Page 6 of A Kiss of Flame
‘What tortures do you have for me today?’ she asked Lynette, trying to push that sensation from her mind. It lingered in the background tormenting her, like the memories of their last kisses or making love in Knightsford.
Lynette sighed, defeated. ‘Well first we’ll have to do something about your hair. Some flowers perhaps? Something to disguise…’
She waved her fingers towards Wren’s head indicating everything. Wren ran her fingers through it so the short style spiked up at odd angles. Wickedness made her do it.
‘I prefer it like this, don’t you?’
Carlotta hid her grin and turned away quickly.
Yes, Wren knew she was being impossible. But it was the one rebellion she still had.
Lynette didn’t so much as smile. ‘You’re meeting the regents’ council and their families for a reception.’
‘And do any of them style hair for a living?’
‘Wren!’ The admonishment was hardly a surprise. But at least she wasn’t using a title now. There was almost a smile on her lips. You’d have to look really hard to see it but Wren was sure it was there. ‘What will they think?’
‘That I’m a wild girl from the forest. They might even let me go back home, if I’m lucky.’
Except there was no home to go back to. The tower had burned to a shell. And without Elodie there, it wouldn’t be home anyway.
Lynette sighed again, softer this time, with understanding, and pulled Wren in for an unexpected hug. It shouldn’t have been so welcome. Wren had decided to fight the court every step of the way if she could. But Lynette was kind, and gentle, and there was nothing Wren could do against that. With Ylena’s appointment of her as lady-in-waiting, she had taken it upon herself to be Wren’s champion and her friend, her shield against the rest of them. Protecting her the same way the knights did.
‘I’m afraid this is home now, my dear. Now please, if you must cut it all off, at least let me do something with it afterwards. They expect a princess and they can make life so difficult for you if they don’t get what they want.’
They. Ylena, she meant. Wren was sure of that. And Roland, of course. And that pompous earl. The rest of the court followed the regents’ leads.
Make life difficult for her. How much more difficult could they make it? She shuddered to think.
Honestly, what good was it being a princess if everyone else still got to make the rules about her life?
Lynette was right. The regents’ council held power in the royal city, and until there was a queen back on the throne their word was the law. The problem with finding a queen was that meant either Wren, or Elodie, wearing the crown. Neither of whom wanted it. No one seemed to be willing to accept that.
‘Fine. Flowers, just a few.’
‘Or a diadem. A small one. There’s a perfect one in the treasury which belonged to your great-great-great grandmother, I believe. It would be very fetching against?—’
Wren shuddered. A diadem, she had discovered, was like a crown, or a coronet, or a tiara… and they all signified the same thing.
‘No. Just flowers. Or a ribbon if you have to.’
And because Lynette knew if she insisted, Wren would lose whatever was put on her head at the first available opportunity, out of a window if necessary, she settled on a silk ribbon the same colour as the dress. In the mirror she didn’t look like herself anymore. Another young woman was staring back at her, one who didn’t climb trees, gather herbs, or race deer through the forest. One who hadn’t grown up with the old magic singing to her from the trees, or the Nox from the shadows. One who would never have faced down shadow kin and commanded them, who couldn’t bend the powers of light and dark to her will, to take a life or save it. How did she even begin to explain that, or what she had seen and heard in the stone circle known as the Seven Sisters?
She had a dark fate, and Leander of Ilanthus was determined to be part of it. He may have fled home with his tail between his legs, defeated by Elodie, but Wren was certain his plans were far from finished. He hated Finn and wanted him dead. And Wren represented everything that he considered to be his by right.
‘You can’t keep this up forever, Wren,’ the lady-in-waiting told her solemnly, as she led her from the chamber. ‘No one is going to put up with this rebellion for long.’
‘They can try to stop me,’ Wren muttered, setting her mouth in a hard line. ‘Or they can let me see Finn and Elodie. I don’t ask for much.’
Lynette shook her head. ‘I don’t think you know what you’re asking at all.’
HISTORY OF THE WARS BETWEEN ASTEROTH AND ILANTHUS
VOLUME 24, CHAPTER 8
When Asterothian forces broke through Sidon’s walls, and de Silvius rode into the stronghold, Hestia, Lady Rayden, was waiting for him. She begged his aid, threw herself on his mercy, and it was she who laid the groundwork for the Pact. Some say she saved thousands of lives that day, while little more than a girl herself. But she was shrewd and astute enough to understand what would happen if the Ilanthians continued fighting, the death and destruction that would follow.
Some say she had the Sight and a vision had shown her all.