5. Tamsyn

5

Tamsyn

W HEN I WAS TEN YEARS OLD, I LEARNED THAT THERE would be no grand state wedding for me. No multitude of guests. No weeklong festivities. No royal hunts for the wedding party. No lavish feast with all manner of entertainment. No bells tolling throughout the land. No marriage rites to a faraway prince or prominent dignitary for the betterment of the kingdom. A future such as that, the kind that glittered like a prism caught in light, dazzling and full of wonder, was reserved for my sisters, but not for me.

Not that I had devoted a great deal of time to thoughts of the future. Especially not at ten. Not yet. I was a little girl. I didn't worry about such things. I lived in the moment.

I spent my mornings learning with tutors and our governess. In music lessons. Dance. Art. Comportment. Playing with the fat tabby cat that slept in the kitchen. Riding ponies through the vast gardens. Romping and exploring with my sisters. Sitting transfixed by the fire in the Great Hall as visiting bards regaled us with stories of days gone by: of fire-breathing dragons and spell-casting witches, of beguiling huldras and hideous harpies, of sea creatures and the monstrous Fenrir, the sire of all wolves, who devoured anyone who dared venture into his territory.

I did not let the occasional whipping affect me. That was just a thing that had to be endured, like a dose of bitter medicine or a hairbrush pulling through the tangles in my hair. Unpleasant but thankfully brief. I refused to dwell on those occurrences.

In my youth, the king or queen or governess usually delivered the hard truths, schooling me in my role, training me and overseeing my punishments. The lord chamberlain had yet to become interested in me. That unwelcome attention didn't happen until my fifteenth summer.

Sometimes I fell under the hard gaze of the lord regent, though, especially if he caught his son playing with me. He did not approve of me, and he would periodically remind me of my place in the order of things. To clarify, he believed my place was somewhere alongside the scullery maid, not throwing darts with Stig.

The king and queen were not around the day I started to seriously consider my future, however. That day's hard truth came from an unexpected source, amid a child's game.

We had finished in the schoolroom and had a small amount of time to ourselves before lunch. The princesses were being unruly, and I was little better as we played a lively game of shadow tag, running up and down corridors and through bedchambers with shrill shrieks and stomping feet.

At some point I had stopped breathlessly in the king and queen's lavish sitting room that adjoined their bedchambers, pulling up short on the lush rug to admire the wedding portrait of the queen, so bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked in her bridal finery.

I studied her likeness on the canvas. Her chin was tilted at a coy angle, highlighting the slender column of her neck. She was young, of course, barely more than a girl, and the similarity to her pretty daughters was strong. I self-consciously twisted a strand of my red hair around my finger, acutely aware of how little I resembled them.

A gauzy veil flowed past her slight shoulders, a glittering gold and ruby circlet holding it in place and stretching across her smooth forehead. Her frame was delicate, almost birdlike. Unlike now—with curves aplenty, she was a formidable presence.

Feena stomped gleefully on my shadow as she came to a gasping halt beside me. My admiration of the portrait must have been visible in my gaze. She pointed to the dazzling jeweled circlet on her mother's head. " I will wear that on my wedding day." She twirled in a clumsy circle. " You won't, though."

She had tossed the words out so casually. Not cruelly and not to be unkind. That wasn't Feena. Feena held my hand almost everywhere we went. Any time she did something she was proud of she would squeal my name first, eager to show off her accomplishment to me.

And yet I'd felt her words like the stinging prick of a knife, a sharp blade sinking into my tender heart.

You won't, though.

"I... won't," I'd agreed, trying to sound as though I'd known that. As though it were obvious to me, too... even though no one had told me that directly. Even if I had never thought about the notion of marriage before. Suddenly, I was. Then I could think of little else.

I might have been the eldest by seven months, but around Feena—and even Sybilia to some degree—I had always felt behind. Less clever. Less knowledgeable. Less worldly. Just less , I supposed. A crystal with a little less sparkle. Gold with a little less shine.

Not so shocking since I was... less.

Less than them in the way that counted the most. I needed only to ask anyone for confirmation of that fact. I could recognize this with no self-loathing or ill will. It was simply the natural order of things. My entire existence revolved around this fact.

Feena had bobbed her head. "It's been passed down through the women in my family for generations. Those rubies were claimed from a dragon's hoard way back when they still filled the skies. I'll wear it first at my wedding. Then Sybilia will. And then Alise."

But not me.

Never me.

Treating me as a royal princess went only so far. It did not extend to a future in which I would marry in the grand tradition of a Penterran princess. Feena had only been informing me of what everyone else knew. I understood that then. I accepted it—with help from Stig.

He had consoled me, introducing me to all the whipping boys and girls captured on canvas in the gallery. He'd reassured me, persuading me that I would have a purpose. It wouldn't be a marriage formed to secure an important alliance. That fate belonged to my sisters. But my fate would be something .

And yet here I was on the eve of my wedding. Against all odds. Against Stig's reassuring words, against everything I had been led to believe, I would be married to secure an important alliance, after all. I guess he had been wrong.

I couldn't fall asleep for thinking about it.

I would be married on the morrow. To a stranger. To a barbaric border lord with no gentle manners, more accustomed to killing than to life at court. Was there even court life to be had where he lived? Any civilization at all among these coarse and vulgar brutes who wore their bloodstained garments into the royal palace?

The hour was late and growing later with every slow, crawling tick of the clock on my bedside table. The revelry had come to an end. The air hummed with silence. By now everyone had quit the Great Hall and found their beds at last.

The lord regent's voice repeated over and over in my head.

We are giving him... you.

The world had gone hazy at those words. Giving me... to him. As though I were an object. Not a person.

My throat constricted. As though they were serving me up like roasted pheasant at Eldr feast.

When I had recovered the power of speech, I'd made a mild protest. At first. But it was not in me to disobey. All my life, for twenty-one years, I had served the throne of Penterra, sacrificing myself for my sisters, for my country. It was the only thing I had ever known. I was good at it. This would be a continuation of those duties. The only person I knew how to be.

My door eased open with the softest groan of its hinges, but in the silence the sound was jarring. A bedchamber door opening in the middle of the night might set off alarm bells for some, but not when you had three sisters fond of barging into your room at all hours without knocking or even calling out.

Many a morning I had found myself with one or more of them curled up in bed beside me, arms and legs tangled with mine—especially following a punishment for one of their transgressions. They always felt terrible and guilty and had to reassure themselves that I was not permanently maimed by spending the night cuddled up next to me.

I flung an arm over my eyes and did not even bother to look. This was precisely the type of extraordinarily eventful day that would send all three of them scurrying into my bed.

I'd had a whipping earlier, we'd been invaded by barbarian guests from the north, and I now found myself betrothed to one of them—to the scariest one of them all. I was surprised the girls had not appeared sooner. Although, there had been a raucous party going on downstairs. They loved a party, even though they would not have been allowed to stay long.

A lump formed in my throat considering how many nights I would have left to myself in this bed. Perhaps there would be no more than tonight. I was not certain when my husband-to-be would wish to depart for the Borderlands, but until then, where would I sleep? Here? Elsewhere? Alone? With him? I gulped. The uncertainty gnawed at me.

I flipped back the coverlet in invitation. "Very well. Come on. Get into bed."

The voice that spoke did not belong to any of my sisters. "That's more of a welcome than I was expecting."

I lurched into a sitting position, shoving the hair off my forehead, blinking and letting my eyes acclimate, grateful for the glow from the fire that saved me from complete darkness. Stig's outline stood at the foot of my bed, an invading shadow, his familiar features cast in gloom but unmistakable.

I launched from the bed, my bare feet landing on the rug-covered floor. "What are you doing in here?" I glanced around as though there might be other unexpected visitors with him.

As close as we were, he had never dared to enter my private quarters. There were lines not to be crossed, rocks not to be tossed.

Perhaps that was why we gravitated toward each other. We understood this. We were alike in that way. We did what was expected of us. We followed the rules. We performed our duties unfailingly.

Stig being here was not expected, and it was strange seeing him in these surroundings, in my domain.

I reached for my dressing gown where I had discarded it at the end of the bed and slipped it on, tightening the belt around my waist as he gazed at me with feverishly bright eyes.

"Should I not have come?" he demanded with a snort that conveyed his incredulity. He paced a short, hard line to the left, then the right. "Should I have stayed away? Is that what you think I would do?" His voice was biting in a way I had never heard from him. Especially when addressing me. He was always kind. Always gentle. Always listened when I spoke—and when I did not.

I shook my head in response, ignoring the bleak squeezing in my chest. "You should not be here." My world had been upended. The person I had been at the start of this day was not the same one standing before him now. There were many things I didn't know, but that much I knew to be true.

Stig surged forward then and closed his hands around my arms. "You cannot be fine with this." His gaze burned brightly into me, the rich brown molten, lit from an unseen fire. "This is not fair. Not right at all, Tamsyn."

"Stig," I said carefully. "It doesn't matter what I want." I didn't utter this with any disgruntlement or with a low opinion of myself. I knew my life held value. I served a purpose. It was only that my preferences were never a priority.

"It matters. You matter."

I gave him a look. "Really? It's never been about me. You know that." He had told me that all those years ago. The whipping girl did not belong to herself. She belonged to the royal family.

I was theirs, bound to them until they released me, free only when they declared it.

They would never declare it. I knew that now.

"You cannot do this—"

"How can I not ? I do as I'm told." Always. And so did he. That was who we were. "Why are you acting this way?" He had never once challenged me to go against my parents, or the role that had been decided for me since infancy. Quite the opposite. I resented this from him. Resented him . It was as though the book I knew, with all its familiar words and characters, with its satisfying ending, had suddenly rearranged itself on the pages... the story rewritten into something else. Why would he fill my head with such thoughts? With thoughts of rebellion? Why was he making this harder than it had to be? "Why are you doing this to me?"

" Me? What am I doing to you? I'm only urging you to think about yourself, to put yourself first."

Now? Now he was advising that? He thought he was doing me a favor? I shook my head fiercely. "No. Don't. You're not being fair."

"I'm not fair? I'll tell you what is not fair. You marrying that barbarian. You giving yourself, giving the rest of your life to—"

"For my kingdom. For the people of Penterra," I cut in. "No less than what you would do." He was captain of the guard. A soldier. That was his duty. He had always taken great pride in that. He should understand. I shouldn't have to convince him.

"They demand too much of you this time." His fingers flexed where they held me. "They're asking for your life."

"As a soldier you risk no less."

"You're not a soldier!" he exploded, and then compressed his lips as though regretting the outburst. He sent a wary look to my bedchamber door as though expecting someone to barge inside.

"That is precisely what I am. What I have been doing all these years..."

His chest lifted on a rough breath. "This will be worse. Worse than anything you've endured before."

I bristled. What did he know of what I had endured over the years? We did not speak of my beatings. I never shared those details. Not with him. Not with anyone. He had never witnessed them either. Never even asked about them. The closest we had come to discussing that part of my life—that very big part of my life—was the day he introduced me to the portraits of the others in the gallery. The ones like me. The day he told me that it would all end eventually and I would become someone else, someone with a life that belonged to me and me alone. At least it was supposed to have gone that way.

I shrugged free from his hands and put space between us. What did he know of my pain and discomfort? What did he know of the lord chamberlain panting in my ear as he brought the whip down on my back?

I'd buried those feelings, and now he dared to poke and prod at them, to expose them and drag them kicking and screaming out into the open. He cast light on them here in the dead of night in my bedchamber... on the eve of my wedding to the Beast of the Borderlands.

He continued in a hoarse voice, "You do this... and you will belong to him."

Was that so different from now? I didn't belong to myself here either.

I lifted my chin, steeling my resolve. "You should go. Now."

A desperate look came over his face. " We can go. The two of us. We can leave before the rest of the palace wakes."

I smiled, and it felt pained on my face. "The one thing I know about you, Stig... is that you always do what is right. You would never abandon your responsibilities for me. For anyone."

"I would. For you. I will. "

"No," I whispered with a slow shake of my head. "I won't forsake my sisters. One of them will have to marry him if I don't. I can't let that happen."

"Let it happen! It has always been their fate to marry for an alliance, to take a stranger for a husband. That is their fate." He stabbed a finger through the air at me. "Not yours."

"And my fate has always been to protect them, to do whatever is asked of me in order to do that."

He shook his head. "Not this." Nodding to the armoire, he commanded, "Pack a bag. We will go."

"We?" We. He would go with me? Run away with me as if we were two wanderers in the wind, troubadours or bards, free to do and go wherever we pleased.

It was impossible to fathom.

"Yes. I'll take you away from here. Away from—"

"You can't leave here." I nodded at our surroundings. "You're in this just as deep as I am. We have our duty."

"Damn my duty and damn yours!"

I flinched. I'd never heard him like this. Never so angry. Not on my behalf. Not on behalf of anyone or anything. He was never this... intense.

"Running away together will destroy us both," I insisted.

In the end, that would be the result. Who would we be but two people who deserted those who loved and relied on us? My sisters. My parents. Our country.

Stig had position and respect here, a shiny future with some highborn bride. How could I take him from that? He would come to resent me if I took him away from this world. Here, he was someone important. I would not let him sacrifice that for me.

"This isn't you. You're the most honorable person I know. The most responsible. People follow you because you're you . Not because you're the captain of the guard. Not because you're the lord regent's son. You don't run away from what's important."

Stig had been my champion for so long. He had always been there to make everything better, taking me for a ride or playing draughts with me or exploring the hidden passageways of the palace, entering through one room and popping out in another much to my delight.

"You're right," he agreed. "I don't run away from what's important."

And he kissed me.

I didn't close my eyes, too shocked at the warm press of his mouth. Stig's mouth. On mine.

Stig. Me. Kissing.

I expelled a breath, and he swallowed it, taking it inside him. Stig, my closest friend, was kissing me.

His lips moved over mine. He kept space between us. His well-formed body was of similar height to mine. I didn't have to angle my head, and he did not have to dip his lips. I lifted a hand, touched his cheek, fingers grazing over the silken pelt of his beard. It was pleasant, as comfortable as wrapping myself up in the weight of a familiar blanket.

He pulled back, his gaze crawling over my face with a tenderness I had never seen from him before. "We're leaving."

I moistened my lips and gave my head a small shake. "Where would we go?" It was a mistake to ask. Relief flooded his eyes, and I knew I'd given him hope. Hope that could never be fulfilled.

There would be no safe place for us in Penterra. We would be hunted down and found. We could reach Acton or the Isle of Meru on a passenger ship. The voyage would not be easy. The Dark Channel was notorious for its perilous waters. The ships that crossed safely were those that tossed live bait overboard to appease the creatures lurking beneath the black waters. Goats and pigs usually did the trick... but sometimes other bait was necessary. Criminals sentenced to death were condemned to the holding cells of ships bound abroad as silage. I shuddered at the thought of their last moments, cast out into monster-ridden waters, even if they were guilty of terrible crimes. The cold rush of the sea, the sharp terror and even sharper tear of teeth...

Assuming we could safely reach one of those distant shores, we could not rely on refuge from our allies if our identities were ever discovered. We would be forced back home. There would never be a day lived without looking over our shoulders, without gauging whether what we said or did might give us away.

"There is no escape," I asserted. "This is my life. I won't hide from it. Or run away. Besides. They would find us. Your father..." My voice thinned, fading like a dying wind as I shook my head. His father would never let his only son go. He would put bounties on our heads and send the most seasoned trackers after us. "We would never be free."

"I don't care."

I smiled indulgently and lifted a hand, brushing my thumb against his bearded cheek. Now he was behaving like a child. "Yes, you do. You have to care. And so do I. I care about my sisters. I cannot abandon—"

"They're not even your real sisters!"

The words gouged into me like fangs. All my tenderness vanished in a flash. "I can't believe you just said that to me." He sounded like my bullies... like his father and those who never accepted me, who made certain I always felt like an outsider: the children who whispered loudly enough for me to hear their words, the housemaids who exchanged looks and rolled their eyes when I was formally announced alongside my sisters. I never thought he would stoop to uttering such words to me, to becoming one of the dark shadows in my life.

He gazed at me intently, imploringly. "Tamsyn, I'm not trying to be hurtful. But it's true. You're not one of them. Not really. You take the beatings. You take their abuse. You don't matter to—"

"Who even are you?" I shook my head. This was not the boy who had filled my head with stories of the other whipping girls who had come before me and gone on to do great things. He began to speak, but I held up a hand, not really interested in his response. "Stop. Enough. This is what I do, what I am. What have I been all these years except for this ?" I demanded in a heated rush, lifting my arms wide at my sides. "You never objected before, but now, suddenly, it's so very wrong?" I dropped my arms, staring at him accusingly. "Take comfort. At least I won't be a whipping girl anymore. That's finally done."

His eyes went hard, the warm brown sinking to a dark granite. "You know that, do you?"

Anger flashed through me. "Well." The word twisted bitterly around my lips. "Whatever the case, it shouldn't bother you. It never has before."

This time, he flinched, and I felt both satisfied and awful. I didn't want it to be like this. We'd only ever been friends. I didn't want this ugliness between us.

A long moment passed before he pronounced grimly, "You will go through with this, then."

I nodded once, suffering the force of his deep brown eyes, so full of pity and disappointment that I reached inside myself and questioned whether rejecting him— rejecting us —was a mistake, after all. I had never disappointed Stig before, and my stomach sank and twisted at doing it now.

"You will marry him," he went on. "Go to his bed. Let him take you north, to those savage lands. Far away from here." He paused a beat. "Far away from me."

I peered into his face, read within the lines of his expression what I had never seen before, what I felt still in the numbing tingle of my lips. It took everything in me not to reach for my mouth, not to touch the echo of him there.

I pressed my hand deeply against my side. "Tomorrow I will do my duty and marry Lord Dryhten. And who knows? Perhaps he won't even want to take me with him."

Once he learns the truth, he might want to get as far away from me as possible.

Stig shook his head, a frustrated little sound breaking loose from him that I felt resonate inside me. "Oh, he'll take you with him." His breath sawed out of him, more animal than human. "He wouldn't leave you behind."

I studied him in the gloom, not sure what to make of that assertion. I was not nearly as confident.

Moistening my lips, I said in a shaky voice, "Life is full of hard choices, and this—"

Stig laughed then—a cruel sound that made me recoil. "Oh, Tamsyn. Is that what you think? That you've ever had a choice in anything? You speak of your duty, but what is it really but bondage? You will trade one captor for another tomorrow."

I took a step back, bewildered at why he was punishing me with such unkind words. He was supposed to be my friend, like always, but he might as well be calling me stupid. That was what I heard. My eyes stung, welling up with moisture.

"Arranged marriages happen all the time, Stig. You will likely—"

He cut in. "Who knows how he will treat you? What he will do to you? There will be no one to stop him. He could kill you and no one would do anything about it."

I suddenly felt cold all over, as though I was already a corpse, warm blood draining from me, and I hated him right then. I hated my friend for making this so hard... for putting this bitter fear into me.

As though he could read my thoughts, his voice lowered. "Tamsyn." He took my hand in his and gave it a squeeze. "I'm trying to free you... to save you."

My lungs ached, my breaths coming harder. It was like he was squeezing my chest and not just my hand. I felt a flicker of something akin to longing. Just as quickly, I crushed the impossible emotion, stomping it down like a bug beneath my shoe.

"Good night, Stig." I pulled my hand free and stepped several paces back from him, chafing my arms, suddenly chilled. My words rang with finality. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Tomorrow, on my wedding day.

Tomorrow, when Stig would be but a face in the crowd, a spectator, a distant shore left behind as I sailed into my new life.

His jaw hardened beneath the shadow of his close-cropped beard, and I knew he finally understood, finally accepted my fate for what it was. A life without him.

"Good night, Tamsyn," he said.

But what I heard was good-bye.