#cienne

King Theo Crey reached an elbow out to nudge his son’s arm.

‘Pretty little thing, isn’t she?’ he said over the din of the celebration.

‘Dunno. The mother’s in the way.’

The mother was a mishmash of wig and petticoat. Seth couldn’t tell woman from accoutrement.

‘The girl, over there, look.’ Theo pointed.

Seth looked her up and down.

Cienne Fleurelle stood between her parents, her skinny form trembling within what must have been six tailors’ worth of silk petticoats. She peered up at Seth over the top of a gilded fan and gave him a tiny, tentative smile, which he pointedly ignored.

‘She’s very… small,’ he drawled. ‘Lilly’s bigger than her. Is she three years old as well? I don’t think I feel comfortable seeing someone a full decade younger than I am.’

‘Don’t be stupid, she’s of an age with yourself. You can’t afford to be fussy, you know. You’re a man now, or as good as at this age. You must spread your seed now that you’re still young.’

Seth’s face screwed up in disdain.

‘That’s disgusting,’ he said with a shiver. ‘Imagine sticking yourself into a girl. Ew.’

‘It must be done. You are my heir, young Seth, and heirs must procreate. Why don’t you show her around? Get to know her a bit before the ceremony?’

Seth threw his eyes towards the heavens and rose from his throne.

‘And remember,’ his father reminded him.

Seth pivoted with a dull expression.

His father flourished his right hand.

‘Polite, chivalrous…’

‘And complimenting,’ Seth finished. ‘The exact opposite of what you’re like to Mother.’

‘Be gone, Seth,’ Theo told him irritably, ‘and heed my words or else!’

Seth stormed away, trying not to think of what ‘or else’ meant as the King of Portabella beckoned him over eagerly.

His matchstick of a daughter had taken heed of Seth’s hostility and cowered behind his broad build, her silver-blond head scarcely visible.

Seth approached the family and bowed.

‘Welcome, your majesty. My father and I are pleased to receive you.’

‘And we are as pleased to be received,’ the king said, his voice thick and jolly. ‘Your highness, may I introduce Princess Cienne, my daughter.’

He directed to Cienne a stream of nonsensical speediness that Seth wasn’t sure was even a human language.

The princess emerged from behind him to drop a quick curtsy.

‘Greetings, my prince,’ she said in a small voice, a thick accent curling prettily between the words.

Seth recalled his earlier counselling with the Duke of Osney and knelt onto one knee to take her hand.

‘Greetings, my lady.’

He pecked the back of her wrist.

Princess Cienne retracted her hand, smitten.

‘Do not let me keep you, Prince Seth,’ King Fleurelle said to Seth with a benevolent smile. ‘I’m sure you have much to show your future wife.’ He winked.

Seth inclined his head with a faint, fake smile.

Give us a chance to unpack the rings, you dirty bastard, he thought privately.

Seth offered an elbow to Cienne.

She beamed at him and took it.

They strolled to the courtyard together.

He walked her around the perimeter, through the dining hall, around the spiralling patterns of the back gardens, everywhere he could think of to postpone having to invent small talk to amuse the silly creature clinging to his arm. As rain began to pitter onto the transparent crust that had become of Seth’s hair oils, he led her back indoors and commenced a tour of the castle before, finally and tentatively, showing her to his rooms.

Where the fragile door of common courtesy was, abruptly, shattered from both sides.

‘Get off! Get off!’

Seth tried to scream through a mouthful of Portabellan tongue technique as Princess Cienne squeezed him to her as tightly as possible.

He wrenched himself away and wiped his mouth.

‘Salator Crey’s balls!’ he gasped. ‘What the hell was that?’

‘A kiss, my prince,’ she said timidly, assuming her previous saintly façade.

‘Is that what you call it?’

‘Was it not pleasing, my lord?’

‘Pleasing?’ Seth shuddered. ‘It was more… torturously inexperienced. Don’t they teach you these things before you get here? Honestly. It was like having a puppy in my mouth.’

Cienne’s face fell. ‘I apologise, my prince.’ She reached forward with both arms. ‘Let me try again—’

‘No!’ he exclaimed.

He stumbled out of her reach.

‘You’re already nearly suffocated me to death, leave me be!’

Cienne stood back, a delicate frown between her brows.

‘Death? How could I have kissed you to death? You still live.’

Seth rolled his eyes. ‘No, love, that was a joke.’

‘Juh-oke?’ she said slowly. ‘I am not familiar with this word. It is like the word “poke”?’

‘No, it is not definitely not like the word “poke”!!’

Seth stepped back again for self-preservation.

‘I meant it was an exaggeration—’

‘Eggs? What have eggs to do with me kissing you to death?’

Seth dropped his head into his palm.

‘No, you nitwit, visit a library. You haven’t kissed me to death, I only meant—’

Cienne’s expression turned stony.

‘Nitwit. I think I’m aware of this phrase,’ she said in a monotone. ‘I beg your leave, Prince Seth. I feel a bit sick, I should like to get some air.’

‘Sick,’ Seth echoed. ‘I like that, I think I’ll use that. It will look more convincing if we’re both unwell, won’t it? We can blame it on the shrimp, put off the wedding for at least another—’

The door slammed behind her, to the concern of no one but a raven outside, which left a spatter-shaped indication of its disgust on Seth’s window.

Smiling faintly at his newfound excuse, Seth entered his bedroom and bolted the door behind him. Women, he decided long ago, were not his speciality.

Cream cakes, however, he thought warmly, were very much his best friend. His mother was bound to bring him a platter of two once she heard he was ‘sick’. Particularly if he dropped the good old ‘growing pains’ line.

Anyway, he was a prince of the realm. The next king, in fact. He would get married whenever he bloody well felt like it, and his father… well, Seth could think of what his father would do in the morning.

He climbed under the covers of his deluxe four-poster and, despite the imminent arrival of cream cakes, fell asleep within moments.

Six hours passed.

Seth awoke to the sound of a raven pecking on his window. He sat up to chase it away when a small hand shot out of the shadows to slit his right palm with a short dagger.

Seth screamed out in fear and alarm.

The shade slapped another hand over his mouth.

The hand held a cloth… a damp cloth…

A raven’s squawk echoed in his ears. Blackness washed in from the edges of his awareness, like rolling waves on a shore. The last thing Seth remembered on the night of his murder was the assassin taking blood from the wound on his right palm.

 The second and considerably more consequential thing that happened on the Night of Raining Thorns concerned an actual egg.

The Queen of the Forest was pissed off. Very pissed off indeed.

Someone had made shit of her castle.

She sat on the landing of what used to be a full set of stairs. Steam burned her lungs as though she sat inside a recently erupted volcano, but steam was the least of her problems.

Red smog drifted around her from the ground floor, dissolving the flagstones. She peered down into the centre of a massive crater in the middle of what used to be her audience chamber.

A few remnants of egg shell lay scattered in the centre.

The Queen shook debris out of her hair.

She tried to recall the date.

Third week of summer. King Theo’s kid was getting married today. She hadn’t been invited, but that was fine. Social ostracization wasn’t something she was unused to.

Having explosive dragon eggs thrown at her was a different story.

Of course he would form an alibi first. That was King Theo Crey down to a T.

He could at least have given her a bit of notice, she thought sourly. A hoard of Crey foot soldiers arriving at her gate, that would have been fine, but magic… that was a cheat. And she should know. Cheating with magic was her signature move.

The Queen examined her household from the foot of the stairs. Some were badly injured. A lot of them were dead. This was not good. Hosting a retaliation with half a house and a council of six cripples was like enrolling in a jousting match with no arms – she might as well go ahead and put a sword in her own throat. Which was no doubt his plan.

Now she was really pissed.

She limped to the remains of her bedchamber, adjusting her dress, stained a dull grey from the debris thrown at her in the explosion. She brushed her dust-coated hair away from her face. A mass of smouldering splinters in the corner marked the remains of her bureau.

A red glint caught her eye.

She dug a hand into the wreckage.

The amulet felt cool under her fingers, in spite of the blast. It had sat inside the drawer for years, decades even. The amulet had never been used. She had never had the desire to use it.

Similarly, the Creys had never made shit of her castle either. And nothing on their part had ever meant war. This had changed a lot of things… and there were a lot of things still to change.

She clenched it tightly in her fist and closed her eyes.