Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 28 of 59

The king came at midmorning. Delia stood at the porch of her flower-draped house and watched his horse crest the path. Nick rode beside his father. Behind them, well back, came Arden. The beds looked earned now, thinned and spread by two nights of labor. But one bed near the fence still troubled her. A drying root had shot up thick and tall overnight. She had grown it too fast to hide. Rowan swung down and walked the rows without a word. He stopped at each bed. He counted. He touched the leaves of a young mint and moved on. Delia followed a step behind, her hands folded to hide their shaking. "Good soil," Rowan said. "Better than my steward's fields." He stated it plainly and kept walking. Then he reached the fence bed. He looked at the tall root. His brows drew down. "This one is old. Years old. The rest are months." He turned to her. "Explain it." Delia's mouth went dry. She had no answer that would hold. Arden reached the fence then. He had dismounted quietly. He looked at the root, then at Delia, then at his father. Delia braced. This was the brother she had ordered off her land, the man who wanted her still. "I planted that one," Arden said. Flat, like a fact everyone should know. "Last spring. When she cured me. I dug it in myself before the house was raised." He met the king's eyes. "You want a witness. I'm your witness." Rowan studied his first son. The court had watched this man lose his father's favor. Now he stood covering for the woman his brother married. Rowan said nothing for a long moment. Nick stepped in beside Arden. "It's true," Nick said. "I was here. He put it in the ground." He did not look at his brother. He looked at his father and held the lie steady. Rowan looked from one son to the other. Two princes who agreed on nothing, agreeing now. He grunted. "Then it grew slow, like a root should." He let the tall stem go. "The field is what she claimed. I've seen enough." He mounted and rode for the gate. His steward trailed after him. The danger passed with the dust of the horses. Arden turned to leave without a word. Delia caught his sleeve. "Why?" she asked. He looked at her hand, then her face. "Because you saved my life," he said. "And because he'd have taken you apart to learn how." He pulled free and walked to his horse. Delia stood between the two brothers who had shielded her. The secret held. But she had a new debt now, one owed to the man she had sent away. And she knew Arden would come to collect it. A truth shared with three people was no longer a secret she alone could guard.