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“Are you nearly ready?” Kestrin asked, popping his head in the door of Rhoslyn’s bedchamber. She looked at him, scandalised.
“And what if I hadn’t been?” she demanded, placing the comb down on the dresser. “It is hardly proper to go shoving your head into ladies’ bedchambers unannounced when they may or may not be undressed.”
He grinned, coming up behind her and putting a cheeky hand on her lower back. “Oh, I’m sure I could have found an appropriate reaction in the circumstances,” he murmured in her ear. A flush came to her cheeks. .
“And then we’d have never gotten to the feast on time,” she said, picking the comb back up to playfully tap him on the nose. “Help me with my hair.”
They entered the main hall looking far more like a respectable married couple than they had any real right to, and took their places in the centre of the high table. Once the benches had nearly filled up, Rhoslyn stood and waited for the chatter to die down.
“Lords, ladies and nobles,” she began. All eyes turned to her. “As you all know, we hold this feast to celebrate the renewed alliance with King Aiden of Farendelle.” She raised her cup in his direction and waited for the cheering to die down. “While this was the expected outcome of our negotiations this past week, it makes it no less momentous that our kingdoms have now had one hundred and twenty years of peace between them.” More cheering. “So feast now and make merry, and hold gladness in your heart.” She sat down with a huge smile on her face, and gestured for the musicians to begin playing.
“Well done,” Kestrin told her, serving them both some meat from a dish before sending it off to a minor lord.
“Well done yourself. This is as much your success as mine,” Rhoslyn said, taking a sip of wine. “You sat through as many of those tedious meetings as me at any rate.”
“Oh, I was only there to provide the eye candy,” he said jokingly. Rhoslyn snorted, recognising a rather transparent ploy to fluster her.
“Well it certainly wasn’t for your brains,” she said sweetly instead, and took another sip from her goblet as he spluttered.
Once the feasting was done, the long wooden tables were taken away and the benches were pushed back to allow room for dancing.
Kestrin turned to Rhoslyn. “Care to dance my lady?”
Rhoslyn groaned. “Now? God no, I’m far too full,” she told him, finishing the remaining wine in her goblet. “All that twirling would be a horrible idea, trust me.”
Kestrin pouted. “But this is my favourite dance.”
“Well, find someone who won’t fall over then.”
Just then, a young lord approached the table nervously, and spoke to Kestrin. “Would you do me the honour of dancing, Your Majesty?”
Kestrin looked to Rhoslyn for permission, and she waved a ‘be off with you’ hand. “Don’t let me cramp your style, chico amante ,” she said expansively. She watched him dance away with the young lord, and glanced at his untouched wine goblet, then at her empty one. With a brief glance to where she could see his black curls on the far side of the hall, she pinched the goblet from where it sat, replacing it with her identical but empty one, and took a mouthful.
“Your majesty, would you do me the honour of giving me this dance?” The man who stood in front of her was a rather portly lord of one of the northern castles. Lord Alignel or Aifefel or something, she can’t quite remember. Rhoslyn swallowed and put down the cup, ruefully deciding she probably can’t refuse without seeming rude.
“Certainly.” She rose and walked around the table to take his arm, noting with vague amusement that she seemed to have drunk more wine than she thought. “On your lead, my lord.”
The dance started off well, and she managed to make small talk with Lord Afiefe about the weather, the harvest, the peace treaty, and other banal subjects of conversation. But halfway through, Rhoslyn found herself getting the steps of the dance hopelessly muddled up.
“I’m so sorry,” she giggled, once more stepping on his feet. He peered at her closely.
“Are you feeling alright, your majesty?”
“I’m fine, I’ve just had a little more to drink than is good for me,” she assured him, though a little worm of doubt crept into her mind. She hadn’t had that much, not enough to have her fumbling on a sequence that she could do in her sleep. Mercifully, the dance ended just then, and she excused herself from Lord… Falafel? to go back to her chair.
Absentmindedly she picked up Kestrin’s goblet again and took another sip, frowning at the slight bitter taste. Alarm bells suddenly went off inside her head. Looking at the inside of the goblet, she could see slight foam on the edge, and there was a strange film across the top of the cherry red wine.
Poison. Someone had poisoned her, or more accurately, Kestrin. The fear that came into her heart was sudden and intense, and she knew she had to find him. He could help her, she could trust him, she had to warn him. She stood up and hurried around the table, grabbing it and doubling over as pain lanced through her stomach. King Aiden approached her and tried to say something, but she shook her head.
“Kestrin. I need him. Where…”
Another streak of pain, but she had spotted dark curls in the crowd and made a beeline towards them, leaving behind a wake of indignant nobles that she had shoved from her path. White was tinging the edge of her vision by the time she reached him, but as he turned she saw that he was far older than Kestrin.
“You’re Majesty?” the lord asked in confusion. She shook her head as she backed away, looking desperately around the hall.
“Kestrin. I need Kestrin.”
“Rhoslyn?” A familiar voice from behind her asked, and she whirled in gratitude.
“Kestrin, thank god,” she said urgently, swaying on the spot. A slight ringing sounded in her ears, heightening her fear. She had to warn him in case they tried again-
“I leave you for half an hour to dance and you get drunk,” he laughed, reaching out to steady her. She shook her head desperately, legs now feeling numb.
“No, not that,” she managed. She coughed violently, sending her to her knees, and was rewarded by a sudden pair of anxious brown eyes in front of her.
“Rhoslyn? Rhoslyn, what happened?”
She tried to reply, but she only coughed again, and the fuzziness of her vision increased. With her fading strength she lifted a trembling hand to cup his face, hoping he knew that meant that she loved him. Then she let out a breath and slipped into the darkness.
Unnoticed to anyone through the following uproar, someone idled over to the high table and bumped into it, hard. The goblet holding the incriminating wine tipped over and fell onto the floor, then rolled under a bench and out of sight.
Kestrin was dancing with the pretty young daughter of a Farendellian lord, Johinna, when he became aware of a commotion. Frowning, he excused himself and went over, and found his wife standing in the middle of the room looking bewildered.
“Rhoslyn,” he said, watching her movements as she spun around. Her cheeks were flushed, and she spoke slowly.
“Kestrin, thank god.”
He narrowed his eyes, grabbing her arm to steady her, then laughed. “I leave you for half an hour to dance, and you get drunk,” he said, shaking his head and drawing her closer. Only then he noticed a slight red tinge around the mouth.
“No, not that.” She coughed, and he watched in horror as blood splattered onto the stone floor of the hall. That was definitely not a symptom of intoxication, at least not one he had ever heard of, and he felt a twist of apprehension.
“Rhoslyn, what happened?” he asked urgently, though he could already guess. Poison was the obvious guess; someone was trying to assassinate his wife. She coughed again, and he felt the slight brush of her hand on his cheek before she went limp in his arms.
“Rhoslyn? RHOSLYN?” He picked her up and cradled her against him, yelling at the nobles trying to get too close. “BACK! BACK, DAMN YOU. SOMEONE FETCH ARTAIR.” He didn’t even notice the tears coming out of his eyes, all he could see was that Rhoslyn’s lips were turning blue and if anyone could help him it would be Artair.
Artair finally pushed through the crowd and took one look at Rhoslyn. “Get her upstairs, into her bed,” she says tersely. “I’ll be right behind you, I need my herbs. Have the servants bring up lots of both hot and cold water.”
Kestrin nodded and hurried in the direction of their bedchamber, Stephan already relaying the need for water. When he got there he all but kicked the doors in, then laid her on the bed. Artair bustled in barely a second later.
“Right, when and how was she poisoned?” she asked briskly, setting a bunch of jars on the table. Kestrin shrugged helplessly.
“I don’t know, I wasn’t there with her. She just came up and collapsed in my arms.”
“Go and see if you can find out then,” she said. When he made no move to go, she sighed. “You’ll be the best help to her that way, you can’t do anything here but get in my way.”
Anxiously, he forced himself downstairs and into the uproar that was the main hall. Stephan was doing his best to get it under control, but the cacophony of yelling was making it hard to be heard. Kestrin pushed his way through to the high table and stared at the spilt wine and the empty place where her goblet had been. In his distress, he didn’t notice that the goblet at his seat was empty. Anger bubbled in his chest as he realised the poisoner was probably still there.
“QUIET,” he roared into the babble, with a ferocity that he didn’t know he had in him. He glared around the now-quiet room and said dangerously. “If anyone knows anything about my wife being poisoned, I suggest they step forward now.”
After a brief pause, a Lord… Antifa? stepped forward and bowed. Kestrin frowned at him. “I danced with her Majesty briefly. She got the steps steadily more muddled, but I thought it was…” he looked around nervously, and then said a little apologetically. “Well, I thought she was merely inebriated. She dismissed it as that herself, so I had no reason to suspect otherwise.”
Kestrin nodded briefly. “Anyone else?”
A brief silence settled over the hall, punctuated only by the sound of crickets coming through the windows.
Running a hand through his hair, Kestrin said in barely restrained fury. “Her goblet has gone, meaning the poisoner is likely still in this room.” His eyes swept across them, trying to detect even a whiff of guilt. “Help me find it, or every last one of you will sleep in the dungeons tonight, even if I have to stack you five to a cell.”
There was a brief pause as everyone tried to work out whether he was serious. His steely eyes suggested he was, and bedlam ensued as they all scrambled over each other to help try and find the missing goblet.
“QUIETLY,” Kestrin roared over the din, and there was a sudden hush, punctuated by people tripping over chair legs and other people’s feet.
A yell sounded soon after, and Kestrin hurried over. The girl he had been dancing with, Johinna, had found the missing goblet under a chair. Barely throwing her a thanks, Kestrin grabbed the goblet and sped back upstairs, ordering Stephan to not let anyone leave the castle as he did so.
Bursting back into their bedchamber, he found Artair applying a cool cloth to Rhoslyn’s forehead. She looked pale and feverish, and there was dried blood around her mouth.
“Take over sponging her,” Artair commanded, snatching the goblet off him. Kestrin nodded and knelt beside her.
“You’re going to be ok,” he said gently, praying to god that he spoke the truth. “You’ll be fine, Artair is working out the poison now and she’ll give you the antidote and you’ll wake up.” He kept talking to her, ignoring the tears flowing down his cheeks. Eventually, Artair came back over.
“I’ve narrowed it down to three poisons,” she said, uncorking some of her bottles. “But the antidotes are contradictory - if I got it wrong, I could kill her.”
Kestrin’s heart missed a beat. “How long,” he whispered.
“A day, give or take,” she replied, moving him aside to administer Rhoslyn a foul smelling concoction. “This should slow the bloodstream so it won’t move as quickly, but even then I don't give her long. She is fortunate she only ingested a small amount, or she would already be dead.”
Kestrin started pacing. “I’ll interrogate every noble and servant who was within ten miles of this castle. One of them has to know something-”
Just then, Rhoslyn murmured his name anxiously, and flung an arm out. He was back kneeling at her bedside and clutching her hand in an instant.
“Your majesty, may I suggest you let someone else do the questioning?” Artair said carefully. “It might be best to leave the investigations to someone with a clear head, so they won’t make a mistake.”
Kestrin let out an unhappy breath. She was right, of course, and he didn’t like that. “Fine,” he said. “But I’m not leaving Rhoslyn’s side. I want all her food to be personally prepared by someone I trust, and six guards at the door.”
Artair threw up her hands. “Do what you will, though I don’t know why you’re telling me. I can’t assign cooks or guards, that’s yours or Stephan’s job. Now, I need some more herbs from my hut, keep sponging her forehead while I’m gone.”
“Take some guards with you,” he yelled after her.
The rest of the night passed by in a blur. Kestrin gave Stephan annoyingly detailed instructions on how he should go about interrogating the guests, which Stephan deliberately ignored. The rest of the time he spent with Rhoslyn, sponging her, singing to her, trying to get some food in her, as she tossed and turned in pain.
Near dawn while Artair was off gathering more supplies, a gruff voice could be heard outside the door, where seven guards were posted to prevent anyone going in.
“Let me in.”
“Sorry Sir, we’re under orders from Prince Kestrin,” William the guard replied. There was an exasperated sigh.
“Under orders you say?”
“Yes sir.”
“Ah, too bad then. I’ll be on my way.” There was a brief silence, as if the man had started to walk away, followed by a yell of pain. The sounds of a scuffle ensued, and there was a brief period of silence until finally the door opened with a creak.
“Oh put that silly thing away, I’m not here to kill her,” was the first thing the man said upon entering the room and seeing Kestrin pointing a sword in his direction. Kestrin lowered the blade shamefacedly.
“Grouse?”
“Who else, the king of Discordia?” Grouse scoffed. “Where’s this poisoned cup then?”
Kestrin pointed to where it rested on the dresser, covered in a cloth. Grouse stomped over to it, licked his finger, ran it around the rim of the cup, and then put the finger back into his mouth, closing his eyes as if to appreciate the sweet, sweet taste of poison. Kestrin only stared.
“No numbing in the mouth,” Grouse said, eyes still closed. “And a faint bitter taste. It has to be White Hallows.”
“White what now?” asked poor Kestrin, not nearly as up to date in poison-lore as his brother-in-law.
“White Hallows. Grows exclusively in the northern half of Farendelle. As a tea it can be used in a variety of remedies, but a distillation made from the fermented root makes a very powerful poison,” Grouse said impatiently, as if the precise nature by which an obscure herb could be turned into poison should be common knowledge.
“Can you treat it?” Kestrin asked, allowing hope to enter his heart. Grouse harrumphed.
“Yes, but it will be a close thing. I need hot water.”
Kestrin pointed to the fireplace, where a large pot was bubbling away. Grouse nodded. “Good. Have you been sponging her?”
“Yes.”
“Keep doing that then.”
Kestrin nodded, already going back to her side. “It does help then?”
Grouse looked over from where he was already extracting herbs from his pouch. “Not really, no, but it keeps you busy, and more importantly out of my way.”
In an hour, after an elaborate process where several herbs were steamed, then dried, then stewed, Grouse had a concoction that rivalled anything that Artair had ever made in terms of smell. Kestrin visibly blanched as Grouse brought it over.
“Good god, you’re going to make her drink that?”
“Yes,” he said shortly. “Get a bowl, a big one. This is not going to be pretty.”
Kestrin grabbed the washing basin out of its stand. “This big enough?”
“Perfect. Bring it here, and hold her in a sitting position.”
Kestrin watched and held her anxiously as Grouse forced the potion down Rhoslyn’s throat. There was a brief pause and she shuddered, then violently threw up into the waiting washbasin, again and again. Kestrin tried not to look, but there was blood amongst what came up which he wasn’t even remotely ok with.
Finally, once she was finished, he gently lay her back down on the pillows. Grouse finished stirring another drink.
“Not more, surely?” Kestrin asked in alarm. Grouse glared.
“This is to help stop the internal bleeding, and give her some nutrients back at the same time,” he said irritably. “But by all means, boy , keep telling me how to do my job.”
Kestrin subsided, and allowed Grouse to finish his medication. When he was done, it seemed to Kestrin that a little colour had come back into her cheeks, and that she was breathing easier. He had barely allowed a small amount of tension to drain out of his shoulders when a knock came at the door and Stephan poked his head into the room. “Your highness, we have a confession. You might want to come and hear it.”
Kestrin hesitated, and glanced back at Rhoslyn.
“Go, I’ll take care of her,” Grouse said in a gentler voice than Kestrin would have thought possible of the grumpy man. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he nodded and followed Stephan, stepping over the forms of the seven soldiers that had been knocked out, and appeared to have bandaged heads.
He was taken to an old unused study. The lady he had been dancing with that fateful moment, Johinna, was sitting in a chair wringing her hands.
“What do you have to tell me?” he asked her quietly. She lifted her tear streaked face when Kestrin came in, and suddenly threw herself at his feet, grabbing the bottom of his tunic.
“Oh your Majesty, I am so sorry. I did such a wicked thing,” she wailed to the now utterly bemused Kestrin. “The poets speak truth when they say love makes one mad. It just made me so upset to see her by your side always, when it should have been me . You must understand, take pity on me? We even look so alike, wouldn’t you agree?” She used her finger to twirl a lock of her golden hair.
Kestrin’s first reaction was disgust. He kicked her off his leg and then stumbled back a few paces. “You mean to say you poisoned my wife in the hopes that I might turn my eyes to you?” he asked flatly, causing her to burst into fresh tears and try to launch herself once more at his feet. He jumped back in alarm, so instead she just kneeled.
“Please my lord, please have mercy, I knew not what I did,” she sobbed, peeking up at him through a curtain of blonde hair. “Women are weak in the face of temptation, I am but Eve meeting the serpent. Surely you can find it in your heart to forgive such weakness.”
He looked at her coldly. “A few things, madam . First of all my title is “your Highness,” which I am usually not a stickler for but I’ll make an exception for you. Second of all, once you are rotting in a dungeon cell, I shall send Father Tirso down to discuss scripture with you. I believe he would be fascinated to hear your viewpoint.” And with that he strode out of the door, telling Stephan to lock her in the darkest dungeon cell he could find.
By the time he got back, Artair had returned. She looked up from wringing out a cloth as he entered. “Your friend just left.”
“Of course he did,” Kestrin muttered, hurrying over to check Rhoslyn’s pulse. It was weak and fluttery, but to have it there at all was a blessing. “How is she?”
“Weak, but she has a good chance of living,” Artair said. She gently added. “Kestrin… your friend did the best he could but… she still has a good chance of not making it. She is very weak, and if I can’t get this fever down, she still might-” Artair stopped, seeing Kestrin’s stricken face. “She still has a very good chance,” she amends. “Especially since the poison is now gone. She just isn’t totally out of the woods yet.”
Kestrin nodded. “Tell me what I can do.”
Rhoslyn became aware of her surroundings slowly, like she was moving underwater. There was light from somewhere, sunlight, that meant it was late in the afternoon. Someone was holding her hand. She felt sore all over, as if her entire body was one giant bruise. Opening her eyes carefully, she saw Kestrin sitting next to her staring across her and out the window, where it was indeed late afternoon.
She tried to speak, but her voice didn’t even produce a croak. It did make her cough though, which caught his attention.
“Rhoslyn,” he said gently, taking a cup of water off the nightstand and carefully raising her up to drink it. She gulped eagerly, and sighed in relief when he finally laid her back down.
“What happened? Surely I didn’t drink that much wine,” she tried to joke, but it fell flat. Frowning, she tried to cast her memory back to what actually happened.
“You were poisoned,” he said hoarsely, and only then did she notice the dark circles under his eyes.
“Well that explains the soreness,” she rasped, feeling her eyelids growing heavy already. “How long?”
“Tonight, it will have been three days,” he said, voice wobbling. “Grouse - Godric - treated the poison the morning after, but you had a fever, and you’ve been asleep since it broke.” He squeezed her hand, and she gently squeezed it back, feeling tears come to her eyes as she realised the reason for the shadows around his eyes.
“I’m sorry to have worried you,” she says, voice already thick with tiredness. “Did you catch… who did it?”
“Yes.” His voice darkened. “She came forward and confessed. It seems she was infatuated with me to the extent that she poisoned you to try and win me for herself. She is in the dungeon now, awaiting trial for high treason.”
Something about this sounded wrong to Rhoslyn, but she was already feeling the pull of sleep affecting her. “Come and sleep with me,” she said, tugging his hand with the last bit of energy she had. “You look exhausted.”
He hesitated. “I’ll disturb you-”
“Nonsense. I always sleep better when you’re cuddling me,” she said. Half awake, she felt him slip into the bed next to her, hugging her from behind. She sighed, and allowed herself to relax into sleep.
A memory surfaced. She is at a feast, the room spins around her. She picks up Kestrin’s goblet, only to find that it is full of blood. She drops it with a clatter, the blood spilling out across the stones in a gush of red like a shattered ruby, and she falls.
“Kestrin!” She woke to a late morning, an empty spot beside her, and the memory she hadn’t recalled last night. Artair looked up from where she was reading beside her chair.
“Good morning, your majesty,” she said, fetching some water. “Sir Kestrin has gone to a meeting with the lords to announce your recovery and discuss the assassination.”
“I must go to him,” she struggled out of bed, ignoring the offered water, and nearly fell as she tried to stand. “Help me Artair.”
Artair pulled an anachronistic monocle out of her sleeve and used it to peer at Rhoslyn before putting it away. “Certainly not, your Majesty, you must rest-”
Rhoslyn shook her head, pulling herself up determinedly. “His life is in danger, Artair. I must go to him.” With sheer force of will, she managed to gain her feet, and careen across the room and out the door towards the council room while Artair was still getting her monocle out for the second time.
With the help of the walls and statues, she managed to make it to the doors of the council room with only a few new bruises from where she had fallen. Bursting in the room, she was just in time to see the lords all raise their goblets in a toast, Kestrin included.
“NO!” she shrieked, loud enough that they all froze in shock. Without losing momentum, she propelled herself across the room to Kestrin, and smacked the goblet out of his hand. It flew across the room to collide with a bang! against the far stone wall, and then dropped to the floor, bubbling wine oozing across the floor.
“The poison… not for me…” Rhoslyn managed before fainting.
She woke a second time in the dead of night, the presence of Kestrin in the bed with her. She sighed and shifted slightly.
He woke immediately. “Rhoslyn.”
“You’re alive,” she sighed, reaching out a hand in the dark. It made contact with his face, and she cradled it as she had when she thought herself dying. “What happened after-”
“After you burst into a council in only your shift, punched my apparently deadly drink to the ninth level of hell and then fainted across my lap?” Kestrin said dryly. She smiled in the darkness.
“Yes, exactly that.”
He sighed and got up to light the candle from the embers of the fire. Placing it on the bedside table, he crawled back into the bed with her.
“Now I can see you,” he said, and she traced the lines of his smile with her finger.
“So what happened?”
“Right. Uproar, as you can imagine,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Anyone who heard what you said was busy hurling accusations, and the ones who hadn’t were demanding to know what the hell was going on. Meanwhile I was more preoccupied with you and your immediate safety, as you were… rather vulnerable at that moment.” He said it lightly, but Rhoslyn knew how deadly serious he would have been with her safety. After all, she was the same with his.
“What did you do?” she asked softly, reaching out and squeezing his hand. He smiled back.
“Got Stephan to try and settle things down while I brought you back to a very displeased Artair, what else? Then I went back and yelled at everyone to be quiet, and then tried to hold court in a diplomatic fashion.” He grimaced. “The Discordian nobles are blaming the Farendellians, the Farendellian’s are blaming the Discordians- it’s a mess Rhos, and nothing has been resolved at all, aside from the fact that the Farendellian girl was lying. We don’t know why, and I’m afraid to talk to her because last time she kept throwing herself on my feet and it was weird .” He glared, and Rhoslyn stifled a giggle.
“Let me talk to her,” she suggested, but Kestrin looked downright affronted.
“Absolutely not . You need rest, and a lot of it. God's favourite fingernail Rhoslyn, last time you got out of bed you fainted nearly immediately after.”
“Carry me to her,” Rhoslyn said patiently. “Or bring her to me. Please.”
“No.”
She played really the only card she had in the situation. “I will be stressed if you don’t. I might even have a relapse.”
He glared. “Don’t you dare, Rhoslyn Anne Thornwood.”
She glared back with equal ferocity, but felt her energy lagging. Finally she dropped back down onto the pillows, giving an exhausted sigh.
“Sleep, pequeño miga,” he said gently. “We can talk in the morning.” Rhoslyn sighed and nodded, and he blew the candle out before wrapping his arms around her so they could both drift off to sleep.
Kestrin was no match for her puppy eyes, and finally he allowed her to question the girl in her study, under the conditions that Rhoslyn sat in the window seat the whole time propped up by every pillow in the castle (at least it seemed that way, but to be honest she was glad for them), that she had a dozen guards in the room, and finally that her feet were tucked away behind her.
The girl, when she entered, appeared far from the raving, foot obsessed lunatic that Kestrin had described to her. She had a pretty, if rather drawn face, framed by blonde hair a similar colour to Rhoslyn’s. She carried herself as one trained to be a lady, but there was a slight tension visible around her shoulders. Her hands were clasped in front of the plain white dress she had been given for the dungeon, and her eyes were lowered.
“Leave us,” Rhoslyn commanded the guards. William hesitated.
“His Highness commanded-”
Rhoslyn looked at him. “I am still the queen,” she said testily. “I outrank him. Leave us, I am in no danger I think.”
Once they had filed out, Rhoslyn beckoned the girl closer with one finger. “My throat is still strained, I would prefer to not have to speak loudly,” she said, voice a little hoarse. Johinna nodded and came to kneel beside the window seat. Rhoslyn looked at her consideringly. “Now, tell me why you lied to my husband.”
The girl swallowed and clasped her hands again, but not before Rhoslyn had seen them trembling. “Your majesty, I-” She stopped, and didn’t go on.
“What are you scared of?” When there was no answer, Rhoslyn said kindly. “You need fear nothing from me, and I can protect y-” she broke off in a fit of coughing.
The girl's green eyes suddenly lifted from the floor, wide with concern. Seeing a jug of water on the table, she grabbed it and brought it back, pressing it into Rhoslyn’s hands.
“Thanks,” she said hoarsely, after a sip. “As I was saying, if you are afraid of someone else, I can protect you.”
The girl nodded, and Rhoslyn waited for her throat to stop stinging. Already she felt drained of energy, and was all too glad that she could lay back on the pillows around her.
“Lord Aiphel,” she said at last, so quietly that Rhoslyn nearly missed it. “He told me to lie.”
‘So that’s what his name is. ’ “What did he threaten you with?”
Johinna swallowed. “He has my brother,” she whispered. “My little baby brother. He said he would cut off his toes one by one if I didn’t take the blame. I did try to warn Prince Kestrin by being too dramatic, but… I don’t think he realised.”
‘Idiot’ , she thought affectionately. “How old is your brother, Lady Johinna?”
“Only eight, your Majesty.”
Rhoslyn’s face softened, and she reached out a hand to squeeze the girl’s shoulder. “I promise I will get him back for you, safe and with all toes intact. Thank you for telling me.”
Johinna nodded, eyes trained carefully on the ground. “Thank you, your majesty,” she said, voice barely a whisper. Rhoslyn retracted her hand and nodded.
“You may go. I hope to bring you news of your brother’s safety soon.”
She nodded and bobbed a curtsey, then hurried out of the door. Kestrin entered soon after, and came to kneel next to Rhoslyn.
“What did she say?” he asked, electing with a sigh to ignore the conspicuous absence of guards in the room. Rhoslyn filled him in. By the time she finished, his face was dark with anger.
“I’ll -” Words failed him, and he filled in the silence with a glare hard enough to make the pillow directly in front of him feel distinctly uncomfortable and like it would really rather be doing something else.
“Yeah,” Rhoslyn said, understanding. “Let’s focus on arresting him and getting him to talk.”
By that she meant of course that she would remain there while Kestrin went and did all the arresting, which is exactly what happened.
The person employed to make close-lipped prisoners talk managed to be very persuasive, and they soon had a full confession, along with the whereabouts of Lady Johinna’s brother. He was rescued (all 10 toes still attached), the peace between the countries, and everyone was left more or less satisfied except for perhaps Lord Aiphel.