The Queen’s Council: A Sword in Slumber

Merryweather accepted it from a messenger as Briar went over travel routes with Köning. It was Merryweather’s sharp gasp that drew her attention.

And then the look on her face, one of staggering worry, and Briar stood from her chair, feeling like her aunt would try to hide the letter, would lie about its contents.

Heart in her throat, Briar read the letter twice. It was short, but her eyes blurred, and she sniffed hard, fighting for composure.

Briar−

Meet with me before you leave for Austria. Just the two of us, as it began, no guards on either side.

I will be in the garden at nightfall should you accept.

Frieda

Briar had wanted a letter like this from the moment she had first seen Frieda in Frankfurt. She had wanted Frieda to reach out.

Something about it was odd, though. The tone, maybe. Briar couldn’t place it, or maybe she was rattled by everything that had happened the past few days.

Ben was already at her side, and he took the letter before she could stop him, but he couldn’t read, and he stared at the ink, his eyes wide.

“She didn’t say.” Briar’s throat was dry. “It’s a trap. From her mother. It has to be.”

“Why?” Ben frowned at her. That flicker of hope was still in him. Would always be in him, she knew, and her heart broke all over again. “Why would she care to threaten you now? You stepped aside. It has to be from Frieda. It has to be real.”

“What if it is not?” Köning stood from the table. “It is an unnecessary risk to take, Your Majesty. We know where Bavaria stands. Nothing will come of this meeting that you have not already decided.”

His words were a little colder, insinuating that she had taken this path and so must stick to it.

Ben took her arm. “If this is from her, if this is real—Bri. You have to try.”

She’d known the moment she’d heard it was from Frieda. Because she had the flicker of hope, and it would always be there, and she was breaking her own heart, she nodded at Ben.

“Johann’s people were within the castle grounds, too,” Phillip said. “As well as the other candidates who were attacked or poisoned. To plan the place and time ahead, and know you will be there…”

Phillip’s face set. He wanted to say more. But he bowed his head in surrender.

What if this was not about Bavaria? What if this was Frieda, and Briar could, somehow, reach her? Not to reclaim her friendship—she wasn’t sure they could, not after everything—but maybe to bridge any future clashes between their countries.

That was how a ruler thought, wasn’t it? To put logic and reason first for the well-being of their people. To resist getting distracted by the selfish part of her heart that was still a child and wanted her friend back even now.

“If Matilda plans to attempt anything,” Briar said slowly, “we could make it more difficult for her. Call for one last meal before we leave—a feast at Austria’s expense. Tonight, during the arranged time. Ensure that Matilda and most of Bavaria’s party will be in attendance, so we can keep an eye on them should any slip away, other than Frieda.”

Briar shrugged. “Possibly. But I would like to control some of the situation, however we can.”

Köning made a grunt that might have been approval. “We can certainly do that, Your Majesty.”

“Good.” Briar rubbed her face, breathing hard into the cave of her palms. “We will leave tomorrow, then.” It was not yet the afternoon, hours to go until her meeting with Frieda, and she felt as though she could lie down and sleep for years.

She laughed at her own bad joke, an empty, hollow laugh that had Phillip frowning in concern.

And Ben, bless him always, shattered what remained of the unbearable tension by looking straight at Phillip and saying, “Married for what, not even two months, and that’s the best proposition you can muster?”

Ben cut an encouraging grin at Briar, gauging her reaction, her need to smile, and when she looked at him rather vulnerably, he pressed on with all the determination she loved in him.

“Without even putting effort into it,” Ben plowed forward, “I can think of several far better ways to lure your wife into the bedroom, most of which involve some veiled reference to your lance.”

Köning rushed from the room with an excuse about arranging the last-minute banquet.

And Briar laughed. She laughed harder when Phillip’s whole face went red and he shook his head in annoyed resignation.

“Death by embarrassment from my squire,” he said to the ceiling. “This is not how I foresaw my end.”

“Oh, I’ve embarrassed you in ways far worse than talking about your lance,” Ben said.

Flora’s face was purple. Fauna was humming over a flower vase, arranging buds, wholly oblivious. Merryweather was laughing.

“Point is, my dear Flora,” Ben said, “I am Phillip’s squire, and I was merely discussing one of his jousting tools. I have no idea why you are looking at me in such horror over what is a perfectly innocent, not at all cheeky topic of conversation.”

“The humblest!” Ben declared. “Thank you! Someone realizes. I am too good for the lot of you. Now out, all you who do not see my worth, for it is truly no concern of ours how my lord uses his lance, except for his wife, because she is famously such a fan of jousting.”

“God help me, Benedikt.” Phillip covered his face with his hands, not fast enough to hide his smirk.

Ben did serve, at least, to get her aunts to leave, and when he followed them out, Briar and Phillip were alone.

“Do you think I should not go to meet her?” Briar asked into Phillip’s chest.

He tightened his grip on her. “I want you to be happy, Briar. And I am beginning to think you will never be truly content until you resolve whatever you need to resolve between the two of you. If it means risking your safety…I cannot say I am thrilled at the prospect, and I will not even try to hide my contempt for Matilda in the banquet hall while you are gone. But I think you would not forgive yourself if you did not try.”

Phillip held her so tightly she couldn’t feel the sag of her body, the weight in her chest. There was only him, his steadfastness, his strength.

When she twisted to look at him, he caught her up in a kiss, so he was not just steadfastness and strength now, but mouth and tongue and fingers on her back.

And she thought, as if down a long, echoing corridor, that maybe she could have all she wanted. Maybe she would meet Frieda tonight and they would reconcile and all would be as perfectly happy as she hoped.

Night approached both too quickly and not quickly enough. Her vassals pulled together a fabulous last-minute banquet under the guise of Austria apologizing for Briar’s brusqueness. She did not condone that apology but let them use whatever excuse they needed. As Ben and Phillip joined the vassals in the banquet hall to represent Austria, Briar snuck down the castle stairs to visit her friend.

It was almost how she had done so in Hausach. Sneaking out, bursting with things she would tell Frieda. Only now she was flanked by Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, on alert, though they would not go into the gardens with her.

“We can magic ourselves to be small,” Flora whispered as they headed down the cold stone stairs. “Hide in your pocket, should you have need of us.”

The door she would take out of the castle was paces ahead, but Briar paused in the shadows, and her aunts stopped around her.

And she realized that this didn’t feel like how she would sneak out to see Frieda; it felt like the night her aunts had escorted—dragged—her from Hausach, to the castle, clad in the finery of a princess. They had plunked her in front of a dressing mirror in a room that was too grand to be hers, put a crown on her head, and given her such a look of confusion when she’d started crying that she couldn’t bear to even try to explain why it hurt.

But they had raised her. And they loved her, and she loved them, and she didn’t know when that had stopped being enough.

“No,” she said to Flora in the darkness. “Thank you. I must do this without you.”

“Thank you,” she said again. For giving me Hausach, she thought, willing them to feel it, but she couldn’t say it aloud. They had hurt her in ways she was still uncovering, but they wouldn’t understand that the best gift they had given her was not a fairy blessing or her return to a throne; it had been her simple life, her humble origins.

Outside, evening had only just fallen, a warm, damp summer night that threatened rain. But the sky was clear for now, alive with speckled stars, a full moon giving pale white light to the rows of hedges and flowers set before her.

Briar wove into the garden, passing gray-washed plant life, until she reached the area where she had played rithmomachia with Frieda.

Briar’s heartbeat thundered in her clenched jaw, in her fists, rocking jerks she felt quicken with each passing moment of vacant stillness.

The tables had been cleared, so it was a normal garden now, a stone path, the walls of shrubs stretching over Briar’s head. In the play of dark and moonlight, her eyes made movement of everything, so a pulse of wind might have been Frieda coming from beside her, or a knot of flowers might have been a Bavarian soldier, crouched, waiting.

Briar turned in slow circles, holding her breath for any sound, but that only let her thudding pulse rock in her head.

And when her eyes drifted up to the moon again, seeing how far it had shifted—

She blinked. It was darker, as though a storm had moved in. It was certainly humid enough, but had she missed clouds rolling overhead? She squinted, fighting to make sense of the darkness, that shape—

Briar spun, shock leaching urgency into her veins, and she staggered at the wrenching shift of her surroundings. The garden, the garden was gone, dissolved entirely, rocking out from under her—

She looked up and saw an old table, a fireplace, stairs twisting above. She saw walls decorated with painted Lüftlmalerei—mural art that Fauna had done, flowers and happy dancing villagers who pranced all over the cottage.

Briar scrambled to her feet, skirt twisted around her ankles, breath coming hard and fast, and panicked.

She had passed out. That was the only explanation. She had been hit on the head, hadn’t she? Struck from behind.

Because she was looking at a pointed heart-shaped face that only existed in nightmares now. The face was matched with a coiling black horned headdress, draping black cloak, long fingers set with thick onyx rings. And a curling grin, red lips, and arching black brows.

The nightmare leaned against the fireplace, eyes slitted in appraisal, and when Briar faced her head-on, she gave a rattling cackle.