Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 12 of 59

Delia sat at her cottage table with a blank sheet before her. The court wedding needed planning. She had to list who would stand where, what flowers would fill the hall, how the whole kingdom would watch her wed the prince. She dipped her pen. But her hand did not move. The rose gold ring caught the candlelight, and her mind slipped somewhere else. Three years back, she had walked a path she did not know. She was new to healing then, unsure where to build her practice. She stopped under a tree with soft pink leaves. A wooden swing hung from one branch. A man sat on it, turning a folded letter in his hands. He did not look like a prince. He looked tired. "You're on my swing," she said, half joking. "I'll share it," he answered. He slid over. She sat. He nodded at the river below. "You could heal people here. People pass this way." She had not told him she was a healer. "How did you know?" "Your hands," Nick said. "They pick at the leaves without thinking. Like they're always looking for something useful." She had chosen the riverside soon after. Because of him. Because he saw what she was before she said it. The cottage door opened and pulled her back. Nick stepped in, still in his dark palace coat. He saw the blank sheet and the still pen. "You've been sitting a long time," he said. "I was remembering the pink tree," she said. "The swing. The day we met." He set his hand on the table. "I remember. You told me I was in your way." "You told me my hands were always searching." She looked up at him. "Nick, I can't plan this wedding." His jaw set. "The king ordered it. In the open, before the court." "I know. But not this way." She stood. "A hall full of nobles isn't us. It never was. We met on a swing under a tree. Let's marry there." He was quiet. "The court expects a spectacle." "Let them come to the field, then. Where I heal people. Under the sky." Her voice steadied. "If the whole kingdom must watch, let them watch me marry you in the place I built for the sick and the poor. Let the wedding show them what the garden is for." Nick studied her. Then he almost smiled, the way he had that first day. "They'll see the field full of patients. Not banners." "Good," she said. "That's the truth of it." He nodded once. "I'll tell my father. A wedding on your land." Delia looked down at the blank sheet. She would not fill it with a hall and flowers for nobles. She dipped her pen and began a new list. Where the sick would sit. Where the swing tree would stand. How to make her sanctuary ready for the eyes of the whole court.