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His long robe was of the same mourning color as my dress. Only instead of water lilies in silver-thread like on the hem of my gown, his robe was trimmed with ribbons of golden dragonfly wings stitched together.
“Greetings, my queen.” He bowed his head with a deference that hadn’t been there before I’d acquired the crown. “If you were to tell a funny story, I would listen.” A smile played on his pale face.
I discreetly wiped away the tears and managed a smile in return. “I’m so sorry, my lord, but I’m afraid I overestimated my abilities when I made that offer. I don’t think I can do funny tonight.”
“I understand. It’s easy to overestimate one’s abilities.” He was holding a paddle in his hands. Dipping it in the water, he moved the board closer to me. “Challenges often appear smaller from a distance. Then, when they approach, we realize we could use some help.”
Clearly, he was no longer talking about the story.
With another quiet splash of the paddle, he aligned the board with the rock I was sitting on, then got down on one knee, positioning himself at eye level with me.
“It kills me to see you this upset, my queen.” He fitted the paddle into the groove carved for it on the side of the board. “Is there anything I could do to ease your mourning?”
“Thank you, Lord Adriyel. Your kindness means a lot,” I replied sincerely. Maybe one of the reasons I didn’t want to leave here was that with the king gone, I’d be left utterly alone in the royal quarters tonight.
As if sensing my vulnerability, he leaned closer, but stopped short of touching me. Pale green light unexpectedly shimmered around his shoulder closest to me, then spread out in concentric waves through the air between us.
He jerked back.
“What was that?” I stared at the space around him, but the light dissipated quickly.
“Wards.” He winced, rubbing his shoulder. “There’s enough of them in here to make the ceiling glow.” He pointed at the dome above us.
“What are they protecting? The king?” I touched King Zeldren’s elbow. The wards hadn’t impeded me from coming close to him or from sitting here for hours.
“The wards protect the Funeral Mound and anything that’s laid upon it. Once placed here, the body belongs to the Lorsan lands. No one can touch, remove, or desecrate it in any way.”
“That’s good.” I stroked the king’s hand. His arms were laid straight along his body. His skin now felt not much different from the rock I was sitting on, hard and cold. “But how come I can touch him?”
“The Crown of Lorsan.” Lord Adriyel stared longingly at the golden diadem with the delicate turquoise spikes on my head—the king’s crown. It had replaced my copy after the king’s body was laid on the Mound. “It carries the magic of the Lorsan Wetlands. It makes you a part of it, too.”
For once, I truly felt like I was a part of something. I belonged to this place, and I loved the feeling. The land had accepted me.
Lord Adriyel shifted in his position, making his board sway. He steadied himself by placing his hand on a rock he could touch, the one that must be outside of the ward circle.
“I’m here for you, Amira,” he said with passion. “I mean it. Anything you need.”
A kind word was exactly what I needed right now. I reached across the ward-protected barrier and placed my hand on his.
He flipped his hand quickly to grab mine and squeeze it tightly.
“Ruling a kingdom is not an easy task,” he said fervently. “You’ll have enemies who will be watching your every move, waiting for you to make a mistake. And when you do make one—not if, Amira, when—they will strike. Will you be able to thwart the attack? On your own?”
“Oh, I know many perils await me, Lord Adriyel. I don’t expect this to be easy, but I'm ready.”
He shook his head with a skeptical look in his silver-blue eyes. “It takes years of preparation to wear this crown—centuries. You’re a smart woman. You’ve been learning, I’ve heard. But you’re still so young, so inexperienced, and so very vulnerable.” He brought my hand to his lips, placing a gentle kiss on the inside of my palm. His warm breath tickled my skin. “You need a man to help you, someone you could rely on to make hard decisions.”
“Not necessarily.” I closed my palm. “Women have successfully ruled Lorsan before, with no men by their side.”
Gorgonians were a largely patriarchal society. The majority of its rulers had been men. But I’d learned of at least two women who were successful on their own. Their situations were similar to mine. Both had been widowed and inherited the crown from their husbands.
“Queens Exear and Utiya—” I started.
Lord Adriyel didn’t let me finish. “Both were gorgonians. Each came from a prominent family that groomed her to become a wife of a noble one day. You didn’t have that.” He yanked on my arm, making me slide to the very edge of my rock and past the ward barrier. He cupped my face through my veil. “Amira, Lorsan has never had a human queen before.”
“Well, there is a first time for everything.” I tried to sit back on my rock, but he drew me closer, not letting me move away.
“The people of Lorsan will never accept a human queen,” he said firmly. “You’re just too different from us.”
“Don’t gorgonians love the different?” I bit back.
“The nobles do. But the regular, common people prefer the stability and the predictability of the tried and familiar. The risk of turmoil is just too high with a human monarch on the throne.”
“How so?”
“You have no magic, which makes you weaker than fae. It makes Lorsan a tempting target for other kingdoms to attack. Even as young as you are, you’ll live only for a few more decades—not a very long period of stability for our people.”
He was right, of course, so very right. But his reasons for saying this were clear—Lord Adriyel saw himself as the next king. The unexpected twist of the crown landing on my head had messed up his plans.
“Thank you for your concerns.” I worked my hand out of his grip. “But I’ll manage, my lord.”
With a deep sigh, he sat back on his board.
“I’m sorry, Amira. I didn’t mean to frighten you, or to doubt you. And I most certainly don’t wish to underestimate you. You are a strong woman and a proven survivor. It’s impossible not to admire you.”
“Thank you,” I repeated flatly.
“I didn’t want to upset you. Especially today.” He gave me a polite bow. I couldn’t fault him for speaking the truth, though his timing certainly wasn’t the best. “Perhaps this would cheer you up?”
He reached inside his robe, then stretched his hand to me. As he unfolded his fingers, a blue-and-green dragonfly barrette lay on his palm. The twinkling of its delicate wings blended with the faint shimmer of his skin and the green glow of the magical light above us.
The sight of it struck me like a lightning bolt.
“How?” I muttered, words lodging painfully in my throat. “Where did you…get this?”
I hovered my fingers over the barrette, afraid that if I touched it, it’d be gone, just like everything else dear to me had disappeared.
“You sent a commission to Ellohi.”
“The king did that, as a favor to me.” My voice shook.
“They returned this morning.”
“And you intercepted them?”
“There was no one else to receive them. The king was gone, and you’ve been grieving.”
He held out the barrette to me. “A palace maid from Ellohi gave them this. She insisted it was yours and that you would want to have it back.”
Geltar. She remembered me.
“Yes. It’s mine. Thank you.” I closed my fingers over the dragonfly. Getting it back felt like a puff of breeze from the past, filled with the memories both painful and comforting at once.
“It was clearly made by a gorgonian, though not by one of our best masters…” Lord Adriyel let the end of the phrase hang in the air, as if inviting me to explain.
Clutching the barrette to my chest, I said nothing.
“It means something to you,” he prodded.
It meant so much. To most, it may be just a trinket, too crudely made for a sophisticated eye. But to me, the dragonfly was a rare gift, the only thing I had from my past, and a memory of Kyllen.
As I clipped the barrette to my braid, my fingers trembled. It didn’t escape Lord Adriyel’s attention.
“Is there someone in Ellohi you care about?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
