The First Crown

Wine and Reckoning

Lilliana

By the time the second night of the festival unfurled, the keep was all torches and song. Smoke lifted from the braziers in warm, sweet threads; someone had spiced the cider until it tasted like summer pretending to be spring. The banners above the yard turned lazily in the soft wind, and the moon hung like a silver coin someone had forgotten to spend.

Maren tugged me into the first dance, laughing when I stumbled. Evelyne spun past on Corwin Ferin’s arm, all fox-red silk and sly smiles; Lord Ferin watched from the steps with that measured look of a man who counts before he speaks. Father presided at the head of the long tables, wine catching the light as he lifted his cup, voice rolling over the crowd in a toast that made men thump their mugs like drums.

I drank when I shouldn’t have first to wash down the too-salty ham, then because Maren pressed her cup to my lips and I wanted to match her joy, then again because the music felt like a wave I could ride if I let my body be water.

Warmth loosened my bones. The torches threw halos around everyone’s heads. The world blurred softly at the edges, and my thoughts already unruly slipped their leashes entirely and ran where they always ran now: to Reade.

To the letter he had sent two nights ago. Two nights from now… the north wall where the apple trees stand. I will wait for you beneath it.

I was supposed to wait. I had promised Briallen I would wait.

But the music swelled and the hall felt too small. The laughter around me was a bright, glittering thing, and my heart beat beneath it like a hidden drum asking to be heard. I danced once more with Maren, twice with a merchant’s son who trod on my hem and apologized so earnestly I nearly forgave him, and once with Corwin again. His hand at my back was careful and cool; his conversation tamped and tidy. He asked about the weather as if it were a woman whose favor he hoped to win. I smiled when politeness required it. I nodded when expected. But the sound of my blood drowned him.

When the set ended, I handed Corwin back his courtesy and slipped into the press of bodies before he could ask for another.

“Lillie?” Maren called behind me. “Where are you—”

“Air,” I lied, and the lie felt like a door opening.

I slid along the periphery of the yard, keeping to the spaces between torchlight, smiling when people looked up, head bowed when Father’s gaze swept the crowd. The corridor beyond the arch felt cooler, the stones blessedly steady under my feet. Music followed, thinned by distance the pipes like birds that had mistaken night for morning.

At the turn toward the kitchens I nearly collided with Briallen. She had a tray in her hands and a frown already forming, the way storms do over the river.

“Don’t,” I whispered, catching her sleeve. “Just this once.”

Her eyes softened and hardened in the same breath. “The north wall is tomorrow.”

“I can’t wait.” The words slipped out from somewhere lower than my throat. “I can’t.”

She looked at my face a long moment and read it as she always had as if my heart were a book she’d learned to hold open for me when I was too young to turn the pages myself. “Then don’t be foolish,” she said, voice very low. “Not the walls, not the yard. Two minutes. Somewhere quiet. If you are seen—”

“I won’t be.”

Her mouth pressed thin with unhappy consent. “The barracks are half-empty. The men on duty won’t be back for an hour. If you must, choose your corner with care.”

“I love you,” I breathed, and squeezed her wrist.

“Go,” she said, rolling her eyes to hide the way they shone. “And for once in your life, walk like you belong wherever your feet take you.”

The barracks corridor smelled of leather and oil, the air cooler here, quieter. My head felt light and fierce at once; the wine had melted my fear until it was just a sheen on my skin. I meant to stand in the shadow near the door, to wait like sense would have me do.

Instead I turned the last corner and nearly ran into him.

Reade came in from the yard with his halberd over his shoulder, hair damp at the temples, the collar of his gambeson unlaced. He saw me and went still, surprise flashing and then shifting into something that made warmth rush to my cheeks for reasons that had nothing to do with wine.

“Lilliana.” My name in his mouth sounded like it had learned to be careful and was trying to forget how. His gaze flicked past me to the empty corridor, then back. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

I smiled, because I could not do anything else with my mouth. “I know.”

The corner of his mouth tilted, amusement tugging at the restraint. “Tell me you didn’t get lost.”

“I came looking for you.” The truth was easier than breath.

He set the halberd against the wall with a soft knock and scrubbed a hand over his face like a man trying to wipe away shock. When his palm fell, his eyes were warmer and brighter and a little disbelieving. “Of course you did.”

“You’re laughing at me,” I accused, stepping closer. The corridor shifted to fit us.

“A little,” he said, and then gentler, “You’re flushed.”

“I might have had some wine,” I admitted, dignity trying and failing to stay upright. “Not much.”

He breathed out a laugh that felt like an arm around my shoulders. “No, not much. Just enough to make you dangerous.”

“I’ve always been dangerous to you,” I said, surprising myself with the boldness of it. The wine had taken the sharp edges off fear and left only truth. “Haven’t I?”

His hand lifted, hesitated, then cupped my cheek as if my skin had asked for his palm and his palm had been waiting to answer.

“Since the first time you looked at me.” he said, voice roughening.

My heart tripped. “I wrote it all down and it still wasn’t enough.”

“I read every word,” he said.

“Then hear this.” I swallowed, lowering my voice until it belonged only to him and the stones that held us up. “I couldn’t wait for the moon to point us both in the same direction. I needed to see you now.”

He closed his eyes like a man struck, then opened them on a decision. “Lillie—”

“Touch me,” I begged. The plea surprised us both. It surprised me how little shame came with it. “Please. I have wanted—” Heat rushed up my throat. “I don’t even know all the names for what I have wanted since the first time you steadied me. But I know I want your hands on me and not because I’m falling.”

For a heartbeat he did not move. Then something gave, some rope inside him he’d wrapped around himself and called discipline. He stepped in, closing the handspan of air between us, and gathered me as if I were at once precious and the only thing that could keep him upright. His arms went around my waist; mine found his shoulders, cloth rough under my fingers, muscle unforgiving, solid like the truth.

He lowered his head. The kiss was not quick or stolen this time. He kissed me like he had waited a long time to do it properly. His mouth coaxed, then claimed, then softened again in a rhythm that stole all the words I’d poured into parchment and replaced them with breath. The wall at my back was cool; he was warm everywhere he touched. The world drew itself small and kind so it could fit us both.

When he drew away, it was only far enough to rest his forehead against mine, breath unsteady, hands still at my waist as if to keep me from vanishing. “You undo me,” he said, and it sounded like gratitude and warning and prayer at once.

“Good,” I whispered, dizzy and brave. I slid my hands up to his jaw, felt the roughness there. “You’re always so controlled. Let me have something unruly.”