Chapter 211: Bear it all

BONNIE

Getting out of the lake was harder than getting in.

The green dress had drunk half the basin and was determined to take me back with it. It clung to my thighs and dragged at my hips, and by the time I’d hauled myself up the flat shelf of rock, I was dripping like a drowned cat and swearing under my breath in a rhythm Lysander clearly found delightful. He stood beside me with his shirt plastered to his ribs and water sliding off his chin, and every few seconds I caught him pressing his lips together to keep a laugh behind them.

"One more sound," I warned, wringing out a fistful of skirt, "and I swear to Selene, I will push you back in."

"I did not make a sound."

"Oh you certainly did."

Boots crunched on the path above us. I looked up to find the two sentinels from the bluff coming down the slope at a dignified march, and behind them, two of the manor staff, a young woman and a young man in gray, each carrying a folded stack of white linen against their chests as though it were a sacred offering. They stopped a respectful distance away and bowed.

"Your Majesty. My lady."

The towel the girl held out to me was thick and warm, as though it had been sitting beside a stove. I took it with a grateful nod, and she ducked her head and went pink to the ears. Lysander accepted his with a murmured thanks and threw it over his shoulders like a cloak.

The taller sentinel stepped forward and cleared his throat. I recognized him as one of the men who had been so busy studying the sky.

"We have swept the perimeter, Your Majesty. That includes the woods, the ridge, the old boathouse, and the service road. Thankfully, there has been no sign of rogue presence."

"Any odd scent?" Lysander asked.

"Nothing fresh or alarming. I did feel a fox, some deer. A few days old, a hunter’s boot print, but nothing that leads anywhere." He glanced at his companion, who took up the thread without a flicker.

"We will keep a sniper on the roof at all times regardless, Your Majesty. Two, once the light starts to fall. And we have set a formation in the grounds, with signal posts at the lane, the lake, and the stable. If anyone does slip through, the team will know within seconds, and the nearest man will fall back to the house."

"And perhaps take lives, if it comes to that," the first added quietly.

"If it comes to that," Lysander agreed. The humor had left his face. In its place was the focused look he wore when he was working a problem. "Good. Hold it exactly as you have laid it out. Anyone who has to leave their post for any reason reports to me first."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

They bowed and withdrew up the slope, and the two staff followed, and the lawn went quiet but for the wind in the reeds.

I pressed the towel to my face and breathed out into it.

"You were very convincing," I said into the cloth. "Back there. As a Regent."

"I thought I looked very undignified given that I was very wet."

"You were that too. But... you do look nice wet."

"Hmmmm..."

He never got the chance to finish whatever he had been about to say. Footsteps sounded behind us, slower this time, and I lowered the towel as Nicholas approached along the path, his hands folded behind his back. The afternoon sun caught the white of his hair, lending it a soft glow. He surveyed us with the patient resignation of a man who had spent many years watching the same boy throw himself into the same lake and had long since accepted that no amount of growing up would change him.

"Your Majesty. My lady." His gaze dipped to my ruined skirt. The corner of his mouth twitched, but he managed to disguise his amusement as a cough. "Lunch is ready."

"We just need to get dry, Nicholas," Lysander said.

"I assumed as much." Nicholas gestured towards the house, his expression returning to its usual composure. "Your room has been aired. If you will follow me."

I bent to retrieve my shoes, then caught sight of the pearls scattered across the grass on the bluff above us. The chain had snapped, leaving half the little beads strewn through the blades like droplets of milk spilled across green silk.

I gathered what I could find, the broken strand resting in my palm. A hot flush of guilt crept up my neck. They had been beautiful pearls, and I had ruined them without a second thought.

Before I could say anything, a pair of small hands appeared beside mine.

"I will find them all, my lady." The freckled girl who had followed Nicholas down the hill was already on her knees, carefully parting the grass with her fingers. "Please don’t worry. They will be restrung by tonight."

"I’m so sorry. They were..."

"Only pearls." She looked up at me with a shy, reassuring smile. "You jumped into a lake for him. I think that is worth a few."

Something tightened in my chest. I looked down at the broken chain, suddenly unsure what to do with the kindness of a girl who had no reason to offer it so freely.

I did not trust my face to answer, so I settled for a small nod and let the pearls go.

The house welcomed us with a rush of warmth, the lake’s chill giving way to the gentle heat of the halls.

I had braced for grandeur. I had spent years walking through the royal estate, a palace with ceilings so high that they seemed to disapprove of me, and I had assumed a manor would be a smaller version of the same cold pride. It was not. The front hall was paneled in honey-colored oak, worn smooth by generations of hands, and the floor was covered with a rug so old its pattern had faded into a soft blur of reds and ochres. A great stag’s head hung over the fireplace, mounted with a sort of weary dignity. Someone had hung a child’s drawing of a horse on the wall beside it, framed in plain wood, and no one had ever thought to take it down.

There were boots by the door. Real ones, muddy, in a row. A walking stick leaned in the umbrella stand. A pair of reading glasses sat folded on a side table beside a half-finished crossword.

"This is lovely," I murmured.

"You sound surprised," Lysander said, close behind me.

"I half expected it all of the walls to be covered in taxidermy and smell of disapproval."

"There is plenty of taxidermy." He tipped his head toward the stag. "That is Gerald."

"You named him?"

"I was seven. He happened to be a very good listener."

Nicholas led us up a broad staircase, its banister carved with a running chain of leaves, and I trailed my fingers along it as we climbed. Sunlight poured through a long window on the landing and warmed the whole stairwell to a golden hush. At the end of the upper corridor, he opened a door and stood aside with a short bow.

"Your rooms, Majesty. My lady. I will leave you to it. We will keep lunch warm."

The door shut behind him with a soft click.

I stood in the doorway and looked.

It was the largest bedroom I would ever have the pleasure of sleeping in—which was saying something, considering how grand my room at the royal estate was—and somehow, it looked like it would also be the coziest.

A great four-poster bed stood against the far wall, its curtains tied back with faded green cord, under a quilt stitched in patches of blue and cream. The window seat was piled with cushions, and a pair of leather armchairs faced a stone hearth where someone had already laid a small fire. Old maps and a few muddy-looking landscapes hung on the walls. The floorboards creaked in a friendly way. Through the open casement came the distant sound of the lake and the smell of cut grass, and the bed smelled faintly of lavender and sun-dried linen, as though it had been waiting for us.

"Goddess," I said softly. "I could live here."

"You would be bored in a week."

"I would not."

"I would know. And I know you would be reorganizing the pantry and stealing the cook’s recipes."

"That sounds perfectly fine."

A knock sounded on the open door. Two Omegas stood in the corridor, a young man and the freckled girl, who had apparently run up the back stairs to beat us there. She had a small cloth bundle in her hands. I was almost certain she’d shoved my pearls into her pocket.

"Forgive us," the young man said. "We have finished with your luggage. Since you will only be with us a day, perhaps less, we thought it best not to unpack everything. We took three changes of clothing from each of your trunks, and a nightdress." He bobbed a small, apologetic bow. "The bathroom is through there. There are soaps, oils, fresh linen. If anything is missing, please ring."

"That is perfect," I said. "Thank you. Truly."

"It is our honor, my lady."

They retreated. The door closed. And for the first time since the car had pulled out of the estate gates, Lysander and I were alone in a room with nobody watching.

The quiet was a living thing. I could hear the fire spit, a floorboard settling, my own pulse.

I took my towel and went to the little bathroom, a narrow room tiled in blue and white with a copper basin and a window that looked straight into the crown of an apple tree. I peeled off the green dress with an effort that bordered on a wrestling match and hung it over the rail to drip. I toweled my hair until my arms ached and my scalp tingled, and I combed it out with my fingers, watching the damp strands curl at my collarbone. My skin was pink from the cold. There was a faint bruise on my elbow where I had struck something in the water.

I went back into the bedroom wrapped in the towel and opened the first trunk.

Everything inside was folded with the precision of someone who had done this a thousand times. A traveling gown in gray wool. Two plain skirts. Then, near the bottom, something I had not seen before: a sleeveless dress of soft green cotton with a skirt that ended well above my knees. It was loose and light, the sort of thing that would breathe, and I had never owned anything like it in my life.

Something about the manor, and the sun, and the lake still beating in my blood made me want to be someone who wore it.

I let the towel drop and pulled it over my head. It slid down my body like water. It left my arms bare and my legs free, and when I turned to face the mirror, I felt a strange, loose, unguarded sort of joy. I looked like a girl on holiday. I looked, I thought with a pang, like I might have looked at nineteen if nobody had ever taught me to be afraid.

I tugged at the hem and turned to ask Lysander what he thought.

The words died.

He stood with his back half to me beside the second trunk, naked as the day he was born, in the middle of a patch of sunlight.