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“Yes.” And the tone in which my father said the word expressed a world of meaning. Ties of family would henceforth keep the lowlands from war, but no one was pretending that there was not one big winner here. Wincham was the major power and so it would remain, and neither Gaunt nor Latran were strong enough to stop that. The marriages were a consolation prize, a way of letting Gaunt and Latran have a share in the spoils of a war that had been averted.
With one problem.
“No.” I heard the word before realizing that I was the one who had said it.
My father looked up at me. “Selena?”
“I don’t want to marry a man just because you say I must.” It wasn’t that I didn’t like Jonas—he was a fine man—but he was twice my age and not my choice. I didn’t love him and that struck me as important.
“We will talk about this later,” said my father, firmly.
I nodded. “Very well, father. But I know how that conversation is going to go.”
My father’s face darkened. For all that he loved me, for all that I was his favorite, his little girl, he had a temper and he didn’t like to be disobeyed.
“You would speak to me like this? In front of our guests?” he hissed at me. “And on today of all days? You have a duty, a responsibility to the country.”
“I have a responsibility to myself too,” I argued. “And to you. I do not think…” I shot nervous glances at the other guests—I didn’t want to have this conversation in front of them. “Perhaps we can talk later.”
It was a nice dream; the three lowland nations united by the daughters of King Uther. It was the sort of dream that would give my father peace when he went to his final rest. But a dream was all it was. He underestimated the ambitions of his neighbors and, though I hated to say it, he underestimated the ambitions of his daughters. Rhea and Sylvia were both older than me and yet I was being made heir to Wincham. Father might say that it was because I was not yet old enough to marry, but my sisters were smart enough to know that it was because I was his favorite. Ironically, it mattered little to me—I was thankfully lacking in the ambition that both my sisters had inherited from our father—but it mattered a great deal to them, and I didn’t think they would let the situation stand. King Uther’s unified lowland empire would not last long after his death.
But I couldn’t say any of that while surrounded by the kings and princes of Gaunt and Latran. Let alone my own sisters.
“I don’t believe that my ‘duty’ requires me to marry for anything but love.”ThatI could say. It had the advantage of being true, and I thought my father might see my point of view.
I was wrong.
“Your duty is what I say it is!” roared King Uther, leaping out of his seat. “Jonas is of noble blood so the throne remains in the family.” Jonas was a cousin of some sort—our family tree was a tangled one.
“I’m of royal blood,” I pointed out.
But my father dismissed this. “The king must be too.”
There it was. If I’d been a boy, then things would have been different, but my father took it for granted that I would be ruler in name alone. I was there to convey royalty to the man who would do the actual ruling, and it was important that he was of the same bloodline, so that our children would carry that bloodline on, one inbred generation after another.
In my father’s mind, he’d probably mapped out the intermarriage of the ruling families of the three Kingdoms so that within a generation, all was under his bloodline, and he, King Uther, would be the great progenitor. He might not have been able to create a single lowland empire in life, but he had laid the foundations of one that would flourish after his death.
Except that none of it would happen. I was sure of it. The whole enterprise would tear itself apart before he was even cold in the ground. In fact, given the fierce competitiveness of my siblings, there was a chance my father would live to see all his plans go to hell. And that would destroy him.
I bowed my head. “I would give my life for you, father, but I will not give up my freedom, and I will not hold your hand to walk you to your own destruction.”
The anguished look on his face proclaimed that I had already brought him to the brink of that destruction, and my heart bled that I was causing him such pain.
“Please, father, let me talk to you later. In private.”
I saw the look that shot between my sisters. They knew what was in my mind.
But they need not have worried.
“You will do as I say,” growled my father, “or you will leave now. This table, this camp, this land.”
Banishment? Surely, he would never…
“Father…”
“Make your choice!”
And so I stood and walked towards the doorway of the tent, tears already springing to my eyes.
