“So she couldn’t inherit until you were wed?”
“Barbaric, isn’t it?” Molkan said. “Not two weeks after their ship went down, the nymphs hired to search for our fathers’ remains finally found enough evidence to suggest that sea beasts had helped themselves to everyone on board, and so we were wed.”
Just imagining the brutality of dying in that way…
The teeth and scales and mountainous muscle of the sea monsters I’d glimpsed within books turned my stomach.
Molkan huffed, as if he’d glanced my way to see the color drain from my face. Then he continued, “Your mother grieved her father terribly for many years, but I was glad to be rid of my own. He was prone to violent outbursts. So much so, my mother was laid to rest in these gardens after perishing from one of his tempers. We were to never speak of it. As far as anyone knew, when my father was alive that is, she died from complications of a miscarriage.”
Sadly believable. Miscarriage and birth were feared killers of faerie females.
“My father never wanted to be king,” Molkan said quietly. “He loved the sea a great deal more than he could have ever loved my mother and me. He felt trapped, and though I hated him, I eventually empathized when I first saw Lilitha.”
Something cold coiled around my heart, my fingers tightening upon the large apple.
“Some decades ago, we had an annual tradition that is now no longer. Each kingdom would meet right here in Bellebon upon the spring equinox. For three days, we’d celebrate. The palace was open to every noble and creature of importance from across Folkyn, and the city outside overflowed with citizens and visitors from our neighboring kingdoms.”
There was no mistaking the nostalgia in his voice, nor the slight thickening that hinted toward regret.
“Lilitha had been confined to her kingdom until she reached seventeen years, and I do believe Florian would have kept her there until she’d fully matured—had he been able to.” He released a gruff bout of laughter. “She escaped, of course, after convincing her father that she had an urgent message that must be delivered to her brother immediately.”
Recalling those mischief-glazed eyes in her portrait, I couldn’t help but smile.
“Hammond was beyond caring what his daughter got up to, and he certainly hadn’t enough soul left within him to keep her from danger. So dressed in his night robes, he materialized his daughter to these very gardens, merely nodded when he’d found me gaping at his unexpected entrance, and then vanished. Lilitha, who’d been slow to shake off the dizziness of her arrival, first looked at me, blinking such huge blue eyes.”
We slowed as we neared bowing workers along the far wall.
Molkan’s voice dropped even lower. “I knew instantly, and I suppose she did, too. For although I resumed mollifying a courtier who’d finally gained my attention, Hellebore’s princess walked straight to me.” He chuckled. “She just waited there in a shimmering silver gown, her long dark curls over her bare shoulders, until the courtier grew tired of failing to keep my stolen attention.”
We wended back across the plush grass toward the palace.
“I’d like to say I avoided her. She was so young.” His sigh was more of a groan. “As I said, she hadn’t even reached the age of full maturity, but I am certainly no saint, and she was incessant. First a dance, then too much wine, then she dragged me beyond the lake and deep into the trees to seal our fates.”
“But she knew you were married,” I said, then remembered she had been all of seventeen years, and evidently lost to the overwhelming intensity that came with finding such an attraction. That came with finding a mate.
“We both forgot that fact entirely too quickly,” he admitted soberly. “Florian was the one to find us. To this day, I still don’t know how. I assume someone informed him, for last I’d known, he’d been in the springs with a horde of females and higher than the moon on toadstool dust.”
Even as my very bones protested at the thought of him with others, I almost snorted.
Almost.
It was hard to imagine the rigid and refined Florian in such a way.
Which must have shown on my face, for Molkan said, “I do hear he does not partake in such revelry any longer. In fact, I’ve heard he’s become quite the cold bore. Like his father but at least with ambition.” A darkly humorous hum. “Suppose that’s my doing, of course.” He exhaled heavily. “So Lilitha was immediately materialized back to Hellebore, and Florian was sitting in my chambers the following morning, watching my wife and me sleep.”
My eyes widened, although the image was much better matched with the arrogant king I knew.
“He hadn’t needed to say it,” Molkan said. “The way he’d stared at Corina was warning enough.”
“He was going to kill her?”
Molkan chuckled. “Skies, no. He was not so cold-blooded back then, but he was certainly cruel when he wanted to be, and his entire frame pulsed with his desire to be as menacing as I’d made him feel by daring to touch his young sister.”
“He would tell your wife.” I swallowed, finding it odd to say, “My mother.”
Molkan nodded. “And despite quietly vowing to never touch Lilitha again, he still did. He smirked at my pleading and waited for Corina to stir, then he rose from the chair to crouch by her ear and whisper my transgressions, his eyes on me while I tried to keep from leaping over our bed to knock the audacity from his pretty face. He vanished before I could, and your mother…”
A warning. Florian had issued a warning to this father of mine to keep far away from the sister he’d raised when his father, Hammond, could not.
Quiet reigned for some minutes as we passed the apple tree and more silent yet bowing workers, and I absorbed all he’d divulged.
When we reached the shade of the terrace, I had to ask, “Did she forgive you?”
Molkan gazed up the stairs, appearing lost in thought. “Never, but as time passed, she did come to understand. I’d found a mate, and rejecting a force that has been ordained by the mother of fate is near impossible. I still tried. For some years after that life-altering night, I tried and tried.” He sighed. “And tried.”
He needn’t have bothered saying more. He’d tried, and he’d clearly failed. Molkan hadn’t stayed away from Lilitha, and now, here we all were.
He said nothing more as he climbed the stairs, with the exception of parting words. “We will resume tomorrow.”
I’d been dismissed, but after all he’d said, I didn’t mind.
I stared at the apple in my hand, then looked back to the sunlit gardens that had seen so much history.
For the remainder of the day, I walked the halls and viewed the scenery beyond the windows and palace walls, lost to the beauty of this land I longed to explore more of and the chaos of my thoughts.
I bathed alone and quickly, not wanting to find myself in another awkward position, then ate a light dinner of pork and a large leafy green salad delivered by a different male servant. There were few items in my room to amuse myself with—only a handful of dusty books and the view from the window.
So I sat upon the bed with a novel containing historic uses of poisonous flowers, and mostly gazed through the window to the city aglow with soft touches of night.