“Make room for me,” Emory said, and Ama shifted over in her bed so that Emory could sit down beside her.
She raised herself up onto her elbows, and would have sat fully erect but for Emory’s insistent hand on her shoulder, pinning her there, and then his insistent mouth slashing down across her own.
His mouth was hot and wet and open and tasted of the evening’s wine and meat. Underneath the weight of him—his mouth, first, and then his chest across hers, pressing Ama back into the mattress—Ama felt breathless and trapped, as if she had been submerged underwater.
This had felt like her own room earlier in the evening, but now it was clear that the room, and everything it contained—including Ama herself—was the property of the castle, and of Emory, as master of it.
Only her one hand, which rested still on Sorrow’s back, felt like Ama’s own. The rest of her became part of the landscape of the room—her lips, pressed into Emory’s teeth. Her hair, torn from its neat plait by his desperate hand. Her breast, when he shifted his weight up and slipped his hand down from her head to her chest, pulling apart the ribbons of her chemise, spreading open the cloth, and finding her bare skin beneath. His hand squeezed her flesh as if he would try to make something from it, and the calluses of his palm rubbed across her nipple, causing it to harden, which Ama noticed as if watching from some distance rather than from within the very skin he handled.
But when Emory tugged up at the hem of Ama’s shift, bunching its fabric at her waist and running his hand first across the downy nest of hair between her legs and then pushing his fingers inside of her, opening her in a way she had not known she could be opened, Sorrow growled once more.
This time, Ama loosened her fingers from the lynx’s pelt, a silent permission to do what Ama could not.
Wild now, the lynx arched her back and hissed, eyes glowing in the last of the fire. Her claws were black talons, and she stretched them menacingly. Lips pulled back from her fangs, Sorrow was dangerous and feral.
Emory’s hand froze, fingers knuckle-deep in Ama, and then, slowly, he withdrew it, leaving her bruised and undone.
Emory cleared his throat, lifted himself from the bed, and arranged his yard, which stood in his trousers, hard and demanding.
“Forgive me,” he said, to Ama or to Sorrow, she did not know. “I am addled by the wine and your presence here, in my castle. There will be time, after solstice, for such things.”
And he bowed, and he dropped the bed curtain, and he turned for the door.
But before he left the room, he said one more thing: “By our wedding night, Ama, that creature will be gone.”
Tillie’s Aunt
When Ama awoke again, it was to the sounds of the ladies in her room. The fire was built back up, the bed curtains pulled open.
Tillie was there, and Ama was glad to see her freckled face. It was Tillie who offered Ama the chamber pot, though it was Rohesia who took it away after.
A girl who had helped serve at dinner the night before brought Ama a tray from the kitchen. Her face, unlike Tillie’s, was not open to Ama; eyes downcast, surly-mouthed, she delivered the tray to Ama’s bed with apathetic duty. When she put it in Ama’s lap, the hot morning drink splashed out of its cup.
“Take care, Fabiana!” Tillie reprimanded.
“My apologies,” Fabiana said, with a quick curtsy that Ama could tell was clearly perfunctory.
“That girl,” Tillie said, mopping up the spilled beverage. “Don’t pay her any mind.”
“She seems unhappy,” Ama said.
Tillie looked as if she might say more, but instead she pushed the tray to Ama and said, “Eat while you can, lady. We have a day in front of us, we do.”
And so they did. Much of the morning was spent pulling on and taking off various gowns for the coronation, while Tillie took measurements and Rohesia took notes. There were a half dozen of them, plus underdressings, and a cloak and cape, as well.
Ama gave herself over to Tillie’s practiced hands, and she thought, as Tillie fastened up the final gown, that she much preferred having her body touched like this, in a detached and utilitarian manner, to the way Emory had touched it the night before.
She obligingly held up her arms as Tillie checked the gown’s fit, turned this way and that as Tillie measured the hem.
“Do you prefer this gown or the last?” Tillie asked.
“The last,” Ama said. “It was looser in the chest. I could breathe more easily.”
“That is not what I meant,” Tillie said. “Which gown did you prefer the look of? Which do you think was more becoming?”
“Oh,” said Ama. “I have no preference about that. Whichever you think, I am sure.”
Tillie smiled. “My aunt told me that the queen mother had no preferences of this sort either, when she first came to the castle. But she learned, she did, and now she is well known for her sharp eye about what flatters her best. You will be the same, I wager, in time.”
This caught Ama’s attention. What was it that the queen mother had said last night, at dinner? That Emory had rescued a damsel from a dragon, and “earned his position as tradition dictates.” That meant that the queen mother herself must have once been a damsel as well. “Tillie,” Ama said, “tell me more about the queen mother.”
“Well, she wasn’t born here, of course. She was like you—saved from a dragon, rescued by the king.” Tillie’s tongue was loosened by her attention to her work, bending to measure, calling out to Rohesia, standing, turning Ama, measuring again. “All kings, for as far back as our memory goes, are made the same way. The prince must venture alone away from Harding. He must find a dragon. He must conquer the dragon and free the damsel from captivity. When he returns home with his prize, he has proven himself worthy of the crown and is made king.”
“Tell me,” Ama said, wanting to hear the answer from Tillie, “did the queen mother have any people—people who knew her before she was taken by the dragon, who came to Harding to celebrate her rescue and her marriage to the king?”
Tillie stopped her work, straightened, frowned. “Oh, no,” she said. “The damsel never has people, you know, until she is a wife and then a mother. And it’s her very son whose coronation is almost upon us, my lady. It’s just hours before you will be presented to the court and crowd as his queen-in-waiting. That is why I wonder—this gown, or the other?”
“This gown will do,” Ama said, gazing at her reflection in the long ovular mirror. The queen mother had no people. And Ama had no people, just the same.
“It is funny you pick this gown,” Tillie said, “for it is the very gown the queen mother chose twenty years ago, when she was presented to court and crowd as the queen-in-waiting.”
“Oh?” said Ama. “How do you know that? Surely that was well before your time.”
“My aunt helped me unpack these gowns from storage, in anticipation of your arrival,” Tillie said. “She served the queen mother in her first months here at the castle, just as I serve you.”
Ama regarded the wide velvet swoop of the gown’s purple arms. She saw reflected her own hands, turned to reverse in the mirror glass. “I would like to meet this aunt of yours,” she said to Tillie. “Bring her to me, please.”
It was, Ama thought, as Tillie bowed her head and left to fetch her aunt, the first order Ama had given.
Tillie’s aunt came to Ama’s room, her face obscured by a veil. “You called for me, lady?” she said, dropping a deep curtsy. Her gown was not the rough-hewn hemp of the lesser servants, but a flat black of sturdy material. It was plain by design, her dress, severely plain.
“I did,” said Ama. “Tillie tells me that you served the queen mother when she first came to the castle. I hope you might be able to help me learn my place here, as you have seen a damsel arrive to the castle before.”
“It is not for me to tell a queen-in-waiting her place,” Tillie’s aunt said. “If anything, it is for her to tell me mine.”
“Your place,” said Ama, “right now, is here, at my ear. And I implore you to speak freely, and tell me what you can of the queen mother and the other damsels who have come before me.”
Tillie’s aunt said nothing. Ama felt as though she was being studied, very closely, through the veil that shrouded the woman’s face.
For a moment, she gave herself over to being examined, but she found she was tired of being the object of others’ gazes. “What is your name?” she asked Tillie’s aunt.
“Allys, it is,” Tillie’s aunt replied.
“Allys,” said Ama. “Please, remove your veil. If you shall regard me with such a look, then I wish to see your face just as clearly.”
Allys bowed her head and brought her hands to her veil. She took it up at its hem and folded it back across her head of steel-gray hair.
And then she raised her gaze, and Ama looked into her face—and into her one green eye.