This time when the healers approached, he allowed it, and one of them held out a glass. “Here, make her drink this.”
“I take it this concoction will work better than the last?” He held the glass up to Margaret’s mouth. At first, she twisted away from the bitter smell, but he pressed it to her lips, tipping it back until she swallowed a large gulp.
He expected her to spit it out, healing tonics being vile and whatnot, but she took another swallow and another until the blueish liquid was gone. By then, her eyelids drooped, and her sobs lessened. Margaret passed quickly into a deep sleep, and King Leon passed her to her nursemaid.
“How in all the Thirteen Hells did she wake?”
“I don’t know, Your Majesty. She should have slept through a siege with the drugs we gave her,” said the healer.
King Leon sighed. His own muscles struggled to bear his six foot frame, and he stumbled before falling ungracefully into the chair beside him. Its wooden legs scraped across the floor, and the healer winced. Leon held his breath a moment, straining his ears for the cries of his daughter. When silence was the only reply, he released the air in his lungs and centered his sights on the healer who was trying to exit unceremoniously through the open door.
“A moment if you will, healer.” The woman paused, her hand resting on the door handle. “When she wakes and is better, will she recall more about the–the attack that killed my wife?”
“Probably not. She spent two days on a wandering horse in the cold rain. We’re lucky she didn’t catch a chill or worse. She’ll probably block out the event completely. It would be better that way. To forget.”
“My wife’s death.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. My apologies, Your Majesty.”
“You may leave.”
Not that he would want her to remember this. Poor child. Poor Catherine. Three days since, and only now did he think on her. The loss hurt, but less than he’d expected. A miracle he didn’t deserve. Their last days together weren’t those of the ballads. She had hated him. King Leon paced and glanced at the door. The least he could do was grieve her loss.
He glanced at the door for a fourth time. Goefrin hadn’t returned. Not that he blamed the poor man. First he has to inform me of my wife’s death, and Margaret little more than breathing, and then Iliana— King Leon gripped the chair until his fingers were chalky white.
“Oh, Iliana, child.” he cried out and was glad for the drugs the healers had given Margaret.
King Leon bolted upright, soaked bed sheets clinging to him in a mad tangle. The colors and emotions of the fifteen-year-old memory warred with the vision of the present—his bedchamber draped in darkness and silence as the castle slept.
Goosebumps spread across his damp skin, and he gasped for air. Like a hunter, his heart pounded in his chest and echoed between his ears. He lay back against the frame of his empty bed. Funny that he would dream of her death now, or maybe not. Even Margaret thought on her often with the approaching wedding.
Unable to sleep, he rose and stuck his arms through the sleeves of his robe while crossing to one of the few windows in his bedchamber: a tiny square that afforded him a view of the capital city of Alesta and beyond it to the forest in the North.
It used to be said that good tidings came from the North. Now they came from the West. He laughed aloud at the thought.
He retreated to his dresser where he fingered the letter from his sepier. The paper still smelled of sweat and leather, of her, and its corners bore her dirty fingerprints. He thrust a fist in the air, the grin stretching his cheeks too wide. Iliana was coming home. Leon’s fingers shook as he unfolded the letter.
To His Majesty, King Leon Poncett III,
At your request, I delivered your letter. It was several days before I heard back from my contact, who told me this morning that the master has agreed to your terms.
Though he warns that should I ever set foot in Sadai again (or you for that matter), he can’t be responsible for what may or may not happen. She’s to meet me in Brieghton, assuming I make it out of Sadai alive.
Your Servant,
-I
The closing of the sitting room door alerted him to the presence of someone outside his bedchamber. “His Majesty is still asleep,” said one of the guards.
“Not anymore,” Leon muttered. He opened the door to Goefrin’s hunched frame and stepped out into the sitting room. The old man tried to appear relaxed, a sleepy smile on his weathered face, but his tight grip on his walking stick gave him away. “What is it, old friend? Why such a tense visit this early in the new day?”
“Odd news reaches these ears; news that I didn’t quite believe.”
“Leave us,” said King Leon to the guards who retreated to the outer hallway. He gestured for the advisor to continue and took a seat to a chorus of creaks and pops.
Both of us are getting old, neither of us moving with ease anymore. Goefrin was old when I became King, but now he’s ancient. I have to wonder if he sleeps at all these days. Heavy bags dragged under Goefrin’s green eyes, bags that took up more room than the sallow sunken cheeks did. Was it all an act?
“You look at me as if I’m dying, boy. It’s just age.”
King Leon forced a laugh. “You just remind me of
