“The wedding’s next week,” Aubrey tells me. “Daddy and Wraye’s. It’s all been arranged at the speed of light. The ceremony will be at Ivera Abbey, and then the reception in the ballroom at the palace.”
She’s speaking fast, and her cheeks are turning pink. I don’t think I like where this is going.
I lean on my fork and just look at her. Finally, she bursts out with, “Wraye says I can invite anyone I want as my plus one. So, I’m asking you.”
I laugh and shake my head. “Lady Wraye said anyone, not no one. Actually, I’m less than no one, I’m Gunvald Lungren’s son. At Levanter’s wedding? You must be crazy.”
“I don’t think that matters.”
“Then you’re an idiot.”
“It doesn’t matter to me. I care that you’re Lungren’s son for your sake because he stole your mother from you. I don’t care who your father was for any other reason, and if other people do care, then so what?”
Then I’ll feel how much I’m not welcome everywhere I go. I don’t care if people judge me and talk about me when I’m living on my terms, but I refuse to dress up in their clothes and drink their champagne and dance at their parties, all the while they’re looking down on me.
“A compromise,” I tell her. “You go, and then come here late at night in your dress, all tipsy from champagne, and knock on my bedroom window.”
Aubrey folds her arms and huffs, looking off to one side. I prop my fork against the wall and go to her. “It’s for the best, baby,” I say softly.
She still won’t look at me, though. “When Daddy and Wraye told me they were together, I told myself over and over that they were selfish, and why couldn’t they choose someone more—” She cuts herself off and ducks her head.
“Aubrey?” But she doesn’t want me to see the tears in her eyes.
I wrap her stiff, unyielding body with my arms, and press a kiss against the top of her head. “I can’t get enough of holding you and kissing you,” I tell her softly. “I think about you every waking moment, and I wonder if you’re smiling. You’ve become precious to me. No one’s ever been as precious to me as you are.”
Aubrey lifts her head and gazes up at me with tears sparkling in her eyes.
“But I don’t fit into your world. I won’t be welcomed at that wedding. Let it be Levanter and Wraye’s day.”
“What about you and me?”
A tear runs down to her lips, and when I kiss them, she tastes salty. “Here, every day is ours.”
She buries her face in my chest. “But I want you there. I want to be there with you.”
I fold her in my arms and hold her tightly, looking around at the stable and the horses. I won’t even have these, soon.
Sometimes, we just don’t get what we want.The day of the wedding, I make myself filthy.
As I stand in three feet of muddy water in a ditch, wrestling with the weeds that are preventing this field from draining, I picture Aubrey with her hair up and dressed in a lavish concoction of chiffon or silk or whatever ladies wear to weddings. I’m here in a field, wallowing in the mud, where I belong.
A dozen feet away, Onyx munches the grass, tail flicking with pleasure as he eats.
“Cassian Bellerose?”
I look up to the sound of the unfamiliar voice. A dark-haired man in a grey suit, with an open and pleasant face, is watching me from a few feet away. Beyond him, at a discreet distance, are three men in scarlet jackets and black pants with a red stripe down their sides, all standing at attention.
Royal Guards. My eyes snap back to the stranger, and I recognize his picture from the papers. Oh, fuck. What’s the King of Paravel doing in my muddy field?
I haul myself out of the ditch and wipe my hands on the seat of my jeans. When I’m standing before King Anson, I’m about to click my heels together and say comrade, before I remember that’s not appropriate for the new ruler of Paravel.
I’m lost for a moment, wondering what the proper greeting is, before performing an awkward bow and saying, “Your Majesty.”
King Anson smiles. “Cassian Bellerose. Apologies for the sudden intrusion, though I hear that you used to have all manner of people descend on you without notice.”
I didn’t think that if I ever met the King, we’d discuss Chairman Varga. We’re chasing the elephant out of the field right away. “Yes, I was, sir. No one ever stopped to talk to me, though.”
The King’s eyebrows raise a little. “The Chairman wouldn’t talk to you? Even with a father like yours?”
There goes elephant number two.
“Varga didn’t like to chat.” I think the only words he said to me all my life were, Boy, hold my horse.