It was like the venting on a meat pie, and the tension steamed out—just a bit. Enough so that when Adile knocked on the door and offered to bring tea, Luca invited Touraine to stay for a cup—and she said yes.
To leave that new space so soon would have made Touraine’s relief feel false. And maybe it was. Maybe in the morning it would be gone, and regret would crash in. Right now, it felt real, and right now she was lonely.
While they waited on the tea, Luca began to lever herself out of her wheeled chair and into the bed.
Touraine reached to help. “Your Highness, do you—”
An impatient wave. After a series of grunts and winces, Luca sat in her bed, legs stretched out. She sucked air through her teeth as she kneaded the muscles in her right leg. Slowly, the lines of pain in her face softened.
Touraine pulled the chair from the small writing desk and sat at the side of Luca’s bed, facing her.
“Does it hurt often?” Touraine found she was rubbing her own leg in sympathy and stopped.
“Yes. It’s why I hate these stupid parties.”
Adile came in and set the tea on Luca’s bedside table.
The warmth of the cup was a comfort in Touraine’s hand. “You fight, though.” When Luca raised a questioning eyebrow, Touraine added, “You stand like a duelist.”
“And it’s awful,” Luca said after a sip. “However, being able to fight could be the difference between life and death. Knowing the latest dances, not so much.”
The same logic ruled the Sands’ training.
“It happened on my birthday. A beautiful autumn afternoon.” The word beautiful came out more like “sky-falling.” “Red leaves on the trees, even more rotting underfoot, the smell of two hundred horses’ shit, and about fifty trumpeters who kept blowing triumphant even after I’d fallen.”
“You mean the autumn parade?”
Luca nodded.
Touraine laughed softly. “I just thought it was a national holiday. Your birthday. Same thing, I guess.”
At a sore spot on her leg, Luca hissed. “Yes. I was lamed on my birthday because of a shoddy saddle buckle.”
Touraine raised an eyebrow. “A saddle buckle? That’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?”
She thought of the stories where dark villains from the south allied with Balladairan princes and betrayed them, only to fall to the righteous heroes. They’d inspired her own fantasies—and experiments—of rigging Rogan’s saddle. In her head, she had been the Balladairan hero, despite all physical evidence to the contrary.
Luca cocked her head. A trail of blond hair escaped to fall across her face, and she pushed it back. “How do you mean?”
“It’s the oldest trick, isn’t it? Makes it all look like an accident.”
“Ha! If my uncle had wanted to kill me, there are a million equally subtle and more guaranteed ways to make it happen. That only barely works, even in the stories.”
Touraine’s face warmed in embarrassment.
“If I’m honest,” Luca added, grimly, “I think he’ll try to discredit me first. Less messy.”
“Over the rebellion.”
Luca nodded, doing that dismissive wave again. “I don’t want to think about him. You like the old adventures, then? Did you ever read ‘The Journeys of the Chevalier des Pommes’？”
Touraine grinned and nodded. The Chevalier des Pommes was a knight of lore who walked a thousand leagues, and every time he slept, an apple tree grew. “What about it?”
“When I was quite small, I tried to fall asleep in the palace gardens so there would be trees when I woke up.” Luca’s smile slid sideways. “No, now that I think about it—my father was so angry at me, and I don’t even know why. It was my mother, I think—when I fell asleep that night, she tucked an apple in my bed.”
They talked through the entire pot of tea, about stories and their youths, though Touraine kept only to innocent misadventures and Luca avoided further mention of her parents. The pot was down to the dregs when Luca drained her cup and then peered somberly over the rim at her.
“Is Captain Rogan one of the Balladairans from your old compound, then?”
“Aye.”
“Has he always been like… that?” Luca waved thin fingers in the direction of the dance floor, which was a sitting room again.
“You mean a rapey son of a bearfucker? Yeah.” Darkness crowded back into Touraine’s thoughts.
Luca’s face went open in alarm. “He—”