A Royal Birthday

“
I’m not giving
that to her.”

Shaking his blond head emphatically, Kiernan Dulchessy edged away from the small statue standing on the table in his family’s palace quarters.

“Yes, you are,” his mother said, her tone stern.

He leaned back farther, though he knew that no amount of distance would render the statue acceptable. “No,” he repeated. “I’m not.”

It wasn’t that the statue was hideous. Far from it, in fact. Nearly a foot high, made of the purest white marble and carved by the best stoneworkers in Thorvaldor, it was a lovely statue of a young girl in a long gown, standing as if in a slight wind, her skirts blowing about her most fetchingly. Her hands were closed and pressed to her chest, her head tilted slightly, as if watching the horizon for some handsome young man on a white horse. Her long, straight hair looked as though a real wind had tousled it becomingly about her face, a face made up of wide eyes, high cheekbones, a small chin, and slightly parted lips that looked as if they were getting ready to accept a kiss. No, there was nothing to fault about the entire statue, from the slender slippers peeking out from under her skirt to the delicately placed crown on top of her head.

Nothing, unless you knew that the girl supposedly depicted would only stand with her hands curled into her chest like that if she were trying to hide the ink spots on them and would probably manage to step on her own skirt and trip if a wind blew it around her legs that way. Nothing, unless you knew being given a statue of such an idealized—and, in Kiernan’s opinion, simpering—girl would merely make the recipient feel small and mousy.

“And not as the gift from the family, either,” his mother went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “You’ll give this to the princess as your personal gift.”

“As my what?” he yelped. “Mother, there is no way—”

“There is every way,” said a voice from behind him.

Kiernan did his best not to snarl at the iron sound in his father’s voice. Turning, he watched as Kerrill Dulchessy entered their family’s palace quarters and closed the door firmly behind him. The Earl of Rithia was looking at his son with the same expression he had worn the time he discovered Kiernan’s plans to sing a particularly ribald song for the palace’s Midwinter’s Day singing competition. Kiernan ground his teeth as he recalled that he had given in and ended up singing the acceptable and boring “Glass Green Sea” instead.

“You will give this to Princess Nalia at her birthday feast tonight,” his father went on. “And you will do it with a smile on your face.”

“But she’ll hate it,” Kiernan protested, though he could hear the weakness creeping into his voice. His lip curled as he stared at the statue. With the dreamy, longing expression on its face, it was a gift that a suitor might give to a girl he was courting, not the kind that you gave to your best friend.

But that, of course, was precisely the reason his parents had commissioned it, he grimly supposed. With Nalia’s fifteenth birthday here, a season of princess-hunting was about to commence. It wouldn’t be long before every Thorvaldian family with a son of marriageable—and not so marriageable—age started parading their progeny around the palace, and shortly thereafter the neighboring countries of Wenth and Farvasee would begin sending their highborn sons as well.

And since Nalia, the Princess of Thorvaldor, was his best friend, his parents must think they could make an early strike. Never mind that it was nigh on impossible that Nalia would be allowed to marry a mere earl’s son, and never mind that she didn’t think of him as anything but her oldest friend.

“It’s beautiful. What girl would hate a gift like this?” his mother asked with a little shake of her head.

She would
, Kiernan thought glumly as he pictured Nalia’s expression when he placed the statue in front of her at her birthday feast that evening. Even now he could see her lips press together for an instant as she compared the statue’s face with her own. No matter how often he told her otherwise, Nalia was utterly convinced that she wasn’t as graceful and pretty as a princess ought to be.

She definitely would
.

An hour later, Kiernan left his family’s quarters with a scowl etched onto his usually smiling face. No amount of arguing had dissuaded his parents from their scheme, and he had been forced to give in once they had threatened to send him back to Rithia for the entire summer if he refused. Because as much as he hated
the idea of giving Nalia the statue, he hated even more the idea of being away from her for months.

And that, he thought with a sigh as he walked—he refused to think of it as sulked—down the palace corridor, was the biggest problem. Not that his friend would hate the gift, but that his parents’ intent in making him give it lay dangerously close to a secret he had managed to keep to himself for over a year now. And not only might it give that secret away, but it would give it away in entirely the wrong context.

What he needed was a second gift, a foil to the stone girl. A gift that she would truly like and one that would show how utterly stupid he knew the blasted statue was. He had been planning to give her a newly copied version of her favorite collection of Farvaseean stories—she had read the old one until the spine was more pieces than whole—but now that didn’t seem like enough. He needed something better, bigger, something that would nullify any unhappiness the statue caused her.

But what?

He needed to go somewhere where he could think, and that place certainly wasn’t inside the palace. The sprawling castle bustled with activity as everyone from the servants to the highest nobles prepared for Nalia’s birthday feast. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face as he dodged a lady’s maid rushing down the corridor, her arms so full of frothy lace and shiny silk that he could hardly see her face above the fabric. More than to think, he wanted someone to talk to about the problem. And, of course, the person who he immediately wanted to run to for advice was the one person he couldn’t ask about his dilemma.

A high, breathy voice some distance behind him interrupted his thoughts. “Kiernan?”

Kiernan’s spine stiffened as he recognized the voice, but he forged on down the corridor, pretending that he hadn’t heard his name called.

With so many people around, the ruse would probably have worked on anyone else. Anyone else would have shrugged, thinking that she must not have called loudly enough and that it would be too much trouble to wade through the throng of people in the hall to go after him. But not Celine Andovia. Kiernan cringed as he heard her cry out his name again.

The truth, he thought ruefully as he looked around in desperation for somewhere to hide, was that he deserved the trouble she was putting him through. After all, he had kissed Celine in the gardens during the ball to honor the ambassador from the Varanth Islands. But he had thought she’d been at court long enough to realize that he was—as Nalia always said—a terrible, incorrigible flirt, and that his kisses were just meant as fun, not a sign of impending lifelong devotion. Celine, unfortunately, seemed to see them as the latter, and since that night she had been determined to make him hers. And since he
had
been the one to kiss her, he had been trying to push her away gently.

Too gently, apparently, because a quick glance behind him as he rounded a corner showed her hurrying after him. Perhaps it was time to be frank with her, though in as nice a way as possible, of course. If there was a nice way to tell someone you didn’t feel
that way
about them. But not today, not when he had a mere six hours to find a present to outshine the horrible
statue. What he needed was a diversion, to start a conversation with someone grand enough that Celine wouldn’t be able to interrupt it.

What he needed was Nalia.

A set of heavy carved doors loomed ahead, and Kiernan eyed them with a mixture of hope and trepidation. There was a chance that Nalia had escaped the preparations for her feast and taken refuge in her favorite place in the palace: the library. Of course, if he was wrong, he would be trapped in a room with only one exit—unable to escape Celine and her batting eyelashes.

He wavered for a moment, then grabbed hold of one of the doors and pulled it open.

Hushed and quiet, the palace library had an atmosphere all its own where the chaos in the hall might as well not exist. It smelled of paper, ink, and dust, smells Kiernan knew Nalia loved but always made him feel vaguely as though he was going to sneeze. Ducking his head down to avoid the glares of librarians—for he had let the door thud shut in his haste to get inside—Kiernan took the fastest route to the corner that Nalia favored, the one with the table set where the light from a window would shine on it for easy reading. He held his breath as he came around a tall shelf of books, praying that she would be there.

She sat at the table, bent over a scroll that looked to be at least two hundred years old, twisting a strand of brown hair around and around her finger as she read. Kiernan couldn’t help his smile as he noticed that the finger in question had a liberal amount of ink on it, and that she was completely heedless of the wiry mess she was making of her hair. He also couldn’t help the
tiny flip in his stomach, a feeling that was becoming more and more common whenever he saw his best friend.

He wiped away the smile as he approached, however, and replaced it with a wide-eyed plea. “You have to save me!” he said dramatically, setting both palms on the table and breathing hard.

Jerking in surprise, Nalia looked up, her eyes caught between worry and suspicion. “What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

“I’m being pursued by the most dangerous of creatures,” he said with a glance over his shoulder. “I must beg for my liege’s protection.”

Nalia raised her eyebrows at him, understanding lighting the eyes beneath. “You
still
haven’t told Celine?”