Closer to the Heart Read Free Page B

latter edged out the former.
    Today had been one of those days. They all had commercial interests, whether it be mercantile or agricultural, or a combination of both, and edging the taxes one way or another could shift the balance of wealth and power around this table and around the Kingdom. It had been like watching people playing a card game for very high stakes.
    The Crown Prince and Princess had sat in on this meeting as well, although they had not contributed anything to the discussion. She could tell from their expressions, however, that neither of them missed a thing—and it was very likely that tonight, at dinner in the Royal Suite, this entire meeting would be hashed out again between the soup and the dessert.
    She was just as glad not to be a part of that. Going through it once was enough. Prince Sedric seemed to take a great deal of pleasure in this game of politics, though, and for that she was grateful. When—as she fully expected—the King stepped aside to allow his son to become the reigning Monarch, she was not going to have to educate him in a thing.
    Nor Lydia, either.
Like Amily, Lydia had been playing the quiet, unassuming observer at the behest of her elders—in this case, her Uncle—for many years. If Sedric knew the highborn players in this game intimately, then it was Lydia who knew the merchant “princes.” Together they were going to make a formidable team.
    And thank the gods for the greater favors. That barring a tragedy, we’re going to get a pair like Lydia and Sedric as our monarchs when the time comes, and not a child.
    That was the current situation in Menmellith, a Kingdom near Valdemar’s southern border. The situation had been
so
precarious, in fact, that Menmellith had not sent an ambassador to Sedric and Lydia’s wedding.
    This, among other reasons, was why Kyril was pressing Amily and Mags to have
their
wedding soon. He wanted to make a state occasion of it, so that those foreign lands who had not sent a representative to the Crown Prince’s wedding would have a second chance with a lot less international political pressure attached to the ceremony.
    Politics. We can’t even escape them when it comes to our personal lives.
She sighed internally.
Evidently, once one is King’s Own, one doesn’t actually have a personal life. No wonder father seems younger. I think I’m taking on all the years he shed.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    Mags and Amily both ended up at the Collegium dining hall late—so late that they missed all their friends and the instructors, and there weren’t more than a handful of Trainees still there. He glanced over at her, thinking how serene and simply pretty she looked in her Formal Whites, and how deceptively unthreatening. She could have been any highborn girl; brown hair neatly braided and pinned around her head, big, soft brown eyes, delicate face—
    â€”and he had seen her kill men, taking carefully placed, precise arrow shots. Not that he hadn’t killed his share, and more, but he didn’t
look
harmless, the way she did. He wondered if any of the Councilors ever thought of that, when they faced her across the table.
    â€œWell, at least there ain’t a crowd,” he said, watching the few Trainees desperately trying to combine eating and studying, and the Trainees on kitchen duty bustling about cleaning up. “We can always beg at the kitchen hatch for some crumbs.”
    But they hadn’t even picked a spot to sit before the Cook sent someone out with loaded trays for both of them.
    Mags grinned and thanked the Trainee who handed them their dinners. “Bless you and Cook, and tell him I said so,” Amily added, and they took their food and found an out-of-the-way spot to enjoy their dinner in peace. One near the fireplace, and away from the windows. The ruddy light of sunset was
not
improving the bleak lawns and gardens outside.
    â€œThis