly distant now, but someday it would belong to Cassion and me. And the mountain to cross before that day numbered exactly one.
King Karman. I needed his blessing to marry.
"Your Highness."
At last, I was face to face with Cassion.
After the rat hole was sealed, I had thrown everything into finding a way to see him. It would be fair to say Cho practically gave its life to the cause. My private purse had been wrung thoroughly dry in the process.
Finding an entry route was the hard part—almost no corner of the royal palace lay outside the reach of Julia's influence. Whatever orders she'd handed down, I couldn't bribe so much as a single knight. So I had smuggled myself in aboard a cargo cart. The goods inspectors were, relatively speaking, easy to buy; hence the method.
Did they wave it through because it was supposedly contraband bound for Julia's own palace?
"You made it. Though what on earth happened to your..."
Jenice had heaped a small mountain of straw into the cart while expounding on its magnificent ride quality. It had seemed like sound planning at boarding; climbing down told a different story. Straw had lodged itself into my dress everywhere it could reach, and picking it free had taken the better part of an hour. Apparently, despite my diligent plucking, a few stubborn survivors had held on.
"Yes, I look a perfect wreck. You, on the other hand, look wonderful, Your Highness."
Cassion accepted this with an airy wave of his hand.
Rebert's painkiller was proving its worth. Freed even of the pain that used to bore into his temples, he looked a world more comfortable. It was no true cure, though. Night after night his fever still climbed and broke, and sometimes a cough brought up blood. Even so, measured against the days when he'd lain abed around the clock, his health had improved to a startling degree.
"It's been a while. The rat hole was sealed—how did you get in?"
"Oh? You knew I'd been coming through the rat hole?"
That much was a surprise.
"Flac told me."
"You asked about me?"
Cassion's brows drew together.
"I wondered if Julia had done something to you, and that was why you'd stopped coming."
"So you were worried."
"It wasn't worry."
"Then you missed me."
"As if. A tig—"
Cassion flared up, then swallowed the word whole—because I had leaned my face in far too close. Crimson flooded his cheeks.
"Your Highness, I think your fever's spiking again."
"It's just hot in here! So get away from me!"
Judging by the boom in his voice, he couldn't be feeling too dreadful. He really must be warm, then.