* Present *
Two weeks since the letter, and I have become a haunting in my own house. The servants whisper behind doors they think are thick enough—they aren't—and the estate smells of beeswax polish layered over grief, as if you can shine loss away with enough lemon oil and elbow grease.
"She won't eat," Margaret tells Cook in the corridor outside my chambers, her voice pitched at that particular volume women use when they want to be overheard. "Two weeks now. Someone needs to say something to Lord Winthrope before we're laying out another body."
I sit on the window seat with Jasper's dagger strapped beneath my skirt—I keep it on me always now, the weight against my thigh the only thing that feels real—and I watch the eastern road. I always watch the eastern road.
Because grief doesn't kill hope the way it should. Hope survives like a weed through flagstone, stupid and stubborn, and some traitorous part of me still believes they got the name wrong. That I'll see a rider crest the hill any day now, mud-splattered and alive and furious with me for mourning him.
I had plans. That's the cruelest part. I was going to wait for his knighthood to end. He'd ride home and I'd tell him about the cottage past the river bend, the one with the kitchen garden gone wild.
We'd fix it up together—him protesting that a lord's daughter can't live in a cottage, me reminding him she can do whatever she pleases if she's stubborn enough. He promised me a mansion once. I was going to tell him I didn't want a mansion. I wanted the garden, and the table, and him.
And on the doorstep, or over the kitchen table, or in the garden with dirt under my nails—I was going to say it. I love you, Jasper. With his name, because I gave him that name, and I wanted him to hear it inside the only sentence that ever mattered.
Now the cottage sits empty past the river bend. The words sit unspoken inside my chest. And the road stays bare no matter how many hours I press my forehead to this glass.
Gravel crunches below. Margaret appears, cloth twisted between her fingers. "Lady Vivien. Your father requests your presence. He seems worried, my lady."
I go, because Margaret looks so worn from caring for me that refusing feels like cruelty. The corridors stretch long and the servants flatten against walls when I pass. At Father's study I push inside without knocking.
He stands when he sees me—not the polite rising of a lord, but the quick movement of a parent who hasn't seen their child in too long. He comes around the desk, pulls the chair out himself. "Sit. Please. You look—" He stops. "How are you, sweetheart?"
Sweetheart. He hasn't called me that since I was small, and my throat tightens against my will. "Surviving. Margaret tells me I should eat. Cook tells Margaret I should eat. I assume you're about to tell me the same."
"You should eat." The ghost of a smile, there and gone. He settles behind his desk but leans forward, closing the distance. "Jasper was part of this household since boyhood. He grew from that starving child into a man I was proud of. His loss is mine too, Vivien."
I know that. Father loved Jasper in his own way—the clap on the shoulder instead of the embrace, the gruff "well done, boy" that meant more than any speech. He sat up three nights running when Jasper had fever at thirteen, then never mentioned it afterward.
That's Father. Love expressed through logistics, affection disguised as duty. The bare minimum delivered with such quiet constancy that you don't notice, until you do, how much of it there is.
"I've been watching you these weeks." He picks his words like a man crossing ice, testing each before committing. "Do you need more time before we discuss anything else?"
"Time and I are not on good terms." My voice comes from somewhere outside my body. "What is it?"
"King Alastair Beaumont of Erdor has sent a proposal of marriage." He sets each word down like blown glass. "He's been interested for some time. I've been delaying, but the king presses for an answer."
A king. Of course. That explains the gentleness. I’ve met him before—twice, I think, which is why he singled me out as a potential bride. The second time was at the harvest summit, if I remember correctly, not that I care. First I don’t remember anymore.
"He is a good man, by every account I trust." Father's voice holds steady. "This isn't only about the alliance. I believe it could give you a real future."
"Yes." The word falls before he finishes—simple, final—and Father blinks, mouth still open on whatever he was about to say.
"Perhaps you should hear the full terms—" But I'm already past listening.
"I'll marry him. Whatever you need." My voice sounds distant, like it belongs to someone standing outside my body.
"Vivien." He leans forward, and there's no politics in his expression—only a father frightened by what he sees. "This is not a decision to make from grief. You'd be leaving home. Becoming queen."
"Does it matter?" I meet his gaze, and whatever he sees there makes his jaw tighten. "Does any of it matter anymore?"
"I won't accept your answer unless you've truly considered it." His hands flatten on the desk. "I am not selling my daughter to a crown. I am asking if this is something you want."
"I have." The lie tastes like ash. "Purpose, influence. Isn't that what you'd tell me? An opportunity most women never receive?"
"I was going to say you deserve happiness." He cuts through my recitation, his voice softer than I’m used to. "That even arranged marriages can hold companionship. That Alastair would respect you."
The word respect settles over the room. A good king. A decent marriage. A life far from this window seat and this road I can't stop watching. "Then I accept. Write to Dimgrove."
"Your happiness matters more to me than any alliance." There's a fracture in his voice I've never heard. "You are my daughter first. Always."
"Time won't bring him back." My throat cracks, and my nails dig into the chair arms hard enough to leave marks in the wood. "At least as queen, I'll be useful to someone."
"You are not required to be useful." His voice splinters. "You are required to be alive and to let yourself be loved."
"Jasper's dead." The words come out like wind through a broken window. "The girl I was, died with him. Whoever wears that crown, she's someone new. Someone who can smile at a king and pretend she has a heart left."
I rise before he can answer. At the door his voice catches me, quiet, almost a plea. "You cannot bury yourself beside him, sweetheart. He would not want that."
My hand stills on the frame. He's right. Jasper would be furious with me—that earnest, devoted fury of his, all clenched jaw and desperate eyes. He'd hate every second of this surrender.
"I know." The word scrapes out barely audible. My hand tightens on the doorframe until the wood bites my palm. "Send the letter, Father."
The corridor swallows me, and I press my hand over the dagger through silk and walk toward my chambers. Tomorrow the machinery begins. Tomorrow I start learning to smile at a stranger.
But tonight I will sit at my window and watch the eastern road one more time. Because hope is a weed through flagstone, and I am not ready to stop looking. Not yet. Not quite yet.
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