A Star Shall Fall

The place was eerily silent. Normally there were fae scattered around enjoying the fountains or the flowers or conducting an assignation under a bower, but tonight Irrith had it to herself—except for Ktistes, of course, who showed no interest in masquerades, and preferred wrestling to boxing. On her way to his pavilion on the far side, though, Irrith realised there was one other person in the garden.

Galen sat on a low bench next to a slender white obelisk. What he was doing there, Irrith didn’t know; he should have been with Lune, preparing to greet the ambassadors from the sea. Certainly he was dressed for court, in a deep blue coat heavily crusted with silver embroidery and a diamond-buttoned waistcoat. He sat unmoving, though, and his expression was a complex blend of melancholy and speculation, and it drew her like a moth to a flame.

She made enough noise that he heard her coming and rose. “Dame Irrith. Is her Grace calling for me?”

“Probably,” Irrith said. “I came to visit Ktistes. What are you doing?”

The Prince gestured toward the plaque at the base of the obelisk. “Just… thinking.”

Irrith drew closer and knelt in the grass, the better to read the inscriptions at the base. They turned out to be a list of names and dates.

Sir Michael Deven 1590–1625

Sir Antony Ware 1625–1665

Dr. John Ellin 1665–1693

Lord Joseph Winslow 1693–1724

Sir Alan Fitzwarren 1724–1750

Dr. Hamilton Birch 1750–1756

And above them, in large letters, PRINCES OF THE STONE.

The numbers made her feel very odd. It was such a human thing—of course, the men commemorated here were human. But to see the years of their reigns laid out in marble like that… it was as if she normally flew above the landscape of time, and this forced her briefly down to earth.

From behind her, Galen said, “You knew some of them, didn’t you?”

“Three.” Irrith reached out with an uncertain hand, brushing her fingertip along the names. “Lord Antony. Jack—he rarely used his title. And Lord Joseph.” After that, she’d been in Berkshire.

“How many were married?”

Irrith twisted around to stare at him. Galen still had that look on his face, the melancholy and the speculation. And a bit of apprehension, too. “Of the ones I knew? Lord Antony and Lord Joseph.”

Now melancholy was winning out. “And the first one, too, I think. Even if they were never wed in a church, I know he loved the Queen. And she loved him back.”

Irrith glanced past him, to the canopy of ever-blooming apple trees on the other side of the path. The greenery in between hid the second obelisk—the one that marked Sir Michael Deven’s grave. “Yes.”

Galen let out his breath as if trying, and failing, to banish his gloom with it, and sank back down upon the bench. There being nowhere else to sit but next to him or on the grass, Irrith stayed where she was. She could almost taste the sentiment churning in his heart, and perhaps it was that which led her to speak recklessly. “She won’t stop you from marrying, you know. Even if you are in love with her.”

The transformation to shock, horror, and embarrasment was instantaneous. Galen sputtered out several half-finished words before he managed a coherent sentence: “I’m not in love with her!”

“Ah.” Irrith nodded wisely. “Then I misunderstood. I thought the fact that you watch every move she makes, light up when she smiles, grovel like a kicked dog when she’s disappointed, and would do absolutely anything she asks in a heartbeat meant you were in love with her. But I’m a faerie; I know little about such things.”

She managed not to laugh at Galen, even though he was staring at her like the very spirit of the word aghast. It was funny, but she also felt a pang of sympathy for him. It could not possibly be pleasant, tying your heart to someone else’s heels like that.

Sunset still flamed in his cheeks when the strangled whisper emerged from his frozen mouth. “Please tell me she doesn’t know.”

“She doesn’t,” Irrith agreed. After all, he was the Prince; she had to do what he told her. Also, he wouldn’t be able to help Lune with the mermen if he went and buried himself under a rock to die of shame.

“You cannot tell her,” Galen said. For the first time since she met him, he sounded authoritative—if a little desperate. “My… sentiment is my own concern. Her Majesty will not be burdened with the knowledge of it.”

Irrith hardly listened to the last of that; she was distracted by something else. “No wonder you almost never use her name. Other Princes have, you know. She doesn’t require formality of them. Are you afraid she’ll guess, if she hears you say it?” It would be hard, she supposed, to sound like an ardent lover while wrestling with cumbersome forms of address.

Galen said stiffly, “Until such time as I can show her the proper respect in my heart, I must rely on the respect of speech.”