AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This time Fadi sighed. Tir had that effect. It was those eyes. All big and rainwater-grey and irresistible. “In my professional medical opinion, yes, you can have sex. But,” he tacked on, “carefully. Make him do most of the work.” He nearly added which means not doing that thing you like over and over in that position you also like simply to be annoying, but he was also extremely aware of Oliver’s muscles and was not inclined to discover any consequences, so refrained.
“See?” Tir said, to Ollie.
“So,” Ollie said, to Fadi, “you know there’s the party in three days? The grand engagement ball or whatever my mother’s calling it? And you know how you’ve just agreed to stand up with us at the wedding? And we’ll be introducing our attendants?”
“Oh no,” Fadi said.
“Berry will be there,” Tir said sweetly.
“I…could…find something decent to wear, I suppose.”
“You can borrow anything you want and get it altered,” Tir said. The royal family tended to do that, too: if a butcher or a lace maker wanted to attend the ball, and wanted a new gown or suit, they’d only have to ask. Bellemare wasn’t that large a kingdom; most of the population would have no qualms about turning up at the castle’s back gate and inquiring, a week or two before a party.
“As if I’d fit into anything either of you own.” This was true as well, though for wildly opposite reasons; Bellemare’s princes and princesses ran to tall and solidly built, whereas Tir, though also tall, could hide in a shadow. Fadi, on the other hand, considered himself a relatively average specimen of the kingdom’s population, at least in that regard. “I’ll figure something out. Go on with you, you’ll miss your tea and political debates, or whatever the plan is. Tir, stay warm. Rest. Both of you behave yourselves, as much as that’s possible.”
Tir laughed, sliding down from the bed; Oliver put an arm around him and said, “Thank you again,” and they went out: mirrored princes in tawny gold and slim starry night, together.
Fadi gazed at the door thoughtfully for a moment after they’d gone. He found himself smiling. He found himself thinking about celebrations, and dancing, and a fairy lord who needed some cherishing; he went back to humming as he prepared slides, a silly childhood tune about merfolk and love.
The tune flickered back through his mind, irreverent and apropos, three days later.
He stood in the castle’s ballroom, having been decently announced and recognized and sent through the gauntlet of receiving-line introductions; the wedding attendants were equally human and fairy, and equally Court and not, in both cases. The balance was a marvel of diplomatic tact; Fadi had lost track of most of their names, at least the ones he’d not already known. He’d have to get Ollie to make a list, if he was meant to spend time and help plan pre-wedding events with them. At the moment, having dispensed with a few last introductions and politics, the younger prince of Bellemare was dancing with Tirian’s cousin Istrael, and they pirouetted past him in a flare of ribbons; Cedric seemed enthralled, and Rae was smiling back. They matched each other’s eagerness nicely, Fadi decided.
He’d unearthed his best Court suit from the previous year, had decided it wouldn’t do, and had gone shopping; he wasn’t a proper lord or knight or courtier, no, but he’d been mildly evasive on the topic. His parents ran the best inn and public house in Heartwater; his grandfather, aging acerbic head of those prestigious sprawling medical centers of the South, could’ve bought and sold most of Bellemare’s minor nobility. He also had his own salary as the royal physician, and the gratitude of princes and queens.
He’d dropped into Tir’s favorite stylish shop and waved money that direction. Glancing down at himself, he liked the effect: subtle dark grey, neither clashing nor interfering with the princes in blue; not flashy, but evidently expensive to anyone who’d notice, and flawlessly fitted, and good with his desert-dusk coloring. He’d sent a note round to Tir, who’d immediately sent over far too much in the way of jewelry and ribbons, silver and onyx and topaz and tourmaline; he’d settled on a few hair-jewels, a necklace, a single ring that gleamed in tiger-stripes of rich color.
And none of that mattered, because time and effort dropped away like discarded buttons: he’d seen Beryllin across the room, and Beryl had seen him.
They met in a corner of the ballroom under a perilous swoop of white satin and a knot of loving-roses. Beryl was wearing green, the color of new leaves in spring, and had left that iridescent hair loose, begging for fingertips through it. Fadi wanted to touch it; reminded himself they were in public and he was representing his princes, and took a steadying breath. “You look…”
“So do you.”
“I look like I’m forgetting half the people I’ve been introduced to, and I’m going to hold Tir’s ring for Oliver at the ceremony, I think—” He stopped, laughed: not even sure why, simply overflowing with it, amazed. “They’ve asked me to be in the wedding. And they’ve finally even managed to get everyone to agree on a date; two months and a week from tonight. Out on the Great Lawn, so everyone can witness the ceremony.”
“You’ll be wonderful,” Beryl said, and took his hand.
They danced for a song or two, whirling under ballroom lights and coruscating music: a Fairy-reel, a classic waltz, a newly written medley of voices and hand-claps and rustles of skirts and ribbons and shoes.
Holding hands, needing a moment after the last giddy country-dance, they ended up near a table of strawberry wine and sugared meringues. Fadi said to his fairy lord, “My parents will be here. For the wedding.”
“They’ve found someone to watch the inn and the house?” They’d talked about families on one of those lazy sun-streaked afternoons, winter light spilling clear through clouds as they walked through castle gardens.
“They’ve planned to give everyone the day off, but they’ve got one of the old charmed mirror-glasses up, like the one our Queen used to have; it never works properly, but prospective burglars don’t know that. I was thinking…you might like to meet them? If you’d want to.”
“I would,” Beryl said gravely, “I’d be honored,” and found strawberry wine for him, and some sort of honeyed pear tart that tasted of cinnamon and tenderness.
Fadi licked fingers shamelessly, caught his fairy watching, grinned, and did it again. “Did you have one?”
“I…enjoy watching you enjoy them. Would you like more?”
“Not at the moment. Half the fun’s the anticipation. Knowing they’ll be there when I want them. I was also thinking about something else. What you said, about not having anything to do, a purpose…and so I had an idea, and I like testing theories…”
“Am I a theory, or an idea?”
“I didn’t mean it like that. You’re…” He had to smile. “You’re my pear tart. Here for me. But seriously I was wondering what I could do to help—and you know Ollie and Tir’re arranging their own advisors, not that they’re setting up proper Small Councils yet, of course not, they’re only Heirs—but they’re leading the unification planning, aren’t they, and they’ve got committees for, oh, exploring modified trade agreements with Stratsburg, and sending mapping expeditions North, and figuring out how to teach charms and countercharms in schools, they’ve asked me to sit in for the hospitals and of course I am but we’ll have University masters too for the experience—”
Beryl had the expression of a man in need of a road-map, possibly a first-edition guide to deciphering human ramblings. Fadi winced.
