In The Name of Love

Kai walks with quick, purposeful steps down one of Adelhyod’s corridors, bound for the courtyard where he’s planned to meet Fifi this afternoon. Ever since they parted ways a couple days ago, Kai has been equal parts eager to see her again and terrified that someone else would find out that he kissed her. And she wanted me to, he marvels. It won’t matter to her father, if he ever finds out, but he had hardly dared to hope that she might also be interested in him as anything other than a friend and fellow cybrinn. Remembering the way she’d smiled at him, the way she’d responded to his touch, makes his face heat up and his nerves flash fire. But then he immediately turns cold as he fears someone might see him and ask why he’s blushing. No one can know. What we’ve done is forbidden, he reminds himself, but he can’t help from smiling at the memory of her fingers tangling in his hair and her lips on his.

As far as he knows, no one saw them. For now, they are safe. We just have to keep it that way, he resolves. How easy or difficult that might be, he has no idea. Every meeting they have is a risk, but a risk he’s more than willing to take. Does she feel the same way? Has she been thinking about it like I have? he wonders.

“Kai! There you are!” Ingemar’s voice behind him interrupts his musings.

“Come riding with us,” Karl invites as Kai turns around.

“Another time,” Kai replies, hoping they will let it go. What if they don’t, though? I can’t tell them about Fifi. There has to be something else—

“Why not now? The weather’s perfect.”

“That meeting with King Ansgar earlier.” That should do it. They were both there, and it’s believable enough, Kai decides. “I have to write my father—”

“Why bother? You don’t like him. The letter can wait,” Ingemar argues.

“If this news only affected him, I would agree, but the whole household will have to prepare. An afternoon ride is no reason to make the servants suffer.”

Ingemar arches an eyebrow. “Maybe so. But I think there’s something else at play. Or maybe someone else—”

“Who else could there be?” Karl interrupts scornfully. “Kai doesn’t go out of his way to make friends.”

“Tomorrow I’ll ride with you, I promise,” Kai says, ignoring Karl’s jibe. Ingemar’s a little too close to the truth for my liking. We have to end this here. He’s actually already written the letter he’s claiming as an excuse, but his friends don’t need to know that. “I just have to get this done. Our house butler is too old to be run ragged with last-minute demands, and my father and Lady Birgitta will both want to be sure we make the best possible impression—”

“You know it won’t matter to the king,” Ingemar grumbles. “You’ve been making a stellar effort to distinguish yourself as competent and far more likable than your father, by all accounts, and a fat lot of good it’s done you. He’s just as cold to you now as he was on your first day at court.”

“I know.” Kai sighs. “But it’s not about him. It’s about helping the people who did right by me growing up in that wretched house. Tomorrow I’ll ride with you. For now, please excuse me.” He hurries away from them, thanking Cybarei as he goes that his chambers are in the same general direction as the courtyard where he’s meant to be meeting Fifi. I’m probably late. I hope she’s not offended. I hope she’s there, he worries. He’s been unable to sit still since he finished the letter to his father, and so he’s been wandering the halls of Adelhyod, not wanting to seem overeager by arriving to the courtyard early. It might have been better if I had. Ingemar—Solveig—sees too much and forgets nothing. I’ll have to come up with something better to tell them, in case this happens again…which it might. In all honesty, the more he thinks about it, the real surprise is that his plans with Fifi haven’t conflicted with his friends’ plans before this afternoon. He mutters curses under his breath at their carelessness, but the curses die on his lips as he steps into the courtyard.

Some distance in front of him, sitting on a stone bench next to the fish pond, are Fifi and Princess Wilhelmina, arms wrapped around each other. The sound of the elder princess’s sobs reaches his ears a moment later. Fifi glances up from her sister’s shoulder and her eyes lock with Kai’s.

“I’m sorry,” she mouths.

Kai shakes his head. “Don’t be,” he mouths back. Concern and disappointment battle for supremacy in his chest. He takes a step back, meaning to go back into the palace and give them some privacy.

“Don’t go. Wait.” Her silent plea stops him in his tracks. He glances around. This courtyard is rather small, leaving him few places to go where Fifi’s sister won’t see him while he waits. But the corner furthest from the fish pond is thick with verdant foliage, and so that is where he goes, keeping his steps light on the stone path. As he gets closer, he discovers another stone bench hidden amongst the leaves. It’s small and dilapidated with moss growing in its cracks, but when Kai sits on it, the two royal sisters are completely out of his sight, which means he should be hidden from them, as well.

As he leans back to look at the clear blue sky through the emerald leaves overhead, though, he finds he can hear the princesses talking—not distinctly, but the sounds of their voices mingled with the breeze and birdsong. Kai winces; he was hoping to avoid that. While he wants to honor Fifi’s request, he doesn’t want to violate her sister’s privacy by eavesdropping. His fingers brush the moss on the bench. I haven’t studied moss much, he realizes, and so he decides to concentrate on the moss, meditating the way he’d asked Fifi to do with the rhododendron in their first lesson.

The rest of the world fades away as he closes his eyes and tries to feel the energy of the moss. Its energy reveals itself as tiny twinkles of green and brown, tickling his fingertips with myriad slight pulses, and it responds to his call with almost no effort. At his unspoken direction, as he opens his eyes, the moss grows thicker and softer and spreads outward from him to cover more of the bench. Its progress is almost imperceptibly gradual and absorbs all of his attention as the afternoon wears on.

The sunlight has turned to the gold herald of sunset when nearby footsteps pull Kai’s focus away from the moss-covered bench.

“I’m so sorry,” Fifi says as she comes into his view. “I didn’t mean for you to wait so long. I didn’t think she’d want to stay—”

“It’s all right,” Kai assures her, rising from his seat. “How is she?”

Fifi shakes her head. “Hard to say. Better than when we first came out here, at least. She was definitely more willing to talk out here than she is inside, so that was nice. I brought her because I didn’t have another way to tell you what had happened, and I didn’t want you to think that I didn’t want to see you or something.” She’s only a step away from him now, her eyes searching his face.

“This courtyard’s too small. We have to be careful,” he murmurs, glancing towards the windows in the walls around them. Most of them are stained glass, rather than shuttered, but he doesn’t want to take any unnecessary risks. “But I’m glad to see you. And glad that you wanted to see me.”

Fifi blushes and turns away. “Since the bird…and…. I haven’t thought of much else.”

“Nor have I.”

“Except….” She turns back towards him, eyes full of apologies. “I have to tell you….”

Hearing about her most recent letter from Prince Didier makes Kai’s fists clench at his sides as tightly as the knots in his stomach. She’d have a more comfortable life with him than with me, and he has her family’s support, he thinks. Cold dread gnaws at his insides.

“I can’t marry him. No matter what they say. I can’t,” Fifi finishes, and hope springs anew within Kai.

“Run away with me,” he invites impulsively.

Fifi’s eyes widen. “What?”

“We’ll have the perfect chance for it, with your sister’s marriage. King Ansgar told me today that the route for her entourage—and your return trip, I assume—will require spending the night in Lyrnola, at my father’s manor house. I’d never ask you to miss her wedding, but on the return trip, if you want—”

“Won’t it cause horrible problems for your family, if I disappear while staying there? And what if we’re caught? You keep saying we have to be careful, and then you suggest….”

“I know. You don’t have to decide now. There’s…a lot of details to figure out.” The magnitude of what he’s suggested to her slaps him in the face, and his gaze falls to the ground as the tops of his ears start burning. “Maybe I shouldn’t have…. We haven’t known each other all that long, and I don’t want to pressure you or rush you into anything….”

“I know you’re just trying to help. And I appreciate that.” She looks to the sky as if hoping to find the answers written there.

“We can forget I said anything about it, if that’s easier.”

“No. I’ve been looking for a way out, some way I wouldn’t have to marry him, and every path I’ve thought of includes having to win an argument with my father. And then you….” Fifi sighs. Kai dares to look at her again. She’s still only a step away, her expression unreadable. “Where would we go?”

“To Sigurd, first. He knows far more than I do. I’m sure he can help us find a way to evade the search parties, and then…. I guess it’s up to you, whether we try to live in a village as commoners or live in the forest as true cybrinn. Either way, it would be very different from the life you’re used to. I would completely understand if—”

“Don’t.” Her eyes scan the courtyard around them and come to rest on his face again. “You’re asking me to trade a crown for freedom.”

“…Simply put, yes.” Does she think I’m crazy? I know my family would, no question, and this is the opposite of what they had in mind when they demanded that I win her over, Kai muses. But this isn’t about them. “Fifi…. I decided to come back to court because you remind me of a bird trapped in a cage, and I wanted to help you find a way out, if you wanted one. I never dreamed that we…. I mean, I don’t regret…but it was never my intention, for…us…” Why is this so difficult?!

“Even setting my father’s plans for my future aside, tradition and crown would have me married to a near stranger at nineteen. I’m grateful, and incredibly lucky, that we…found each other, and got to know each other, and….” Her voice trails off, but her eyes have more to say. Kai’s heart pounds in his chest and it’s all he can do to stay still, to keep the distance between them. “You said I don’t have to decide now.”

“And I mean it. Really. Giving up everything you’ve ever known isn’t an easy decision.”

“Not quite everything.” She closes the distance between them and kisses his cheek before stepping away again. Heat courses through him and for a moment he reaches after her before restraining himself. Not here, not now. No matter how much you want to. “But it’s still a lot. And I have to think about it.”

“I understand.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to have our lesson today. I have to go back inside, though. I told Minna I wouldn’t be long….”

“That’s all right. We can try again in a couple days, if you want.”

“After supper, in the one where we healed the dove. Day after tomorrow?”

“I’ll be there.”