5. Nicolette

Half an hour later, I stepped into the dining hall with my usual trepidation.

Five years had passed, but I’d never forgotten how I’d seen my own brother Caulder—dead with a sword wound in his back—laid upon the long table in here. Or my cousin Soren, who’d been disemboweled ten feet away for killing Caulder. Or Yasmin—Vienne’s sister—whom I’d murdered, turning to dust with magic power, not but minutes after Soren’s demise.

Sometimes, I still woke in a cold sweat, breathing hard and trembling, just remembering that one horrible hour that had transpired in this very room.

Tonight, however, it was full of lights and music and the merry, mingled voices of my closest loved ones.

“Nicolette! Nicolette!” Five-year-old Anniston ran up to me, grinning wildly. “Look what I got in the village at the celebration today. Isn’t it beautiful?”

She touched the pink floral wreath she wore on her head and beamed with pride as she twirled in a circle before me, making her lavender skirts float in a circle around her.

Immediately relaxing in the presence of the child, I crouched in front of her to inspect the wreath fully. “It’s a fine laurel, my lady. Probably the finest in all the land.”

When I tweaked her nose, she giggled and raced off to join her toddling brother, Emory, who was petting one of the hounds lounging on the floor in front of the fireplace. Vienne’s daughter, Anniston, had been named after the very grandmother who’d been sister to Indigo’s storytelling grandpa, Atchison. Anniston’s father, however, was my late cousin, Soren, which made the girl my first cousin once removed, I guess.

Realizing that connected me in relation to my own bodyguard, I glanced back to find Indigo, only to realize he’d trooped over to visit Emory and the hounds as well. Shaking my head in amusement as I watched him reposition the sword hanging from his side so he could kneel next to the two-year-old, I decided to take my seat at the royal table, only to be stalled by my brother before reaching it.

“Sister!” Brentley’s voice boomed in a pleasant kind of surprise from across the room where he was already seated. “Are you to dine with us tonight, then? I had thought you might not come down this evening, seeing as you skipped the celebration in the village today.”

If I had looked toward the king’s seat of honor five years ago, I would’ve seen Caulder there instead, seated next to Soren, the two of them deep in discussion about something or other. But now that both my cousin and eldest brother were gone, that left my second brother, Brentley, wearing the crown, and his brother-in-law, Urban, who sat beside him.

I had never been close to Caulder, and Soren had ignored me completely. But both Brentley and Urban nodded in greeting with great respect and affection when I glanced their way, smiling mischievously as if they had a secret to behold.

I still wasn’t used to garnering such a reaction from two of the highest-ranked men in the kingdom. So I nodded back to them solemnly, not feeling the same cheer they seemed to be experiencing.

“I just wasn’t in the mood for large crowds today,” I answered.

To which Brentley’s brow furrowed in worry because I usually adored going to the village. “Has something been troubling you, dear heart?”

Another change from Caulder’s rule to Brentley’s: this king actually cared about my happiness.

I offered him a vague smile. “Of course not, brother. I must’ve just overtaxed myself with all the preparations for the festival, that’s all.”

“Then you must take it easier next time. I can’t have my favorite sister overtaxed and exhausted. There are always plenty of hands willing to help with such things. You know you never need to overburden yourself, don’t you?”

I inclined my head. “Of course. I just got carried away with all the planning. And before I knew it, I was completely spent.”

His smile spread. “Ah. I understand. ’Tis an affliction my wife suffers from as well.”

“Suffering isn’t the word I’d use for it exactly,” his wife countered as she strolled into the room, her elbow hooked with Urban’s wife, Vienne, who was cradling her infant son, Iver, in her arms. “I see it more as a gift and an opportunity to make our people smile. Not a suffrage at all.” Stretching her hand out to me, Queen Allera greeted, “Sister! Come. Vienne and I pined over your absence at the celebration today and now we wish to gossip with you about everything you missed.”

“Yes, we have much to share,” Vienne invited.

Vienne’s sister, Yasmin, had been the last queen, married to my brother Caulder and Yasmin had never smiled at me with such regard or requested that I join her and her ladies court for gossip. She’d only ever degraded and maligned me, talking down to me as if I were a child.

Which I had been. But still…

Here I was now, no longer so young or innocent, and everyone in the royal court looked upon me with far more regard and esteem than ever before. Yet for some reason, I felt more removed from them than ever before, too.

I knew I should’ve been unbearably happy. My life was everything it should be for a princess in my position. My brother, the king, gave me freedom and adoration. He listened to and considered my ideas. He seemed proud to have me in his court. He let me live and study how I wished within the castle, idling through the days in luxury, and pampered beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

And yet, I ached, wishing for more.

Wow, I was just a pathetic, spoiled heap, wasn’t I? Life was perfect for me, and I couldn’t even appreciate it? People would kill to be in my position. People had killed for it, in fact. And I merely felt indifferent.

Experiencing a nip of guilt for my ungratefulness, I nodded to my sister-in-law as I stepped toward her and Vienne, trying to force that spark of contentment in their company that I once had and knew I should have again. Touching Iver’s tiny toes as he slept peacefully in Vienne’s arms, I glanced over at Allera when she hooked my elbow with hers and tugged me in close, grinning wickedly.

“Should we tell her?” she asked Vienne before lifting her eyebrows expectantly.

“Oh, most definitely,” Vienne answered, swaying her youngest babe back and forth to keep him napping throughout our conversation. “Nicolette might never forgive us if we left her out of the loop a moment longer.”

When she glanced at her child’s face with such pride and adoration, I knew exactly what she was going to say just as both women shrieked together, “We’re pregnant!”

Wait. We?

Okay, that I had not been expecting.

“We?” I repeated, glancing between the two of them. “You mean, you’re both—?”

“Yes!” Allera confirmed on a delighted hoot, covering her stomach with two hands. “Both of us. My first. Her fourth. After being married to my first husband for seven years and then Brentley for five, I feared my womb was closed, but it’s not. It’s not, Nic! Isn’t that grand?”

“I—” I started in surprise, blinking rapidly. “It certainly is, yes.”

“And they’ll both be boys too,” Vienne added, shaking her head with a wide grin. “Nanny Wynter predicts they’ll be born within a week of each other.”

“Well,” I said breathlessly, pressing my palms to my cheeks when they stretched wide from the force of my smile. “This is all so wonderful. Congratulations! To both of you. And seriously, that’s some timing. Yet, I don’t wish to know how you two managed to coincide such a thing.”

While Allera laughed uproariously, Vienne blushed. “It was quite by accident, I assure you.”

“Brentley and I already have a name chosen,” Allera told me. “He’ll be dubbed Prince Cal. In honor of Caulder.”

Tears pricked my eyes as I nodded. “I love it,” I rasped, painfully moved by the tribute.

Needing to skirt any subject that might cause me more melancholy, though, I turned my attention to Vienne.

“And you?” I wondered. “Do you have a moniker selected for your newest addition? With all the progeny you’ve been manufacturing of late, I’m beginning to worry you’re running low on names to choose from.”

As Vienne scowled over my teasing, Allera threw her head back and howled in amusement.

“He shall be named Ulysses,” Vienne announced primly, lifting her chin and hugging Iver protectively closer to her. “And four children aren’t all that many, you know.”

“Certainly,” I sassed back, “except the speed in which you’re producing them suggests there might very well be dozens before you’re done.”

Tsking, Allera nudged my arm. “I think since my brother met Vienne while she was pregnant, he believes he must keep her that way.”

“Nonsense,” Vienne cried, turning bright red with embarrassment. “We’re just—”

“Completely horny?” Allera raised her eyebrows teasingly. “Unable to keep your hands off each other? Sexually unquenched?”

“Oh, you’re impossible,” Vienne muttered, trying to control her discomfort before pointedly turning to me. “Why do we put up with her heckling, Nicolette?”

I opened my mouth to remind her I’d been the instigator of said heckling, but Allera tipped her nose up regally and answered for me. “Because I’m the queen, and it amuses me to tease. Plus, you love me.”

I chuckled, shaking my head, and realized this was honestly the best life I could probably ever live. I cherished my family. I cherished how I was treated. I cherished my privileges.

So why was I filled with such yearning, wishing I had someone to share it all with, as Allera and Vienne did, or maybe my own child to cradle right now?

It was pure selfishness.

When my laughter faded before it probably should have, I glanced toward Vienne’s other two younglings, who were still over by Indigo at the fireplace, begging him to pick them up and dangle them upside down as he too often did.

I would probably never have children of my own.

I’d met my true love, and now he was gone. Knowing he had no doubt returned to his homeland in Far Shore—our sworn enemy—I realized I never would see him again either, just as something inside me whispered that I’d wait for him, anyway.

I knew nothing about him—if he was a good man or bad, pleasant or brutish, honest or corrupt, serious or impish—and yet I was counting on him to return someday to make my life finally feel complete.

How pathetic was that?

It all made me wish I’d never been so reckless as to get this stupid love mark tattooed to my face to begin with. I finally understood why Caulder had been so upset after I’d run out in secret and gotten one. They were powerful, dangerous magic. Once they tied you to another person, you never felt like your own again.

Just because Allera, Vienne, Urban, and Brentley seemed utterly pleased with their love marks—because they’d ended up with their true loves—didn’t mean they were all that amazing. I couldn’t see the benefit in mine at all.

It had helped me discover who my match was, sure. But that was it. It didn’t help you keep that person in your life. It didn’t make you happy. It didn’t ease you at all. In fact, since meeting him, I’d been downright miserable.

I had tried to complain about it to Indigo once, certain at least he would understand, since he had a mark as well and no true love to show for it. I swore, his mark kept him from finding a woman in Donnelly and settling down with her. He could’ve been perfectly happy by now with a litter of children—since he seemed fond of them, and women too—but he held off because his mark hadn’t felt connected to anyone else.

It was all hogwash, if you asked me. All the marks did was tie you down and prevent you from being who you could truly be.

And still, my idiot bodyguard had argued with me, saying it was just the opposite. Once you found the right person for you—your true partner—that was when you could finally become your full potential. No one got through life on their own, he’d insisted. We all needed others at some point. Well, the mark was supposed to help direct us toward the one person out there who could complement us better than anyone else ever could, that person we felt free and open enough to be our true selves with. The person we could connect and communicate with like none other.

Then why did it make me feel so damn miserable and alone, I wanted to cry. I knew who was supposed to make me happy, release my inhibitions, and unlock all my possibilities, and yet it hurt just to think about him.

Indigo had to be wrong; that’s all there was to it.

I sent my bodyguard a scowl from across the room, where he’d stationed himself against the back wall along with a horde of other guards, as Urban collected his children to usher them to the royal table for supper. It eluded me as to why Indigo still had so much faith in his mark when it’d never served him any good purpose either.

As if sensing my glower, Indigo glanced my way and winked.

I rolled my eyes and turned back to Allera and Vienne, only to find them watching me with a bit too much interest.

They each glanced toward Indigo and then back to me with knowing little smirks.

Vienne was the first to comment. “It’s so nice to see how close you and my cousin have grown over the years.”

Allera nodded, her gaze alight with gossip. “Is he, by chance, the reason you elected not to attend the festival today?”

I furrowed my brow, confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” The queen widened her eyes dramatically. “Are you and your bodyguard, you know…” Stepping intimately closer, she hushed her voice. “Having a liaison?”

I blinked at her, still not catching on at first. But then she added, “Not that I’d blame you or even discourage the match, if you were. He’s quite attractive and personable. I enthusiastically approve. In fact, I—”

“Oh my God,” I hissed. “You think I’m sleeping with Indigo? Seriously?”

Allera and Vienne traded winces before Vienne answered, “We’re just saying—”

“No, you’re meddling where you don’t belong. I already have a true love,” I stated emphatically. “One I’ve met and felt connected to. You know this. So you should know I would never—could never—no. Just no. It’s insulting to even hear such a suggestion.”

“I know, dear heart,” Allera started, reaching for my arm. “I just—” When I snatched my elbow away before she could catch it, she paused and inhaled patiently. “You must get so lonely,” she tried again. “And Indigo is always there, seeing to your needs. If you decided to—you know—pass the time with him to help fill the void, no one would blame you. I certainly wouldn’t, anyway.”

“Well, I would,” I snarled. “Now, never make such a suggestion to me again.”

“Ho there,” Brentley called from the table, finally noticing the tension brewing between us. “Is there something amiss between my favorite sister and favorite wife?”

Great. Now the whole damn family was going to join this dreaded discussion. What better way to end a miserable day?