Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 1 of 59

Delia Prance wanted a garden where any hurt traveler or animal could heal for free. Right now she had four empty beds, cracked soil, and no fence to keep the deer out. She knelt by the river beside her cottage and counted what she owned. A jar of dried mint. A bundle of nightshade she had picked by instinct. Nothing that would buy seedlings. A farmer had come at dawn with two coins and a grateful face. She had pressed his hand shut around them and sent him home. She never took coin. But kindness did not fill the beds, and the empty rows shamed her every morning. "You turned him away again." Nick Rider stood at her gate. The second prince wore his dark blue coat, but his boots were caked with village mud. He had walked, not ridden. He came often now, and each time he brought news that weighed on him. Delia stood and brushed dirt from her apron. "I don't sell what I do," she said. "I know." Nick looked at the empty beds. "So they stay bare. That helps no one." He was right, and she hated that he was right. She loved him partly for saying the hard thing plainly. "I won't charge the sick," she said. "Ever." "Then don't." Nick stepped through the gate. "Charge the ones who aren't sick. The palace kitchens throw out silver on wilted flowers. Grow them a field of blooms. Sell the beauty. Give away the medicine." Delia went still. A field of flowers, sold to nobles who wanted color on their tables. The coin from vanity would buy fences and seedlings. The healing would stay free. She could keep her rule and fill her beds at once. "Where would I even grow that much?" she asked. Nick pointed past the cottage to the open field beyond the river bend. It ran wide and empty, catching full sun. "There. It's crown land. No one uses it." He pulled a folded paper from his coat and pressed it into her hand. His fingers were cold. "A grant. It gives you the field. I signed it myself." She unfolded it. Her name sat there in ink beside his seal. "Your father allowed this?" "No." Nick's jaw tightened. "He doesn't know. He's busy signing land away from three villages." He held her eyes. "So take the field before he thinks to sell that too." A black fox trotted from the reeds and sat at Delia's feet, watching the paper as if it understood. Delia laughed, short and surprised. She closed her hand over the grant. "All right," she said. "A field of flowers to feed the sick." But she caught the shadow on Nick's face. He had given her crown land without the king's word. When his father found the grant, someone would answer for it. Delia had her field now. She had also tied her garden to a fight inside the palace she did not yet understand.