The Throne of Thorns and Roses

Chapter 3: The Crimson Banquet

The guards didn’t touch Jasmine.

They didn’t need to. Two steps from Kian and their hands went to their swords, and that was enough. In the palace, steel spoke louder than shouting.

“Wait,” Jasmine said. Her voice came out wrong. Not a princess. Not a command. A plea. She hated it.

Lady Mirea stepped between her and Kian, as if her sixty-year-old frame could block a war. “Your Highness, return to your chambers. This is not”

“Is not what?” Jasmine cut in. Rule one: never speak first. She’d buried that rule in the Veridian this morning. “Is not appropriate? Neither is accusing a man without cause.”

“Cause?” Captain Vey entered the potting shed and the space shrank by half. He was armor and obedience, and he looked at Kian like one looks at a rabid dog. “He was alone with you. Unchaperoned. That is cause enough for a servant.”

Kian said nothing. He stood between the guards, wrists loose, eyes down. The perfect picture of harmless. Except Jasmine had seen the scars. She’d heard the word Vareth. Harmless was a costume he wore better than livery.

“He’s the groundskeeper,” Jasmine tried. “He was working.”

“He was shirtless in a closed room with the heir to the Sunstone Throne.” Vey’s tone didn’t change. It didn’t have to. Facts were their own sentence. “The prince has already been informed.”

Ice slid down Jasmine’s spine. Caelen. We would not see a dispute arise. This was the dispute he’d been engineering.

“Where are you taking him?” she asked.

“The cells,” Vey said. “Until His Majesty decides if this is treason.”

Treason. The word hung in the air, thick as smoke. Treason meant the headsman. Treason meant Kian’s blood on the executioner’s block before the week was out.

“No.” Jasmine moved before she thought. She put herself between the guards and Kian, and suddenly every lesson on courtly distance evaporated. She could smell the lye on his skin. “You will not.”

“Jasmine.” Kian’s voice was low. A warning. For the first time, he used her name in front of others, and it landed like a struck match. The guards stiffened. Lady Mirea made a small, broken sound.

“Step aside, Your Highness,” Vey said. Carefully now. As if she were the one holding a knife. “Please.”

She didn’t move. “He saved the moonlilies. He saved the banquet. He saved my mother’s pride in front of the Nordish. If that is treason, then execute me too.”

For a heartbeat, no one breathed.

Then Kian spoke, and his voice was nothing like the man who’d said _we made heat_. This voice was flat. Empty. Trained. “I apologize for the misunderstanding, Captain. I forgot my place. I will go quietly.”

He stepped around Jasmine. Didn’t look at her. Let the guards take his arms.

Mirea seized Jasmine’s elbow, nails biting through silk. “You will come with me. Now. Before you ruin yourself.”

Jasmine let herself be dragged. She had to. If she fought, they would call it hysteria. They would call her unfit. They would lock her in that northern convent and throw away the key, and Kian would die in a cell because she didn’t know how to play the game.

She was learning. Gods help her, she was learning fast.

The Crimson Banquet was not cancelled.

That was the first cruelty. That was how Jasmine knew her father had already chosen politics over his daughter. The banquet would proceed, the Nordish would be fed, and a servant would disappear from the kitchens with no one to ask after him. Servants disappeared all the time.

Jasmine sat at the high table and stared at the empty space where the moonlilies had been. They’d removed them. Too controversial now. Too tied to a groundskeeper who dared to look.

Caelen took her hand. His rings were still cold. “You look pale, my bird. The excitement of the day?”

“You had him arrested,” she said, not bothering with volume. Let the ambassadors hear. Let the whole court hear. “Because I said thank you.”

Caelen’s smile didn’t slip. “I had him arrested because he endangered the alliance. You are to be my wife. My wife does not entertain servants in sheds.”

“I wasn’t entertaining”

“Weren’t you?” He leaned close, breath foul with ice wine. “Mirea said your cheeks were flushed. That his shirt was off. What am I to think, Jasmine?”

That I’d rather be in a shed than at this table. That I’d rather have dirt under my nails than your rings on my hand. She didn’t say it. She couldn’t. Not here.

Across the hall, her father watched. King Herrin, who had once carried her on his shoulders and called her his little sun. He met her eyes, and for a second she saw the father. Then the crown won, and he looked away.

The message was clear: fix this, or I will fix it for you.

Dinner was served. Venison again. Jasmine couldn’t swallow.

Halfway through the third course, the doors opened. Not for food. For Captain Vey.

He crossed the hall, armor loud in the quiet. He knelt before the king, not Caelen, and Jasmine’s heart started beating again.

“Your Majesty,” Vey said. “The prisoner attempted escape.”

The hall went still. Even the musicians stopped.

Jasmine’s fork clattered to her plate. “What?”

“He killed two guards,” Vey continued, relentless. “He’s in the lower cells now. Reinforced. But he won’t last the night. The wounds are bad.”

Lies. It had to be lies. Kian didn’t try to escape. Kian had gone quietly. He’d chosen the cell over making her fight.

Caelen made a pleased sound. “Then the problem solves itself. Traitors die. It’s cleaner.”

“Is it?” Jasmine stood. Her chair scraped. Every eye in the hall found her. Never refuse a dance. She was refusing the whole damn orchestra. “If he dies tonight, it won’t be clean. It will be murder. And I will tell the Temple exactly how it happened.”

The Temple. The only authority higher than kings. The only place where a princess’s word outweighed a prince’s convenience.

King Herrin finally looked at her. Really looked. “Jasmine. Sit down.”

“No.” She stepped around the table, into the open floor. Her skirts were the color of blood. Appropriate. “You taught me that a princess is a bridge. Bridges don’t stand by while innocent men are killed to make construction easier.”

“He is not innocent,” Caelen snapped. “He’s Vareth.”

The word dropped into the hall like a stone in a pond. Vareth. Enemy. The reason for this whole wedding, this whole grotesque performance of peace.

Jasmine lifted her chin. “He’s a man who grew flowers from frost. What have you grown, Caelen? Besides fear?”

Silence. Thick. Dangerous.

Then her father stood. Slowly. Like a mountain deciding to move. “The banquet is ended.”

It wasn’t a suggestion. Lords and ambassadors scrambled up, bowing, retreating. Caelen didn’t move. He stared at Jasmine with a look that promised bruises later, then followed the king out.

Jasmine didn’t wait for dismissal. She walked out through the Veridian doors.

The moonlilies were gone, but the mirrors were still there. Dozens of them, catching moonlight, throwing it back. The garden was full of cold fire.

She found Kian in the lower cells.

He was not dead. But Vey hadn’t lied about the wounds.

Kian lay on the stone floor, his side ripped open from ribs to hip. Someone had tried to stitch it. Badly. Blood soaked his livery, turned the palace blue to black. His face was gray. His eyes were closed.

“Jasmine,” the guard at the door hissed. “You cannot”

“Open it,” she said.

“His Majesty’s orders”

“Open it, or I will have your rank, your home, and your name before sunrise.”

The door opened.

She went to her knees in the blood. Didn’t care about the dress. “Kian. Hey. Just Kian. Look at me.”

His eyes opened. Fever-bright. He focused on her with effort. “You shouldn’t… be here.”

“You keep saying that.” Her hands hovered over the wound. She didn’t know where to touch without hurting. “They said you tried to escape.”

“I didn’t.” His breath rattled. “They came to… make sure I wouldn’t talk. About Vareth. About what I am.”

Assassins. In her father’s cells. With her father’s permission.

Rage, pure and clean, burned through the fear. “Who sent them?”

Kian’s mouth twitched. Almost a smile. “Does it matter? We’re both… in cages. Yours is just… gilded.”

Jasmine tore a strip from her underskirt. Pressed it to the wound. He hissed. “Stay with me. You don’t get to die before you tell me how to make heat from nothing. I need to know how you did it.”

“Mirrors,” he whispered. “And stubbornness. And… you.”

The last word undid her. She bent her head, pressed her forehead to his, and for a second there was no crown, no prince, no war. Just blood and breath and we.

“I’m getting you out,” she said. “Tonight.”

“Jasmine”

“Don’t tell me I can’t. Don’t tell me it’s not my place. I’ve decided where I stand.”

She stood, hands red, dress ruined. The guard at the door had gone pale. Good. Let him be afraid.

“Send for the Temple healer,” she told him. “Say the princess commands it. Say if Kian of Vareth dies, the alliance dies with him.”

The guard ran.

Jasmine looked down at Kian. He was watching her like she was the impossible thing. Like she was the bloom in the frost.

“Rest,” she told him. “We have a kingdom to burn down.”