“I was thinking how very beautiful you are.”
Irris opened her mouth, then closed it, her cheeks flushing a little darker. “Well,” she said, smoothing down her own dress to cover her surprise. “You don’t have to flirt with me, you know you have my vote.”
Despite her mood, Sorrow smiled. “You’re right. I’ll save it for Samad, then.”
Irris gave an unladylike snort. “Indeed. Well…” She began to rifle through Sorrow’s wardrobe. “For tomorrow… Might I recommend something in … black?”
“What else?” Sorrow reached for a tunic and matching trousers.
“Why don’t I send for some wine, and I’ll help you draft some ideas on what we want the new Rhannon to look like?” Irris said.
“We?”
“I said you didn’t have to do it alone. I meant it,” Irris replied. “Besides, the sooner you’re all settled, the sooner I can get back to university.”
“You’ll leave, once I’m chancellor?” A new surge of panic gripped Sorrow’s heart.
Irris’s eyes sparkled as she replied. “Well, that all depends on my pay rise.”
Sorrow jostled her friend out of the way. “Perhaps I’ll make a law that means all students have to wear salmon pink and lemon yellow,” she said slyly. “Salmon-pink and lemon-yellow wool.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Irris said.
“Watch me. If you thought my father was bad, you just wait for the hundred and fifth chancellor.”
Hoping her words weren’t tempting fate, Sorrow sashayed out of the wardrobe, leaving Irris laughing softly behind her.
But Sorrow couldn’t help wishing that Mael had lived. That he was standing where she stood now, facing what she faced.
Wants and Needs
The lamps had burned low, and the wine was all gone by the time Irris rose to leave, some two hours later. They’d started out well, talking about disbanding the Decorum Ward, redistributing money back to the universities so they could teach art and literature courses again. Reopening libraries, theatres, dance halls. But they abandoned writing their plans when the ideas got increasingly silly, and Sorrow declared there would be a national cake day, where everyone had to send her cakes.
“You’ve never even had cake,” Irris said.
“It doesn’t matter. I already know I love it.”
“It is lovely,” Irris admitted.
“How do you – oh, of course.”
“I’m older than you.” Irris smirked. “I had three whole years of cake. And you would love it. Will love it.”
The clock on the wall gave a soft chime, and Irris looked up. “I should go. We’ll both need to be up very early tomorrow.”
The two girls embraced, and Irris left Sorrow humming tunelessly to herself as she prepared for bed. She washed her face and hands, pulled her nightgown over her head and slipped under the sheet.
As soon as she did, the glow from laughing with Irris faded, and fear took its place. This time tomorrow she’d be chancellor presumpt… Preparing for an election… Responsible for all of Rhannon…
Adrenaline forced her out of bed, and into her dressing room. She shoved the endless hangers of black clothes aside, until she found what she was looking for.
There was a hole in the wall the size of a coin, and Sorrow pushed a finger into it, pressing until the hidden mechanism inside released and a section of the wood panelling detached from the rest, revealing a door. The same door Rasmus had used to sneak from her rooms when the stewards had arrived earlier, and the way he’d crept back in after they’d left.
She returned to her bed, picking up the small lamp from beside it, and lit it. Then, in silence, she entered the passageway.
She and Rasmus had found it by accident years ago, before they became more than friends. They’d been messing around in the corridor of the diplomatic wing, mocking a bureau of old artefacts that seemed to have been hidden down there, out of sight of the rest of the palace. Sorrow had reached for a particularly ugly vase, fashioned like a kind of dolphin, but as she’d tried to lift it the bureau shifted instead, revealing a passageway behind it.
They had slipped into it and, holding hands, followed it all the way along until they’d found themselves, to their surprise, in her wardrobe. They’d never discovered the real reason for it, hadn’t wanted to ask in case someone blocked it off, though Sorrow fancied it was for some ancient ancestral chancellor to sneak out to see his mistresses. It had made for great fun when they were children, and become even more useful as they’d grown, and things had changed. Not even Irris knew about it.
Moments later she had reached the end, stepping into the corridor where Rasmus’s room was.
He was lying on his bed, still fully dressed, reading, when she entered the room without knocking, and he looked up in surprise.
“Row?”
She tugged her nightgown over her head and dropped it, releasing her hair from its crown. Rasmus put down his book and stood.
“Row, what’s—” he said, but she gave him no time to talk, tugging at his shirt, unlacing it and yanking it over his head. She pressed into his body, warm and living, and felt a peace begin to spread through her, beneath the wildness of fear and need. She pushed him back on the bed, silencing every word he tried to say, and soon he stopped trying, responding in the way she needed him to. Somewhere beneath the wanting, she knew she wasn’t being fair, that she had to tell him what had been decided, and what it meant for them, but she couldn’t think of that then.
She reached across to the drawer beside the bed and pulled out a small bag, and he took it from her, emptying the contents into his mouth and chewing, his hands stroking at her the whole while, his rings cold against her rapidly warming skin. When he bent to kiss her, his lips tasted bitter and green, and she licked the flavour away. He made a sound deep in the back of his throat, and she closed her eyes, pulling him against her, into her.
Her hair was damp when they separated, her mouth sore from kissing. He’d curled himself around her, one hand stroking her spine.
“Are you all right?” he asked, and she nodded against his chest.
“Are you?” she murmured.
Above her head he gave a soft snort. “Well … I suppose so.” She could hear the smile in his voice and it made her ache.
The first time she’d seen Rasmus smile, it had terrified her. It wasn’t the first smile she’d seen, but it was the first one that was wide, and full, with no guilt or fear behind it. It was so open she hadn’t known it for a smile at first.