“It is believed?” Tiras asked, incredulous.
“She doesn’t remember.” Kjell shrugged.
“She is familiar to me,” Lark said, her brows furrowed above luminous eyes, her small pointed chin cradled in her palm.
“It is the hair,” Tiras remarked, his eyes trained beyond Kjell where Sasha had been, turning pages in his head, trying to find something he’d once seen.
“I’ve never seen hair like hers,” Kjell interjected, and felt a wash of embarrassment at the awe in his voice.
“No. Not as deep a red,” Tiras said. His eyes were troubled.
“Lady Sareca of Kilmorda had hair like that. She was a friend of my mother’s. She came once to Corvyn before my mother’s death and several times after. My father considered Lord Kilmorda an ally. Surely there is someone from Kilmorda who would remember a girl like Sasha in the lord’s house,” Lark ruminated.
“Zoltev was convinced the lordship in Kilmorda gave refuge to the Gifted, and he put a great deal of pressure on the lord of the province to continually prove his innocence,” Tiras said.
“Or maybe he wanted to control the ports and the wealth in Kilmorda,” Kjell said. “I was old enough to accompany the guard to and from Kilmorda several times before Zoltev disappeared and you became king, Tiras. Kilmorda was the richest province in Jeru, even richer than Degn. Lord Kilmorda had close relationships with the lands to the north, conducting trade that did not involve the oversight of the kingdom. Zoltev didn’t like that.”
“It was no coincidence that Kilmorda was the land he most completely destroyed,” Tiras agreed.
“And no coincidence that the lord of the province and his family did not survive the attacks,” Kjell added.
For a moment the conversation lulled, the king, the queen, and Kjell all lost in their own memories of what Kilmorda had endured.
“Sasha will be our guest, and she will be safe here,” Lark promised. “We will see to it, and we will do our best to find someone who might be able to identify her.”
***
Sasha was not terribly comfortable being a guest.
Mistress Lorena, under the queen’s direction, put her in a room in the same wing as the family, assigning a lady’s maid to dress her hair and assist her in her daily toilette. Dresses were commissioned, and all manner of bits and baubles, underthings and overskirts, slippers and shoes, and handkerchiefs and head scarfs were brought in for her use. Sasha accepted it all with gracious wonder but promptly donned one of the dresses Kjell bought her in Solemn and braided her own hair.
When Lark discovered Sasha could read and write, she asked her to act as her personal assistant, though Lark’s abilities made assistance feel more like providing company rather than work, and Sasha was accustomed to work. Kjell overheard her needling Mistress Lorena for a bucket of water and a stiff brush to scrub the cobblestones in the courtyard.
The first morning after their arrival, he found her wrapped in a fur, asleep on the floor outside his door. The next night he left his door unlatched for the first time in his life and lay with his ears straining for her arrival. When he heard a slight scuffling and a small bump against the corridor wall, he rose and led her into his chamber. He patted the side of the bed farthest from him, and she promptly climbed in and fell asleep. Every morning after that, he found her curled beside him, and every morning he woke her before sunrise so she could return to her own room to avoid alerting the very curious staff of their arrangement. He never denied her. In fact, they never even spoke of their odd need to continue what they’d started weeks before.
During the days he hardly saw her. And he missed her. He ached with it. In the pit of his stomach and the back of his throat, in the balls of his feet and the palms of his hands, he missed her. It horrified him, and he made himself volunteer for patrol, staying away two days longer than needed just to prove he could. Then he practically ran through the halls of the castle, through the kitchens, into the cellar, and out in the gardens looking for her.
He found the queen instead, sitting among the roses, a book in her hand and Wren in her arms. The book floated in front of her, the pages turning at her command.
“Are you abusing your power, Lady Queen?” he asked.
“I am using my power, brother. I don’t want Wren to tear at the pages.”
“Wren is sleeping.”
“Yes. And I want to hold her and read. The book is heavy,” she protested, but humor danced in her large, grey eyes. “Are you looking for Sasha?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, sheepish.
“You look as though you are desperate to find her,” she remarked, commanding the book to lower and close. She was teasing him, but it was the absolute truth, and he was certain she knew it.
He was desperate to find her.
“You feel something for her,” Lark said. She didn’t ask, didn’t over-exaggerate. Lark was incredibly careful with her words, as they could curse men and control beasts. She approached every interaction with the fear that she would harm unintentionally, and listened far more than she spoke.
“Yes. I feel something for her,” he admitted quietly, grateful he didn’t have to admit more, and sank down on a garden bench at an angle to his brother’s wife.
“And you don’t want to?” the queen asked.
“I have tried not to.”
“But feelings don’t always obey.”
“No.” He shook his head. “They don’t. But I don’t trust . . . my feelings. Especially because I healed her. The healing has created a . . . bond. A strong one. An unnatural one.”
“I see.” She was silent for a moment, as if examining his confession for holes.
“Do you have feelings for me?” she asked suddenly.
Kjell’s eyes shot to hers, and he knew she saw the curse he swallowed.
“No,” he clipped.
The queen laughed, the sound light and silvery, like the woman herself.
“I admire you,” he amended. “I would die for you, gladly. I even . . . love you. But . . .” he struggled to explain something he didn’t understand himself.
“But you healed me too, Kjell. Remember?”
He hadn’t considered that.
“Yet the bond is very different than what you are feeling for Sasha, isn’t it?”
Even her name hurt him, piercing him sweetly, and he hung his head in submission.
“I have loved badly before,” he grunted. He could barely say the words, and they were mostly unintelligible. The queen, however, did not miss them.
“I see,” she sighed. She didn’t argue with him, didn’t question his feelings or his misgivings. She just let the statement be, accepting the truth of it. He had loved badly, and the kingdom had suffered. He had suffered. Terribly.
After a time, the queen spoke again, returning to the matter at hand.
“Sasha is devoted to you.”
“Yes.” He agreed without equivocation. He knew that she was.
“But you don’t trust her devotion either?” the queen asked.
“It is born of gratitude and servitude. I don’t want either of those things from her.”
“What do you want?”
When Kjell failed to respond, Lark answered for him. “You want her to love you. It is an entirely different thing, isn’t it?”
“I think so, yes,” he confessed, and felt both relief and pain at the admission. “I am not easy to love.”
Lark laughed again, and he winced. “That, my dear Kjell, is a good thing. The very best things in life are born of difficulty. Whatever comes too easily is easily abandoned.”