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Chapter 2
The armor on the two guards clanked as they bowed and reached to open the enormous wooden doors to my father’s throne hall. It was ridiculous to have me summoned here like some general, but this was what our relationship had devolved into. After my mother died, he had tried to continue with daily dinners and book readings in the library. But over time, it became more and more forced. We would sit at the endless dinner table, him on one end, I on the other, while we forced a stilted conversation. The older I grew, the more we ran out of topics, until one day, we had eaten in total silence.
With an outward confidence I didn’t feel on the inside, I strode across my father’s favoritehall. I passed guards and servants, my footsteps echoing off the paintings of angels on the ceiling high above us.
My father’s mighty figure towered beside the enormous fireplace behind his golden throne. He was wearing his glamorous red military uniform, which he had worn since the war broke out in the North. A warning that he would be ready should anybody decide to come south.
I stopped before him, but his brown eyes were deep in thought, staring at the wiggling flames. The crackling of the fire and the rain patting against the windows were the only noises breaking the unbearable silence.
I waited for a moment. Had he genuinely not heard me enter?
“Father?”
His head jerked up like a deer startled by the awful noise of these new war machines—cannons, they called them. He looked at me, then turned and waved over a maid. A young woman carrying a box rushed toward me, opening the wooden lid to reveal a glittering golden egg decorated with diamonds.
“It plays music,” my father said in his low voice.
I sighed.More gold and diamonds...just what I needed.
“It’s beautiful,” I mustered to say.
The silence settled back in, turning the air thick. My father waved the girl away. She bowed and left quickly.
“You wanted to see me?”
My father walked up to his throne and placed his hands on the headrest. “Yes. There is something I need to speak to you about.”
I couldn’t help my curiosity. He hadn’tneededto speak with me in years. What could this possibly be about?
“I’m here. Speak your thoughts,” I said. He glanced at me again, then nodded, nervously arranging the stiff collar at his neck. He hated formal uniforms. His neck was too thick for them. As a child, I always laughed when my mother told him to stop pulling at his collar like a little boy.
Why was he so nervous?
“There comes a time,” he said, then turned to walk back to the fire, “when a mother usually sits with her daughter to speak about these matters.”
My chest tightened. He didn’t have to go on. I was as innocent as a nun when it came to these things, but I was well-read and had overheard the servants gossiping about the latest noble romances and scandals. So, by God, I knew what came next.
“Father, I don’t—”
“This is tremendously difficult for me, so please let me speak first,” he insisted.
I froze.
“It is most unfortunate that your mother is not here to speak to you in my place. But the time has come for us”—he paused and turned to look at me—“for us to invite suitors for a possible match.”
For you or me?almost slipped out of my lips, but I remembered whom I was talking to just in time. Of course he meant for me. My thoughts began racing for the right strategy. The last thing on my mind was getting married to another prince or king. Not now, not ever. If it were up to me, I would remain unmarried and rule as a virgin queen after my father handed me the throne. Why torture myself with love or children when everything could be taken from me just like my mother was? Besides, a match built from love was a rare occurrence when it came to marriage among a king’s kin. I would most likely be married to some politically motivated lord who would only value me for the heirs I might give him. Which was a problem; I was not a woman who would be ruled by a man. Though his faults were many, my father had continued to raise me according to my mother’s principles. I had always been independent and free to speak my mind. I wouldn’t be silenced by some man who thought a woman was worth less than a horse.
“Father,” I said in a soft voice. “I appreciate your concern for my well-being, but I’ve already decided to stay married to God.”
I had gone over this scenario in my head before. I’d known this conversation would come someday and had decided that my argument would be with God. Not that I was overly religious. I believed in magic as much as our Christian God, but there had been noblewomen before who’d chosen to live the life of a nun. There were many reasons to choose such a life, but most, I assumed, did so for the same reason as mine—to avoid marriage to some pig.
My father turned his back on me and pulled something out of the pocket of his red coat.
No. Please, not that dreadful thing.
His fist clenched tightly around the object as he stared into the flames again. I knew exactly what the object was. It was his daemon, the devil—a single nut from a country far from ours. But to my father and me, it wasn’t just a nut. It was the reason my mother had died. To this day, I could not understand how something so small and insignificant could have killed someone as special as my mother. Even worse was the fact that my father had brought it to court as a gift for the guests on my seventh birthday. The doctors called it a “severe allergic reaction to a very foreign food.”
My father had banned the little brown nut throughout the whole kingdom, except for the one he carried with him, the one he held in times of deep emotional struggle. A man so mighty, defeated by a thing so little.
