A Throne for Sisters

The woman merely grinned in return, as if knowing Kate had no choice.

Kate backed away, and as soon as she reached the steps, she ran, stumbling as she went. Siobhan’s mad laughter followed her.

“I’ll be here when you change your mind.”

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Sophia still couldn’t believe that Sebastian had proposed to her. She’d barely been able to get used to the fact that she’d found a place in the palace as his lover, and now, suddenly, his ring sat on her finger. She couldn’t believe that things had swept forward so quickly, and that she was now getting married. It felt like being carried along by a stream, so fast that there was no way to know what was happening half the time.

Sophia hadn’t known that planning a wedding could involve so much. She had known that it wouldn’t just be a question of finding a priest, when it came to royalty, but there were complexities that she had never considered. There were feasts to be organized, announcements to be made. There were even permissions to be sought, because the dowager and the Assembly of Nobles would have to give their blessing before a prince’s marriage could go ahead. The latter, according to those officials she asked, would be a formality. This was one matter where the nobles would go along with whatever their ruler said.

Getting Sebastian’s mother to agree sounded like anything but a formality. She had been kind enough during the dinner where Sophia had met her, but Sophia wasn’t stupid enough to believe that a ruler would be happy about one of her sons marrying someone who couldn’t cement an alliance or bring in new lands. Currently, Sophia found herself surrounded by a small coterie of helpers, with a clerk going through all the etiquette of asking permission, a dressmaker working on designs for a wedding gown, and the palace cook talking about whether they should have swan or goose.

“Obviously, it’s the tradition here, but I thought that perhaps I could do a selection of delicacies from your home.”

Their names flickered through the cook’s mind, so Sophia picked a couple, then waved the issue away.

“I’m sure you’ll make it wonderful, whichever you choose,” Sophia said. She wished that Cora were there to help her navigate a route through it all.

She wished that Sebastian were there, rather than caught up in preparations for the army and the role he would have within it. Sophia felt as though there was only so much she could do alone and being with him… well, that was kind of the point of all this, wasn’t it? What was the point of getting married if her husband-to-be wasn’t even there?

If she were just doing this to have a good life, that might not have mattered. She could have designed the dream wedding, without the almost unnecessary presence of a husband. Sophia could imagine Angelica sitting quite happily in one of Sebastian’s rooms, ordering around servants as she planned for her position as his wife.

Sophia wanted Sebastian. More than that, she loved him. She felt the ache of need whenever he wasn’t there, and the world seemed to brighten whenever he was. Now, it seemed that she was trapped in the middle of preparations for a wedding, without the chance to actually see her husband-to-be.

Then he was there, and Sophia stood to throw her arms around him. She was shocked when he took a step back.

“Sebastian?”

“Come with me, Sophia,” he said.

“What is this about?” Sophia asked. She tried to pick the answer from Sebastian’s thoughts, but right then, those were a tangled mess, filled with hurt and confusion. There was too much in there at once to focus on any one strand. “Did something happen? Sebastian, what’s going on?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that,” Sebastian said, in a tone that made Sophia’s blood seem to turn to ice. Something had gone wrong. The girls in the castle had invented a rumor about her, or his mother had refused the marriage. Maybe the shop to which she had sold the dress had come to tell Sebastian about his new bride. There were so many things that could have gone wrong with her plan that it always seemed as though it was held together only through gossamer strands.

Sophia didn’t know which thing had gone wrong, so she followed Sebastian through the palace, moving from the main quarters to the guest rooms, going to one where everything seemed ordinary, except that a guard stood outside the door.

“Thank you,” Sebastian said to the man. “You can go now.”

“Yes, your highness,” the man said. He walked off, but just his presence made Sophia wonder what was going on there.

When Sebastian pushed open the door, she had an answer of sorts. The room had been repurposed as an artist’s studio, most of the furniture stripped away to make way for canvasses stretched out, ready for work. Sophia didn’t have to ask whose quarters these were: they were obviously for Laurette van Klet, the artist Sebastian had brought in to create a portrait of Sophia. The sketches of Sophia said as much. Even the beginnings of a painting sat at the heart of it all, worked in oil. It wasn’t anywhere near complete yet, and Sophia suspected that it was itself a preparatory piece for a bigger work, but it was still further along than she’d thought, showing her as she’d been in the garden, informal and more beautiful than she suspected she was in real life.

“Well?” Sebastian asked.

“Well, it’s beautiful,” Sophia said. “But I don’t understand – ”

“Here,” Sebastian said, pointing to a spot on the painting. A spot where Sophia’s dress had ridden up in the casual joy of the day, revealing a stretch of her calf, and the mark that sat there like an accusation.

She’d covered it up with makeup for the ball. She’d done it intermittently since, but she hadn’t today. She’d forgotten. Had she forgotten for their trip along the river too? The truth was that she didn’t know, but the evidence was right there in front of her. The only question was what she was going to do with it now.

“I don’t understand,” was all she could think to say.

Sebastian shook his head. “Don’t lie to me, Sophia. Laurette paints what she sees. Only what she sees.” He reached for her then, and although Sophia started to pull back, he caught her by the shoulders. “Some of the women around the palace have been talking too, saying that something seems wrong about you. I thought they were just being jealous, but what if they aren’t?”

Sophia tried to stop him as he lifted the hem of her dress, knowing that once he did this was over. There was nothing she could do though, and in moments, the symbol of indenture tattooed onto her calf was plain to see.

Sebastian stared at it for several seconds, and then stepped back. Sophia could feel the shock rising from him, his thoughts coming in such a rush that it was hard to keep up with them all. She watched as he sank to the floor in the midst of the arranged easels, looking as though he were trying to shut out the world.

“Sebastian,” Sophia began, wanting to go to him to comfort him, but that wouldn’t work, would it? Not when she was the one hurting him.

He looked up, and Sophia could see the glimmer of tears in his eyes. It was something she hadn’t expected, and something she had definitely never wanted to be the cause of.

“Why?” he demanded. “Why lie to me, Sophia? Is that even your real name?”

“Yes,” Sophia assured him. For the first time since she’d met him, she let the accent she’d assumed fall. “Just not of Meinhalt.”

“Even your voice isn’t real?” Sebastian said, and now he sounded distraught. “We’ve known each other… what? Days, at best. We don’t know anything about one another, do we? Who are you?”

Sophia swallowed at that question. It was one she wasn’t sure she knew the answer to herself. She’d tried to create an answer, but it wasn’t the real one. She asked herself the question over and over without an answer. It still hurt to hear it from Sebastian, though.

She wanted desperately to tell him everything. About herself, her past, and above all, about how much she genuinely loved him. About how, even if all else was fake, her love for him was real. About how she never meant to hurt him. How her lying, her behaving like this, wasn’t even her.

But in her frenzy of emotions, the words caught in her throat. All she could manage was:

“I didn’t want it to be like this.”

Sebastian stood, going over to one of the canvasses. As sudden as a storm, he picked it up and smashed it, tearing through it.

“You tricked me!” he cried out. “You took advantage of me! All you were after was my wealth! My position! You never cared for me at all!”

She felt a pain in her chest at his words, at the sudden violence of it all, of seeing her image being torn to bits. It was a fitting image for how she felt about herself, her life, all being torn to bits about her.

Despite her best efforts, she started to cry. She stood there and cried like a little girl with no one to comfort her.

It seemed to surprise Sebastian. He stopped what he was doing, and his rage abated. He stared back at her, as if sorry, as if realizing he’d gone too far.

And yet he did not come to comfort her.

She wanted so badly to read his thoughts, and yet they were such a jumble of heightened emotions, of contradictory feelings, she could not read them at all.

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” Sophia involuntarily blurted out.

She immediately regretted it. She didn’t want his sympathy anymore, or his help.

And yet still, he stood there, silent. His rage and shock seemed to be calming, his face seemed to be conforming to something like compassion, or pity.

She didn’t want pity. And least of all from him.