“It’s certainly something that might interest a person plotting to take over a throne, though.”
Some of the tension in Kayu’s frame seemed to ebb, almost like his honesty was refreshing. Her heart-shaped face gave nothing away, though, her dark eyes trained on the candle and her finger passing through it. “You still don’t believe me, then.”
“That your family sending you here to study while the Queen is ill has nothing to do with you being next in line for the Valleydan throne? No. I don’t.”
She stiffened a bit, but her voice was flippant. “Please. You think Valleyda is worth starting a war? I’ve been to funerals livelier than this court.” A shrug as she began twisting a strand of hair around her finger. “And I didn’t know the Queen was ill. Last I heard, she was meddling in the Order, changing things that hadn’t been changed in centuries. Seemed fairly healthy, to be doing all that.”
It’d been a mistake to mention Neve. It made his chest feel hollowed out and full of a simmering anger all at the same time.
“She’ll recover soon, I’m sure,” Kayu continued. “Then maybe there will be a ball. I love balls. It’s been ages since I went dancing.”
“Maybe you could go home and convince your father to throw one.”
Her finger froze, wound in black hair to the knuckle. Any mention of Kayu’s father went over like a bucket of ice on a winter morning. “My father is more likely to throw me in the ocean than throw me a ball.” She released her hair, looked away. “And I don’t know how many times I’ll have to tell you that both of my older sisters are married, one to a noblewoman in Elkyrath and one to our father’s treasurer, and thus unavailable for the position of Queen.”
“You aren’t married.” Any Queen succeeding to the Valleydan throne had to be either unmarried or married to someone from within the Valleydan court. Kayu was a third cousin of Red and Neve, some complicated matter involving a great aunt who remarried and bore children late in life to a Niohni noble. The line of succession was a tangled one, but it ended with Kayu, unmarried, and therefore eligible to become the next Queen of Valleyda.
Her full lips pulled to the side, an expression he couldn’t read. “No, I’m not married.” A pause, then she flipped her hand dismissively. “But I’m also unavailable, believe me. And I do not want it.”
The undesirability of Valleydan queenship was really the only thing saving them, since no one knew that the Second Daughter tithe was now moot. Raffe thought it would behoove him to keep that secret as long as he could.
Still, the arrival of a candidate for the crown within days of Neve disappearing into the Shadowlands was enough to give him pause, undesirable queenship or no.
Raffe wondered, not for the first time, if it was too late to really show an interest in the wine-shipping business.
The barest hint of sunlight filtered into the sky beyond the window, night’s fist opening into fingers of dawn. He was fully awake now; trying to sleep again would be pointless. Scowling, Raffe got up, bunching his sheet around his waist as he crossed to the wardrobe. “Is there a reason you’re sneaking in here in the wee hours of the morning other than seeing if you could kill me? Which I’m still not happy about, by the way. I could’ve killed you.”
“Take it as a testament to your nobility that I knew you wouldn’t.” Kayu sat in the wooden chair against the wall and propped her chin on her fist. “You are achingly noble, Raffe. Right on the edge of where attractive becomes exasperating.”
“Fortunately, I don’t particularly care about being attractive.” He opened the wardrobe so the wide doors hid him from her view.
“Not to anyone but the Queen, right?”
He froze, fingers clenched around a pair of trousers. Only a moment passed before he pulled them on, the movement as nonchalant as he could make it. “What makes you say that?”
“I have two eyes, for one thing. And you, Raffe, walk around like a man carrying the weight of the whole world. Who else would you carry it for?”
Raffe yanked on a shirt with more force than was needed, nearly loosening a seam.
When he closed the wardrobe, Kayu sat back in his chair like the princess she was, this time elegantly crossing her legs at the ankles. The candlelight gilded her long, straight hair, so black it was nearly blue. “I can’t wait to see her, once she recovers,” she said. “I desperately want to meet the distant cousin who has you so in her thrall.”