Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 48 of 59

They rode back to the healing house at dusk. The two crowns stayed at the palace, wrapped in cloth, waiting for a coronation Delia had not agreed to want. She was heir's wife now. Safer, the king had said. But the nobles would not forgive it, and Delia felt their eyes even here, miles from the throne. She wanted one night without the weight of it. The house met them draped in blossoms, its windows dark, the beds inside empty until morning. Delia unlocked the door and breathed in. Dried herbs. Clean linen. Home. Nick came in behind her and dropped the satchel of petition marks on the table. For the first time in days, no one was watching them. "The workers went home," she said. "No patients tonight." "Then no one needs us," Nick said. He pulled off his stiff court coat and hung it on a chair. Without it he looked younger, just a man in his shirt, tired around the eyes. "Just us." They climbed the stairs to the small room at the top. The cedar bed sat under the window, dressed in pink and blue flowers. Delia sat on the edge and let her shoulders drop. Nick sat beside her. He took her hand and turned it over, tracing the palm where a cut had once closed itself in front of him. "You went still when he named you queen," Nick said. "I saw it." "I came to be hard to ignore. Not to wear a crown." "I know." He did not soften it. "But a queen keeps her door open and no steward argues. A queen grows what she likes and no noble counts the beds." He met her eyes. "You'll be out of their reach. That is worth the gold on your head." Delia looked at him. She thought of the locked room down the hall, the family tree hidden inside, the willow, her body that would not stay wounded. All of it under a queen's protection. Or all of it under a queen's watch. She still did not know which. But tonight the man beside her was not the prince or the heir. He was Nick, who had signed a grant against his father to give her a field. "You're glad," she said. "Truly glad." "I'm glad you'll be safe," Nick said. "That was always the whole of it." She leaned into him. His arm came around her. Outside, the river ran past in the dark, the way it always had, open to anyone who came to it. Delia let herself believe, for one night, that the crown could guard her garden instead of cage it. "Then I'll wear it," she said again, quiet. "But we do this together. Every step." "Every step," Nick said. She slept without fear that night. In the morning, the first patient would knock, and the court would begin sharpening its knives. But that was tomorrow. Tonight the house was theirs.