The Queen Says No

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The fortress commander refused to open the inner gate until he saw the queen's face.

Iona lowered her hood. Dawn had not yet reached the courtyard, but the lamps gave him enough light to recognise the woman he was keeping outside in the cold.

He bowed so quickly his helmet slipped.

“Your Majesty. We weren't informed.”

“Clearly.”

Anwen handed him a written order for Tomas's release into royal custody. Cassian stood beside the queen, still enough to make Iona aware of the effort it cost him.

The commander read the page twice.

“The duke's instructions were explicit.”

“So are mine.”

“He said this prisoner was a danger to the ceasefire.”

“Then bring me the evidence. And the prisoner.”

The commander looked toward Anwen. Her expression offered him no safer answer.

Tomas came out ten minutes later, thin beneath a borrowed coat, walking with the careful stiffness of someone who had learned to conserve his strength. He stopped when he saw Cassian.

For a moment neither moved. Then Cassian crossed the courtyard and took his brother into his arms.

Iona looked away. It felt wrong to witness a reunion that her own ignorance had helped delay.

Tomas pulled back first. His eyes found the queen, and the relief in his face disappeared.

“She came herself?”

“She ordered your release,” Cassian said.

Tomas stared at her. “Now.”

“Yes,” Iona said. “Now. I should have known sooner.”

He looked as though he had expected an argument and did not know what to do without one. Cassian helped him toward the carriage. Iona remained with Anwen while the commander brought the records.

Lucien's seal appeared on every order. The queen's authority was cited beneath it. Her name had become a door other people could lock.

Anwen counted the other names in the register. Seven men and two women had remained after the exchanges, all listed as smugglers without a hearing date. Iona ordered food and a physician for them too, then sent a separate officer to examine their cases. She would not open every cell without knowing who was inside. Nor would she let one rescued prince become an excuse to stop looking.

Cassian heard the orders as he returned for Tomas's dropped scarf.

“Will you remember them tomorrow?” he asked.

It was an unkind question. It was also a fair one.

“Anwen will bring me the list,” Iona said. “And you may ask again.”

He picked up the scarf. “I will.”

She discovered that she wanted a man who would. Wanting him was becoming steadily less convenient.

On the return journey, Iona rode beside the carriage rather than inside. Cassian joined her when Tomas fell asleep. The road curved above the river, and the first pale light touched the water.

“You kept your word,” he said.

“It was a beginning.”

“It was my brother.”

She glanced at him. “Then you're allowed to be glad.”

“I am.” His voice caught slightly. “I'm trying to say thank you without making what happened smaller.”

“You don't have to.”

They rode quietly. Iona felt the absence of a crown like a change in the weather. Her hair had escaped its pins. Her hands were cold. Beside her was a man who knew her kingdom's worst face and had still chosen to believe one promise.

She wanted him to look at her. When he did, she wanted him not to stop.

At the palace, Lucien waited in the entrance hall.

“You left without informing the council.”

“I released a prisoner held under a false name.”

“A sensitive matter.”

“A man.”

The duke's gaze moved to Cassian. Recognition hardened his expression.

“You brought the enemy into your household.”

“I brought a witness.”

Lucien stepped closer, lowering his voice as though intimacy could make an order gentler.

“Iona, you are tired. Let me deal with this before you say something difficult to withdraw.”

She had heard that tone from tutors, ministers, her mother. Concern that required her to become smaller in order to be properly cared for.

“There will be no betrothal,” she said.

The hall seemed to grow quieter around them.

Lucien looked at her bare head. “You haven't considered the consequences.”

“I have considered the marriage. The answer is no.”

His jaw tightened. “The roads still need soldiers. The grain still needs paying for.”

“Then bring proposals that do not require my hand as a signature.”

She walked past him before her courage could ask permission. Cassian followed at a respectful distance. She wished, fiercely, that respect did not require quite so much distance.

Anwen installed Tomas in a guarded guest room and summoned a physician. He needed food, rest, and care. Freedom did not make two years disappear. Cassian stayed until his brother slept again.

Iona found him in the garden later, standing beneath a leafless pear tree. He had removed his borrowed captain's coat. Without it he looked less like an intruder and more like a man trying to remember where his body belonged when it was not waiting for bad news.

“How is he?”

“Sleeping. Angry.”

“Both seem reasonable.”

“He doesn't trust you.”

“I haven't earned that from him.”

Cassian turned. “You don't make this easy.”

“What?”

“Hating you.”

She felt the words low in her chest. “Is that what you're trying to do?”

“Not successfully.”

A servant passed at the far end of the path. Iona waited until they were alone again.

“I didn't ask you to come here.”

“No.”

“I didn't ask you to save me.”

“No.”

“And I am not asking you to feel something because I helped Tomas.”

Cassian stepped closer. “You think that's why I'm looking at you?”

She could have answered like a queen, with a question or a dismissal. Instead she said, “I don't know.”

His hand rose, then stopped beside her cheek.

“May I?”

She nodded. He brushed a loose strand of hair away from her mouth. It was a touch so slight she could have pretended it meant nothing. She had spent years pretending less convincing things.

“I keep thinking about the room last night,” he said. “The soup. You laughing. None of that helped my brother. None of it was owed to me.”

“I keep thinking about your hand at my waist.”

His eyes changed. “You told me to remove it.”

“I know.”

“What are you telling me now?”

She moved nearer. “That I noticed when you did.”

He kissed her beneath the bare branches, slowly enough to let her change her mind. She did not. She caught his shirt and drew him closer, astonished by the force of wanting something that belonged to neither the council nor the peace negotiations.

When they parted, she rested her forehead against his.

“This is unwise,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Say something useful.”

“I've wanted to do that since you threatened me over the water jug.”

She laughed, and he kissed her again because she was laughing, because for those few seconds they could be two people in a garden rather than two countries making a mistake.

Anwen's discreet cough ended it.

Iona stepped back. Her captain looked at the pear tree with determined professional interest.

“Lady Mira has arrived.”

“Good,” Iona said, with entirely too much composure. “We need to discuss her delegation.”

“She has opinions about it.”

“I imagine she does.”

They returned to the palace together. Lady Mira stood by the open garden doors in a travelling cloak the colour of dark wine. She was thirty-three, tall, and beautiful in a way that suggested she had never mistaken beauty for her most useful quality.

Her eyes moved from Iona's loosened hair to Cassian's expression.

“Well,” she said. “That is going to complicate the grain negotiations.”

“You vouched for him as a merchant captain,” Iona said.

“He has captained merchant ships.”

“You neglected the prince.”

Mira smiled without apology. “I thought the man deserved a chance to arrive before the title.”

“And how well do you know the man?”

Cassian made a quiet sound beside her. Mira's gaze softened for the first time.

“Well enough,” she said, “that our families once expected me to marry him.”