Chapter 65: Sixty Five
Valka
No one told me being named the King’s bride came with a full schedule, meetings with duchesses and dowagers whose names I can’t remember, luncheons with courtiers who speak in riddles about politics I don’t care for, and an entourage of guards shadowing my every breath--I can’t even relieve myself without alerting someone.
New companions who bicker none stop about things I had little idea of. A new set of chambers. A wardrobe so vast it has its own room. silk after silk, jeweled tunics stitched with gold and silver, far fewer pants than I’d have liked. Shoes. Slippers. Boots. Gold. Diamonds. Rubies. Every precious stone known and unknown to mankind.
And yet... all of it comes with far less of the one thing I actually want. To be alone.
And gods, I want to be alone.
Because I can’t explain why, in the middle of ’tea’ with courtiers simpering over my approaching coronation and wedding--I know. It doesn’t even feel real to me either. That I, Valka, am getting married. To a King, no less--I started sobbing into my cup, that grief clinging to me sourly.
I can’t explain why the rations they give me are no longer enough, either. Why I can’t stop eating.
You’d think being the King’s bride-to-be means I could eat whatever I wanted. I can. But Margot insists it’s unbecoming to eat like a glutton--and I must lose a few pounds to fit into my wedding dress.
So I sneak to the kitchens at night like a starving rat.
Worse still, two or three nights a week I wake drenched in sweat, panting, starving for something I’m too ashamed to name. It’s filthy. Humiliating. I want to dig a hole and die in it. I claw at my clothes until they’re nothing but rags, writhing and hissing, my skin burning from the inside out.
I’m on heat.
And judging by the looks on my guards’ faces when I pass, the way their nostrils flare, the careful distance they keep from me, they know it too.
It might be bearable if I could predict when it would happen. But over the past ten days, it’s been everything but predictable.
It’s happened in my sleep--waking with my hands already shoved beneath my chemise, my breath ragged, my body desperate for pleasure.
It happened in the middle of a fitting with Margot. I’d never felt such humiliation in my life when my scent filled the room, thick and unmistakable, forcing her to dismiss the royal designer, and every man present, before their restraint snapped.
It even happened during the most uncomfortable lecture with the priestess on the duties expected of a royal bride during the mating rite.
Lucien had been there, too. Sitting right beside me. Being lectured on the best position for ’gifting’ me his royal seed--eww. There were even drawings. And I’d stood so abruptly and fled the chamber that I nearly tore the skirts off my gown on the way out.
How was I supposed to explain that? How was I supposed to tell them that in that moment, I didn’t care if there was an audience? That I didn’t care if half the Court was watching? That my body -- shameless, disobedient, feral -- just wanted hands on me. Inside me. His hands. Any hands at all.
Furious, stupid tears won’t stop pouring down my cheeks as I scoop up the last wedge of chocolate cake with trembling fingers and shove it into my mouth. Chewing and sobbing. Chewing and sobbing. Sobbing and chewing.
Valka Ironfang, the woman who felled thousands with a single swing of her fist. Valka Ironfang, the reckless, the relentless, the unbreakable. Valka Ironfang, the soldier, fighter and victor.
Reduced to this pitiful, snivelling wreck hiding beneath the King’s kitchen table, devouring stolen cakes in the dark while her guards and maids thunder through the halls calling, "Your Highness."
Could I be any more pathetic?
The near-silent scruff of boots makes me freeze. Whoever it is stops at the threshold. A turn. Footsteps heading straight toward me. Suede-blue boots, clean. Ebony black sole, polished to a royal sheen. A gloved hand catches the edge of the white tablecloth and lifts it.
"Ah," is all Lucien says.
I don’t move. I just... exist there, catching my reflection in his twinkling violet depths. Chocolate smeared around my mouth, crumbs clinging to my fingertips and chemise, hair sticking damply to my face, cheeks blotchy and wet. Bare feet tucked beneath me like a child hiding from punishment.
It’s the first time I’ve truly looked at him since he left me in his bed nearly two weeks ago. Aside from the mandatory fittings and ceremonial lectures we both must endure together, I haven’t spoken a single word to him. I told myself it was the silent treatment, my little rebellion. But in truth, he’s been avoiding me too. Running would be a better term. The coward.
So I made a decision. I would pretend he didn’t exist. I would not look at him. I would not speak his name or acknowledge him. I would not let him live rent-free in my mind.
(Still working on the last part. Miserably failing, if we’re honest.)
Lucien tilts his head, pointed ears twitching as if catching a sound I can’t. Whatever it is, he dismisses it with a soft shake and to my utter bewilderment, ducks under the table.
It’s an inelegant maneuver. There’s too much of him to fit in the cramped space; his shoulders knock against the underside, his knees scrape the floor, and he has to fold himself into a series of uncomfortable angles just to make it work. In the end, he gives up on sitting altogether and stretches out on his back beside me, long limbs crossing carelessly as his hands come to rest behind his head. He stares up at the plain wood above us like it’s the most interesting ceiling in the world.
"I used to hide a lot when I was little," he says after a moment. "My father didn’t like me very much, you know."
I don’t want this--don’t want the edges of him seeping past my walls, don’t want the ice I’ve packed around my heart softening with these small, human scraps of his life. So I fix my gaze on the far end of the tablecloth and pretend I’m not listening. Pretend.
But I am.
"I was the least liked of my father’s brood. The least coddled. The least useful, apparently. I never stayed where I was told, and I certainly never did as I was ordered--which, to be fair, was half the fun of disobeying.
"I wasn’t the heir. Tiernan was destined to wear the crown, and I thought the idea of it sounded about as thrilling as a sermon on a rainy day. Kings--the lot of them--only ever bragged about two things. War and how many heads they’d cleaved from their enemies. Tedious.
"I preferred life. The messy, delicious, sinful bits of it. The pleasure given and received. I adored wine that burned down my throat and mornings I couldn’t remember. I liked the wilds more than the walls, liked the beast more than the prince, and I saw little point in playing the well-mannered son when I could be anything else.
"I suppose that made me more like my mother--wild, ungovernable, unfit for polite company. And my father... well, he despised me for it. Which, if I’m honest, only made me enjoy it more."